Letter to The Economist: Diet and Health

The Economist is a great publication in so may ways, and open- and fair-minded on almost every topic. A long-standing exception has been animal agriculture; quite consistently over the past twenty years or more, The Economist has ignored or downplayed the ever-growing body of evidence as to the many sorts of harm caused by animal agriculture and by the human practice of eating animal products. And one will search in vain in back issues of the magazine for any coverage of the extraordinary health benefits of a whole foods, pant-based diet. The letter below was not published.

Your recent article on the food business (“Appetite for Change,” August 24–30) tells us that “it may not only be an excess of sugar, fat, and salt that causes health problems,” and reports that the “heavy processing” of food may also be to blame. True enough, but even more damage is caused by something you don’t touch on; you make no mention whatsoever of the effects on our health of eating animals rather than plants.

The organization Physicians for Responsible Medicine lists more than a dozen areas (arthritis, asthma, cancer, diabetes, heart disease, etc.) in which research has shown health outcomes to be far better to the extent that we eat a whole-foods, plant-based diet. And to the extent that we do go that route, our tax bill for health care costs is reduced, global warming is reduced, pollution of our lakes and rivers is reduced, and harm to non-human animals is reduced. It would be good to see some of this reported on in your pages.

Letter to the Globe: Farm Animals and the Law

I haven't posted much on this blog in the past few months, but I have been writing lots of letters to the editor. Many of them didn't have a lot to say (the several I wrote to ask newspapers to pay more attention to the war in Sudan, for examle). But some may be of interest; I'll post a few now. The Globe and Mail published a slightly revised version of this letter in its 6 August issue.

Re “More life” (Letters, Aug. 2): A letter writer finds that the National Farm Animal Care Council and Canadian Council on Animal Care “do somewhat protect” farm animals. The truth is that neither they nor federal or provincial governments provide meaningful guards against such cruelty.

Just as American states have done, Canadian provinces have made animal agriculture essentially exempt from animal cruelty laws; anything considered “generally accepted practice” is allowed. And what is generally accepted by the animal agriculture industry – and by these councils – often entails horrific cruelty.

Instead of focusing on reducing cruelty, our governments continue to pass “ag-gag” laws designed to prevent the public from realizing the extent of the cruelty. Meaningful protection of farm animals on the part of all levels of government is long overdue.

Meat and Milk, Children and Mothers

Nicholas Kristof had an excellent column in the New York Times of April 15; "What a Girl’s Goat Teaches Us About Our Food" tells the story of how a nine-year-old girl in Shasta County, California, grew very fond of Cedar, a goat she was taking care of as a 4H member--so fond that, when it came time to give Cedar up for slaughter at the end of the County Fair, as was usual practice, she couldn't do it. Instead, she and her mother took the goat to a place they thought would be safe. The County Fair authorities argued that the girl and her mother were legally obliged to have the goat killed. The authorities were so determined to have what they saw as a four-legged piece of personal property killed that they liaised with the County Sherriff's office and persuaded the Sherriff to send law enforement officers some 500 miles to capture the goat and return it to County Fair authorities. Cedar was found, and Cedar was duly slaughtered, just as the authorities had wanted.

Kristof treats the incident as a reminder that "the bright line we draw between farm animals and our pet dogs and cats is an arbitrary one." He takes aim at the cruelties of factory farming and the unreasonableness of ag gag laws, and recounts how he himself has given up eating meat.

The piece inspired many comments, a number of which Kristof responded to with comments of his own, including one in which he contrasted the cruelties of today's dairy farming with the practices of earlier generations of dairy farmers. It was in response to that Kristof comment that I ssent the following letter to the Times:

Nicholas Kristof’s moving column on the horrors of the meat industry is superb. But he forgets the fundamental facts of the dairy industry when he writes that "it used to be that dairy cows were mostly pastured and had a decent life." No mother has a decent life if her newborn children are taken away from her soon after birth so that the members of another species can take her milk. And when the mother stops providing large amounts of milk, she is killed (rather than being allowed to live out her 20-year natural lifespan). Even in the old days, the dairy industry inflicted horrible cruelty on the mothers and daughters as well as on the sons who were killed to become veal. Unlike in the old days, substitutes for both dairy and meat products have become readily available; there need be no real sacrifice on the part of humans in moving towards a plant-based diet.

"What a Girl's Goat Teaches Us about Our Food" truly is an excellent column. I urge you to read it: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/15/opinion/goat-girl-slaughtered-california.html

Deforestation

I sent the letter below to The Globe and Mail this past week after reading an excellent column by Paul Shapiro. The letter was published in yesterday's paper (along with a very good letter by Anna Pippus, calling for governments to play a much more active role on these issues).

