Lambs are Destroying the Planet

The "Meat Eater's Guide to Climate Change & Health," an infographic-packed report published by the Environmental Working Group, says that the "WORST CHOICE" of all the meats you can eat is lamb. Its carbon footprint, it seems, is very large -- "50% higher than beef," according to the Guide. Indeed, says the Environmental Working Group, Americans' consumption of meats (including poultry and fish) is destroying the environment. I suppose the conclusion isn't surprising, given that the premise of the Guide is that meat-eating "takes a toll on our health, the environment, the climate, and animal welfare."

The BEST choice? Lentils, apparently. Tofu, beans and yogurt are also called out as relatively "green."

I appreciate that the Guide points out that pastured and grass-fed meat and dairy are better alternatives, and I agree with the Environmental Working Group that feedlots and factory farming practices are deplorable.

But the report is rife with inaccuracies, bad information and questionable recommendations. Like the part where they say that "[t]he evidence is clear that eating too much meat...is associated with serious health problems." And the part where they promote "Meatless Mondays." And the part where they conveniently forgot to include the environmental impacts of wheat agriculture. And the part where they advocate eating "lower-fat dairy products." And the part where they suggest that "everyone in the U.S." should adopt a vegetarian diet for environmental reasons.

Yeesh. I'm getting tired just looking at the list.

Monkey Meat

Despite my love of meat, I have no desire to chow on a plate of monkey. But as the BBC points out:

For people raised on bushmeat, in Africa and elsewhere, the equation is different. "Forbidding hunting [bushmeat] is not a solution for the Baka," Messe Venant told a small gathering here [at the UN Convention on Biological Diversity meeting in Nagoya, Japan]. The Baka people, from Cameroon, have always survived on whatever the forest provides.

In impassioned and colourful French, Messe compared the forest to a western supermarket. "Everything we need, we go into the forest -- for food or anything else," he said. "The principal source of protein for the Baka is bushmeat."

In rural areas of Central Africa, even outside specific ethnic groups such as the Baka, bushmeat provides up to 80% of protein in peoples' diets.

But gorilla-eating is causing a crapload of ecological damage.

It threatens wildlife in Africa, Asia and Latin America, including populations of some animals even closer to humans in the lineage than monkeys, such as gorillas and chimpanzees. Animals disperse seeds -- up to 75% of plant species, in some forests -- so the disappearance of animals would present a much larger problem.

In the Congo, south of the Uele river, in addition to overpopulation, "local taboos about eating bushmeat have begun to break down in recent years."

[Dr. Cleve] Hicks [of the University of Amsterdam], who is also affiliated with the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, said that one tribe, the Barisi, used not to harm the animals because they believed their tribe was descended from a union between a man and a female chimp. The women of two other tribes, the Azande and Babenza, previously refused to eat or cook ape meat for fear that it would result in them giving birth to babies with "big ears".

The spread of a Christian group called the "message believers" whose doctrine is based on the teaching of an American faith healer and preacher called William Branham who died in 1965 has swept away some of the old beliefs. Hicks said that followers interpret his teachings as condoning bushmeat hunting.

The burgeoning market for monkey flesh is leading authorities around the world to consider banning the sale of bushmeat -- but this approach would harm groups who rely on bushmeat as their primary source of protein (and income), and potentially "drive [the practice of killing gorillas for food] further into the hands of gangsters."

What to do?

An idea proposed by Edgar Kaeslin of the UN Food and Agriculture Organization is to give back to indigenous people something they had once upon a time: self-control over their forests. They could then self-regulate the practice of bushmeat hunting for themselves, separating it from outside market forces that have led to rampant, environmentally unsustainable and criminal monkey-killing. Such a plan might help reduce or even eliminate current incentives "to catch much more than nature's supermarket can sustainably provide."

Messe Venant painted a picture of simple Baka cultural norms that keep hunting under control. Hunters are allowed to bring only one animal back from a trip, he said. Without the capacity to preserve meat, whatever's caught must be eaten there and then -- there's no point in taking a massive haul in one go.

In other words, the solution to the bushmeat problem may be to allow local populations to go back to being hunter-gatherers.

Kangaroos Are For Eating

There are plenty of reasons to start chomping on kangaroos:

Kangaroos aren't factory farmed! In fact, kangaroos -- which are 100 percent wild game meat -- may be "the most ethically and environmentally sound source of meat on the planet":

The animals whose flesh ends up on supermarket shelves live wild before dying a humane death... What's more, one kangaroo consumes about a third as much plant material as a sheep, and just 13 per cent of the water. This is a significant benefit in [Australia,] a country that suffers periodic droughts, which climate change may worsen.

It cuts down on greenhouse gases! According to a report commissioned by Greenpeace, switching from beef to kangaroo meat would help cut 15 megatons of greenhouse gas emissions by the year 2020. Why? Because their farts are virtually methane-free. Way to go, kangaroo farts!

Eating kangaroos saves polar bears. Why? Because this video says so. And personally, I think polar bears are way awesomer than kangaroos.

There's too damn many of them! Australian authorities are "culling" kangaroos to curtail their destruction of the environment and harm to other species. Side note: "Culling" sounds an awful lot like "killing," which I guess is appropriate:

By law, adult kangaroos must be killed by a shot to the head from a high-powered rifle. A report published this year by the animal welfare group RSPCA Australia says this leads to instant insensibility quickly followed by death. Kangaroo harvesters are good shots: according to the report, around 95 per cent of carcasses were indeed shot in the head.

Things get more complicated if the roo is female. A doe usually has a young joey in her pouch, and by law it must be dispatched by a blow to the head. In practice, it is coshed with a metal pipe or swung against the side of a truck. "Blunt trauma is an aesthetically displeasing procedure, but when done correctly is an acceptable method of euthanasia," says the RSPCA report.

(On second thought, maybe it's better to focus less on the murder of kangaroo mommies, and more on the sweet, sweet taste of marsupial flesh.)

Kangaroo is tasty! Esquire Magazine says it tastes like "sweet filet mignon." There's nothing like a delicious steak to distract me from killing an animal by bashing its head against the side of a truck.

It's paleo-friendly! Just like grassfed meats, kangaroo is lean, healthy, low in polyunsaturated fat and loaded with long-chain omega-3 fatty acids and conjugated linoleic acid (CLA).

Even vegetarians are making exceptions for kangaroo meat! I shit you not: They're calling themselves "kangatarians." (I prefer "vegeroos.")

You can pretend you're eating something else! Just as you find the notion of eating "pork" and "beef" more palatable than chowing on "pigs" and "cows," you can just close your eyes and tell yourself you're dining on "australus" meat. Yum!

It's available in the U.S.! You can order kangaroo australus meat from a bunch of places online, like Exotic Meats USA, Fossil Farms, or -- if you're looking to buy in bulk -- Marx Foods. Some butcheries specializing in exotic meats (like San Francisco's Polarica) carry kangaroo. Or, if you're in New York and want someone else to do the cooking, try the kangaroo skewers at Eight Mile Creek.

The final reason: Kangaroos have faces and souls. I get that Tony Horton is a vegan and doesn't like ingesting things with faces. But I've gone over to the paleo side of the fence, and Robb Wolf's my guru now. And I believe him when he says I should eat animals -- even cute ones.