Animals

as much as i want to reduce my carbon footprint,it is extremely hard being a vegan.so plz suggest somethin.

Hi Michael, I admire your passion. However, I am compelled to point out that cattle don't need grain, ever. Cattle are fed grain not to make more meat, but to make the meat fatty - it's called "marbling." It is quite possible to overwinter ruminants on hay and on crop waste - like corn stalks and soybean vines after the grains are harvested for human consumption. If grain farmers mowed weeds between rows instead of flaming or poisoning them they could make a surprising amount of high quality winter feed for ruminants. Given a small amount of nitrogen-rich food like cottonseed cake left from oil extraction, cattle and other ruminants can also do pretty well on things like corn cobs after the seeds have been removed for human consumption - the bacteria in that huge fermentation vat aka rumen eat the nitrogen and the cattle digest the protein made inside the microbes from the nitrogen. Cattle on grass may belch more, but there are many fewer of them than those packed into CAFOs so the end result is still less methane. The quotation is disingenous because it deliberately overlooks the manure lagoons associated with CAFOs, which generate appalling amounts of methane - which could be captured and used to generate energy. Cow pats on pasture break down aerobically - minimal methane.   Pigs can be brought to slaughter weight entirely on foods like waste fruit and vegetables, and all the trimmings from fruit and veggie packers - peels, cores, and the like. Again, there'd be fewer pigs than currently, but that's a gain, right? Even chickens can be raised for meat or eggs on crop wastes. They're currently fed grain so CAFOs can raise very fat birds at an early age, and to maximise egg production. People managed to raise livestock for thousands of years without feeding them mega-quantities of grain, often no grain at all.

Hi Michael, I should have made it clearer that I support the drive to eating less meat, and especially to eradicate cruelty. However, I don't believe that a totally vegan diet is possible for everybody (I will address this in a separate post) or even healthy for Earth. Nature has never designed an ecosytem without constant cycling of nutrients through animals, both in their manure and urine, and through their bodies and bones. This recycling of nutrients is also facilitated through the various trophic levels in which predators cull the primary consumers and maintain their survival fitness - the sick, weak, and old are primary targets.The prairies were extremely productive, resilient, and continued to gain in fertility and build topsoil until the arrival of white settlers with iron plows. The big Dust Bowl was directly caused by the production of grain crops for humans - this was decades before the introduction of the CAFO. There are prairie remnants at Matlock which stand a full three feet above the surrounding croplands. This kind of soil depletion takes place under monocropping grains regardless of the destination of the product - human or animal stomachs. The Fertile Crescent, breadbasket of the ancient world, is now harsh desert - entirely due to intensive farming of grains for humans. Empires in Meso America crashed when they ruined their land through grain farming, again for humans. Agribusiness, whether crop or livestock based, is designed for profit first and last - and the devil may take the hindmost!

I am aware of the work of John Jeavons on growing crops without animal manures. However, this is a land- and labour- intensive method, whereby large amounts of crops are grown purely for composting. Animal poop is hotching with beneficial organisms; while much of the initial food eaten by, say, a cow is digested in her rumen by bacteria, untold millions of these bacteria are digested in her true stomach, and untold millions pass through still alive - and these add value to the faeces. When mixed with coarse carbonaceous material like straw, leaves, woodshavings, sawdust, shredded paper and cardboard, the faecal bacteria set to with a will and eat it. As I've already said, small numbers of livestock could be kept without impinging on the human foods at all, and they would be an asset to the farm even if they were never themselves eaten. England developed high farm fertility and production through its famed ley-farming system, whereby some land was always under multi-species pasture (tailor-mixed for the microregion) utilized by livestock. Some of this pasture was ploughed yearly while an equal amount of cropland was laid down to sod. The Green Revolution almost wiped out ley farming, but it's making a big comeback as oil prices and public awareness rise in tandem.

Shifting the way in which livestock is raised and the channels by which their products reach the market would definitely take a change in attitude. It's not impossible, though. On a recent visit to England I was very much heartened by the easy availability of humane-certified products in major supermarkets, small local co-operatively based stores, farmer's markets, site-based stores (small farms which run their own processing facilities), CSAs, and online purchasing. There is a much higher level of general public awareness of environmental and cruelty issues in England and continental Europe than in the USA. In England, no major supermarket chain carries battery-farmed eggs. Woodland -  and pasture - ranged eggs and pork products are widely available and very competitively priced due to the very large numbers of small land-holding farmers. Yes, it's a different system to the USA, but there is hope here too - Trader Joe's and Costco carry grassfed beef, Trader Joe's sells pastured dairy products, our local farmer's market has egg and butter from pastured stock, there are CSAs like Marin Sun where one can sign up for monthly deliveries humane, cleanly raised animal source foods.

