Meatonomics (30 page)

Yes, the Meat Tax is a little paternalistic. But in light of the many others it seeks to help, not overly so. Besides, Americans have a history of imposing—and tolerating—paternalistic sin taxes on items like alcohol and tobacco. There's little reason to view the Meat Tax differently.

This might be the most daunting criticism. No one likes a new tax. And because this proposal targets one of the most powerful and well-funded industrial sectors in the country, it's like David against an army of Goliaths.

But you have to start somewhere, and as Gandhi advised while dismantling British rule in India, “If you don't ask, you don't get.” Pundits once thought it inconceivable that slavery would be abolished, that Congress would pass the Civil Rights Act, or that Big Tobacco would be held legally accountable for destroying the lungs and lives of millions of Americans. A decade ago, few would have thought we'd soon have a black president—and certainly not for two terms. Change
does
happen, often in swift and surprising ways.

Moreover, I optimistically submit that the Meat Tax
is
feasible. Tax credits will put cash in most voters' pockets and help stimulate the economy—ideas that are always popular. The credits also ensure that the typical consumer's disposable income available for food will remain constant. Further, the tax is lower than the average tobacco tax of 72 percent, which lawmakers have increased steadily over the years and are likely to raise even more in the future. The Meat Tax's many social benefits—like saving lives, restoring land, protecting fisheries, making water cleaner, reducing animal suffering, and helping reduce global warming—are big selling features. Another boon is the huge cash surplus it generates each year, which can be used to fund social programs and reduce individual income taxes.

If you don't ask, you don't get. The institutional changes proposed in this book require help from lawmakers, which requires voters to
speak loudly and clearly. Here's one idea. Ask your state and federal legislators to end subsidies to animal foods and to start taxing those foods. Their contact information is here:
usa.gov/contact/elected.shtml
. As cultural anthropologist Margaret Mead said, “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.” Make a phone call, send a letter or an email, compose a tweet or go on Facebook, or better yet, meet your lawmaker in person. Although we've seen lawmakers often side with corporate interests, a survey of congressional staff found that the best way to influence lawmakers is not through paid lobbyists but through “in-person visits by constituents.”
⁵¹
So anyone really
can
make a difference.

Two centuries ago, when the Industrial Revolution was still in its infancy, poet William Wordsworth observed of modern, workaday life: “Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers.” I can relate. I've worked off and on as a business lawyer for more than two decades, which means I've spent a lot of time putting cash in the pockets of clients like Frank. As you may know from personal experience, money-driven work like that is largely devoid of social significance other than to the few people who benefit from it. It drains your passion and leaves you little time or energy to do much else.

But a few years ago, working pro bono for a nonprofit organization, I discovered how it felt to put my powers to better use. After sending a letter and engaging in a minor negotiation, I convinced authorities to allow activists protesting animal cruelty to enter a shopping mall. I was thrilled by the tiny win (although admittedly, I kept my day job). Describing my feelings later to activist Dina Kourda, I said, “I've been practicing law for years, and this is the first time . . .” My voice trailed off, but Dina finished my sentence, hitting the nail on the head: “. . . you did something that actually mattered?”

It's easy to get caught up in the day-to-day getting and spending that life demands. Sometimes it just takes a single, jarring event—a blog, a movie, a book—to remind us that some things in life matter
more than money. And the next time that particular realization grabs you like a warm embrace, there's plenty you can do without giving up your day job. Consider the words of Gandhi: “You may never know what results come from your action. But if you do nothing, there will be no result.”

• We can act now to reverse the social and financial costs of meatonomics. Individually, each of us can help by consuming less meat, dairy, fish, and eggs.
  
• Collectively, we can address these problems with a Meat Tax. The tax-driven policy changes would save 172,000 human lives and 26 billion animal lives, generate a $32 billion annual cash surplus, permit the return of one-sixth of the contiguous United States to native habitat, and have the same effect on carbon emissions as garaging all American highway vehicles, boats, and ships.
  
