Hunting Hype

When faced with the ecological horrors of animal agriculture, some look to hunting as an escape—as the environmentally friendly way to put meat on the table. This chapter explores the environmental effects of hunting, exposing a handful of myths that help to make this sport appear to be environmentally friendly, animal friendly, socially acceptable—even morally exemplary. As noted, this book is written specifically for those who have a choice as to what they eat. This book is not a criticism of those who truly have few dietary options (for example, due to affordability or lack of availability). . . .For millennia men dreamed of acquiring absolute mastery over nature, of converting the cosmos into one immense hunting ground. . . . . . .—HORKHEIMER AND ADORNO 2 4 8 . . . In the United States, wildlife conservation was established by hunters for hunters because of hunters. In the late 19th century, Theodore Roosevelt complained that commercial hunters had decimated wildlife—that a comparatively small population of “market” hunters profited while the nation was stripped of hunter-target species (S. Fox 123). To address these concerns, he founded the Boone and Crockett Club (BCC) in 1897, with the following mission: “[T] o promote the conservation and management of wildlife, especially big game, and its habitat, to preserve and encourage hunting and to maintain the highest ethical standards of fair chase and sportsmanship in North America” (“About the B & C Club”). “Conservation” is a utilitarian, human-centered term promoting the protection of wildlife and wilderness for human use. Accordingly, the BCC promoted laws protecting “every citizen’s freedom to hunt and fish,” and established wildlife as “owned by the people and managed in trust for the people by government agencies” (“About the B & C Club”). As a result of the BCC, the U.S. government was placed in charge of managing wildlife on behalf of hunters.

Farming Facts

Cheap meat, dairy, and eggs are an illusion—we pay for each with depleted forests, polluted freshwater, soil degradation, and climate change. Diet is the most critical decision we make with regard to our environmental footprint—and what we eat is a choice that most of us make every day, several times a day. Dietary choice contributes powerfully to greenhouse gas emissions (GHGE) and water pollution. Animal agriculture is responsible for an unnerving quantity of greenhouse gas emissions. Eating animal products—yogurt, ice cream, bacon, chicken salad, beef stroganoff, or cheese omelets—greatly increases an individual’s contribution to carbon dioxide, methane, and nitrous oxide emissions. Collectively, dietary choice contributes to a classic “tragedy of the commons.” Much of the atmosphere’s carbon dioxide (CO2) is absorbed by the earth’s oceans and plants, but a large proportion lingers in the atmosphere—unable to be absorbed by plants or oceans (“Effects”). Plants are not harmed by this process, but the current overabundance of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere causes acidification of the earth’s oceans. As a result of anthropogenic carbon dioxide emissions, the “acidity of the world’s ocean may increase by around 170% by the end of the century,” altering ocean ecosystems, and likely creating an ocean environment that is inhospitable for many life forms (“Expert Assessment”). Burning petroleum also leads to wars that devastate human communities and annihilate landscapes and wildlife—including endangered species and their vital habitats. Additionally, our consumption of petroleum is linked with oil spills that ravage landscapes, shorelines, and ocean habitat. Oil pipelines run through remote, fragile areas—every oil tanker represents not just the possibility but the probability of an oil spill. As reserves diminish, our quest for fossil fuels is increasingly environmentally devastating: Canada’s vast reserves of tar sands oil—though extracted, transported, and burned only with enormous costs to the environment—are next in line for extraction. Consuming animal products creates ten times more fossil fuel emission per calorie than does consuming plant foods directly (Oppenlander 18). (This is the most remarkable given that plant foods are not generally as calorically dense as animal foods.) Ranching is the greatest GHGE offender.

Introduction

When i was in my twenties on a Watson Fellowship that took me to the Tibetan Plateau, I met an Irishman at a low-end restaurant. We had dinner together. Though each of us had met many other people in our travels, there was something magnetic about our connection—I refer to the negative ends of a magnet. We disagreed about pretty much everything. At the time, I would best have been described as a budding philosopher, ethicist, atheist, feminist, and animal liberationist; he was a scientist, mathematician, born-again Christian, and environmentalist. Ideologically we had almost nothing in common, but since we had both been traveling for months with little opportunity to speak English (and even less to engage in meaningful discussions) we spent our days together . . . and argued almost perpetually. Because we tended to meet at dinner, and because I was a vegetarian, our disagreements usually began over food, then spread to innumerable other areas of discord. Despite the discord, we continued our discussions long after we returned to our respective homes. Yet neither reason nor heartfelt pleas shifted the Irishman to a plant-based diet. He was sympathetic to human moral responsibilities for animal suffering (ever the Christian), but on learning of the cruelty of animal agriculture, he merely shifted to “happy meat” and the eggs of “free range” chickens. Though I feverishly pointed to the horrific transport and dependable adolescent slaughter of grass-fed and “free range” animals, and the absence of any nutritional need for animal products in our diet, my energy was wasted. Ultimately, it was the Irishman’s concern for the environment, combined with his predilection for numbers, that altered his dietary choices. Recently my friend composed an essay for an anthology I was putting together, about animal advocacy and environmentalism and the search for common ground. In the process, he applied his math and science skills to calculate the ratio of the mass of wild birds to the ratio of the mass of chickens in the U.K.—1:104. His horror was palpable despite his wry response: “For every ten grams of wild bird, somewhere out there (and close) lies a full kilo of chicken.”

