This is
silly. Eating meat is not somehow in tension with saying that increased awareness of the brutality of Confined Animal Feeding Operations (CAFOs) would lead to more humane and sustainable methods of slaughter. Indeed, it's been the efforts by various organizations to publicize the costs and outrages of industrial agriculture that have led to a proliferation of more environmentally aware options. Which people can buy, so their purchases reflect their beliefs. And going a step above that, exactly such an ad campaign just led to the passage of Proposition 2 in California, as voters decided that their laws should reflect their beliefs, too.People should be able to stand by the production methods of the products they consume. And as the Prop 2 fight showed, if made directly aware of the status quo, and if told that reform might increase the cost of meat slightly, they're willing to make the tradeoff. Jon Chait's argument is equivalent to the folks who attack Al Gore for wanting cap-and-trade
even though he uses light bulbs. You can be a carnivore and care about the morality and sustainability of the livestock production chain. The alternative to apathy need not be veganism.But as Chait sneers his way to scoring another debater's point, here's what's going on amidst this sort of lazy indifference:
Stacy Sneeringer, a professor at Wellesley College, published research, which documented the impact of CAFOs on infant mortality, in the respected American Journal of Agricultural Economics. Sneeringer looked at a 15-year period between 1982 and 1997, analyzing data on a county level for the number of CAFOs and animal units. Controlling for a host of variables, she found that changes in animal units directly compared to changes in infant mortality. The results concluded that for a 100,000 animal increase in a county, there were 123 more infant deaths under the age of one per 100,000 births and 100 more infant deaths under the age of 28 days per 100,000 births. As well, the research suggests that a doubling of animal production induces a 7.4 percent increase in infant mortality
If you take Chait's dichotomy seriously, you have to assume that turkey eaters are in favor of this sort of thing. But of course they're not. Not even Chait. Rather, there's a lack of awareness about the impacts of our methods of industrial livestock production. The main culprit on the mortality issue, for instance, is airborne pollution from CAFOs, in particular ammonia and hydrogen sulfide.
And we're subsidizing that pollution. The Union of Concerned Scientists released a report showing that from 1997 to 2005 taxpayer-subsidized grain prices saved CAFOs nearly $35 billion in animal feed," and since 2002, "CAFOs have received $100 million in annual pollution prevention payments." Presumably, fairly few turkey eaters are in favor of using their tax dollars in that fashion.Then of course there's the regulatory failure. This sort of thing should be under the EPA's purview, but as a recent GAO
report concluded, "the EPA does not have comprehensive, accurate information on the number of permitted CAFOs nationwide. As a result, EPA does not have the information it needs to effectively regulate these CAFOs." Meanwhile, "since 2002, at least 68 government-sponsored or peer-reviewed studies have been completed that examined air and water quality issues associated with animal feeding operations and 15 have directly linked air and water pollutants from animal waste to specific health or environmental impacts." As Tom Laskawy
concludes, "CAFOs exist because of massive taxpayer subsidies and wholesale regulatory negligence. Meat is cheap by historical standards only if you limit your gaze to the price on the supermarket label." But whatever, right? I bet the authors of that GAO report eat burgers on the 4th of July.
Image used under a CC license from Chris Suefert. 
