Audubon Society Promotes Livestock Industry Propaganda

[douglas9]

I recently received a video titled Audubon Conservation Ranching: Hooves on the Ground, Wings in the Air from the Audubon Society. The video promotes beef production to save grassland birds.

The video is a slick production of happy talk featuring some urban cowboys. And it plays on the old, tired Condos vs. Cows argument. The idea being if you don’t want to see land subdivided, you must support cattle ranchers.

The numerous ways that livestock production negatively impacts the environment, from water pollution to Greenhouse Gas Emissions to soil erosion and displacement of wildlife, are never mentioned in the video. Promoting ranching as a way to protect birds is like encouraging alcoholism as a solution for heroin addiction.

There is no doubt that grassland birds are declining for a host of reasons. But far more important is the conversion of grasslands into ag lands—a fact never mentioned in the film. In much of the Great Plains, grasslands are being transformed to wheat and corn crop production—both sustained by Ag subsidies. Urban growth is a significant factor in some parts of California, but so is the change from rangelands to ag crops.


https://www.counterpunch.org/2021/11/22/audubon-society-promotes-livestock-industry-propaganda/

[hunter]

1. The California dairy industry is a bigger problem

The are about 1.7 million dairy cows in California at any given time, and about 670,000 cattle on the range.

Most of these dairy cows are not living on grassy hillsides, they are confined and fed silage, most of it grown in ways that are not bird friendly.

When the milk production of a cow declines it is turned into inexpensive beef products, along with the young male dairy cattle.

Personally, I think factory farm meat and dairy production is a larger problem. I'd like to see the markets for cheap liquid milk evaporate. I'd like to see factory farm pork production shut down.

I don't believe cheap hamburger, bacon, and gallon jugs of milk are a basic human right.

With higher beef prices we could increase environmental regulations on range land, decrease the density of cattle, in effect allowing responsible ranchers to become caretakers of the land.

In my U.S.A. utopia there's no demand for factory farm meat and dairy products, or fuel ethanol. With much less demand for agricultural products sensitive farmland and range land could be restored to a natural state and rewilded.

I look forward to the day when the veggie burger is both the preferred and lower priced option at fast food places, and schools quit serving cartons of cow's milk for school meals.