Reposted from Sustainable Agricultural Systems Ltd. (SAS)
(Don’t mind giving them the link and credit This article is not an advertisement. ~ctm)
January 23, 2019
I have previously covered the anti-animal agriculture narrative here and the plant-based and/or alternative protein agenda here.
But as the plant-based diet agenda is currently enjoying an uninterrupted public relations campaign facilitated by the obliging media; and given last week’s launch of the EAT-Lancet Commission’s report on healthy diets for sustainable food systems, I feel compelled to delve a little deeper into the matter.
Although I loathe mixing business and politics, livestock agriculture is becoming increasingly politicised. Regrettably, this forces one’s hand.
Why something so innocuous as personal dietary choice needs to be voiced so loudly is a strange phenomenon. However, there are some interesting facets of information that can be gleaned by analysing the EAT-Lancet Commission’s posturing and the alternative protein movement.
The anti-animal agriculture narrative and plant-based diet agenda combines political ideology and commercial interests. This “movement” is insidious, unsavoury, and cannot be ignored by those who value liberty and consumer choice.
Although most people cannot deprive themselves of high-quality nutrition for long-periods of time, the fact that some people are going to such great lengths to avoid the consumption of meat and dairy products is rather telling.
The nutritional argument against consuming animal source foods is non-existent. It is quite simply illogical that red meat or dairy products cause modern diseases (I have previously covered this subject here).
Dietary recommendations have been moulded by religious and other personal beliefs (such as the temperance movement), animal rights activists, and food companies since their inception. None of this is anything new. What is new, is the concept of promoting a “planetary health diet.”
Nutrition science is ambiguous enough without adding extra layers of complexity. What’s good for the planet and what’s good for human health are understandable concerns to have. But conjoining the two is imprudent, especially when innumerable falsehoods are bandied about regarding both.
By far and away, the biggest contemporary driver of the anti-animal agriculture narrative is the supposed environmental impact of livestock – and that is a good place to start a critique of the plant-based diet agenda.
Climate Change Cover Story
“The great enemy of truth is very often not the lie – deliberate, contrived and dishonest – but the myth – persistent, persuasive, and unrealistic. Too often we hold fast to the clichés of our forebears. We subject all facts to a prefabricated set of interpretations. We enjoy the comfort of opinion without the discomfort of thought.” – John F. Kennedy
Central to the anti-animal agriculture narrative, is climate change. The accusation that cattle are a leading cause of anthropogenic climate change is perhaps the most absurd concept of the global warming theory.
Nevertheless, this is the charge being laid against livestock agriculture.
Analysing the anthropogenic climate change thesis is not the purpose of this post. But the promotion of this claim is pivotal to the anti-animal agriculture narrative.
It is important to remember, that there is no such thing as consensus in science. Science progresses by exploding dud theories of the past. Consequently, the debate around anthropogenic climate change will continue for some time yet.
That the climate is constantly changing does not appear to be in dispute. What causes the weather to do what, particularly in terms of historic records and future predictions, is the bone of contention.
In the video below, the oft berated Lord Christopher Monckton shares his thoughts on climate change and why it should be questioned.
Lord Monckton’s conclusions on what is really driving the fixation with anthropogenic climate change is important to note, if one wishes to fully understand the plant-based diet agenda.
In any event, even if the politically distorted and commercially valuable anthropogenic climate change claim is assumed to be true, and the correct course of action to “save” the world from impending doom is to reduce the minute concentration of a substance essential for all life on earth, targeting livestock agriculture is of little consequence.
According to the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), agriculture accounted for 9% of U.S. greenhouse gas emissions in 2016. Of this 9%, animal agriculture was responsible for 4%. Transportation and electricity generation were each responsible for 29% of emissions, industry 22%, and commercial/residential 12%.
However, the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations (UN) claim that livestock agriculture is responsible for a sizeable 14.5% of global emissions. This figure is such because less developed countries are generally home to inefficient, unproductive livestock.
For example, in 2014/15, the average daily milk yield of indigenous cows in India was 2.54 kg. Whereas the average daily milk yield of an American cow is approximately 31 kg.
Therefore, one American cow produces as much milk as twelve Indian cows. As a result, the less developed countries contribute a greater portion of their greenhouse gases to the world total in the form of livestock emissions.
In fact, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) estimates that 70 – 80% of global livestock related greenhouse gas emissions stem from developing countries. The implication of this, is that third world countries are to blame for “causing anthropogenic climate change” – which is obviously ridiculous.
As a final blow to this livestock emissions nonsense, consider the following:
In 1909 the number of motor vehicles registered in the U.S. totalled 312,000. By 2015, this had increased to 263,610,219. Over this time period, the number of motor vehicles per person increased by a whopping 27,233%.
However, between 1909 and 2015, the number of cattle (beef + dairy) per person in the U.S. decreased by 58%.
The premise that cattle are a leading cause of anthropogenic climate change never really made sense. This argument is merely co-opted to further the anti-animal agriculture narrative.
Resource Depletion
After cattle are accused of causing global warming, the allegation soon follows that they are responsible for resource depletion and world hunger as well.
The sustainable management of natural resources is indeed a subject worthy of attention. Nevertheless, this topic area can quickly give rise to all kinds of perturbed knee-jerk reactions.
Calls to limit population growth or redistribute surplus food are the most common, yet ultimately misguided “solutions” to the resource question. Indisputably, there is still considerable room for resource efficiency improvements in livestock agriculture, and this is of course our company’s raison d’être.
However, the anti-meat posing as green activists, propagate many dubious resource use factoids to discredit livestock agriculture.
A 2017 study published by Global Food Security examined the claims concerning the “burden” livestock agriculture places on the human food supply. The report suggests the feed/food challenge is a much smaller threat to food security than often reported.
