If you don't ask, you don't get. The institutional changes proposed in this book require help from lawmakers, which requires voters to speak loudly and clearly. Here's one idea. Ask your state and federal legislators to end subsidies to animal foods and to start taxing those foods. Their contact information is here: usa.gov/contact/elected.shtml. As cultural anthropologist Margaret Mead said, “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.” Make a phone call, send a letter or an email, compose a tweet or go on Facebook, or better yet, meet your lawmaker in person. Although we've seen lawmakers often side with corporate interests, a survey of congressional staff found that the best way to influence lawmakers is not through paid lobbyists but through “in-person visits by constituents.”51 So anyone really can make a difference.
Getting and Spending
Two centuries ago, when the Industrial Revolution was still in its infancy, poet William Wordsworth observed of modern, workaday life: “Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers.” I can relate. I've worked off and on as a business lawyer for more than two decades, which means I've spent a lot of time putting cash in the pockets of clients like Frank. As you may know from personal experience, money-driven work like that is largely devoid of social significance other than to the few people who benefit from it. It drains your passion and leaves you little time or energy to do much else.
But a few years ago, working pro bono for a nonprofit organization, I discovered how it felt to put my powers to better use. After sending a letter and engaging in a minor negotiation, I convinced authorities to allow activists protesting animal cruelty to enter a shopping mall. I was thrilled by the tiny win (although admittedly, I kept my day job). Describing my feelings later to activist Dina Kourda, I said, “I've been practicing law for years, and this is the first time . . .” My voice trailed off, but Dina finished my sentence, hitting the nail on the head: “. . . you did something that actually mattered?”
It's easy to get caught up in the day-to-day getting and spending that life demands. Sometimes it just takes a single, jarring event—a blog, a movie, a book—to remind us that some things in life matter more than money. And the next time that particular realization grabs you like a warm embrace, there's plenty you can do without giving up your day job. Consider the words of Gandhi: “You may never know what results come from your action. But if you do nothing, there will be no result.”
Food for Thought
We can act now to reverse the social and financial costs of meatonomics. Individually, each of us can help by consuming less meat, dairy, fish, and eggs.
Collectively, we can address these problems with a Meat Tax. The tax-driven policy changes would save 172,000 human lives and 26 billion animal lives, generate a $32 billion annual cash surplus, permit the return of one-sixth of the contiguous United States to native habitat, and have the same effect on carbon emissions as garaging all American highway vehicles, boats, and ships.
The best part is, by making price levels more accurate and decision making more meaningful, these changes will empower consumers to make better-informed choices.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This book sometimes asks people to think about animals and our relationship to them, and I'd like to remember two of the many animals who got me interested in this particular subject. In 2004, a law enforcement officer shot to death a cougar sleeping in a tree in Palo Alto, California. With the state's populations of humans and cougars then at 35 million and four thousand, respectively, this incident led me to reflect on the economic principle—inconsistently applied, it turns out—that value is based on scarcity.
And a few years later, the slaughterhouse video Glass Walls showed a cow dangling upside-down from one hoof in a fast-moving butchering machine. Already past the stunning station (without being stunned) and headed for the belly-ripping station, she continued to bellow and struggle to free herself. We don't often see animals as individuals, but when we do, it can leave a lasting impression. These individual animals, and many others whose lives or deaths I've seen—sometimes just in brief glimpses—have changed the focus of my own existence.
I am indebted to the many people who helped with this book—particularly those who provided comments on the manuscript simply because I asked. As the combined result of their good-natured generosity and my shameless begging, I had the tremendous good fortune to be advised in this effort by more than thirty people. Seven readers have advanced degrees in economics. Ten have PhDs. Twelve are lawyers. Some fit more than one category. While this feedback dramatically improved the book's accuracy and objectivity, I remain solely responsible for any errors. Further, I note that several of those who commented disagree, in varying levels, with my analysis and/or recommendations.
I am particularly grateful to Donald Garlit, Claire Kim, John Maher, and Michael Pease for heroically spending the many hours necessary to read and comment on the entire manuscript. For their valuable help in reviewing parts of the manuscript, I also owe deep thanks to John Boik, Chris Bryan, Karen Davis, Carol Glasser, Michael Harrington, Chris Holbein, Julie Jaffe, Miles Jaffe, Melanie Joy, Dina Kourda, Tom Lillehof, Dara Lovitz, Tania Marie, F. Bailey Norwood, Robert Ranucci, Kendra Sagoff, Mark Sagoff, Larry Simon, Max Simon, Michele Simon, Janice Stanger, Paul Wazzan, James McWilliams, and Bill Weissinger. And special thanks to Erin Evans for her valuable research and editorial assistance.
A number of veterans of the book trade were key to this work's publication, and I am grateful for their expert assistance. My agent, Lindsay Edgecombe, provided invaluable advice at each step, guiding me through the publishing process with energy and savvy. My editor, Caroline Pincus, backed this book with courage, enthusiasm, and foresight. Josh Chetwynd provided terrific editorial help, excising redundancies and lawyer-speak with the skill of a surgeon. Thanks also to Ali McCart for her astute and meticulous copyediting, Vanessa Ta for her excellent production editing, and Bonni Hamilton and Anne Sullivan for their zealous and creative promotional efforts.