I loved being in England; just outside major towns there are pigs cavorting in beautiful grassy meadows, cows lying under trees while chewing their cud, turkeys and chickens doing their thing. In the heart of small tourist villages cattle and chickens loaf in small deep grass paddocks. On side streets of Oxford (yes, the university town) there are chickens ranging under fruit trees in people's front gardens.

 I found a similar attitude in Croatia, in Dubrovnik. During the last Balkan War, roughly half the food that carried Dubrovnik through the siege by the Serbs was grown within the city. Even in the old city thronged by tourists, there are small gardens bursting with fruit trees and vegetables, and hens cluck contentedly in the back. On the island of Sipan, which I visit as often as I can scratch together the cash, the neighbour on one side has a cow in her backyard. She walks it to pasture every day during spring, summer, and autumn. The cow lives in a big barn during the heavy winter rains, eating hay made during the summer, mounds of gathered carob pods, and armsful of weeds from the garden. On the other side, there are chickens, two goats, and occasionally a pig. None of these animals gets grain.

The works of Bill Mollison, Joel Salatin, and Alan Savory, are all really worthy of study by anybody who cares about their food and about Earth.

I will address the diet issue separately, as it's such a huge subject.

Now, to address the vexed question of the vegan diet not being suitable for every person on the planet. I became interested in nutrition because I became ill on an ovo-lacto-vegetarian diet, and crashed severely on a vegan diet. I was not detoxing, I was not blood-lusting to kill poor innocent animals so I could carry them around in the walking graveyard aka my stomach, and I WAS doing it properly. Sorry if there's a bitter edge to my words here, but I've been slapped down with these phrases too often by radical vegans who won't let me finish my first sentence! The diet was designed for me by a nutritionist and it was perfect on paper. On this diet, I crashed really hard and really fast. My weight dropped catastrophically, 88 lb at 5' 6" tall (I was not merely sub-obese, another radical vegan fantasy!), my heart went crazy, I was completely exhausted all the time, my metabolism went into catabolic overdrive,  and my urine was full of ketones - the kind that result from one's body ripping its own tissues apart in a desperate search for sustenance. The subsequent battery of tests showed that I am hypoglycaemic, gluten-sensitive - borderline intolerant, and have extremely high requirements for vitamin B12. It took nearly two years for me to regain some semblance of health. For several months I had weekly IV transfusions of gammaglobulins (my immune system was smashed), and minerals and vitamins (severely damaged ability to absorb them from food because of flattened villi), as well as a dietary shift.

 Ever since then, for twenty years now, I've been reading voraciously about human nutrition - there's a new, rapidly growing science called nutrigenomics which is fascinating. It's conceivable that one day we'll all be food-typed in the same way we're blood-typed, for related reasons.

I was one of those pale, frail, ailing children who never grew out of it. I was 30 at the time of the crash.  I'm a chronic migraineur and a chronic depressive. It was the escalation of migraine attacks two years ago, where I was losing up to 23 days of each and every month to recalcitrant pain, that really pushed me into intensive study of my own physiology. This post is going to be very me-centred because that's what I worked on! PubMed.gov is an excellent portal should you wish to independently verify the following statements.

Migraineurs have energy metabolism that is altered, and not for the better, at mitochondrial level. We fall into three constellations of co-morbidities - I am Constellation 2. We have different insulin metabolism to that of non-migraineurs. I fall into the group which does not produce the enzymes required for the safe digestion of legumes - the tannins and amines in seed coats and actual grain portion catalyze migraine attacks. Our brains are differently wired to those of non-migraineurs. Our central nervous systems are hair-triggered - hence the need for vast quantities of magnesium and B vitamins. My thyroid gland was knocked out, permanently, during the few weeks of my vegan period, which means I am dependent now on Synthroid for the rest of my life. People with low thyroid function are unable to convert provitamin A (carotenes) into vitamin A; instead it deposits in subcutaneous fat and gives us a yellowish tinge to our skins. I am triggered by some red-fleshed fruits like plums, and by corn oil. While I was working my way through the Chronic Pain Clinic, I kept a pain diary for six months in which I had to record everything I ate and did, so that I could analyze my data regularly to see if there were patterns in the days preceding migraine attacks.