Furthermore, the report explains that livestock contribute directly to global food security, because animals produce more highly valuable nutrients for humans, such as proteins, than they consume.
The reports lead investigator, Anne Mottet PhD said: “As a Livestock Policy Officer working for the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations, I have been asked many times by the press to report on the negative environmental impacts of livestock.”
“Doing so, I came to realize that people are continually exposed to incorrect information that is repeated without being challenged, in particular about livestock feed.”
The report determines that 86% of livestock feed is not suitable for human consumption. Dr Mottet said: “The media often reports how consumers’ choices can contribute to sustainable development, like through a vegetarian diet; however, erroneous information is provided regarding livestock feed requirements.”
The FAO estimates that 32% of the world’s cereal production is used for animal feed. It is worth noting, that one of the key pieces of technology to be employed by the SAS System is hydroponic feed production. This technology has the potential to reduce the quantity of grain consumed by cattle by as much as 40 – 50%.
Furthermore, it is often stated that there is so much food in the world, 2.1 billion people are overweight or obese, yet 815 million people go hungry. The naive utopian belief is that overweight people eat too much, and this food could otherwise feed those who are hungry.
This oversimplified statement is correct in that there is no global shortage of calories. There is, however, a shortage of nutrition.
As I covered in this piece here, carbohydrate foods keep people fed, but not nourished. In order to alleviate malnutrition, populations throughout the world need access to nutrient dense animal source foods.
People who wish to insinuate that animal source foods have a high carbon or resource footprint (compared to plant source foods), can only do so when privileging calories as the numeraire.
Vegetables and grains are nutrient poor, whereas animal source foods are nutrient rich. Comparing bioavailable minerals, essential fatty acids, and digestible protein would be a much more appropriate measure, but this would tip the scales in favour of animal source foods.
Less developed and developing countries struggle to produce adequate quantities of nutrition for various reasons. Chief among them is political corruption; civil unrest or war; inadequate property rights; resource mismanagement; poor infrastructure; inability to access finance; inefficient farming practices; and a shortage of farm management expertise.
There are very few technical reasons preventing people from enjoying healthy diets rich in nutrient dense animal source foods.
For example, last year a British agronomist in Kenya grew a trial plot of barley that yielded 11.84 tonnes/hectare. The UK average spring barley yield is approximately 7.5 tonnes/hectare. The agronomist said: “The only food crisis Kenya should have is where to export all the food it produces. Shows what is actually possible right now with the application of proper science and agronomy.”
Any suggestion that the consumption of animal source foods in developed countries has anything to do with world hunger or resource depletion, is complete and utter drivel. Dangerous political ideologies, brutal tyrants, and warlords are responsible for famine and resource mismanagement – not “livestock agriculture.”
Food Utopia or Food Dystopia?
“Much of the social history of the Western world, over the past three decades, has been a history of replacing what worked with what sounded good.” – Thomas Sowell
Given that the anthropogenic climate change and resource footprint accusations against livestock agriculture do not hold water, what’s really behind the plant-based diet agenda?
Well, the empirical evidence suggests it is the advancement of plant-based diets for all.
Indeed, the plant-based and alternative protein movement is about more than industry disruption. It’s an ideology, one hell-bent on replacing traditional food with a utopian “food” solution – it’s political as much as it is commercial.
The CEO of Impossible Foods, Patrick Brown, has announced that: “The whole mission of the company is to completely replace the use of animals as a food technology globally, by 2035. And that is unequivocally the most important mission in the world, full stop.”
The level of hubris emanating from alternative protein companies is remarkable. Removing the pinnacle of human grade nutrition from the food supply could only be considered the most important mission in the world in the minds of ideological elites.
But can the founders and CEOs of the alternative protein companies really be so ignorant as to believe their own hype? Or is the disinformation campaign being waged against livestock agriculture merely the pretext for the insertion of imitation animal food products into the food supply?
The UN also believes “tackling meat is the world’s most urgent problem.” Unsurprisingly then, the UN named Impossible Foods and Beyond Meat as the 2018 joint winners of the Champions of the Earth Award, in the Science and Innovation category.
It is interesting to note, that in the two great dystopian novels of the 20th century, Brave New World and Nineteen Eighty-Four, synthetic food is integral to the themes explored.
In Nineteen Eighty-Four, George Orwell recounts Winston Smith’s interactions with food on several occasions.
When Winston is queuing in the canteen, food trays are pushed beneath the grille: “onto each was dumped swiftly the regulation lunch – a metal pannikin of pinkish-grey stew, a hunk of bread, a cube of cheese, a mug of milkless Victory Coffee, and one saccharine tablet.”
Orwell then describes Winston eating the lunch: “He began swallowing spoonfuls of the stew, which, in among its general sloppiness, had cubes of spongy pinkish stuff which was probably a preparation of meat.”
Did the EAT-Lancet Commission take its cue from Nineteen Eighty-Four?
Similarly, in Brave New World, Aldous Huxley references “vitaminized beef-surrogate.” In these novels, food is linked to survival and it comes from the state, hence the state equals survival.
Alarmingly, the relationship between a nation’s protein food supply and political ideology is nothing new.
In 1929, Benito Mussolini ordered the formation of the Committee for the Study of Soya, and boldly announced a plan to require soy flour as a mandatory ingredient in the Italian staple polenta.
In the 1950s and 1960s, the Communist Party in the Soviet Union pushed soy protein and soy margarines as the solution to low-cost feeding of the masses.
Indeed, Stalin’s efforts to collectivize agriculture involved the liquidation of the kulaks as a class (landowning peasantry). These farmers were opposed to giving up their cattle and land to collectivization, and as such, represented a counterweight to Soviet power.
