By Rayma Cooley

Hi, my name is Rayma Cooley and I am fiercely passionate about where my food comes from.  I have been an on-again, off-again vegan for the last ten years.  I wish I could say that my initial decision to eat this way came from some kind of virtuous awakening I had over schmoozing with a cute cow, but in all honesty, I had a fervent hot dog addiction.  I was, what I will call, a monochromatic food addict.  In my mind, the only way to get off this slippery slope was to give up all meat and everything associated with it.  That’s just how my crazy mind works sometimes- go all in.

I’ve had the common experience where the radical animal cruelty protesters assault me with their blown-up photos of dead, tortured animals.  For me, nothing is more of a turn-off, or counter-productive to a cause than preachy, pretentious pressure which comes across as assaulting and aggressive.   But this hot-dog detox was creating a curiosity within me to take a closer look at where my food comes from.

I’ve read book after book about the inhumane treatment of animals associated with our mainstream meat, dairy, and egg producers.  Yes, it’s horrific, but really they all kinda say the same thing and it’s easy to become desensitized to it all.  I’m sorry to say that if I were to rely solely on these books, or the gruesome videos of confined, sick animals to keep me straight, I would probably be knee-deep in hot dogs by now.  The reality is that it is easy to go on believing that in our grocery-store world of attractively packaged meats and eggs depicted in mom and pop illustrations of happy little farms, that this world exists.  And I’ll be the first to admit, meat is DELICIOUS!  Don’t even get me started on cheese.  I can become as disconnected and disillusioned as everyone else, just so that I can go on enjoying these scrumptious indulgences guilt-free.  Yes, I know I’m capable of that.

This is what has kept me mostly straight all these years- sustainability (more about the “mostly” later).  Giving up animal products is the single most impactful thing you can do for the sustainability of our planet’s resources.[1] It is virtually impossible to keep up with animal-product demand without having adverse effects on our environment.  Think about all the energy and resources it takes to sustain an animal, and that’s just the input. 

Here’s the reality about mainstream animal production:

• Animal products create more greenhouse gas emissions than transportation and industry combined.[2] Emitted in the form of carbon dioxide (CO2), methane, and nitrous oxide, we are doing more for global warming progression eating a half-pound hamburger than driving a 3,000-pound car nearly ten miles.[3]
• Mainstream animal production contributes to a dead ocean[4] and the erosion of our soils[5] via the methods of corn production for feed.   Nutrient loads from corn and soybean production is the greatest contributor to the gulf hypoxic zone, and conventionally plowed agriculture is eroding our soils faster than they can be produced.
• Animals eat the food that we should be eating.  More than a third of the calories we produce as crops are used directly for animal feed, with an output of only 12% that is transferred as energy to our bodies as food from animal products.[6]  With the growing concern of how we will be able to feed an exponentially growing population, we can nourish populations much more effectively if calories were being directly received from plant to mouth.
• We’re killing the rainforest, and in turn, biodiversity and our oxygen supply.  The rainforest is home to millions of unique plants and animals and supplies 20% of the oxygen we breathe,[7] but the demand for cheap meat is responsible for over 60% of Amazon deforestation.[8]
• No, we’re not in the clear with fish and seafood.  Our wild-caught harvesting practices have depleted many of our fisheries stocks,[9][10][11][12][13] and aquaculture, the farming of fish and other seafood, has its own lengthy list of problems.[14][15][16][17]

So it seems as if the easy solution would to just give up all animal products, right?  This is where my endless internal struggle comes in.  Over the years I have learned that giving up meat is not enough.  Now I also have to be a locavore.  Now I also have to grow my own food.  Now I also have to get more political.  Now I also have to eliminate all processed food, even the ones at the health food store.  You try being a gardening locavore-vegan-politician.  I will literally have time for nothing else!  Not only is it hard to do, but with all these experts telling us that it’s not enough to vote with your fork, or it’s not enough to eat within a fifty-mile radius, or it’s not enough to just give up meat, what is a girl to do?  And if it’s confusing and seemingly hopeless for me, a graduate student affiliated with a lab dedicated to finding sustainable agricultural solutions, then what is it like for the average American?  It’s no wonder we turn a blind eye to it all.

Here’s the bottom line:  we are creating a system where it seems impossible to do anything right as a food consumer, and so the alternative is to do nothing at all.  This growing wedge between the goal of a sustainable tomorrow and the habits of our population is partially of our own doing.  We need to tell the people that it does matter when they shop at their local co-op and farmer’s market.  It does matter when they eat less meat.  It does matter when they grow their own tomatoes.  It does matter to sign a petition or write to your congressman.  Collectively we can make a difference much more impactful than if a few people are trying to do everything all on their own.

[1] Emily Cassidy, http://ensia.com/voices/why-diet-matters/?utm_source=IonE+Interest+Area…;...

[2] 2006 report from United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO)

[3] https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-greenhouse-hamburger/

[4] Bryan Walsh, http://science.time.com/2013/06/19/this-years-gulf-of-mexico-dead-zone-…

[5] David Montgomery, http://www.pnas.org/content/104/33/13268.full

[6] Emily Cassidy, https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/8/3/034015

[7] WWF, wwf.panda.org/about_our_earth/teacher_resources/best_place_specie...

[8] news.discovery.com/earth/amazon-rainforest-deforestation-cattle-w...

[9] http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2007/04/global-fisheries-crisis/montai...

[10] http://ocean.nationalgeographic.com/ocean/critical-issues-overfishing/

[11] Worm et al., http://www.sciencemag.org/content/314/5800/787.abstract

[12] Pinsky et al., http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2011/04/22/1015313108.abstract

[13] https://www.seafoodwatch.org/seafood-basics/where-does-seafood-come-from

[14] https://www.seafoodwatch.org/seafood-basics/the-state-of-seafood

[15] http://www.fao.org/fishery/topic/14894/en

[16] http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2007/02/mangroves/warne-text/3

[17] ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2010/02/patagonia/klinkenborg-text/4