From: young@clpd.kodak.com (Rich Young)
Subject: Re: References for Vegan/Vegetarian environment
Originator: young@sasquatch
Reply-To: young@clpd.kodak.com
Organization: Clinical Diagnostics Division, Eastman Kodak Company
Date: Fri, 22 Jan 93 13:07:01 GMT

In article <1jni0e$pn5@agate.berkeley.edu> timi@mendel.berkeley.edu ( Tim Ikeda) writes:

[...]

>I think Rifkin's works should always be read with a touch of
>incredulity. Put mildly, he has a tendency to gloss-over 
>contradictory information while at other times over-inflating the
>significance of his pet ideas. It as if he doesn't realize
>that two half-truths don't add up to the whole truth.

[...]

With these comments in mind, I'll re-post the following review of "Beyond Beef."

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The following was printed in the latest issue of the TUFTS UNIVERSITY DIET AND
NUTRITION LETTER, Vol. 10, No. 4, June 1992.  It is reproduced here without
permission, with the assumption that both sides of a story are useful in
making informed decisions.

			ONE MAN'S BEEF WITH BEEF

	There's a man in Washington who forsees a "new chapter in the
	unfolding of human consciousness" accompanied by "an ecological
	renaissance, a grand restoration of nature on every continent."
	In his vision, "ancient rivers will flow" and "children will have
	a chance to grow up with sound bodies and minds capable of
	experiencing the fullness of human existence."

	What will usher in this utopia, according to the vision's author?
	The end of the "world steer complex," an alleged international
	conspiracy by the industrial nations that supposedly subjugates
	the world's poor and plunders the earth of its soil, grain, and
	water by keeping beef a mainstay in the diets of most affluent
	countries.  That's the startling pronouncement made by D.C.-based
	philosopher-activist Jeremy Rifkin in his new book BEYOND BEEF: THE
	RISE AND FALL OF THE CATTLE CULTURE (Nwe York: Dutton, 1992), the
	opening sortie in an eight-year international campaign he has
	designed to convince Americans to stop eating or at least drastically
	reduce their consumption of beef.  Television commercials and
	newspaper advertisements are planned to begin this month.

	There certainly is much to criticize about eating too much beef,
	especially fatty cuts.  And in building his indictment, Rifkin
	taps into some real fears many have about our health, humanity,
	and the environment.  But a steer for Rifkin is not so much meat
	as it is a metaphor for everything wrong with the late twentieth
	century.  And the picture he paints is so one-sided and the solution
	he proposes so simplistic that he distorts what are legitimate
	problems about how we produce and eat our food.  Unfortunately,
	readers could become impressed enough with the enormity of the case he
	presents against cattle, and with his impassioned defense of the
	planet's environment and the world's poor, and with his extensive
	documentation, that they may find themselves swept along with his
	indictment without fully realizing there is a lot more to the story
	than he lets on.

	Consider, for instance, the author's statements about the effect
	of beef eating on health.  According to Rifkin, Americans are fat
	and dying by the millions of cardiovascular disease, colon and
	breast cancer, and diabetes specifically because of beef consumption.
	He documents the very real issue of obesity in the United States
	with official government statistics and scientific research
	demonstrating that it is widespread and growing, then says "not
	surprisingly, as Americans have come to consume greater amounts
	of marbled beef...they have become increasingly overweight."  It
	all SOUNDS very convincing.  But Rifkin never points out that
	Americans were overweight long before beef had become the most
	popular meat in the United States in the early 1950s, or that
	they are still overweight now that consumption of beef has been
	overtaken by that of poultry.

	Rifkin does pause for one sentence to admit that "many other things
	contribute to overweight," yet ignores the qualification as he
	continues his emotional denunciation of beef eating for causing
	Americans to become so fat.