• The best part is, by making price levels more accurate and decision making more meaningful, these changes will empower consumers to make better-informed choices.
  

This book sometimes asks people to think about animals and our relationship to them, and I'd like to remember two of the many animals who got me interested in this particular subject. In 2004, a law enforcement officer shot to death a cougar sleeping in a tree in Palo Alto, California. With the state's populations of humans and cougars then at 35 million and four thousand, respectively, this incident led me to reflect on the economic principle—inconsistently applied, it turns out—that value is based on scarcity.

And a few years later, the slaughterhouse video
Glass Walls
showed a cow dangling upside-down from one hoof in a fast-moving butchering machine. Already past the stunning station (without being stunned) and headed for the belly-ripping station, she continued to bellow and struggle to free herself. We don't often see animals as individuals, but when we do, it can leave a lasting impression. These individual animals, and many others whose lives or deaths I've seen—sometimes just in brief glimpses—have changed the focus of my own existence.

I am indebted to the many people who helped with this book—particularly those who provided comments on the manuscript simply because I asked. As the combined result of their good-natured generosity and my shameless begging, I had the tremendous good fortune to be advised in this effort by more than thirty people. Seven readers have advanced degrees in economics. Ten have PhDs. Twelve are lawyers. Some fit more than one category. While this feedback dramatically improved the book's accuracy and objectivity, I remain solely responsible for any errors. Further, I note that several of those who commented disagree, in varying levels, with my analysis and/or recommendations.

I am particularly grateful to Donald Garlit, Claire Kim, John Maher, and Michael Pease for heroically spending the many hours necessary to read and comment on the entire manuscript. For their valuable help in reviewing parts of the manuscript, I also owe deep thanks to John Boik, Chris Bryan, Karen Davis, Carol Glasser, Michael Harrington, Chris Holbein, Julie Jaffe, Miles Jaffe, Melanie Joy, Dina Kourda, Tom Lillehof, Dara Lovitz, Tania Marie, F. Bailey Norwood, Robert Ranucci, Kendra Sagoff, Mark Sagoff, Larry Simon, Max Simon, Michele Simon, Janice Stanger, Paul Wazzan, James McWilliams, and Bill Weissinger. And special thanks to Erin Evans for her valuable research and editorial assistance.

A number of veterans of the book trade were key to this work's publication, and I am grateful for their expert assistance. My agent, Lindsay Edgecombe, provided invaluable advice at each step, guiding me through the publishing process with energy and savvy. My editor, Caroline Pincus, backed this book with courage, enthusiasm, and foresight. Josh Chetwynd provided terrific editorial help, excising redundancies and lawyer-speak with the skill of a surgeon. Thanks also to Ali McCart for her astute and meticulous copyediting, Vanessa Ta for her excellent production editing, and Bonni Hamilton and Anne Sullivan for their zealous and creative promotional efforts.

I'm especially grateful to my partner, Tania Marie, for her extraordinary patience, support, and encouragement. The past few years saw many a sunny Saturday or Sunday morning spent in the house, working. She brightened those indoor hours with her sparkle.

Finally, I must also recognize Joy, Gaia, Boojum, and Sweet Pea—the rabbit, tortoise, and two cats who share our home and whose visits punctuated and enlivened many a writing session. The cats even gave their own input, walking on the keyboard every so often to insert random strings of characters in the manuscript. These individual animals' unique personalities and behaviors provide a daily reminder that they, like all sentient beings, live to pursue their own versions of happiness.

Don't we need milk for healthy teeth and bones? Aren't fish a great source of omega-3s? Isn't an egg a day good for you? Isn't meat a necessary source of iron,
Appendix B
₁₂
, and other nutrients? As musician Steve Albini cautions, “Doubt the conventional wisdom unless you can verify it with reason and experiment.” This appendix explores a number of widely held beliefs related to the health effects of animal food consumption. Specifically, the first section addresses issues in beef and pork, the second looks at dairy, the third eggs, and the fourth fish. As we'll see, reason and experiment don't always support popular assumptions.

