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Introduction

W󰁥’󰁶󰁥 󰁡󰁬󰁬 󰁨󰁥󰁡󰁲󰁤 󰁴󰁨󰁥 󰁮󰁡󰁲󰁲󰁡󰁴󰁩󰁶󰁥 󰁳󰁯 󰁯󰁦󰁴󰁥󰁮—󰁴󰁨󰁥 󰁯󰁮󰁥 󰁡󰁢󰁯󰁵󰁴 how red meat, beef in particular, is killing us—that many of us have come to accept it as incontrovertible truth. It’s so common it’s common knowledge. Te story goes something like this:

Americans once raised cattle, pigs, and sheep on small, mixed farms scattered around the country, sprinkled with handfuls of livestock. Animal numbers were low and, correspondingly, Americans ate dainty portions of animal fat and red meat. We were thin. Hyper-tension, stroke, and heart disease rates were low. Environmental damage from farming was minimal. Over the course of the 20th century, however, everything changed for the worse. Livestock herds ballooned. Cattle overgrazed. Red meat and animal fat became abundant, cheap, and ubiquitous. Americans gorged themselves on hamburgers, butter, and ice cream. Te result: soil erosion, water and air pollution, and skyrocketing rates of obesity and chronic diet-related diseases.

Tere’s just one problem with this narrative: It’s fiction. Yes, parts are correct. But facts that rarely make it into mainstream discussions and media coverage diametrically oppose the narrative’s key elements. As this book will make clear, aspects of the United States’ envi-ronmental condition have, indeed, worsened, and chronic diet-related diseases have become more widespread and severe. But these problems cannot reasonably be connected with bovines, butter, or beef. Why?Because there are about the same number of cattle on the land today as there were a century ago. And while Americans are taking in more calories overall, they are eating less red meat in general, and less beef in particular, than at any time in recent history. We are also consuming less butter, far less whole milk, and much less saturated animal fat. No

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DEFENDING BEEF

swelling bovine herds. No ever-heftier helpings of red meat or beef fat. From these facts alone, the simplistic narrative collapses.If you are skeptical, I won’t blame you. What I’ve just said likely runs counter to what you’ve heard from various sources for many years. But I come armed with data, and plenty of it, all from official govern-ment sources. While my overall premises—that cattle are good for the environment and that beef, butter, and cheese are healthy foods—are, admittedly, controversial in this day and age, the basic agricultural and demographic facts are not in dispute.Here is the most pertinent point to keep in mind. In the second half of this book, I will detail how American diets have changed. I will show we eat less beef and less animal fat now than we did 100 years ago, while our consumption rates for sugar, grain, and industrial vegetable oils have skyrocketed. I will present facts strongly supporting the conclusion that our sugar, flour, and vegetable oil consumption rather than red meat and animal fats are to blame for the sharp rise in obesity and chronic diseases. Te popular story line is also far off-base concerning the numbers of animals on the land. In reality, Americans’ eating habits have shifted away from beef toward poultry and fish. Decreasing per-capita consumption of beef has been accompanied by a decline in per capita cattle in US inventory. It’s true the total quantity of red meat and dairy produced has increased as our population has grown, and some is exported. But the amount of beef and dairy the United States exports is actually quite small. Only about 7 percent and 2 percent, respectively, go to foreign markets. So cattle raised for exported meat and milk products barely affect the math.Greater output in the beef and dairy sectors has actually not resulted from swelling herd sizes. On the meat side, this is because animals are now slaughtered at much younger ages. At the dawn of the 20th century, a typical beef steer was sent to slaughter at four or five years of age.¹ oday, to lower costs, and enabled by grain feeding and growth hormones, that steer is killed younger than two years old, typically around 14 months.² Dairy cows, too, go to slaughter at much younger ages (often just three years old). Tis also affects beef supply because, now, as always, a large portion of US beef comes from dairy cattle. Te rise in milk production, however, is owing to another issue. As I detailed in my book

Righteous Porkchop

, selective breeding of dairy cows

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INTRODUCTION

for greater milk output (read: large bodies and huge udders) has vastly increased per-animal production.³ At the beginning of the 20th century, average US annual per-cow milk output was 2,902 pounds (348 gallons). oday it is 22,774 pounds (2,734 gallons) per year. Tis is often touted as a major victory for humanity. But the scale of the increase (more than sevenfold) suggests selective breeding has been pushed to an extreme. (Indeed, many of today’s mature dairy cows even have trouble walking, something I have personally witnessed, with heavy heart, numerous times.) Te net effect of this change has been a substantial shrinkage of the US dairy herd over the past century. Tese factors, combined with the near disappearance from American agriculture of oxen, mules, donkeys, and horses as animal draft power, means there are fewer larger farm animals in the United States now than there were a century ago.For those of you who may still find this hard to believe, here are the specific numbers. Since 1900, beef cattle numbers rose, but less than people tend to assume, going from 67 million to 94 million. Pig numbers have also gone up, but not much: In 1920, there were 60 million pigs; in 2018, 74 million. On the other hand, sheep numbers plummeted, going from a high of 46 million in 1940 to 5 million today. Likewise, the dairy cow herd shrank dramatically, from 32 million down to 9 million, over the past century. And draft animals have gone from 22 million in 1900 to just 3 million in 2002. All told, that means that while early-20th-century farms and ranches had roughly 99 million head of cattle and 227 million larger animals (including cattle), today they have 103 million cattle and 185 million larger animals. Tat’s a modest 4 percent increase in cattle numbers and an overall 19 percent

reduction

in larger farm animals.From an environmental standpoint, two issues are most relevant: How many animals are in inventory, and, more important, by what methods are they being raised? Tese factors will largely determine ecological footprint—harmful or helpful. As we’ve just seen, there are only slightly more cattle today than for much of the past century. At the same time, cattle are being raised with more care: Tere is a bur-geoning movement within agriculture to thoughtfully manage grazing. Tis is increasingly transforming animal impact into a cornerstone of regenerative agriculture.