Furthermore, the Native American Indian were starved into submission when the settlers exterminated the main food source upon which they had relied for generations – the bison.
The best hope to control the Native Americans was to: “make them poor by the destruction of their stock, and then settle them on the lands allotted to them” – according to Major-General Phillip Sheridan, the man tasked with this objective.
Controlling the means of production and interfering with a country’s food supply appears to be a constant theme of totalitarianism. Undoubtedly (from an historical point of view at least), the consumption of nutrient dense animal source foods is associated with wealth, health, physical strength and intelligence. In combination, these attributes empower the individual and enable independence from the state.
It is not hard to deduce, that the end goal of this contemporary plant-based diet agenda, is not about treating animals with humanity, but treating humans like animals.
The Elite Diet Diktat
“I think that insofar as dictators become more and more scientific, more and more concerned with the technically perfect, perfectly running society, they will be more and more interested in the kind of techniques which I imagined and described from existing realities in Brave New World.” – Aldous Huxley, 1962
The plant-based diet rhetoric is sounding increasingly dictatorial. It is morphing from a teenage rebellion or bohemian novelty into an officially endorsed diet option.
Undoubtedly, some of the plant-based diet promoters will be simply well-intentioned but misguided people (and perhaps suffering from early onset SDS – Steak Deficiency Syndrome). Nevertheless, ignorance is no excuse when such damaging agendas are being peddled. As Thomas Sowell said: “Activism is a way for useless people to feel important, even if the consequences of their activism are counterproductive for those they claim to be helping and damaging to the fabric of society as a whole.”
It is all too easy to deride the conflicted puppets of the anti-meat posing as green crowd – such as Gunhild Stordalen, the founder of the EAT organization. Similarly, it is easy to single out the “Intellectual Yet Idiot” report contributors – such as Walter Willet (nutrition researcher) or Dr Marco Springmann (meat tax study). But of far greater importance, is establishing who the puppet-masters are.
It is important to acknowledge, that the anti-animal agriculture narrative; the plant-based diet agenda; calls for the introduction of a meat tax; and the anthropogenic climate change claim, are cut from the same cloth.
“Climate change is a convenient horse for elites to ride in the implementation of a new world order. Debating the science of climate change is beside the point. There are heated views on both sides; some science is settled, some not. Global elites treat the debate as settled to mask a larger project. For elites, a global problem once defined conjures a global solution. Climate change is the perfect platform for implementing a hidden agenda of world money and world taxation.” – James Rickards, The Road to Ruin
The plant-based diet rhetoric could be more correctly described as a propaganda bombardment. One where the end goal is to coerce the masses into accepting the elite diet diktat.
However, to really decipher the plant-based diet agenda and the bizarre EAT-Lancet report, an understanding of the Hegelian dialectic is a prerequisite.
In a July 2018 insight, Alasdair Macleod (Head of Research for Goldmoney), wrote the following in an article entitled “State or Individual?” As a preface, Macleod outlines that modern statism has its origins in Marxism.
“Marx was a student of Hegel and based his philosophical analysis on Hegelian dialectic. Hegel concluded we all take our cue from our social and cultural surroundings and circumstances, and that they in turn are set by historical events. This became the basis for Marx’s extreme philosophy of class structure, which, in common with that of Hegel, denied any role to the independence of human thought.”
“Marx’s philosophical stance was comprehensively set out in his book, A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, published in 1859. The fundamental principle behind Marxism is stated early in the preface, where he defines his deduction from the Hegelian dialectic: ‘It is not the consciousness of men that determines their existence, but their social existence that determines their consciousness.’ In other words, social organisation takes precedence over the individual, and it therefore follows that the individual is subordinate to the social organisation.”
The following statement found on page 34 of the EAT-Lancet report confirms the analysis of Macleod’s writing: “However, the scale of change to the food system is unlikely to be successful if left to the individual or the whim of consumer choice.”
By understanding Marx’s philosophical stance and applying the Hegelian dialectic, it becomes rather obvious that the plant-based diet agenda promoted by the EAT-Lancet Commission contains at least a strand of political ideology.
Macleod summarised the Hegelian dialectic as follows: “Hegel, as did Marx, reasoned from a thesis, then a negation of the thesis, and then a negation of the negation. This was meant to be irrefutable proof of a surviving conclusion. But if the historical and ordinary facts and any assumptions are wrong at the outset, the whole thesis obviously fails.”
I find explaining the Hegelian dialectic in plain English to be somewhat difficult. But as a layman, I will attempt to use the dialectic in the context of the plant-based diet agenda.
Essentially, two extremes are required – one being the thesis (“livestock agriculture destroys the world”), and the other the anti-thesis (“the consumption of animal source foods must be phased out”).
However, the two are capable of reconciliation by combining them into a wider idea – a synthesis of opposites (“insert imitation animal food products made from plants into the food supply”).
Therefore, it can be deduced, that the advancement of the plant-based diet agenda will not take the form of a coup d’état. Instead, its implementation will advance subtly through various institutional and corporate channels, most likely via the alternative protein industry.
Food Financialisation
The lure of “disrupting” what remains of the unadulterated food supply (meat, dairy, fish, eggs) is an appealing proposition for start-up alternative protein companies and incumbent food industry giants.
The profitability of taking what should only be considered livestock feedstuffs, and processing this into human-consumable products, is an extremely lucrative business.
At the time of writing, a 415-gram box of “Nestle Shreddies Cereal” (96% whole grain wheat) can be purchased at the UK supermarket Sainsbury’s for £2.15 or £0.52/100g (a retail price per tonne of £5,200).
Currently, the spot UK milling wheat price is approximately £180/tonne.
