Pre-Reading Questions:
DIRECTIONS: In the next five minutes, ask as many of your peers as you can thehighlighted question below, and record their answers. Remember that as you movearound the room to ask your classmates your question, they will be doing the same.-Do you consume meat, including beef, pork and poultry products at every meal, once aday, two or three times a week, rarely or never?-What do you know about how meat is produced in the United States?-What impact might meat consumption have on the environment? -What health problemsdo you know of that could be linked to eating meat?-What countries do you think consume the greatest amount of beef, pork and poultry andwhy did you choose these?-Does livestock production contribute to the emission of greenhouse gases and to climatechange? Why or why not?-Is rainforest deforestation related to the production of livestock? Why do you think so?-Are poor and impoverished countries impacted by American’s consumption of beef?Why or why not?-How much meat do you think the average person should eat on a daily basis?-What types of energy are used to produce meat? In your opinion, how does the amountof energy to produce meat compare to the amount of energy used to produce an equalamount of vegetables and grains?When you have finished getting answers to your question, review the answers you gotand then fill in the blanks in the following sentences: I asked _______________ peoplemy question. The three most interesting answers I got were these: _______________; _______________; _______________. What I can conclude from all of the informationis _______________.”
Post reading Questions:
a. Why does the author compare meat to oil? In what ways are meat and oil alike anddifferent? b. How do socio-economic factors influence the consumption of meat by humans?c. What land uses are indirectly involved in livestock production?d. Why are there “inherent inefficiencies” associated with the production of meat?e. How do current methods of meat production have a greater environmental impact than production methods used 50 years ago?f. In your opinion, which solutions to the problem, as outlined in the article, are the mostachievable and why?g. How do market influences set the price of a commodity such as soy, corn or beef?h. Will the arguments presented in the article cause you to change your consumptionhabits? Why or why not?i. Why do you think the brief description of the writer, Mark Bittman, includes the notethat he "is not a vegetarian"?
Discussion:
Choose one of the following:Meat-eatersor Vegetarians Now draw a simple food chain of your chosen consumer. The food chain should startwith the SUN. Label the producers, primary consumers, secondary consumers andtertiary consumers.Partner up with a person from the other group and:Compare the two food chains:-What is shown by each food chain?-What is the main source of energy for all consumers?-What place (primary consumer, secondary consumer, etc.) do humans fill in each foodchain?-How is energy transferred in a food chain from one organism to another?Also discuss: “What other sources of energy input are required to mass produce meat asdescribed by the article? How many times more costly do you think the production of meat is compared to the production of plant crops?”-What is your stance on the animal rights issues related to mass meat-production?-How do you think a livestock farmer would feel about the assertions made by thearticle?
Rethinking the Meat-Guzzler
By MARK BITTMAN
A SEA change in the consumption of a resource that Americans take for granted may bein store — something cheap, plentiful, widely enjoyed and a part of daily life. And it isn’toil.It’s meat.The two commodities share a great deal: Like oil, meat is subsidized by the federalgovernment. Like oil, meat is subject to accelerating demand as nations becomewealthier, and this, in turn, sends prices higher. Finally — like oil — meat is something people are encouraged to consume less of, as the toll exacted by industrial productionincreases, and becomes increasingly visible.Global demand for meat has multiplied in recent years, encouraged by growing affluenceand nourished by the proliferation of huge, confined animal feeding operations. Theseassembly-line meat factories consume enormous amounts of energy, pollute water supplies, generate significant greenhouse gases and require ever-increasing amounts of corn, soy and other grains, a dependency that has led to the destruction of vast swaths of the world’s tropical rain forests.Just this week, the president of Brazil announced emergency measures to halt the burningand cutting of the country’s rain forests for crop and grazing land. In the last five monthsalone, the government says, 1,250 square miles were lost.The world’s total meat supply was 71 million tons in 1961. In 2007, it was estimated to be 284 million tons. Per capita consumption has more than doubled over that period. (Inthe developing world, it rose twice as fast, doubling in the last 20 years.) World meatconsumption is expected to double again by 2050, which one expert, Henning Steinfeldof the United Nations, says is resulting in a “relentless growth in livestock production.”Americans eat about the same amount of meat as we have for some time, about eightounces a day, roughly twice the global average. At about 5 percent of the world’s population, we “process” (that is, grow and kill) nearly 10 billion animals a year, morethan 15 percent of the world’s total.Growing meat (it’s hard to use the word “raising” when applied to animals in factoryfarms) uses so many resources that it’s a challenge to enumerate them all. But consider:an estimated 30 percent of the earth’s ice-free land is directly or indirectly involved inlivestock production, according to the United Nation’s Food and AgricultureOrganization, which also estimates that livestock production generates nearly a fifth of the world’s greenhouse gases — more than transportation.To put the energy-using demand of meat production into easy-to-understand terms, GidonEshel, a geophysicist at the Bard Center, and Pamela A. Martin, an assistant professor of geophysics at the University of Chicago, calculated that if Americans were to reducemeat consumption by just 20 percent it would be as if we all switched from a standardsedan — a Camry, say — to the ultra-efficient Prius. Similarly, a study last year by the National Institute of Livestock and Grassland Science in Japan estimated that 2.2 poundsof beef is responsible for the equivalent amount of carbon dioxide emitted by the averageEuropean car every 155 miles, and burns enough energy to light a 100-watt bulb for nearly 20 days.
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