A Case Against Waste and Other Excesses

I could hardly believe it. There on my television screen was Mike Wallace, handing the nation a line that seemed downright incredible: If we would feed our beef only a little less grain, the grain saved would be enough to keep everybody in the world from starving. Obviously someone had gotten carried away. How many listeners would write to “Sixty Minutes” and challenge this extravagant claim? I decided that one, at least, would.

DEAR MR. WALLACE:

I could hardly believe my senses when I heard you say that if we would grain feed our beef only ten days less (causing a hardly detectable difference in the quality of the meat), we could save enough grain to preserve the lives of all the starving people in the world.

I find this almost incredible. What is your documentation? If what I heard on “Sixty Minutes” is true, it would seem to place an absolute moral obligation on Americans to save the world from starvation. I would really like to have this information, because I would certainly put it to use. If true, this information should be preached from every pulpit and proclaimed by every voice capable of speaking to the American collective conscience.

I received a prompt reply from Paul L. Loewenwarter of CBS News, the producer of “Sixty Minutes.”

DEAR MR. BALDWIN:

Mike Wallace has passed your letter on to me because I was the producer of our report on grain-fed beef.

The documentation on our story is quite simple, and it comes from readily available publications at the U.S. Department of Agriculture and confirmed by the Beef Industry Council and the American National Cattlemen’s Association.

In short, 48.3 million tons of grain of all kinds are fed to beef cattle (1973–1974) per year. UNICEF and FAO at the U.N. cite world need to stave off starvation at 10 million tons this year.

The cattlemen and the Department of Agriculture currently favor a shifting of grading in beef so that “choice” would include beef which has spent about two weeks less in feed lots. This affects marbling, which controls taste and texture. The cattlemen (particularly feed-lot owners) favor this because it would reduce their feeding costs in a world of high-price grain. The result would be lower-cost meat at the supermarket counter, hence increased sales. But if shipping grain abroad is not their primary concern, their statistics nonetheless illustrate the point of our piece.

In two weeks in a feed lot, according to the Meat Institute and the Cattlemen’s Association, a steer consumes between five and six bushels of grain, along with a lot of other forage and nutritive materials. (This comes to about five bushels per animal.) There are about 34 million steers in lots at any given moment in normal times, so that simple multiplication gets us very close to 200 million bushels saved each year if feed-lot time for every steer was reduced by two weeks. That’s about the 10 million tons required to bridge the starvation gap.

Grain prices vary day by day, but a rough estimate at recent prices is that the saving to the feed-lot owners would be about $650 million, which might mean reduced meat prices to consumers.

Having said all that, it is worth noting the extreme complexities of the beef and grain markets and the adjustments that would have to be made by the government, the consumer, and the food industry in order to ensure that the right kind of grain could be gotten to needy people. And there are other complexities about kinds of animal feed versus kinds of people feed. And if we ate beef raised only on the range our grasslands might not hold the entire steer population, so we’d have to cut back consumption a bit. But the Heart Association says that would be good for us all!

So at the bottom we stand by the statistical support of our story because it is a valid statement of the saving in grain which could result from a change in consumer preference and government policy.

Thanks much for your letter and your interest.

The Apostle Paul said that if eating meat should cause his brother to stumble, he would eat no meat as long as the world stands. What would he say if his eating meat played a part in depriving his hungry brother of food?

Most people are inclined to dismiss vegetarianism out of hand. The word conjures up visions of religious fanatics, Eastern mystics, food faddists. Mention “vegetarian” to my sister and she immediately thinks of her kooky neighbor, who first stopped eating meat, then all processed foods, then food grown with chemical fertilizers, until now “about all he eats is figs and he’s so weak he can hardly walk from the car to the house.” This view of vegetarians prevails even though such well-known people as Rousseau, Tolstoy, and George Bernard Shaw were vegetarians.

The case for vegetarianism is usually debated on two grounds: the physiological and the ethical. The physiological question is: Do we need to eat meat to be healthy or could we do as well or better on a vegetarian diet? The ethical question is: If man can be healthy without eating meat, is there any justification for the wholesale slaughter of animals? Can the bloodshed, the butchering, the callousness, really be approved?

A writer in the Encyclopedia of Religion and Ethics says that “an enormous majority of people are too much under the yoke of custom to be awake to the moral appeal” of vegetarianism. But Christians have another appeal to consider, this one from Christ himself: “Why don’t you judge for yourselves what is right?” (Luke 12:57). If we are going to eat meat, let it not be because we are a part of that majority so yoked to custom as to be incapable of moral discernment. If we are to eat meat, let us eat it out of Christian conviction based on biblical principles.

Whether we can be healthy without eating meat is a much debated question. Vegetarians say yes; others say it’s doubtful. We do know that protein is essential to health and that meat products are primary sources for protein. Strict vegetarians avoid not only meat but all animal products, such as cheese, milk, and eggs. This makes it much more difficult to get needed protein.

