In Defense of Beef

Food Chain Radio Podcast with Michael Olson

Nicolette Hahn Niman, Author, Defending Beef: The Ecological and Nutritional Case for Beef

America’s beef industry has many enemies and few friends.

The enemies-of-beef camp includes the environmentalists who claim that the cow destroys the earth by trampling it beneath its hooves, and forces the climate to change by emitting its greenhouse gases.

The camp also includes nutritionists who claim that eating the saturated fat of beef makes people fat and sick. And vegans, vegetarians and animal rights activists who believe all farm animals should either be treated like the family pet, or released to run free in nature.

The enemies-of-beef camp also now includes the industrialists who offer up meat-like substitutes for beef made with patented chemical compounds that cannot be manufactured without their getting a sufficient royalty.

The friends-of-beef camp includes those who earn a living raising the animals, and those who process the animals for sale to the public. There are not many of them!

That the friends-of-beef camp has been losing so much ground to the enemies-of-beef camp leads us to once again ask:

Should beef be banned?

(Nicolette Hahn Niman, Niman Ranch, animal agriculture, beef industry)