BETTY WOLANYK REBUTTAL to ARTICLE
This type of article has so much wrong that it would literally take me months to track it all down and then find the science to disprove it. I recommend using the Addressing Misconceptions about Agriculture Curriculum because many of the underlying problems with this article are covered in that publication.
But, let me give you a couple of examples why none of it can be believed. First, it infers that tearing down the Brazilian Rainforest is because of meat production and consumption by linking the two. But it actually does not say that. It just links two completely different subjects and allows the reader to make that link. In reality, that rainforest is being torn down to fuel power plants producing electricity.
Second, all of the figures for how much of anything that meat production causes (greenhouse gasses, water consumption, oil consumption, etc.) are all based on the 16 pounds of grain to 1 pound of beef from Frances Moore Lappe’. This figure is way off. In the U.S. it is 2.6 pounds of grain per pound of beef and globally it is 0.3 pound of grain to pound of beef.
The EPA’s water quality figures are garbage because 1. they do not monitor the nation’s waterways. They rely on states to do so and the states have only been monitoring troubled areas. In fact, if a state monitors a troubled area of water – say one mile of polluted water – and they take samples three times of the same mile, EPA has been counting it as three miles of polluted waterway. Even the Government Accounting Office has condemned their lack of scientific credibility for information they publish.
People who write articles like this only understand the topic enough to be dangerous. They assume that all of the world’s land can be used to raise crops. Not so, for every 1 acre of cropland on the planet there are almost 4 acres of grazing land. We cannot or should not grow crops on that land.
That should give you a place to start.
Betty