An Ethical Meat Eater’s Response to Cowspiracy

This is a piece I wrote from a personal perspective that was originally published in ‘Primal Eye’ magazine.

The post was well received and received hundreds of thousands of views – and still generates a lot of interest today. It was a well timed antidote to a deep sense of frustration among ethical meat eaters and regenerative farmers.

Creating viral content is often about understanding your customers and solving their problem.

Cowspiracy is a mock documentary film by A.U.M. (Animals United Movement) Films & Media. The film is a docu-drama, American style affair, or ‘mock-doc’ about climate change and intends to ‘wake up the world’ and shock you into action.

 

Over the last few weeks and months, I have had this film mentioned many times in response to my articles about grazing management techniques designed to build carbon and to help climate change.

 

Now I am all for ‘waking up the world’ however I am also increasingly suspicious of amplified statements about cattle ending our existence on earth, so I was compelled to dig a bit deeper.

The opening scene of Cowspiracy introduces the character of the film, Kip, and explains how he was inspired by Al Gore’s film ‘An Inconvenient Truth’ to ‘wake up’ to the threat of climate change. Kip embraced this new paradigm, he tried everything; cycled everywhere, sorted his trash, turned off light switches but sadly it didn’t work – he did not stop climate change!

 

Then, in a life-changing moment, Kip read an e-mail from a friend and it was suddenly all clear.

 

He realised that the massive changes in climate were not down to cars and oil after all, but was in fact caused by cows! The e-mail in question was a reference to the ‘Livestock’s Long Shadow’ report by the United Nations Food and Agriculture organisation.1 It stated that cows generated more CO2, 18% more, than the transport system.

 

Now in itself, this is pretty big news and the report did indeed get huge coverage because its figures were so different from previous estimates. The report provided perfect fuel for activist animal welfare campaigners – who love all living beings with the exception of meat-eating humans!

 

The report was also great for the motor industry who suddenly had a perfect ‘scape cow’ for continuing to create gas guzzling monsters which contribute little to our food security!