Let’s Talk About Animal Agriculture – Part I
This week, I subjected myself to watching the film, “Cowspiracy.” Although I have many scholarly thoughts and statistics to share, this week, we’re not going to do that — this week, we’re just going to talk. No crazy facts and figures, just logical thinking.
Cowspiracy is a 2014 documentary which was produced to shed light on animal agriculture’s environmental impact. If you go to the Cowspiracy website, you will see “THE FILM THAT ENVIORNMENTAL ORGANIZATIONS DON’T WANT YOU TO SEE,” on the homepage in bold, yellow letters.
Cowspiracy claims that animal agriculture is the biggest contributor to greenhouse gas emissions and provides numerous, invalid sources to back up its claims. So, why, you ask, is a film with invalid sources a threat to agriculture? Well, many people see this film and whole-heartedly believe its message.
There are dozens, if not hundreds, of consumers who watch Cowspiracy and automatically switch to veganism. And again, as I feel like I say in almost every column, it’s okay to be vegan, but it’s not okay to spread misinformation about agriculture.
I will hand it to Cowspiracy’s film makers, the documentary is captivating. It provides shocking numbers and tugs on the heart strings. And you know what, if I didn’t know the truth about agriculture, I would probably feel guilty about eating meat after watching Cowspiracy, if not switching to veganism as a whole.
Notice the key phrase of my previous statement: If I didn’t know the truth about agriculture. I, like many of you reading this, know the truth of ag. I grew up around it and it’s been a daily topic of discussion in my life for as long as I can possibly remember. However, this is not the case for most.
Think of the well of agricultural education as a simple bell curve. About 15 percent of the population sees movies such as Cowspiracy and thinks, “Well yeah animal ag is bad, tell me something I don’t know.” They don’t support animal agriculture and probably never will.
About 15 percent of the population knows the truth about agriculture. Watching Cowspiracy takes us about three hours because we’re too busy pausing the movie to yell at the screen (something I am not ashamed to admit I did last night). We support animal agriculture, we live it, we breath it, it’s our livelihood and there’s not much anyone could say to deter us from our way of thinking.
Then we have the (roughly) 70 percent of people who are on the fence. A friend of mine recently called this group of people the “moveable middle.” This 70 percent watches Cowspiracy and maybe they believe it or maybe they don’t…regardless, they don’t have an abundance of prior animal agricultural knowledge to debunk Cowspiracy’s “facts” because, frankly, we don’t really market our findings to this specific demographic.
Cowspiracy did its job. Whether it was backed by true facts or not, it’s turning people against cattle raisers, pork producers, chicken farmers and fishermen left and right. So why can’t we do this?
To be frank, it’s because we’re not doing much. This is just my opinion, but I feel like we spend a whole lot of time talking about agricultural ignorance and not doing much to fix it. I mean, anti-ag activists are slapping photos of cows onto steaks in delis in attempts to humanize the meat and what are we doing? Griping to our buddy about “those ignorant hippies?”
We’ve got to tell the truth about animal agriculture, and we’ve got to stop preaching to the choir. We’ve got to get out and correct this misinformation.
FFA members, what’s stopping you from setting up a booth at your next local event and passing out fliers outlining animal agricultures TRUE impact on the environment?
Ranchers, you’re coming up on your slow season, why don’t you dedicate a day to spending time at your local school and answering students’ questions about agriculture?
Extension Agents, you’ve got the resources and the data on hand, why not put a short ad in your local paper?
Agriculturists, what’s stopping you from having a conversation with someone who chooses to be vegan?
Just because someone doesn’t eat meat doesn’t mean they’re a bad person, I promise they won’t bite (human flesh doesn’t quite fit into the vegan diet, so I’m told).
Ask them why they’re vegan and if they say it’s to help the environment, maybe sit down and have a ***civilized*** conversation with them about the true environmental impact of animal agriculture. The Environmental Protection Agency is a trusted, unbiased, government organization and has an entire page dedicated to this.
Quit wasting your time worrying about which cattle organization to support and talk to your neighbor, because in the end, we’re all on the same side. We all want agriculture to thrive. Until the 15 percent of us who support animal agriculture choose to work together to fix this problem, that moveable middle is going to continue to turn against us, and it’s up to us to do something about it.
So, let’s talk, let’s tell the truth about agriculture and maybe, just maybe, we’ll be able to move some of those on-the-fencers to our side.
