Yesterday, in my Environmental Economics class, I learned of an interesting choice that I’ll now have to consider when I consider what to grab for dinner. The choice is this one: do I care more about the well-being of animals or of the planet?
It’s trickier than I thought it was, this whole meat thing. I’ve known for a while that chicken is “more sustainable” than beef. I know that beef produces much more of those heat-trapping gases than chicken. Okay, so my science is a little iffy, but this has been pretty clear for a little while now. Here is a new article that explains it a bit deeper.
What I didn’t really think about was how many animals it takes to satisfy my consumption habits. Yes, I know that animals have to die in order for me to eat them, but I didn’t consider how many lives I was taking by choosing chicken over beef. Obviously, cows are much larger than chickens, but I learned the the average American meat-eater consumes about 0.14 cows each year and about 27 chickens. Assuming I’m “average,” that would mean I don’t even eat one entire cow every seven years, yet I take 27 entire chicken lives annually. Of course there are a bunch of other factors to consider, like my actual meat consumption and the quality of life of the animals, but this definitely adds a bit of confusion to what I thought was pretty simple before.
Maybe I should just eat less (or no) meat. I’ve considered vegetarianism before and I even tried it for two weeks this spring and for a few weeks this summer. I didn’t even really do it on purpose this summer; it just kind of happened because it allowed for less expensive grocery trips and took less preparation. I didn’t really crave meat or need it, but eventually I just started eating meat again because I can only drink so much soy milk and eat so many edamame before getting a little bit bored.
There is also an idea to make a neutralizing program that grants “meat offset credits” in exchange for funding for vegetarian advertising and things of the sort. I think this is pretty interesting and I’m wondering if it exists yet or if it will in the near future. One person in our class compared it to an episode of Friends, which I thought was pretty cool.
Just some food for thought (mind the idiomatic pun). Let me know what you guys think about all of this.
Photo Source: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/eb/Free_range_chicken_flock.jpg
Written by Mariah Greico, Class of 2018