	This pattern of argument is repeated in blaming beef eating for
	cancer and heart disease.  Eating too much fat has, indeed, been
	linked with certain cancers, and consuming too much saturated fat
	and cholesterol is one of the risk factors for heart disease.  But
	Rifkin fails to disclose that together, pork, poultry, dairy
	products, and eggs provide far more of the fat, saturated fat,
	and cholesterol Americans consume than does beef.

	In Rifkin's defense, he does concede that there may be other sources
	of fat in the diet, but he undermines that point when he says that
	it is from beef that Americans as well as Europeans are "dying
	by the millions."  He also undermines his credibility as someone
	knowledgeable about nutrition when he wrongly implies that the RDA
	is the maximum amount of a nutrient the body can absorb rather than
	the amount of a nutrient that is recommended for good health in the
	population at large.

	BEEF EATING'S INFLUENCE ON THE ENVIRONMENT

	Beef's effect on health is actually not Rifkin's biggest gripe.
	It's that beef production is "one of the most destructive envir-
	onmental threats of the modern era."  Particularly chilling is
	his description of the ecological ruin that clearing rain forest
	for grazing land has caused in Central and South America.

	Each of us bears some measure of responsibility, Rifkin scolds his
	readers, because the production of a single quarter-pound hamburger
	from a steer raised in Central or South America involves the eradi-
	cation of about 165 pounds of living matter that come from 20 to 30
	different plant species, perhaps 100 insect species, and dozens of
	bird, mammal, and reptile species.

	Certainly, the destruction of irreplaceable natural resources for
	whatever reason is deplorable, and the U.S. bears a share of the
	responsibility for deforesting nations with fewer natural and
	economic resources than our own.  But contrary to the impression
	Rifkin creates, some experts believe that the worst of the plunder
	is over and that the American taste for beef has little impact
	today on what happens in the tropical rain forests.  Less than one
	percent of the beef Americans eat is imported from Central and
	South America, according to the United States Department of
	Agriculture, and even that small amount is steadily declining.

	As for the impact of cattle production on global warming, steer
	do exhale methane gas, which rises to the atmosphere where it
	traps heat escaping the earth, and thus help to create the "green-
	house" effect."  But cattle are not the only culprit.  Coal mining,
	oil and gas drilling, the incomplete combustion of fossil fuel,
	the burning of vegetation, and our wetlands all produce large
	amounts of methane.  Rice paddies and termites alone produce almost
	twice as much methane as cattle.

	FEED A COW, STARVE A HUMAN?

	Yet another problem with beef, Rifkin asserts, is that because
	some people eat it, a billion humans are starving.  At issue is the
	fact that more than half the grain harvested in the United States
	is fed to livestock.  Rifkin maintains that if we were to reduce
	our cattle production, we would use our agricultural resources to
	grow more food for starving humans instead.  No doubt many Americans
	would be willing to forego some of their own beef if they knew for
	certain that the grain spared would be used to save poor families
	in poor nations from starvation.  But Rifkin ignores the very real
	dilemma that production of grain in one area of the world does not
	guarantee that it will be used to end hunger somewhere else.

	Even at our current levels of beef production, some 200 million
	tons of surplus grain are already available in the industrial world.
	In fact, in the United States alone, 60 million acres of cropland
	have been withdrawn from grain production in order to prevent
	surpluses from depressing prices.  The unfortunate reality is that
	in many areas of the world, hunger is as much a product of politics,
	civil wars, entrenched wealth, inefficient distribution networks,
	and corruption, as it is of inadequate food supplies and production
	capabilities.

	None of this is to say that stamping out world hunger shouldn't
	include efforts to produce and distribute our food more efficiently
	and with greater attention to its effect on the environment, as
	Rifkin reminds us.  But long-range, realistic solutions are neces-
	sary rather than answers based on zealous arguments that SEEM
	grounded in facts but are in reality opinions with, at best, shaky
	foundations.


-Rich Young (These are not Kodak's opinions.)
Newsgroups: rec.food.veg,misc.health.alternative,sci.med.nutrition