There is evidence that some migraineurs cannot make carnitine out of other amino acids, which makes carnitine an Essential Fatty Acid for them.

So, let's summarise this: I shouldn't eat grains, simple starchy veggies like potatoes, sugary foods like most fruits, and nearly all legumes - I'm okay on small amounts of peanut butter. Soy is definitely contra-indicated on grounds both of my lack of enzymes and my thyroid damage. I definitely need preformed vitamin A, which comes that way only in animal source foods. I may well require carnitine preformed - I have fewer headaches when I eat red meat a couple of times a week. I need high intake of vitamin B12, as well as B2 and B6 - the latter can be obtained from leafy plants. What I can eat with impunity is fresh meat, eggs, real cheese, leafy greens, non-starchy veggies, and small amounts of less sweet fruits, olive oil, sesame oil, and butter. I can eat occasional small helpings of non-gluten grains. Take out the animal source foods and I'll be hungry and severely malnourished. Artificial supplements are never as effective as those eaten in their natural state as real foods.

Gary Nabhan is an ethno-botanist who has been delving into the mysteries of why some people thrive on certain diets while others don't. I strongly recommend his book "Why Some Like It Hot." He has a table in the front linking food intolerances with specific chromosome regions.

Michael Klaper is a vegan activist and medical doctor. Despite his site's slogan that "the human body has absolutely no requirement for animal flesh, Klaper has noted that many vegans have genuine health problems, and also the possibility that some people may genuinely be "obligate metabolic carnivores." Here's a link to his study http://www.vegsource.com/klaper/vegan_study.htm

Given that humans are not biogenetically identical, it makes sense that different people thrive on different diets according to their genetic inheritance. My own case is not extreme or even unusual. I'm not being snarky here, but should I, and others like me, simply commit suicide if it is scientifically proved that we're metabolically unsuited to veganism? Drag out our lives in constant illness, dependent on artificial supplements to keep us alive? Or emigrate maybe to some region out of sight where we won't offend the sensibilities of the Metabolically Correct?

Which brings us to the Great Divide: is it ever right to take milk or eggs, or kill animals for the sake of eating them? This becomes a question of personal religion that polarises discussion. I have owned a smallholding and lived intimately with the animals who fed me. I'm willing to describe and discuss my personal experience if anybody's interested. I am NOT cognitively dissonant, BTW.

Before I talk about my personal experience as a smallholder, I want to re-iterate that I fully believe that Westerners, and particularly US Americans, can cut their consumption of animal source foods at least by half and probably by three-quarters, and experience only benefits. I fully support eradication of cruelty, and to me this extends to the enormous killing and maiming of wildlife associated with agribusiness of corn, wheat, soy, broccoli, spinach, peaches, strawberries, and any other mono-cropping. I would like to see the return of the smallholder, the return of city farming, and the return of real knowledge about and experience with our food. I would like to see a situation where public health comes first, and one mega meat-packer or one mega spinach-grower does not hold the health and even lives of the nation in its hands, balanced against its profits. I'm rather passionate about these issues.

This is one of my favourite images, of a suburb in Basel, Switzerland:http://www.cityfarmer.info/?p=48

I would like to see recognition of the reality behind food miles. I've seen it written that it's better environmentally and karmically to eat non-animal foods flown or shipped from anywhere in the world than to eat local animal-source foods. This leaves me breathless. What about the animals known as "other people?" What about the starvation and brutal conditions in Third World countries pillaged by the over-wealthy West? I'm talking about the obscenities of strawberries, cucumbers, and cut flowers, flown from the Sahel to winter-locked Europe, while the nomads who used to survive quite nicely, thank you, on the products of their herds have lost their traditional wells and their best grazing and their herds alike to multinational corporations. These people are forced into camps where they depend on the bounty of the West for starvation rations of, you guessed it, corn and soy products. Sugar? Up to 800 gallons of water per cup of refined crystals, and human rights violations that should be blazoned across the skies. It's been very interesting to see the mainstream reaction to the documentary "The Price of Sugar." "Violent refusal to believe" puts it mildly - who wants to feel guilty while eating a sweet pastry and drinking sugared coffee?