A back of the envelope calculation indicates a mark-up of 2,788%. Although I am not familiar with the detailed economics of breakfast cereal processing, one can assume the margins will be at least several hundred percent – after packaging, transportation, and the processor’s margin is accounted for.
Whereas beef processing margins (after all costs), as an industry norm, are “in very low single digit percentages” – according to Tom Kirwan (CEO of ABP, a leading UK and Irish beef processor).
Given these indisputable facts, it is easy to see why Cargill and Tyson Foods (established animal protein processors) are keen to invest in alternative protein companies.
To them, a saleable product is a saleable product. If impressionable people are willing to buy their offerings, then a market will develop.
In late 2018, Nestle announced its plans to tap into the plant-based trend, having identified this as one of several fast growing “food tribes” (their wording). According to media reports, Nestle’s scientists are “experimenting with a liquid derived from walnuts and blueberries, with a purple hue. There’s also a blue latte featuring spirulina algae.”
Evidently, there is substantial corporate interest in the alternative protein concept.
Impossible Foods, the company receiving much of the alternative protein limelight, has attracted nearly $400 million in total funding. The company counts Google Ventures and Bill Gates among its investors.
Gates is not the only high-profile billionaire backing the alternative protein mania. Richard Branson is another notable example, he is an investor in Memphis Meats – a synthetic protein start-up.
Despite operating an airline (apparently among the worst airlines for pollution); and developing a space tourism venture, Branson wrote the following concerning his investment in Memphis Meats: “This could have a huge impact. Livestock is estimated to produce 18 per cent of all ‘man-made’ greenhouse gas emissions. This makes it a bigger contributor to global warming and environmental degradation than all forms of transportation.”
Sir Richard Branson’s actions perfectly demonstrate that the anthropogenic climate change story is worthy of the appellation “Saving the Planet Inc.”
Last year, New Crop Capital (private venture firm) launched a $100 million “New Protein Fund” to focus on investments in alternative protein companies.
The fund’s co-founder and chief investment officer (CIO), Chris Kerr, certainly believes there are fortunes to be made. “We will be rich, not matter what” he said in a pitch to a food manufacturing business, according Bloomberg Businessweek.
Reportedly, Kerr created New Crop Capital with funding from “wealthy backers who wish to remain anonymous.” The December 2018 article said that the fund has stakes in 33 vegan food companies.
Bloomberg summarised the discussion with the fund’s CIO, by stating: “To go truly global, in other words, vegan foods must be financialized and industrialized.”
Indeed, in this age of financialisation, it isn’t entirely surprising that the concept of an alternative protein industry has eventuated – anything seems possible.
Patrick Brown has said: “I love VCs and particularly the ones invested in us…. but it’s truly astonishing how little diligence they do in terms of the actual science that underlies some tech companies.”
“Sometimes……some of the VC firms we work with will ask me to take a look at a company. But it doesn’t really matter what I say because sometimes I’ll say, ‘If I were you I’d just flush my money down the toilet because it is faster and easier.’ But it doesn’t matter. They’ll do the deal.”
Patrick Brown’s observation confirms a recent comment made by financial journalist Edward Chancellor: “The market value of Elon Musk’s firm overtook BMW’s even though the profitable Bavarian luxury carmaker produced 30 times as many cars last year as the loss-making Tesla……With so much dumb money about, one of Silicon Valley’s new mantras is ‘spray and pray’.”
Many companies today exist only because of financialisation. As Roy Sebag, Founder of Goldmoney recently said: “We live in an age where liquidity masquerades as solvency.”
However, the situation the global economy and financial system finds itself in today is unprecedented. Many alternative protein companies who think they have a future could end up as ephemeral as dot-com companies – the similarities are striking.
Food Supply Control
It is important to distinguish between plant-based and synthetic protein (lab-meat) alternative protein companies. Synthetic protein companies have not yet commercialised the manufacture of “lab-meat.”
But if (and it is a big if), the process of manufacturing synthetic protein proves to be technologically and economically feasible, this would potentially put the means of “meat” production under the control of a small group of intellectual property-owning companies.
However, a more credible outcome, is that the promise of synthetic protein is simply used to cajole unwitting omnivores towards a utopian “meat” future. When they get there, they will instead find a plant-based food solution.
Covertly, I suspect the alternative protein promoters know that the commercial production synthetic protein is impractical.
By following the money, it is plain to see that the alternative protein movement is primarily focussed on plant-based companies. Imitation plant-based products (such as the Impossible Burger) can be manufactured now, using readily available agro-commodities such as soya, wheat, peas, oilseeds etc.
Therefore, the only real barrier preventing alternative protein products from entering the mainstream food supply, is consumer preference.
Alternative protein company executives know that most food consumers will only buy their imitation products if they can be made cheaper and more appealing than the real McCoy.
Josh Tetrick, founder and CEO of JUST, Inc. (an alternative protein company with a 2017 valuation of $1.1 billion) has said: “If my Dad can go to Walmart and buy cheap cod for $2.99 or [cell-based] Bluefin tuna for $2.49, then he might pick the tuna. If you can figure out how to get the cost down and the quality is better, it doesn’t matter if they [consumers] care about animal welfare, if they understand anything about the GFI, or if they believe in the science of climate change, or if they are a Trump voter….that’s when the switch [from conventionally produced meat to cell-based meat] will occur.”
Price is one of two elements central to the success of any food product.
The second element, taste, is outlined by Patrick Brown (he really is the gift that keeps on giving) in a response he gave during a 2009 interview (see interview here).