Consider a common belief about animal protein: that its quality is better than plant protein's. Along those lines, beef and pork producers routinely trumpet the high-quality protein their products supposedly deliver.
¹
Where do these groups get the idea that animal protein is high quality and plant protein is low quality?

This notion seems based on the idea that some proteins contain a more complete set of the eight essential amino acids than others. Amino acids are building blocks of protein that our bodies cannot produce independently. Despite research to the contrary, the idea developed that only animal foods contain all essential amino acids, and that has led to these foodstuffs being called, somewhat hyperbolically, “complete proteins.” Yet plants can also provide a complete set of essential amino acids. Writing of the common misconception that plants lack certain essential amino acids, physician and nutritionist John McDougall said, “Any single one or combination of . . . plant foods provides amino acid intakes in excess of the recommended
requirements,” and for a vegetarian who consumes sufficient calories, “it is impossible to design an amino acid–deficient diet.”
²
It's unclear why the myth persists that plants lack amino acids and are incomplete. As early as 1966, a clinical study of amino acid intake in meat-eaters, vegetarians, and vegans found that “each group exceeded twice its requirement for every essential amino acid and surpassed this amount by large amounts for most of them.”
³

Paradoxically, despite the misdirected focus that consumer messaging often places on animal foods providing more essential amino acids than plants, animals actually have no independent ability to create amino acids. Only plants and bacteria can generate protein's building blocks. As nutritionist Janice Stanger notes, “Animal protein is recycled plant protein.”
⁴
When humans obtain protein from vegetables, we simply cut out the animal middleman.

In the animal kingdom, herbivores get all the protein they need for healthy muscle and tissue development from plants. Moreover, power, speed, and body size often favor those who eat plant food, not animal food. Thus, nature's strict herbivores include large animals like elephants, rhinoceroses, giraffes, and fast animals like gazelles, antelopes, and horses. Not only do these vegans get plenty of protein from plants, but their robust physiques and longevity belie the feared trade-off that humans typically associate with eating plants.

But humans are different from plant-eating animals, some say, because our bodies have
evolved
to eat meat. This argument typically advances in three parts: human anatomical features, such as canine teeth, are similar to carnivores'; vegetarian diets don't provide necessary nutrients like protein, calcium, iron, and vitamin B
₁₂
; and hunting and meat eating have been natural human or hominid occupations for millions of years. In fact, a closer look at these issues tends to point toward the opposite conclusion: it seems humans, just like gorillas, evolved to eat plants.

In a study examining the comparative anatomy of carnivores, omnivores, herbivores, and humans, physician Milton Mills compared
nineteen anatomical features from the four groups. Mills found that humans most closely resemble herbivores, not carnivores or omnivores, in all anatomical features related to eating.
⁵
Thus, like herbivores but unlike carnivores or omnivores: our saliva contains enzymes to digest carbohydrates; our intestines are long, not short; our mouth opening is small, not large; our stomach's pH is 4 to 5, not 1; we chew food rather than swallow it whole; we have flattened nails instead of sharp claws; our molars are flattened, not sharp; our incisors are broad and flat, not short and pointed, and our canines are short and blunted, not long and sharp. These features all support plant consumption and suggest that in humans, the evolutionary process selected features associated with eating vegetation. For instance, a long intestinal tract and a higher stomach pH are appropriate to digest plant material, not flesh; and flat molars, blunted canines, and a predisposition to chew food distinguish us from carnivores and omnivores who typically rip and swallow food whole. In the anatomy of eating, it seems we have much more in common with Bambi and Bullwinkle than with Lassie or Leo.

The argument that humans cannot obtain adequate nutrients from a vegetarian diet is a common misconception. In fact, as seen in
chapter 2
, protein is available in every kind of plant food. Iron and calcium are readily available in a wide variety of plants. Moreover, in each instance, the plant sources of these nutrients do not promote disease, while the animal sources promote illnesses like cancer, heart disease, and diabetes.