Sacred Cow: The Nutritional, Environmental and Ethical Case for Better Meat
Produced and directed by Diana Rodgers
https://www.sacredcow.info
Almost the first thing that we see in this film is a European butcher preparing and cooking up some delicious-looking red meat. It is well-marbled and has a lot of fat, which he does not trim. Good man. Later, we are introduced to a couple who run a local butcher shop in the U.S. After the vegan lobby pressures them to put a sign in their window proclaiming how unethical it is to eat meat, they temporarily give in, and the vegan-influenced news release that follows goes viral. You would think that would be bad for business, but their business hits an all-time high in the months following that press release. That might tell you something about strong basic human instincts. It might be better to go with those instincts than with the politically correct fad of the day. We should not be too quick to let lightweight thinkers impose their fanaticism on the rest of us.
We see more evidence of the shortcomings of political correctness on a farm in Indiana that, for decades, grew corn and soy, mostly GMO. The result was not only nutritionally disastrous, but an environmental and economic failure. Those failures are repeated on similar farms all over the world. All of those factors turned around when the Indiana farmers converted to pastured animal-based farming.
A common criticism of animal-based agriculture is that cows require too much land, too much water, yada yada. Water and ice cover most of the surface of the earth, and most of what is left is too cold, too hilly or too dry to grow anything but grass. We can’t eat grass. Cows can. The only option for a few billion people on the planet is livestock-based agriculture.
Lierre Keith and others in the film spill the dirty secret that healthy animals and plants need healthy pasture, and healthy pasture does not happen without animals. If you look at the ingredients of a good fertilizer, there are animal products in it. Sorry, there is no way around it. No animal can live without the death of another. That becomes less obvious as we get more separated from the source of our food. Joel Salatin, in classic form, says we are experiencing devolution into disconnectedness. His Polyface Farm is a well-known model of how to do things right. Other familiar faces also make an appearance in this well-done video.
Actor and comedian Nick Offerman is the perfect narrator for this video. He played a very funny TV series character (Ron Swanson) who is all about red meat and real food in general. He is famous for classic quotes like, “There’s only one thing I hate more than lying: skim milk. Which is water that’s lying about being milk,” or “You had me at ‘Meat Tornado.’” The thumb is UP.
This article appeared in Wise Traditions in Food, Farming and the Healing Arts, the quarterly journal of the Weston A. Price Foundation, Summer 2024
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