Re If You Don’t Want to Ditch Meat For your own Health, Do It To Avoid Pandemics (April 24): Paul Shapiro’s piece on the many good reasons we should transition away from eating animals mentions the UN’s conclusion that 15% of greenhouse gas emissions can be attributed to animal agriculture. But the relevant UN Food and Agriculture Organization study looked only at the agricultural operations themselves. An additional 10-15% is attributable to deforestation, which is primarily also related to animal agriculture; we cut down “carbon sink” forests primarily in order to grow crops that are to be fed not to us, but to animals we will then eat.

When we obtain our nourishment directly from plant sources, far, far fewer forests are destroyed; if we transition away from eating animal products, the net positive effect on climate change will be closer to 30% than 15%.

Voting Green

I've just posted the message below on the Facebook page of Vegans of Nanaimo. (That's a group that had a little over 400 members a year or so ago; now it's well over 1,000--in a city of fewer than 100,000.)

For the past several months I’ve been doing everything I can to lobby two Canadian political parties—the Green Party and the New Democratic Party—on issues relating to the harms caused by animal agriculture to the environment, to human health, and of course to non-human animals.

A couple of weeks ago I urged members of this group to come out to a town-hall style NDP meeting at which federal leader Jagmeet Singh would be speaking. As those of you who were there will know, both he and local candidate Bob Chamberlin spoke at some length about the environment. As is usual for New Democrats, however, they said nothing in that context about animal agriculture. The flyers I started to distribute on this issue were collected by an NDP staffer almost as fast as I could hand them out. When I spoke with Singh one-on-one following the meeting—the second time I had spoken to him on this issue—he said he was thinking about it; he gave no indication that his thoughts might translate into policy recommendations for the party anytime soon. Over the phone, a staffer said local candidate Bob Chamberlin would phone me about this issue; he never has. I had also written Singh (and two other NDP MPs who I thought might have an interest in this area) over 6 months ago; there has been no response whatsoever from any of them.

Over the same period I’ve been in touch with Green Party people; what a contrast! When I wrote Green Party shadow cabinet members last fall on these issues, several responded thoughtfully and at length. Elizabeth May herself eventually wrote to say that she agreed that “we must transition to a more plant-based diet as part of the fight to combat climate change.” And this week local candidate Paul Manly wrote, saying that he “definitely would support policies to encourage Canadians to eat a plant based diet.”

The Green Party as a whole is still very far from fully recognizing the importance of these issues. As my email correspondence with Green shadow cabinet members made clear, there are many in the party who regard it as much more important to support organic meat and dairy operations than it is to encourage Canadians to move away from animal products, period. And there are many Greens too who are reluctant to acknowledge the importance of animal agriculture (and associated deforestation) as a key driver of climate change; under the heading “Solving the Climate Crisis,” the Green Party’s website still says absolutely nothing about animal agriculture and the degree to which it contributes to climate change. At the moment there is nothing on the party’s website supporting policies to encourage Canadians to eat fewer animal products, and more plants and vegetables. But however slowly, the Green Party does seem to be moving in the right direction on these issues—and certainly that seems to be the case for Party leader Elizabeth May and local candidate Paul Manly. Moreover, the Greens are clearly open to hearing us—and to welcoming us into the Green Party and encouraging us to try to influence the shaping of future policies. The NDP, on the other hand, does not seem to be moving at all on these issues—and they don’t even seem willing to listen.

I first joined the NDP in 1978, and I’ve volunteered for the party in dozens of elections since then. I ran as a federal candidate for the New Democrats in 2000. But gradually over the past couple of decades (I started changing my meat-eating habits in the late 1990s, and went vegan in 2011) I’ve come more and more to appreciate just how important and just how interconnected these issues are. On this network of issues—arguably the most important we face today—the NDP has failed completely. I’ll be voting for Paul Manly and the Greens in the May 6 by-election; I urge you to do the same.

Nation Rising

I heard today through a post on Vegans of Nanaimo about the "Nation Rising" demonstration planned for Parliament Hill July 14. It has the support of a number of excellent groups (including Animal Justice), and sounds like a great idea. The aims of Nation Rising are as follows:

1. Stop subsidies to animal agriculture: Stop the multi-billion dollar subsidies that go to animal agriculture. It is wrong that our tax dollars are used to fund food that makes us sick, destroys our planet, and hurts animals.

2. Make healthy food affordable: Create new subsidies to ensure healthy, organic, plant-based food is affordable for everyone, in particular Indigenous and low-income communities.

3. Help farmers transition to plant-based farming: Provide financial assistance to farmers wishing to make the transition to plant-based farming, and set up the necessary committees to provide guidance during that transition.

If you can go to Ottawa mid July and join in, that would be wonderful. I doubt if I can--but I'm thinking that maybe those of us who can't make it to Parliament Hill might organize support demonstrations in other cities across the country.

For more information, here are the "Nation Rising" website and Facebook page locations:

http://nationrising.ca/

https://www.facebook.com/nationrisingcanada/