Some vegetables, too—grains, legumes, seeds, and nuts—are good sources of protein. But vegetable protein is incomplete; that is, it lacks one or more of what are called the essential amino acids, whereas meat, eggs, and milk contain all eight of these. However, the amino acids lacking in one plant source can be made up in another; the rice-bean combinations common in Latin American diets are an example of the principle of complementary proteins.

A 1974 report by the National Academy of Sciences on studies comparing the health of meat-eaters and vegetarians found that total vegetarians got enough of all essential nutrients except vitamin B12 (the vegetarians who ate milk and eggs did get enough B12). My sister’s neighbor is, apparently, not a typical vegetarian.

Leaving the physiological question somewhat up in the air, we turn to the moral question. Vegetarians appeal to our compassion, our humanity: are countless animals to die just to please our palates?

Now vegetarians have a new appeal to our compassion. Not only must animals be sacrificed to our appetites if we eat meat, but so in a sense must our fellow human beings, for the grain we feed our meat animals is kept—figuratively, at least—off the plates of starving people around the world.

Senator Mark Hatfield explained it this way in a speech given in St. Paul, Minnesota, in June, 1974;

“If you take an acre of land, it can produce varying amounts of protein depending upon how it is utilized. If you plant soybeans, you have a yield of about 667 pounds of protein. Corn will produce 435 pounds; rice yields about 323 pounds of protein; wheat gives forth about 227 pounds. But if you devote that land to feed for poultry and meat, look what happens. For chickens, an acre will give you about 97 pounds of protein. For raising pigs, one acre of land and its feed converts into 29 pounds of protein. Finally, for every acre of land in America devoted to raising beef, we yield a mere 9 pounds of protein.”

On the other side of the question, it should be observed that our abstinence from meat would not necessarily place food on the tables of the starving masses abroad. For one thing, not all acreage suitable for raising beef could be successfully converted to grain or soybean production. I’ve lived in cattle country. The vast reaches of western ranchlands, in many cases, could never produce anything but meat. The Bureau of Land Management leases grazing rights on thousands of acres that look like sagebrush desert or absolute wasteland. The casual observer would be convinced that such land couldn’t support jackrabbits. But that land will raise cattle. It may take as much as ten acres to a head, but there are a good many ten-acre plots out there. So the argument that meat in our mouths is necessarily tantamount to starving our neighbors throughout the world is subject to challenge.

As for the appeal to our compassion for the poor animals we butcher, are we supposed to be more compassionate than the Lord himself? That’s not meant to sound irreverent, but God did create a world in which some animals live by feeding on others. Man may be able to live without meat products, but carnivorous animals certainly cannot. If killing for food were intrinsically evil, would God have permitted it in the animal kingdom?

Apparently man did not eat meat in the early days of his existence upon the earth. Despite the caveman caricature of early man as a savage hunter, Scripture suggests that it was only after the Flood that man began to eat flesh. Originally God told Adam and Eve, “Behold, I have given you every plant yielding seed that is on the surface of all the earth, and every tree which has fruit yielding seed; it shall be food for you” (Gen. 1:29, NASB). After the Flood, however, God said, “Every moving thing that is alive shall be food for you; I give all to you, as I gave the green plant. Only you shall not eat flesh with its life, that is, its blood” (Gen. 9:3, 4). Thus, it appears, God added meat to man’s vegetarian diet.

The New Testament shows that moral scruples against eating meat may be misguided. “One man has faith that he may eat all things, but he who is weak eats vegetables only. Let not him who eats regard with contempt him who does not eat, and let not him who does not eat judge him who eats, for God has accepted him” (Rom. 14:2, 3).

The Apostle Paul warned Timothy against “men who … advocate abstaining from foods, which God has created to be gratefully shared in by those who believe and know the truth. For everything created by God is good, and nothing is to be rejected, if it is received with gratitude” (1 Tim. 4:3, 4).

On the basis of these Scriptures, it seems we may state that, in itself, eating meat is ethically and spiritually blameless. But we haven’t told the whole story.

Just as man did not eat meat in the original creation, so he will not eat meat in the golden age to come. Scripture seems to say that carnivores will some day become vegetarians: “And the wolf will dwell with the lamb, and the leopard will lie down with the kid, and the calf and the young lion and the fatling together; and a little boy will lead them. Also the cow and the bear will graze; their young will lie down together; and the lion will eat straw like the ox” (Isa. 11:6, 7, italics added). After giving this vivid description of the idyllic harmony that will prevail in the coming kingdom of peace, the prophet sums it all up in these words: “They will not hurt or destroy in all My holy mountain; for the earth will be full of the knowledge of the LORD as the waters cover the sea” (Isa. 11:9).

