My Beef with Meat

dissident of cognitive dissonance

Sup nerds, Matt here with a quick note before we dive into another one of my Pulizter-ignored rants. If you’re cooking for the holidays and need us to hold your hand, don’t forget about The Beastless Feast menu. Also next weekend will be our final Broiler Room for the year, as we’re both taking off for the holiday season. And y’all should too, quit looking at your email and cook something with cinnamon or peppermint in it. BE PRESENT AND CELEBRATE BITCH. The Broiler Room will be back in your inbox January 6th next year.

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I’m not perfect, none of us are. Even striving for perfection is a stressful fallacy and I envy people that don’t give a fuck. I often think how sociopaths are probably much happier than me as I navigate daily life trying my best. I’ve watched someone launch a Starbucks cup from a moving car while I kept a crumpled up CVS receipt in my pocket so I could throw it away at home. Sometimes I bump into inanimate objects like doors and apologize to no one. I thoroughly rinse plastics before recycling because I’m afraid they’ll be rejected at the processing plant. No surprise to any of you that know me but most embarrassingly, I’m a vegan.

Don’t get me wrong, I was born and raised in Texas. I’m a surgeon with a shotgun and I know how to field dress a deer. But my daily existence has evolved into a game of trying to reduce harm.

Which leads me to my beef with meat. Or animal agriculture. Whatever they’re calling it these days. I’m regularly challenged to explain my decision to live without meat. I’ve heard it all, from “but where do you get your protein” (ugh) to the predictable “so if you were on a desert island”- yes, I’d survive by any means necessary hell I’d be a cannibal if needed but that’s not what’s in my fridge. Meat itself is evolving, just like milk and butter, and I believe plant-based eaters are ahead of the curve. 

Let’s start with some math- the global population will reach 10 billion people by 2050. That’s alot of mouths to feed and we’d need to increase food production by 70%. Animal agriculture accounts for roughly 17% of global caloric consumption while being one of the biggest producers of greenhouse gas, soil degradation, poisoning water tables, and deforestation. Put simply we cannot continue to keep up with animal agriculture demand while simultaneously ignoring its environmental impact, it’s unsustainable.

The math just ain’t mathing.

via Our World in Data

Luckily humans are remarkable at adapting and over the next couple decades, y’all aren’t gonna have a choice. We’re still in the early days of faux-meat proteins that are either too costly or overly processed to justify an overnight shift. But all these new “alternative” companies are at a sizable disadvantage. Most fake meat companies are startups that are learning in real-time what consumers will and won’t respond to. As opposed to long established billion dollar corporations like Cargill, Tyson or JBS that have been lobbying legislators for $38 billion in annual subsidies while oppressing competition that receives a pittance of $17 million in subsidies (that’s .04%). Nearly all of the established meat conglomerates that benefit from 99% of subsidies have now developed their own ‘plant-based’ proteins.

If America was truly a free market capitalist nation, subsidies funded by taxpayers such as myself and everyone still reading this, should be evenly distributed among protein producers right? They’re not and that should change. 

“But that could double or triple what I pay in the drive-thru!”

Uh huh and maybe that’s just what meat should realistically cost. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯  Maybe that $5 Big Mac should cost $13 without government assistance. Maybe if salads were subsidized they’d cost $5 instead of $13. Why do we allow faceless corporations to hire children in slaughterhouses and fast food restaurants to poison our communities in the name of a cheap meal while benefiting from our tax dollars? Especially as these same companies provide dangerous work environments, speed up production lines, fight against paying workers living wages all while reporting record profits and aggressive expansions.

Seems fucked. I think these welfare loving companies need a rug pull.

As I continue my neurotic rituals of harm reduction each day, I can’t help but think about the future and how we’ll look back in disbelief, not too different from when doctors recommended smoking. I don’t judge anyone for their personal preferences if you wanna huff paint, knock yourself out, literally. But I think meat consumption is akin to smoking, if not worse.

The global food supply path that we’re on will reach a tipping point given the devastating environmental impact, labor struggles, financial losses, and cognitive dissonance required to ignore both animal and human suffering. It’s simply unsustainable and like I mentioned earlier, your dietary adaptation won’t be up to you. Food companies are already betting you’ll eat insects.

Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.

- Michael Pollan

A new year approaches and we’re all reflecting on how to be better versions of ourselves; may I humbly suggest reducing harm wherever and however you can. Practice patience and endure minor inconveniences. None of us will ever be perfect but goddamnit we can try. 

Happy holidays gang. Love y’all. 

matt