Meat: A Benign Extravagance
Simon Fairlie, a born again carnivore, recently published a book entitled Meat: A Benign Extravagance in which he proposes the idea that the consumption of meat and dairy is not necessarily as dangerous to the planet as we are being led to believe.
Breath.
This is not me saying we should all go back to eating meat and dairy. I’m merely suggesting, once again, that understanding more than one angle of the story is always a good idea. In this case, a lot of that story focuses on the report by the UN about livestock and their production of greenhouse gases. In his interview with Time magazine, Fairlie suggests that some of the data may be misleading. He also presents a few interesting points about the difference between mass production of meat and dairy and small-scale operations that are more considerate of the overall impact they have.
So, for the sake of discussion, I thought it might be interesting to highlight this. My academic years are interested because of the possible flaws in the research, and the devil’s advocate in me is interested just because.
=-)
