Reading through the list of the Biden administration’s climate initiatives, announced this month at the Conference of the Parties of the the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, or more simply COP27, hosted at Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, one is struck again by the absence of any serious reckoning with agriculture, the nominally American or Western diet. Yesterday, on MSNBC’s Morning Joe, host Mika Brzezinski recoiled momentarily at a news story concerning ‘lab-grown meat’ before conceding that this innovation involves no slaughter of animals, and that was a good thing in her view. Personally, I am ambivalent about lab-grown meat and it’s not my primary concern here. I have no desire to eat meat of any kind, but anything that mitigates the slaughter of the 80 billion animals that are tortured and killed for human consumption every year is an evolution in the right ethical direction. If the Frankensteinian image of the lab-grown creature disturbs you, but the meat counter at your supermarket does not, then—
Anyway, following the documentation from the US contingent, there are some initiatives that acknowledge the contribution of animal agriculture on methane emissions, for example: “In June, USDA signed an MOU with the Innovation Center for U.S. Dairy to encourage adoption of technologies and practices that improve sustainability and assist in addressing U.S. dairy farmers’ environmental needs. This renewed collaboration will accelerate and streamline delivery of programs focused on resource recovery, sustainability improvement, soil health management, and greenhouse gas emissions reduction, particularly methane.”1 But a memorandum of understanding in this context is not worth the paper it is written on, and the other investments in the Rural Development Agency of $64m and the $90m invested in the USDA’s National Institute of Food and Agriculture and Agricultural Research Services over the past 5 years for “manure management and methane-related research, education, and extension projects,”2 amount to token gestures.
I’ve almost certainly said this before, but: asked to explain the title of his dystopian satire Naked Lunch, William Burroughs referred to it as “a frozen moment when everyone sees what is on the end of every fork.” Like Mika Brzezinski, the Biden administration—US governments writ large—have not met their Naked Lunch moment. Neither has the public. For what is on the end of (almost) every fork in America is death, and in the decaying animal matter that is subsidized to death, there is the hieroglyph we seem unable to read, no matter how literal the picture. It is particularly absurd for the anti-capitalist strains of environmentalists, or anti-capitalists in general, to prop up the industries which slaughter so many billions of sentient creatures, and devastate the oceans. If your environmental charity meeting is serving meat, dairy, or fish at its fundraiser, then it is engaged in hypocrisy (all you Sierra Club carnivores, etc.). Throwing soup at a Van Gogh, or oil on a Klimt achieves less than simply divesting from the cycle of agricultural abuse.
The so-called ‘average American’ will have no choice but to drive to work tomorrow, but has several opportunities per day to divest from and undermine—more importantly, change—the nature of big agriculture in what he or she eats. The best way to protect rainforests is to stop consuming animals. Divesting from forms of animal agriculture is the most immediate action one can take in terms of mitigating climate and environmental damage. The best way to reduce diabetes, heart disease, etc., and the best way to prevent zoonotic spread of viruses is to stop consuming animals. If you are horrified by the ‘food deserts’ that are the lot of many working class communities in America, then opposing the subsidies that make fast food dominant should be a priority. These are not secrets. And here, governments are truly in a bind. Governments that attempt to mitigate the environmental harms done by big agriculture are accused by populists and political opportunists of trying to ‘take away your hamburgers!’ or some such appeal. It’s hard to imagine a politician wanting to risk that. Senator Cory Booker (D-NJ), the only vegan in that chamber, is relatively silent on the the actual need for a paradigm shift in American agriculture, even as he promotes ‘healthy eating.’3 The connection to environmental damage, to cruelty, and to capitalist exploitation has not been made by politicians and policy-makers.
Although COP27 welcomed its first booth to promote the benefits of divesting from animal agriculture and fisheries this year,4 as a headline from Reuters states, the attendees have “Meat on the menu, not the agenda, at COP27 climate conference.”5 Had we but world enough and time— But here, gain, is the real difference: when it comes to what is on the end of our forks, we have real consumer power to leverage the mechanisms of capitalism against some of its worst excesses. Even as I write this, I am conscious that many readers will find it objectionable. One of the first accusations one faces when refusing to consume animal products is that one is being ‘self-righteous’ or taking some elitist position or other. No, it is rather that I am doing what I can to mitigate a holocaust, yes, a holocaust of animal suffering and to improve the lot of our species and theirs at the same time. That seems to me a rather modest aspiration.
Thank you for reading, and I hope this gives you food for thought.
Regards from New Mexico,
—James Reich
https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/US-Methane-Emissions-Reduction-Action-Plan-Update.pdf
ibid.
https://www.booker.senate.gov/nutritionconference
https://plantbasednews.org/news/environment/turning-point-cop27-vegan-education-booth/
https://www.reuters.com/business/cop/meat-menu-not-agenda-cop27-climate-conference-2022-11-15/