Amazonian acai berries: It's naive to think that local growers won't clear riverine growth to expand their croplands and increase their income. Why on earth would this be different from any other wonder-crop that will sell to the wealth-crazed First World? One has only to look at the palm-oil and cacao bubbles of very recent history. Can one blame the growers who will chop down everything non-acai in the area and replace it with money-spinning acai, destroying one more ecosystem and replacing it with one more monocrop? I think I would do that if my choice was bare survival or a higher quality of life. If one tree produces 6-8 bunches of fruit up to 6kg each in weight, then it's going to take a lot of trees to produce a reasonable income. Of course, fashion is fickle. Once the next wonder-herb comes along, the market will switch and the Brazilians will be left with gang-raped land and more acai than they'd ever be able to eat even if they wanted to.

My point is that unless the food production and delivery system is looked at holistically, the flagrant environmental, non-human animal, and human abuses will continue. I can do only what I can do, and I have chosen to start with what I personally eat and use in my home.

I carefully read the arguments in the GrassFed Myths paper. However, the author falls right at the beginning into the either/or fallacy; s/he states that the only way to produce beef on grass is to endorse overgrazing of public lands in the arid West. This argument can be falsified with minimal research into the subject. There are many successful grass farmers across the world whose intelligent, skilled management of their range results in increasing fertility, resilience, and biodiversity as wild animals are drawn to the region by increased food supplies. There are also ways of integrating livestock and crops in a synergy that produces more food for people than either would alone on the same amount of land.

The author appears to be unaware of the difference between grazers and browsers, as well as the concept of resource partitioning within ecosystems. The author appears to have no knowledge of historically extremely productive savanna and prairie ecosystems, where herbivores were predated both by humans and other animals. Birds, grasshoppers, and small mammals were part of the grassland guilds.

There is no need to irrigate permanent native species pastures. The wise farmer knows how many acres he has and how many acres he needs per head of livestock; the carrying capacity varies widely with region and seasonal variation. Part of the land is rested each year, sometimes for two or more years, to allow seed production and root replenishment. Part can be cut for hay a couple of times during the growth flush, and then left to grow for winter feed. Part is left untouched throughout the growing season, to provide bulk carbohydrates (including fibre) as a fodder bank. The remaining land is rotationally grazed throughout the growing period.

 It's extremely poor management to allow livestock access to watercourses and, with inexpensive solar systems now available both to power fencing and to pump water from watercourses into drinking troughs, false economy not to do so. However, this kind of incompetence is not universal among grass farmers. Supply of site-specific information and investment in infrastructure is required. Some areas should probably never be farmed in any way. 

I was surprised to find that continuous unmanaged grazing is the default mode of raising livestock on grass in the USA. I was born and grew up in Rhodesia, where conservation farming was the norm; conservation of land and water was a national obsession. Even the cancellations on mail read "The wise farmer: he came, he saw, he conserved."  We were taught from the time we started school about the fragility of soils; I remember our class getting very dirty and happy, in Standard 3 (we would have been around 10 years old), by setting up experiments with soil in pans. Some soil was bare, some we covered with varying amounts of leaves and grass. We had to drop water onto each pan in turn, from different heights, and notice what happened to the soil. Then we dropped water onto grass on our playing fields, and noticed that nothing happened. "Carrying capacity" was a concept with which we grew up.

Perhaps the author of this publication (GrassFedMyths)has genuinely never been exposed to the principles and success of grass farming as it is practiced in a number of countries. Here are links to information:

Holistic Resource Management: http://www.jstor.org/pss/3900847 JSTOR articles can be accessed through membership in a public library, and pdfs downloaded for personal use.

Rotational Grazing USA:
http://attra.ncat.org/attra-pub/PDF/rotgraze.pdf
http://ag.arizona.edu/pubs/natresources/az1184.html

Defence of Continuous Grazing where stocking rate is correct for the region: http://essm.tamu.edu/people/briske/documents/REMSynthesis08.pdf

Australian systems:
 http://www.gms.wa.gov.au/documents/emu%20rotational%20grazing.pdf
http://lwa.gov.au/files/products/land-and-water-australia-corporate/ew071245/ew071245-cs-24.pdf
http://www.mla.com.au/TopicHierarchy/News/MediaReleases/Profit+vital+to+environment+-+Sustainable+Grazing+Systems.htm

 South Africa: There are regions that produce far more meat from sustainably harvested game populations than cattle or sheep would yield. http://thegamerancher.com/game%20ranch%20managemnt/Ecological%20Principles.html
A portal to other resources:
http://www.wild-about-you.com/ServiceVeldManage.htm

Rangeland Management:
http://www.rangelands.org/
http://www.cnr.uidaho.edu/range/