This seems to leave little question that the ideal is for there to be no bloodshed, no killing, no preying on others in the animal kingdom. And we might well go on to argue that since vegetarianism appears to be God’s ultimate ideal, we should be striving toward that now, despite the biblical license to eat flesh. The Bible also permitted and regulated slavery, but we perceive that system to be intrinsically contrary to biblical principles of individual worth and freedom. We say that while the Bible did not flatly condemn slavery, it did lay the basis for its abolition by presenting the ideal: all persons are equal in Christ. Could we not consider a similar argument about eating meat—that God permits it, but that it is not his ideal?

Vegetarianism seems clearly to be the ideal. But we do not live in an ideal world. For now, God has specifically authorized the eating of meat. If we feel it is nobler not to eat it, if we are convinced that God’s people can approximate the future ideal even now, if we are sure our health will not suffer, perhaps we will choose to be vegetarians. Otherwise we will eat meat with a clear conscience—and thank God for it.

Granted, the Bible does not forbid meat eating. Granted, some of the land used for raising beef would not produce other crops. The fact remains that huge quantities of grain that could be used to prevent starvation are instead being used to produce meat for affluent and overfed Americans.

Senator Mark Hatfield said in the speech quoted previously, “It takes about seven times as much grain to put protein on the table in the form of meat as it does to consume such cereal grains with an equivalent amount of protein in direct forms. The richer a country becomes, the more inefficient it becomes in its use of protein—the more it likes to eat meat, which we may take for granted, but which is utter luxury in the world, and like most luxuries, is extremely wasteful.”

Hatfield also suggests some specific steps to reduce our meat consumption: “We should renew the Christian discipline of fasting as a means for teaching us how to identify with those who hunger, and to deepen our life of prayer for those who suffer. And we must all analyze, in prayer before God, our own habits of food consumption. Specifically, we can drastically alter our consumption of meat, and the money we save we can give to alleviate world hunger. Some Christians may decide that part of their witness means being a vegetarian. Families can decide how to limit their consumption of beef, perhaps to only certain days, or at times of special celebration.”

Should you personally reduce your consumption of meat? And if so, by how much? If you already eat only a little meat, perhaps you ought not to cut back. If you are eating more than the average, you place yourself in the role of “worst offender” since even average consumption in America is very high compared to that in the rest of the world. According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, in 1973 the average American consumed about 175 pounds of red meat (beef, veal, pork, mutton; poultry and fish are not included in this figure). That’s nearly half a pound per day.

Back to “Sixty Minutes.” According to that presentation, we don’t need to stop eating meat altogether. We wouldn’t necessarily even have to reduce our consumption if we would settle for beef with less fat marbling—i.e., beef that had spent about two weeks less in feed lots. If the immense quantity of grain saved were distributed to hungry people around the world it could prevent starvation worldwide.

But we waste food in other ways also. Many home cooks could help their strained food budgets, improve family health, and help the world’s food problem simply by preparing and serving smaller portions and using all leftovers. Will our garbage cans testify against us in the day of judgment?

Gandhi is quoted as saying, “The earth provides enough for everyman’s need, but not for everyman’s greed.” We in the West feel indicted by that statement: because we are greedy, people in India are needy. But there’s another side to this also. May I suggest that “the earth provides enough for everyman’s need, but not for everyman’s waste.” It doesn’t rhyme, but it places some responsibility on the poor of India as well as on the affluent in America, for we in the West are not the only ones who waste food.

Bernard Yo, an Air Force nutritionist, has asserted that the world could feed up to three times its present population if everyone would use the food production and processing knowledge we now have. Around the world people are wasting vast quantities of food, not deliberately but by failing to act wisely. Yo says, “In the underdeveloped world, I figure more than half the potential food source is wasted. In India, for example, the amount of food waste is unbelievable. India produces a lot of rice. They smash the rice from the stalk into grain and then crush the grain. They do not utilize the husks of rice, which provide minerals and vitamins, and they use the straw for fuel. Rice stalks can offer a tremendous amount of Vitamin D” (from an Associated Press release, November 6, 1974).

Hearing information like this, we may be tempted to shrug off the whole matter of feeding the starving masses. Why should we be concerned about hungry people if they are wasting products that could help to feed them? But Jesus charges us with perceiving and doing what is right. The failure of others does not alter our responsibility.

Jesus gave us the example. He once fed 5,000 people by miraculously multiplying a boy’s lunch of five barley loaves and two fish. Then, after feeding so many people with so little, what did Jesus say? “Gather up the leftover fragments that nothing may be lost” (John 6:12). I think we can take this as an instruction about leftovers: not “into the garbage—there’s more where that came from” but “gather up the leftovers so that nothing will be lost or wasted.”

Jesus calls us to a no-waste life-style. Does that mean we should stop eating meat? Possibly. Does it mean we should eat less meat? Probably. Does it mean we should not waste food? Positively.

It’s a question of conscience.

Stanley C. Baldwin is a writer and speaker who lives in Milwaukie, Oregon. He is the author of What Did Jesus Say About That? and a co-author of other books.

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