As a preface, Brown was explaining that the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) of the UN published a study looking at the environmental impact of animal farming, “and the bottom line is that it is the most destructive and fastest growing environmental problem.” Here’s what he said about his plan to “eliminate animal farming on planet Earth”:
“The gist of my strategy is to rigorously calculate the costs of repairing and mitigating all the environmental damage and make the case that if we don’t pay as we go for this, we are just dumping this huge burden on our children. Paying these costs will drive up the price of a Big Mac and consumption will go down a lot. The other thing is to come up with yummy, nutritious, affordable mass-marketable alternatives, so that people who are totally addicted to animal foods will find alternatives that are inherently attractive to eat, so much so that McDonald’s will market them, too. I want to recruit the world’s most creative chefs – here’s a REAL creative challenge!”
Firstly, this statement is a clear indictment of the alternative protein agenda, including the meat tax conspiracy.
Anyway, as the ultra-processed food industry has demonstrated, the blandest ingredients can be made palatable through chemical trickery. Supposedly, Impossible Foods has mastered this technique also. If a concoction of grain and oilseeds can deliver a meat-eating sensory experience, perhaps unsuspecting omnivores will buy alternative protein products?
Alas, it is the average Joe who will determine their level of entrapment to the elite diet diktat. Aldous Huxley very nearly surmised this exact predicament several decades ago:
“There will be, in the next generation or so, a pharmacological method of making people love their servitude, and producing dictatorship without tears, so to speak, producing a kind of painless concentration camp for entire societies, so that people will in fact have their liberties taken away from them, but will rather enjoy it, because they will be distracted from any desire to rebel by propaganda or brainwashing, or brainwashing enhanced by pharmacological methods. And this seems to be the final revolution.” – Aldous Huxley, 1962.
Corporate & Academic Collusion
In the 2009 interview, Patrick Brown also alluded to “driving up the price of a Big Mac.” I wonder how he intends to do that?
“A new study (useful things these studies eh?) from researchers at the Oxford Martin School has found that a health tax on red and processed meat could prevent more than 220,000 deaths and save over US$40 billion in healthcare costs every year.”
The report was led by none other than Dr Marco Springmann – a vegan activist.
And which journal published the report?
Well, that would be the Public Library of Science (PLoS) – “a nonprofit Open Access publisher, innovator and advocacy organization with a mission to advance progress in science and medicine by leading a transformation in research communication.”
And who co-founded this journal?
None other than CEO and founder of Impossible Foods – Patrick Brown.
In that expository 2009 interview, Brown said: “I want to LITERALLY overthrow the scientific publishing establishment……that is what I want to do. PLoS is just part of a longer range plan. The idea is to completely change the way the whole system works for scientific communication.”
Evidently, “part of a longer range plan” means publishing studies conducive to his commercial interests.
And lastly, does the Oxford Martin School really think that taxing meat could “prevent” more than 220,000 deaths every year?
To quote the inimitable Dr Malcolm Kendrick: “The chances of getting out of life alive are zero. Indeed, to the best of my knowledge, no-one has managed it yet.”
(Note: Dr Malcolm Kendrick’s exceptional 2014 book, Doctoring Data, is a must read if you have even the slightest interest in your own health).
Governments & Meat Tax
Indisputably, there is a vociferous mob who would willingly support a plant-based diet for all. Indeed, after announcing the meat tax study, Dr Marco Springmann made sure he used the one-sided mainstream media soapbox to full effect: “For the average consumer……the takeaway message is, change your diet and write to your politicians to implement better regulations.”
However, politicians in office are not yet displaying much fervour for taxing meat. They must surely know that pushing up food prices is a sure way of instigating a revolution? (case in point, the Arab Spring).
A British Minister of State (Claire Perry) has said: “I don’t think we should be in the business of prescribing to people how they should run their diets……Who would I be to sit there advising people in the country coming home after a hard day of work to not have steak and chips?”
The idea of taxing red meat doesn’t seem to be getting much traction in Australia either.
The Australian Minister for Agriculture (David Littleproud) said: “The idea of taxing red meat by Oxford University shows just how irrelevant these institutions are becoming……You have to question who commissioned this report.”
“I don’t tell people what they should eat. People can make up their own minds and government should stay out of their lives.”
Of course, plant-based protein companies are bound to lobby for a meat tax, and by colluding with biased academic researchers, they will strive to compile a body of “evidence.” (There isn’t a shred of discernible evidence to validate the red meat pseudo-science or the climate change claims).
Although I suspect calls for banning this and taxing that will increase as the Western world undergoes continued social, moral, and economic turmoil; it would take a brave, desperate or despotic politician to tax something as primal as meat.
It is imperative that the protein food market remains free. Free from overzealous regulations, penal taxes, and corporate dictation.
If this holds true, and people are free to eat a diet of their choosing, then alternative protein companies will have to compete against real animal source foods. This is the free market, that is how business is supposed to work.
But if food companies use corporate cronyism to influence policy makers, then the free market element will be lost, along with consumer choice.
Open Farm Pinprick
“Kill weeds when they are small – this rule applies to any problem you encounter in life.” – Matthew Naylor, Farmers Weekly columnist
Currently, the anti-animal agriculture narrative is doing damage to the livestock sector. Even if it does not result in people deliberately removing animal source foods from their diets, this propaganda bombardment plants the seed of doubt in the minds of the majority who do eat meat and dairy products.
To date, the livestock industry has been slow to dissect the anti-animal agriculture narrative and formulate a solid rebuttal. The response has been to ignore this dietary fad; pass the buck onto certain production systems; or advocate a “balanced diet.”
All these reactions miss the bigger picture. Understanding who is promoting this movement; who is profiting from the attempt to shift dietary patterns; and why this disturbing agenda is being pursued, ought to be the livestock industry’s focus.
History shows that complacency in such matters is unwise. The infamous Ancel Keys almost single-handedly instigated one of the greatest health deceptions of the 20th century.
