“Things are seldom what they seem, skim milk masquerades as cream …” — from Gilbert & Sullivan’s HMS Pinafore
Earlier this year, two large farm pigs came to Geauga Humane
Society’s Rescue Village, where I work as the executive director.
Minnie and Cricket already had star credentials, having been featured
in the HBO documentary Death on a Factory Farm. In this
difficult-to-watch film, the public saw what life (and death) is like
for animals being raised for food on one of the big factory farms in
Ohio.
So the fact that Issue 2 in Ohio has kicked up such a firestorm of
controversy is not surprising. People in urban, suburban and rural
areas, including farmers, are more concerned with food than ever before
— what we eat, how it is grown, what goes into it and, when it
involves meat, how the animals are treated. And of course, farmers and
all of us are concerned about economic survival as well.
I have read wild claims that Issue 2 pits vegans against meat-eating
and meat-producing farmers. If they could speak, Minnie and Cricket
would call this hogwash!
The fact is that opponents of Issue 2 — just like the general
population — run the gamut from happy carnivores to vegetarians
to vegans. The Issue 2 debate does not break down based on what is on
our dinner plates. Just about everyone on both sides of this issue is
concerned about improving the standards that govern care and treatment
of livestock and poultry. But saying “just about everyone” is not the
same as “everyone.”
Hard-fought battles were waged in Michigan and California to win
even small reforms in the laws governing standards. No, not everyone
agrees that laying hens should live in cages bigger than a sheet of
notebook paper. Not everyone agrees that livestock should be able to
turn around or lie down comfortably. Most everyone agrees, but not
everyone. This is where the power of big agribusiness comes in.
It is no secret that big agribusiness emphasizes profits. However,
it is possible to provide humane conditions and care without breaking
the bank. Humane treatment can be cost-effective.
In our state, an amazing thing has happened. In Ohio, one of the
centers for big agribusiness, there has seemingly been a miracle. Issue
2 came up and got on the ballot in what felt like record time. Before
anyone could catch their breath, we had a massively funded campaign to
convince the voters to make a constitutional change. And what’s more,
the language of that change seemed almost too good to be true. Here in
Ohio, we are going to get to vote on having it in our constitution that
there would be a 13-person board regulating standards — a board
that would allegedly see that livestock and poultry were treated more
humanely. Suddenly this state, which has been so stubbornly backward on
standards and laws protecting animals, seemed to be born-again
animal-welfare fans.
Curiously though, not a single humane society was contacted or
consulted in the creation of Issue 2. This was strange, given that it
is the humane societies that enforce anti-cruelty laws in most Ohio
counties. So I asked myself: Would the Minnies and Crickets of this
world benefit from passing Issue 2 and enshrining this 13-member board
in the state constitution?
That board will sit above the voters, with no accountability, no
oversight (not even from the Ohio General Assembly) and no guarantee
that it will involve people, or enough people, who are not tied to the
narrow political and economic interests of big agribusiness.
If you ask me, Issue 2 is both a response to the small reforms that
have been won in other states and a precedent-setting power move. If
Issue 2 passes, it will be much harder to challenge the status quo.
This indeed would not benefit Minnie and Cricket. Things are seldom
what they seem; this is a case of skim milk masquerading as cream. Vote
no on Issue 2.
MEAT IS MURDER ON THE PLANET
Supporters of Issue 2 like to claim that their opponents want to
force veganism on Ohioans. That’s nonsense, of course, but even this
wing-and-burger-lovin’ omnivore is thinking about cutting back after
reading this report from the Worldwatch Institute. Seems that our
bottomless appetite for meat may be even worse for the planet than our
obsession with SUVs:
Whenever the causes of climate change are discussed, fossil fuels
top the list. Oil, natural gas and especially coal are indeed major
sources of human-caused emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2) and other
greenhouse gases (GHGs). But we believe that the life cycle and supply
chain of domesticated animals raised for food have been vastly
underestimated as a source of GHGs, and in fact account for at least
half of all human-caused GHGs. If this argument is right, it implies
that replacing livestock products with better alternatives would be the
best strategy for reversing climate change. In fact, this approach
would have far more rapid effects on GHG emissions and their
atmospheric concentrations — and thus on the rate the climate is
warming — than actions to replace fossil fuels with renewable
energy.
Livestock are already well-known to contribute to GHG emissions.
Livestock’s Long Shadow, the widely-cited 2006 report by the United
Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), estimates that 7,516
million metric tons per year of CO2 equivalents (CO2e), or 18 percent
of annual worldwide GHG emissions, are attributable to cattle, buffalo,
sheep, goats, camels, horses, pigs and poultry. That amount would
easily qualify livestock for a hard look in the search for ways to
address climate change. But our analysis shows that livestock and their
byproducts actually account for at least 32,564 million tons of CO2e
per year, or 51 percent of annual worldwide GHG emissions.
… [L]ivestock (like automobiles) are a human invention and
convenience, not part of pre-human times, and a molecule of CO2 exhaled
by livestock is no more natural than one from an auto tailpipe.
Moreover, while over time an equilibrium of CO2 may exist between the
amount respired by animals and the amount photosynthesized by plants,
that equilibrium has never been static. Today, tens of billions more
livestock are exhaling CO2 than in pre-industrial days, while Earth’s
photosynthetic capacity (its capacity to keep carbon out of the
atmosphere by absorbing it in plant mass) has declined sharply as
forest has been cleared. (Meanwhile, of course, we add more carbon to
the air by burning fossil fuels, further overwhelming the
carbon-absorption system.)
Full report available at worldwatch.org/node/6294
This article appears in Oct 28 – Nov 3, 2009.