Where’s the Beef? At the Juncture of Flora,Fauna,and Food

I committed my career, more than 30 years ago, to a preferential focus on the contributions of dietary intake to medical destiny, and the human condition. That commitment was well justified then, ¹ with diet already configured among the three leading causes of premature death in the United States, and other countries with comparable epidemiology. All the more so now that diet quality is the undisputed leading cause of lost years from life, and via the intermediary of chronic disease, lost life from years, in industrialized countries worldwide. ²

But that one lens-direct human health effects-offered a questionable view of diet even then, and offers a decisively obsolete view now. ³ In this age of melting glaciers and rising seas; deforestation, dwindling biodiversity, concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs) and climate change- and the profound interconnections among planetary health, public health, and biodiversity - the impacts of dietary patterns at the scale of 8 billion hungry Homo sapiens must include the reverberations to the flora and fauna and ecosystems of Earth. ⁴ An ethical lens, also warranted, extends the view to the domestic fauna from which we principally source meat, dairy and eggs.

In the focus of that trinocular view, beef looms unusually large.

Through the lens of human health effects alone, beef has been a contentious topic. The evidence is clear that the high levels of per capita beef and meat intake in Western countries, the U.S. prominent among them, contribute to chronic disease and premature death. ⁵ Debate has raged for decades about whether this is due to saturated fat, animal protein, or something else-such as the displacement of health-promoting plant foods. Recently, the salient elements of debate involve distinctions in animal husbandry across a spectrum from so-called “factory farming,” to “regenerative agriculture.” Also brandished is the distinction between populations with reliable access to more than ample protein, ⁶ and those without.

In general, the environmental and ethical indictments of beef production are less encumbered. ⁷ The ethical abuses that prevail at the mass production facilities of animal agriculture are widely evinced, and known to all not turning a willfully blind eye. The environmental costs of beef – in terms of greenhouse gas emissions, water utilization, and other pertinent metrics-are notoriously, and singularly, high. The global demand for beef is the leading driver of deforestation in the world’s pristine rainforest ⁸ -a tragic, calamitous, and irrevocable loss advancing relentlessly.

But even here, there are subtleties. While much of the world will need to reduce beef intake substantially to remain within planetary tolerances, the beef that is produced could be better directed to those populations most apt to benefit. Methods of agriculture, including the sourcing of feed for cattle, can alter the environmental footprint. Smaller farms can decentralize power over the food supply, eliminate the cruelties of factory farming, and potentially engage in genuinely regenerative agriculture, enriching the microbiome of the soil while obviating reliance on chemicals.

Such subtleties are explored in the two thoughtful commentaries that follow. Smith and Myers ⁹ incisively examine the role of beef in the sustenance of humans worldwide through the particular lens of planetary health. Murimi, ¹⁰ whose work is split between the United States and East Africa, does the same through the lens of public health.

Together these views bring beef into clear focus at the confluence of flora, fauna, and the feeding of H sapiens. Acknowledging the imperatives of our fraught time while giving nuance its due, they are consigned to the elusive ambition of shared understanding and common cause.