A Fishy Business

Oceans cover the majority of the planet and are home to a vast quantity of diverse yet interconnected ecosystems. The volume of living space provided by the sea is 168 times greater than that provided by the earth’s landscapes (Clark et al. 5). Given the wealth of creatures living in the seas, as well as those in lakes, swamps, and rivers, and given the much-touted health aspects of aquatic flesh and the environmental nightmare linked with animal agriculture, should we turn to a diet of pollock, shrimp, and salmon? In the 18th and 19th centuries, a mercury wash was used to produce felt hats. In the process workers were exposed to and absorbed bits of the substance and developed mercury poisoning. As a consequence, those who were employed in the felt hat industry often stumbled about “in a confused state with slurred speech and trembling hands” and “were sometimes mistaken for drunks” (“Mad as a Hatter”). Mercury poisoning “attacks the nervous system, causing drooling, hair loss, uncontrollable muscle twitching, a lurching gait, and difficulties in talking and thinking” (“Mad as a Hatter”). From this comes the term made famous in Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland, “mad as a hatter.” Between 1973 and 1997, fish consumption rose from 45 to 91 million metric tons (Delgado 1). The American Heart Association recommends eating fish at least twice a week for heart health (“Omega-3 Fatty Acids”). The National Healthy Mothers, Healthy Babies Coalition accepted “thousands of dollars from the fishing industry” to promote a recommendation that pregnant women eat “at least 12 ounces of fish per week” (“Fishy Recommendations” 23). Fish flesh is touted as “healthy meat” in comparison with the flesh of terrestrial animals. Omega-3 fatty acids found in fish are credited with helping everything from heart disease to diabetes, but fish flesh also contains deadly mercury (as well as “dioxins . . . and poly-chlorinated biphenyls”—PCBs) (“Omega-3 Fatty Acids”). Longer-living predator fish such as tuna, marlin, shark, mackerel, and swordfish “can have mercury concentrations that are hundreds or thousands of times, possibly even a million times, greater than concentrations in the water in which they swim” (Smith and Lourie 151).

Conclusion

Each chapter of Eating Earth focuses on environmental problems that stem from our willingness to consume animal products—environmental problems that stem from animal agriculture, fisheries, and hunting policies and practices. The final chapter also exposes relevant history and myths that explain why the vast majority of U.S. citizens continues to accept sport hunting despite the environmental problems that stem from this deadly pass time. Animal products, whether organic or local, whether hunted or purchased, whether chicken or fish or yogurt, harm the environment. As this book draws to a close, it is important to at least mention the larger picture with regard to ethics and dietary choice: There are a handful of other critical reasons to move decisively toward a plant-based diet, all of which are interconnected. I remember the five reasons for choosing a plant-based diet through a mnemonic using the Italian word for love, AMORE. In this acronym, “A” represents what is likely the most common reason for choosing a vegan diet—animals. In choosing to kill or buy body parts, mammary secretions, and eggs from other animals, we support the exploitation and slaughter of living, breathing, sentient beings, who would prefer to live out their natural lives peacefully in their own communities. In the U.S., ten billion farmed animals are denied pretty much every natural behavior, without regard to their sufferings, only to be shipped to their deaths when they are adolescents—all for the sake of eggs, milk, and various “meats.” The long-term suffering endured by farmed animals—especially female farmed animals in the egg and dairy industries—is truly unconscionable. Cruel practices are always unearthed when undercover investigators penetrate the increasingly thick walls that conceal common animal agriculture practices. If you are unaware of the stunted lives and premature deaths forced on farmed animals around the world, please explore footage taken by undercover activists, starting with the excellent YouTube clip, “If Slaughterhouses Had Glass Walls.” “M” represents the many critical medical reasons for rejecting an omnivore’s diet.