I'm especially grateful to my partner, Tania Marie, for her extraordinary patience, support, and encouragement. The past few years saw many a sunny Saturday or Sunday morning spent in the house, working. She brightened those indoor hours with her sparkle.
Finally, I must also recognize Joy, Gaia, Boojum, and Sweet Pea—the rabbit, tortoise, and two cats who share our home and whose visits punctuated and enlivened many a writing session. The cats even gave their own input, walking on the keyboard every so often to insert random strings of characters in the manuscript. These individual animals' unique personalities and behaviors provide a daily reminder that they, like all sentient beings, live to pursue their own versions of happiness.
APPENDIX A
Animal Foods and Human Health
Don't we need milk for healthy teeth and bones? Aren't fish a great source of omega-3s? Isn't an egg a day good for you? Isn't meat a necessary source of iron, Appendix B12, and other nutrients? As musician Steve Albini cautions, “Doubt the conventional wisdom unless you can verify it with reason and experiment.” This appendix explores a number of widely held beliefs related to the health effects of animal food consumption. Specifically, the first section addresses issues in beef and pork, the second looks at dairy, the third eggs, and the fourth fish. As we'll see, reason and experiment don't always support popular assumptions.
A Red Flag for Red Meat: Issues with Beef and Pork
Consider a common belief about animal protein: that its quality is better than plant protein's. Along those lines, beef and pork producers routinely trumpet the high-quality protein their products supposedly deliver.1 Where do these groups get the idea that animal protein is high quality and plant protein is low quality?
This notion seems based on the idea that some proteins contain a more complete set of the eight essential amino acids than others. Amino acids are building blocks of protein that our bodies cannot produce independently. Despite resear
ch to the contrary, the idea developed that only animal foods contain all essential amino acids, and that has led to these foodstuffs being called, somewhat hyperbolically, “complete proteins.” Yet plants can also provide a complete set of essential amino acids. Writing of the common misconception that plants lack certain essential amino acids, physician and nutritionist John McDougall said, “Any single one or combination of . . . plant foods provides amino acid intakes in excess of the recommended requirements,” and for a vegetarian who consumes sufficient calories, “it is impossible to design an amino acid–deficient diet.”2 It's unclear why the myth persists that plants lack amino acids and are incomplete. As early as 1966, a clinical study of amino acid intake in meat-eaters, vegetarians, and vegans found that “each group exceeded twice its requirement for every essential amino acid and surpassed this amount by large amounts for most of them.”3
Paradoxically, despite the misdirected focus that consumer messaging often places on animal foods providing more essential amino acids than plants, animals actually have no independent ability to create amino acids. Only plants and bacteria can generate protein's building blocks. As nutritionist Janice Stanger notes, “Animal protein is recycled plant protein.”4 When humans obtain protein from vegetables, we simply cut out the animal middleman.
Meat and Human Evolution
In the animal kingdom, herbivores get all the protein they need for healthy muscle and tissue development from plants. Moreover, power, speed, and body size often favor those who eat plant food, not animal food. Thus, nature's strict herbivores include large animals like elephants, rhinoceroses, giraffes, and fast animals like gazelles, antelopes, and horses. Not only do these vegans get plenty of protein from plants, but their robust physiques and longevity belie the feared trade-off that humans typically associate with eating plants.
But humans are different from plant-eating animals, some say, because our bodies have evolved to eat meat. This argument typically advances in three parts: human anatomical features, such as canine teeth, are similar to carnivores'; vegetarian diets don't provide necessary nutrients like protein, calcium, iron, and vitamin B12; and hunting and meat eating have been natural human or hominid occupations for millions of years. In fact, a closer look at these issues tends to point toward the opposite conclusion: it seems humans, just like gorillas, evolved to eat plants.
In a study examining the comparative anatomy of carnivores, omnivores, herbivores, and humans, physician Milton Mills compared nineteen anatomical features from the four groups. Mills found that humans most closely resemble herbivores, not carnivores or omnivores, in all anatomical features related to eating.5 Thus, like herbivores but unlike carnivores or omnivores: our saliva contains enzymes to digest carbohydrates; our intestines are long, not short; our mouth opening is small, not large; our stomach's pH is 4 to 5, not 1; we chew food rather than swallow it whole; we have flattened nails instead of sharp claws; our molars are flattened, not sharp; our incisors are broad and flat, not short and pointed, and our canines are short and blunted, not long and sharp. These features all support plant consumption and suggest that in humans, the evolutionary process selected features associated with eating vegetation. For instance, a long intestinal tract and a higher stomach pH are appropriate to digest plant material, not flesh; and flat molars, blunted canines, and a predisposition to chew food distinguish us from carnivores and omnivores who typically rip and swallow food whole. In the anatomy of eating, it seems we have much more in common with Bambi and Bullwinkle than with Lassie or Leo.
