I nominate cow farts (demonization of).

No doubt everyone is aware that there is a war on meat and livestock being waged by the usual suspects of Extinction Rebellion, Animal Rebellion and various other militant vegan groups.

Their agenda is to ban the consumption of meat but they use the climate angle as justification.

Their argument goes that cow farts are mostly methane, methane is a potent greenhouse gas (the argument usually goes that it’s something like 1500 times more potent than CO2) and there are too many cows, so obviously we must stop eating meat and dairy products forthwith to ‘save the planet’. A secondary argument is that pasture raised meat consumes many resources that could be used growing more ‘sustainable’ crops.

Should you encounter one of these yoghurt knitters here are some counterpoints to use against this bullshit (pun intended).

Firstly, the Earth is very large. Take a look at Google Earth/Maps or preferably a free alternative in night mode. All cities combined take up a pretty insignificant amount of the total land area. The land is mostly covered with deserts, tundra, forests or grasslands. There are still vast grasslands, the African Savanah, the Russian and Mongolian Steppes, the American Prairies, Argentinian Pampas etc. By no means all of them converted to arable crops. So there’s plenty of unused grasslands on which to graze animals still, and this area is growing due to the global greening that’s happening thanks to the plant food that is carbon dioxide, the atmospheric concentration of which is increasing.

Ruminant animals have evolved and adapted to eat grass in a way humans haven’t. This is why there were historically millions of Bison on the North American prairies, and wildebeest on the African Savanah. We can eat some domesticated grass seeds, but even those can make us sick from maladaptation, e.g. from gluten in wheat. In reductionist terms a cow can be regarded as an automated machine for roaming grasslands converting grass, which we can’t eat, into concentrated fats and proteins that we can.

But what about the farts? A cows stomach is a miracle of evolution with multiple chambers specialized to extract the maximum nutrients from a dispersed, low nutrient density food. This miracle is achieved by bacterial colonies in the gut which ferment the ingested grass. A by product of the fermentation is methane, which is vented as farts. So what would happen if cows weren’t grazing on the grass, would there be less methane?

No.

Ultimately everything living dies off, grass being no exception. What happens to it if it’s not eaten? It decays on the ground by the action of bacteria, which produces methane. So whether its eaten by a cow or left to rot on the ground, some of its carbon gets turned into methane by bacteria. So what does it matter if the bacteria that eat it live on the ground or in a cows stomach if the result is the same? The difference is that in the latter case, we get milk, cheese, butter and steak into the bargain for the same amount of methane released.

As for the methane being such a potent greenhouse gas, it is rapidly oxidized in the atmosphere into, wait for it, carbon dioxide and the main greenhouse gas water vapour. So without cows the end result is the same amount of ‘greenhouse gases’ as with, except without the meat and dairy products.

Furthermore, the meat of pasture raised cattle has more nutrients by virtue of eating green grass. Certain vitamins for example are synthesized in their guts from the chlorophyll pigment in the grass, so their meat is better for you.

What if we turned the pasture over to arable crops though? Wouldn’t that use less resources and produce less methane? Nope, a grazing cow is a highly efficient machine for extracting and concentrating nutrients and energy from grass. If we used the land instead to grow something like soybeans, the cow farts would just be replaced by human farts.

So fire up the barbie and get grilling with a clear conscience. Maybe even throw a few vegans on it, the cunts.

Nominated by: Berkshire Huntmaster