But the contemporary assault on livestock agriculture and animal source foods could have far greater consequences.
The consumption of nutrient dense food is a fundamental pillar of a thriving civilization. No sensible person would wish to see real nutrition removed from the food supply. However, as this critique has sought to highlight, the anti-animal agriculture narrative and plant-based diet agenda harbours wider political and commercial schemes.
Nevertheless, dispelling the anti-animal agriculture narrative and exposing the fraudulent plant-based diet agenda is not an insurmountable challenge. All the actual scientific evidence, history, and logic is firmly on the side of livestock agriculture – as well as the vast majority of food consumers.
However, thinking the complicit media and ivory tower academics will embrace impartiality on this issue is ingenuous. The anthropogenic climate change claim and “red meat causes [insert non-communicable disease of your choice]” is entrenched dogma in the eyes of the media and many academic institutions.
Alas, many schools are also adept at spreading propaganda. I vividly remember being taken from the classroom to watch Al Gore’s 2006 “documentary” – An Inconvenient Truth (I don’t recall being taken to watch any other “educational” films).
Instead, the process of rebutting the anti-animal agriculture narrative and exposing the plant-based diet agenda must go direct to the people – as Dr Frank Mitloehner (University of California, Davis) summarises in the short clip below.
The whole point of our company’s proposed Open Farm agri-tourism venture is to provide a transparent platform for people to experience modern and sustainable livestock agriculture. I have briefly outlined this concept here.
Engaging with the very people agriculturalists seek to nourish is going to be a crucial aspect of 21st century food production – the state of public health and individual liberty just might depend on it.
Declaration of Interest!
Any damning assessment of the alternative protein movement, especially by a livestock agriculturalist, could easily be construed as typical luddite behaviour.
Therefore, when analysing this subject, I am mindful of the following quotation in more ways than one.
“The mind likes a strange idea as little as the body likes a strange protein and resists it with similar energy. It would not perhaps be too fanciful to say that a new idea is the most quickly acting antigen known to science. If we watch ourselves honestly we shall often find that we have begun to argue against a new idea even before it has been completely stated.” – Wilfred Trotter, surgeon and sociologist
Notwithstanding Trotter’s valid observation, suggesting that this critique is lamenting the demise of an “antiquated and inefficient” industry would be misguided. Our start-up agribusiness is intently focussed on innovation in dairy and beef production. Indeed, developing a super-efficient agricultural production system fit for the 21st century is our ultimate endeavour.
Without question, livestock agriculture is going to have to increase its innovation commitments in order to continue dominating its very own market segment.
But there is disruption, and then there is foolishness. Thinking that people can thrive on a diet devoid of animal source foods, or one laden with imitation “meat” products, is madness.
Edward Talbot
About
Sustainable Agricultural Systems Ltd. (SAS) We are a New Zealand farming family who in 2010 moved to the UK to investigate new agricultural opportunities. Since then, we have researched and designed the SAS System.
this is all coming to the fore because large numbers of people are learning how much they have been lied to about diet as they effectively lose wight on diets like atkins. to have everyone eat that healthily would raise the costs of protein and animal fats astronomically. This will not be allowed, especially when TPTB want to push people off of the land and into cities. so you’ll eat your evolutionarily discordant plant based diet and like it. You diabetic feet and MIs are a small price to pay.
stopping CAFO would be good for the animals and land/water let animals graze free;ly
locally we have 1/4acre per sow sheltered pig runs theyre happy the meats excellent and locals are employed keeping the communitiy going
most farmers here are mixed use so sheep cattle n cropping, which is the best solution to land use fertiliser naturally for a fair part at leas, weeds controlled using less chem than no stock land farms.
excellent article by the young fella;-)
and the supporters of this idiot idea are as stated a lot of big grain and chem agri as well as pharma and other for profit and control types
see this link, similar but more corporate named
https://www.sott.net/article/406178-Nina-Teicholz-EAT-Lancet-report-is-one-sided-not-backed-by-rigorous-science
Ersatz (substitute) is a word of German origin. It took full significance in the postulate that elite race is entitled to high quality nutrients while the polluting majority of plebes should feed on ersatz.
De facto many nazi leaders were vegetarian by fears of contamination until the era of bio-dynamic culture and proper race separation could guarantee their standards of purity.
During the war saccharin was an ersatz for sugar, as were “Schokoladenersats” and other roasted grains based coffee substitutes. The real products being obviously requisitioned for the high-energy food of the army.
Reasons why the word ersatz is related to poor quality or even harmful food.
Those who control food and energy have a solid grip on the population.
How much of a coincidence is that campaigners for energy and food poverty are equally supportive of gun control and strong governance practices ?
I am always told that “you are what you eat”.
Thus I am a vegetarian. I eat lots of cows, pigs, chicken, and fish. They eat lots of plants. Thus they are vegetables.
Therefore, I am a vegetarian. My vegetables are just first processed into beef, pork, and chicken.
The plants digest manure .. don’t think too hard about that 🙂
This was an informative write-up. Thank you, Mr. Talbot. As a person with a background steeped in Midwestern agriculture, reading this has had a deep impact on me.
When farmers from other nations speak up with truth and clairvoyance, we should all listen.
How about astrology? At least astrology, like climate change, is in so many newspapers. Clairvoyance is not so much.
No, not astrology.
Astrology told me there’d be no snow this Winter and 30 C plus temperatures.
TheReganGroup.webnode.com. I am the longest living non surgucal no stint conservative survivor of massive heart disease. Given a moment to live. I’m still here. Regrowing my heart. Active. Most physicians look at me and say robust healthy fellow! Boy how the government, food industry, Trump, insurance etc hate me! Celebs are selling a wrong mix to get wealthier off people in need
Plant based is not vegan vegetarian etc. It is a strict plant based veg, fruit, grain, legume lifestyle. Sold suppliments have negative ingredients. No oils nuts dairy meat fish poultry sugars fake food. No Western food. Only food that is proven nit to cause cancer diabetes heart disease.
