Recently, the FDA has made rumblings about legitimizing the use of cloned animals in our food chain. Hopefully, these coming policy changes will start a conversation around the United States about the cost of our food. People from the Associated Press and our own BNN have thrown down very good articles covering the economic status of these future changes. To each of them I give kudos for their industrious coverage of the facts.
However, I feel that a major part of the puzzle has been left uncovered for the average American and I wish to delve into that now. Is our continued reliance on the meat industry for a large part our daily diets good for the world around us? Is it cost effective in the long run for us to continue have meat be a main stay of our daily consumption?
I, for one, am not so sure and I am not alone. To place this in context, I’m not a vegetarian and I thoroughly enjoy eating meat. But I question the viability of this process. How much land, food, water, and energy are we funneling into the meat industry? And can we continue to do this while the population of the world continues to increase at amazing speed?
According to some rather fundamentalist veggie-ists out there it takes fifty times as much water to produce one pound of beef than it does to produce one pound of potatoes. The scientist in me baulks at these statements, as I do not place the potato in the same category as a beef steak. For two reasons, one — its not meat and two — potatoes have less protein than beef.
I have decided to come up with my own comparison to see if I can better rationalize my beef eating ways. What if we compared the amount that you can get from soybeans (lots more protein and has been made into all sorts of meat-like things) to what you get from beef?
For a second let us pretend that we all know that cows eat a lot of food to grow big and strong. While soybeans are planted in the ground and grow from the sun, water, and air. This makes me question something: How many soybeans does it take to make up for one cow? According to different academic agriculture sources (including Penn State and Utah State) the amount of food for each cow is somewhere between 10-20lbs of food per day (for two or more years) and will cost about $200 per cow per year.
It costs somewhere between $2-8 dollars to produce a bushel of soybeans (that’s roughly 50lbs for us none bushel using people), depending on your location. The average cow gives us roughly 500lbs of human edible food stuffs. Run those numbers.
That’s right. It costs about fifteen cents to produce a pound of soybeans which can then be eaten but it costs about $2.5 to produce a pound a beef. That doesn’t include processing, transportation, or waste costs. Plus the cows are eating a large amount of the food that we are producing.
With the growing population of the globe can we all afford to continue eating meat?
I, for one, am not ready to stop enjoying steaks and hamburgers. But I fear the day of rationing, as in novels by Robert Heinlein are not far away. Would we really give up strawberries and cream to keep hamburgers?
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Follow-up comment rss or Leave a TrackbackThese are very good points. It is interesting to note that part of the problem here is the practice of feeding ruminants grains and legumes instead of grazing them on pasture. Not only are feedlots unsightly and hugely increase the cost to us and suffering of the animals (the unneccesary cruelty of confinement systems is a whole ‘nother topic), but they are the source of much human disease.
Consider that animals such as cows have lived on nothing but grass since there were cows. Their stomachs are designed for grass only with a few grains in the autumn. When force fed grains, the pH of their stomachs increases (becomes more alkalai) and allows ornaisms such as the ubiquitious e-coli to thrive. The great lakes of waste that such systems create must be disposed of, but even the best lined lagoons allow some contamniation into the ground water supply — that’s how you get e-coli on the neighboring spinach field. If these animals were grazed until even a week before grain fattening, this problem would cease to exist.
Now, consider that many animals spend a majority of their lives eating grains and you begin to see where the problem creeps in. Not only does this diet radically change their digestive system, but every aspect of the animal’s health is impacted. Hoof and skin infections skyrocket. Supplements and antibiotics must be given to keep them from becoming ill. Animals that are not grazed suffer illness and a generally depressed immune system at a rate far greater than their feed-lot bretheren.
The USDA is continuing to take comment on whether at least 6 months of grazing should be required of beef labelled “organic,” and many small producers are pushing for it. They’ve seen the difference themselves. It is sad that this type of ag has gone on long enough for an entire generation of ranchers to have forgotten how to pasture animals — they actually need to be retaught.
If the USDA hadn’t pushed feed-lot type animal production on farmers since the 1960s, they wouldn’t be facing a crisis — the average age of a feed-lot rancher in the US is nearly 70! Not only do we need to make sure more animals are pastured for their health and ours, but it’s past time USDA began funding re-education programs to bring new blood into ranching. The industrial-sized operations that have sprung up in the last 40 years are a real model in free-market fundamentalism, but fail to take into account the impossibility of anyone young entering that type of work. Feed-lot policies have actually placed American Agriculture in crisis, in an effort to sheer a few pennies off hamburger at the Safeway.
To say that cheep meat is somehow a democratization of “high eating” is disingenious at best. The fallout of this 40 year experiment has been an explosion of disease and morbidity among a lower socio-economic class that eats meat products at a higher rate than their more affluent cohorts. That the so-called “diseases of affluence” are now killing the poor at higher rates can ultimately be traced back to feed-lot confinement systms and the quest for a $0.30 hamburger.
This is a question more than a comment. I’m looking at protein sources from an energy/resource per pound perspective. One must also consider the cost per pound as the fastest incentive to get the average person to change their habits is often through the pocketbook. Does anyone know what the cost figures are to get the raw beef and raw soybeans processed, packaged, and shipped to the consumer in a consumer friendly form? Seems to me one would have to do a lot to the soybeans to convert it to a form consumers would find appealing. Does the cost gap shrink? How to other protein sources such as fish, canned tuna for example, compare. How about storage and preparation?
When I compared beef, tuna, and Morning Star veggie crumbles on a cost and calorie per gram of protein basis, tuna came out way ahead. This is even before considering that tuna didn’t have to be refrigerated.
Any solid facts or reliable studies to share? Thanks very much.
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