I wrote the following as part of an assignment for my Environmental Biology course this semester. This is a topic that I am quite passionate about and could write about for days, but I only needed one page, and here it is. Part of my personal brand is hating cows. The initial reason for this is multifaceted and honestly a little embarrassing, but it has since evolved into a deep distaste for the cattle industry. After learning about the scope of related destruction to rainforests in a class in 2018, I even stopped eating beef for a year. My husband’s dairy allergy has limited the amount of “baby cow growth fluid” I consume. Of course I had to watch Cowspiracy the second I discovered its existence. It was an interesting documentary. For the most part I already knew the base facts, but I did learn a few things. For one, no environmental officials seemed to have expansive knowledge or interest in the topic of agricultural destruction. Unlike the documentarian, however, I don’t think this is part of a mass conspiracy. There may be an element of fear in the lackluster reactions—agribusiness is powerful, and as I also learned from the documentary, can be murderous in South America—but I think it has more to do with the fact that animal agriculture is so important. America—civilization in general—depends upon agriculture. Humanity depends upon agriculture. Environmental organizations and government agencies can afford to go after big oil because it is not a fundamental component of the human existence. We’ve only dealt with fossil fuels for a couple centuries. Agriculture has been around for millennia. This extends past the fact that all humans have to eat, and towards the fact that attacking agriculture attacks the everyman. There are no small family oil rigs. There are, always have been, and always will be, small family farms. Fighting the negative environmental effects of animal agriculture is not just hard to market and fundraise with, as said in the documentary, but also political and social suicide.
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I'm Audrey, a college student and existential rambler.
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February 2021
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