While I was clearing out junk in my desk, I came across a magazine from about 20 years ago with an article about the discovery of a 400,000 year-old site in Germany that contained javelins (double-ended wooden spears) for both adults and children, and the remains of prey animals. Those people led a life that was harsh by its nature, requiring enormous amounts of animal protein to simply exist and be healthy.
The vegan stuff is simply another fake religious movement. You can shift over to that if you like, but a mono-culture source of food is unhealthy. Modern humans are omnivorous just like our distant ancestors, whether the veggie-slaughtering crowd likes it or not. If that is not so, then they will have to explain why, as has been frequently observed, other primates like chimpanzees hunt and eat meat.
I mostly stick to chicken because it’s cheaper and less fatty than beef. Does not mean I have given up beef, or that I never use ham or bacon or salt pork or turkey. It is failure to acknowledge that, as primates, humans are omnivorous and require a (bad words here) variety of food sources to stay healthy.
It’s an interesting article but I’m always skeptical about any claims of puppetmasters. Reality is that many different groups and individuals are pursuing their own interests independently. Sure, the socialists are riding CAGW and creating myths about meat-eating premised on their myths about climate. But the rent-seekers are primarily just opportunistic parasites trying to get rich off of other people’s foolish beliefs. The climate scientists and no doubt the nutrition scientists/technologists are mostly reacting to incentives out of self-interest as well.
There’s no need to assume a global conspiracy to explain what is going on.
The anti-meat movement is predicated on the assumption that raising animals for human consumption is a significant determent to the biosphere on net balance. This ignores the positive contribution that animals make to the total biological cycle. It also ignores the carrying capacity of the pre-human land mass.
Great herds of bison used to roam freely throughout what are now the Plains States. Consider this:
“200,000 square miles. The plains and prairies could, on the basis of area, support 15 such herds, or 60 million bison.” [1]
Also consider: “…Typical weight ranges in the species were reported as 460 to 988 kg (1,014 to 2,178 lb) in males and 360 to 544 kg (794 to 1,199 lb) in females,…” [2]
Even at the lower weight of 1,000 pounds, before this area of the US was settled by Europeans and later subdivided to preclude what bison were left from having free range when barbed wire fencing was invented,
60 million animals x 1,000 pounds each = about 6 x 10^10 pounds of bison flesh. That was the “sustainable” carrying capacity of this part of North America apart from the other species of large mammals such as deer that lived there.
Consider this: “…Current inventory statistics from the USDA (as of January 1, 2018) show us that there are currently 94.4 million cattle …” [3]
At an average of 1200 pounds per cow, and with 94.4 million cows = about 1.1×10^11 pounds of cattle flesh. or roughly twice the amount of animal flesh as before the area was settled and repurposed for human benefit. This is well within the margin of improvement in agricultural yield over unmanaged lands that were subjected to large scale fire damage and disease.
It turns out that the current environmental burden of raising cattle for human consumption not substantially greater than the burden of the pre-human indigenous bison herds. In other words, the assertion that we must stop eating meat to save the climate and thus save the planet is totally unfounded.
[1] https://journals.uair.arizona.edu/index.php/rangelands/article/viewFile/11258/10531
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_bison
[3] https://www.quora.com/How-many-cows-are-there-in-the-US
Are you familiar with The China Study by T. Colin Campbell? You might benefit from reading it. There are important reasons apart from global warming to reconsider our meat consumption. You are not being careful in your review of the science when you insist meat and dairy are not harmful to our bodies. Farming practices have changed and the meat you eat today is not the meat our ancestors ate.
I did see The China Study a few years ago. The major problem is self’reporting of diet, and relying on statistics from the PRC. I do not know which is more unreliable.
See here for a critical analysis of The China Study: https://deniseminger.com/2010/08/06/final-china-study-response-html/ and here for a less-detailed post on meat and mortality using the China Study data along with others: http://quantitativemedicine.net/2015/11/09/red-meat-is-healthy-says-the-china-study-data/
The critique is worth reading alongside the book. While it is true that meat is different due to farming practices, the same is true about everything else we eat. Modern wheat is problematic for many people and has a higher correlation to mortality than meat (in the China Study data but not reported in the book). Fruits and vegetables bear little resemblance to what they used to be: https://www.sciencealert.com/fruits-vegetables-before-domestication-photos-genetically-modified-food-natural
I read extensively about nutrition and health. What I have come to realize is that the best diet for one person might not be healthy for someone else. Those who do best on vegetarian diets (and some do!) are those who are genetically suited to convert nutrients to bioavailable forms (such as betacarotene to vitamin A, essentail fatty acid conversions and methylation) and who have the right microbiomes. Some do very poorly on vegetarian diets after a while, even if they eat one that would be considered healthy.
There are problems with high meat consumption and how meat is consumed. It is best to eat it with greens and it may depend on the microbiome: http://paleointheuk.com/blog/does-red-meat-cause-cancer/ It is complicated.
“nutritional argument against consuming animal source foods is non-existent. It is quite simply illogical that red meat or dairy products cause modern diseases”
Yes but the argument against red meat, especially for people who have a family history of colon cancer, is very valid. See https://www.health.harvard.edu/newsletter_article/red-meat-and-colon-cancer
I lost half of my colon to cancer in 1987. I still eat meat but mostly poultry and fish since then.