The argument that humans cannot obtain adequate nutrients from a vegetarian diet is a common misconception. In fact, as seen in chapter 2, protein is available in every kind of plant food. Iron and calcium are readily available in a wide variety of plants. Moreover, in each instance, the plant sources of these nutrients do not promote disease, while the animal sources promote illnesses like cancer, heart disease, and diabetes.
Vitamin B12 is one nutrient some vegans might have a problem obtaining from plants, but not because it's not present naturally. In fact, neither plants nor animals are capable of independently producing B12; the vitamin is produced only by bacteria.6 These bacteria are typically present in unwashed vegetables, but not in the triple-washed, hermetically packaged vegetables most people eat today. Thus, while it's appropriate for strict vegetarians to take B12 supplements unless they grow and fertilize their own crops, this is merely the result of life in industrialized society and not a feature of body design. Furthermore, our bodies need only the tiniest amount of B12. Those who eat lots of meat may get too much, and high levels of B12 are associated with a higher risk of prostate cancer.7
As to the argument that hominids have been eating meat for aeons, the archaeological record is less than conclusive. One school of thought posits that early humans were predominantly scavengers, not hunters, which explains the presence of animal bones at early human sites.8 The theory that meat consumption in early humans was merely opportunistic, rather than the product of complex social activities like group hunting, tends to counter the argument that human evolution has been closely related to dietary changes like increases in animal protein consumption.
Another interesting line of research postulates that early humans were mainly prey, not predators, engaging in social behaviors like group living for self-defense rather than hunting. According to archaeologist Robert Sussman, our hominid ancestors were vegetarians who, because of body morphology, “simply couldn't eat meat.”9 These early humans inhabited a hostile landscape populated by ten times more predators than today, and one in ten hominids became another animal's dinner. Sussman and others argue that the concept of early humans as hunters has been radically overstated; in fact, evidence suggests that systematic hunting did not begin until relatively recently within the total scope of human evolution.10
While it is undeniable that humans have hunted for millennia, it does not follow that our bodies evolved to eat meat. We're opportunistic, intelligent, and highly capable of developing and using technology. To look at it another way, we readily build and use airplanes, although our bodies did not evolve to fly.
Dairy Dairy, Quite Contrary: Issues with Milk, Cheese, and Butter
Through aggressive government marketing and artificially low prices, meatonomics encourages Americans to consume huge quantities of dairy. Each American takes in about 2 pounds of dairy every day. That's nearly three times the worldwide average and, according to experts, considerably more than our bodies can safely process.11 As with meat, these high consumption levels damage our health and cost billions of dollars to treat. A brief overview of dairy's health effects shows why.
Mammals have mammaries. That makes us unique in the animal kingdom, both in producing milk and in drinking it when young. Milk is nature's way of promoting rapid growth and boosting the immune system of infants, which is why milk is stocked with antibodies and nutrients like protein, calcium, and vitamin C. For human babies unable to chew or digest solid food, milk is a great delivery vehicle for these nutrients. For adults and children past weaning age, however, a sizable body of research suggests otherwise. These studies find that when fed to non-infants, especially at the levels Americans consume it, dairy is not only unnecessary but harmful.¶ As Dr. Michael Klaper said, “The human body has no more need for cows' milk than it does for dogs' milk, horses' milk, or giraffes' milk.”12
Consider protein, the building block of muscle and tissue development. Because natural selection among prey animals like cattle favors those whose young grow quickly, bovine infant formula, or cow's milk, has triple the protein content of human's milk. This high protein content helps calves gain 2 pounds a day during the first nine months of their lives. It also helps human children who drink lots of cow's milk grow faster than those who drink less.13
This rapid pace of growth might appeal to parents who associate fast growth with good health. However, clinical studies question this need for speed, finding that children who grow quickly are m
ore likely than others to develop cancer later in life.14 Do human children really need to grow as fast as cattle? Maybe not. For one thing, unlike prey animals, human babies can afford to grow slowly because their parents protect them from predators.
Cancer
Dairy promotes rapid cell growth, but this is a double-edged sword. One problem with this process is it spurs the development of both healthy and unhealthy cells. As a result, cancer cells develop in ways that evade or overwhelm the body's natural capacity to attack and kill them. The biggest culprit in this area appears to be the protein casein, one of the main ingredients in milk. According to The China Study coauthor T. Colin Campbell, casein is an “exceptionally potent cancer promoter.”15 This is not just a problem for milk or cheese gluttons. In fact, at levels well below the two pounds consumed by the typical American each day, research consistently finds dairy causes cancer.
Take prostate cancer, a disease which at least sixteen clinical studies link to dairy consumption.16 In one study, men who drank more than two glasses of milk daily were found to have a significantly greater risk of prostate cancer than those who drank no milk.17 The daily danger threshold of two glasses is one less than the USDA recommends and almost two less than the American average.
Among women, research finds that dairy—unfortunately, an equal opportunist—can cause both breast and ovarian cancer.18 In the latter case, two large cohort studies find that women who consume just two servings of dairy daily—again, one less than recommended and two less than the average—have a significantly higher risk of ovarian cancer than those who consume less.19 There's a pattern here: at consumption levels well below those the USDA recommends or Americans practice, dairy promotes disease.
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