Some of the new protein foods will be derived from sources that haven’t normally been part of the human diet. There may be unintended consequences. This is a post on mycoproteins (derived from fungus), which points out that it is a potential allergen. https://draxe.com/mycoprotein/ (the problem is likely the polysaccharide structures in the membranes)
Nutritional research has the same problems of bias and poor study design that exists in other fields of study (https://reason.com/blog/2018/09/06/most-nutrition-research-is-bunk ). It is hard to untangle the complexity of diet and health.
Very likely some people will develop allergies to artificial meat, at the very least.
‘livestock agriculture is becoming increasingly politicised’
The Left intends to politicize EVERYTHING.
In a country where the vegetation is poor then goats are the best way of converting it into food for humans. You can’t plant your posh crops on the edge of a desert without chemical fertilizers and water transport. The goat thrives and so do the people. You cannot grow your posh crops on a Welsh hillside but sheep thrive and convert the poor land into food for humans.
Horses for courses was I think, the old saying.
Yummm. Blue pond scum coffee.
Take a gander at one of the patents from Impossible Foods. (Their CEO has idiotic ideas.)
https://patentimages.storage.googleapis.com/4e/08/c1/1807e29ce7b8a3/US9700067.pdf
IMO … it depends on your individual metabolic profile. Contrary to the “we r all the same” crowd, separate populations of humans evolved for thousands of years in micro environments. The ability to consume milk products is primarily isolated to populations from northern Eurasia. 75% of the human population is lactose intolerant. OTOH, 65% of the human population is suffering from diabetes and metabolic syndrome, illustrating that the flawed advice of low fat high carb diets was poor advice. In fact a ketogenic diet beats a low fat every time when compared for weight loss and improved health metrics.
I personally am a meat eater. On a ketogenic diet of mostly meat, my blood pressure normalizes, HDL goes up, cholesterol particle size increases, triglycerides practically go away, … and I gravitate towards my ideal weight.
I don’t care about the moralistic arguments, I don’t need any liberal telling me what to eat.
I’ve been carnivore-Keto since the week after Thanksgiving and I’m lovin’ it! My belly fat has been burned in place of hundreds of dollars’ worth of indigestible cellulose matter, and I barely even think about food. Hard to argue with Evolutionary Biology 101 . . . and the weather here pretty well resembles the Ice Age. 😉
Correct! Which is why the diet works, you are getting back to how we use to eat prior to the Food Pyramid of 1992 pushing grains over meat, before the obesity epidemic.
As I covered in this piece here, carbohydrate foods keep people fed, but not nourished. In order to alleviate malnutrition, populations throughout the world need access to nutrient dense animal source foods.
People who wish to insinuate that animal source foods have a high carbon or resource footprint (compared to plant source foods), can only do so when privileging calories as the numeraire.
Vegetables and grains are nutrient poor, whereas animal source foods are nutrient rich. Comparing bio available minerals, essential fatty acids, and digestible protein would be a much more appropriate measure, but this would tip the scales in favour of animal source foods.
Best wishes to all ketogenic diet adherents. I’ve seen a lot of diets touted & the science of human physiology develop in interesting ways.
The focus on “cholesterol particle size” is nuanced. Size “small” denser LDL size particles is considered less desirable (than larger “fluffy/bouyant” size LDL particles). And the inverse is true for HDL desirable particle size (ie: small HDL particle size is ideal & large HDL particle size not ideal); thus the “protective” claim for elevating HDL has not proven to be lineally true.
What should be understood is that having relatively more “small” LDL particles is only detrimental when they are “oxidized” & made more pro-athero-sclerotic before being processed downstream in our bodys. It is the action of copper on “small” LDL which leads to the actually risky “oxidized” LDL. I am not going to say here that meat copper is going to “oxidize” more readily than vegetable (or nut/seed) copper.
I will point out that the same protein ( & calorie content) soy bean (as tofu) trialed against meat resulted in it (bean protein) taking longer (“lag time”) for LDL particles to actually “oxidize”. Which, to me (if we can extrapolate), means that bean let’s the susceptable pro-athero-sclerotic (small) LDL clear away faster before potential “oxidation” (undesirable) than meat.
I am not knowledgeable on biological science, but my engineering thermodynamics (graduate level courses) informs me that if the concern is the release of CO2/Methane, then removing the middleman (the animal) that converts plants to a more nutritious product does not significantly decrease the generation of CO2/Methane. In fact, from my experience while on a vegetarian diet, it is probably preferable to have the cow, hog, sheep, digest that plant product first to get the needed proteins. Have read many nutritional guides explaining how many needed proteins and vitamins are missing from an all vegetarian diet. Further, that it takes much more food to get the missing vitamins and proteins. Since people will want and only eat a much higher quality vegetation it will also cost much more. Many poor rarely eat an apple a week because they can not afford to have more. Corn for animals is significantly cheaper than corn for people.
How is it OK for a lion to eat a buffalo but it is not OK for a human to eat cattle?
Almost certainly humans took better care of their cattle than the lions did of the buffalo. Almost certainly the humans killed their cattle in a less painful manner than the lions did the buffalo.
It seems very wrong to call the lions noble and see the human actions as somehow wrong.
“…Almost certainly humans took better care of their cattle than the lions did of the buffalo…”
As others have pointed out or alluded to in this thread, this is a crucial point that is not satisfactorily addressed in this otherwise important and thorough article.
Insofar as lions leave their prey alone until they hunt and kill it out of necessity, throughout most of human history your statement may’ve been true on a global scale; today, unfortunately, in the age of industrial animal farming, it’s largely untrue on a global scale.
The rule of profitable mass overproduction is a culprit.
Cruelty to animals is not a superfluous topic. It must be addressed without facilitating a technocratic conspiracy to place control of the global food supply into the hands of a few, compromising the health and relative dietary freedom of the masses.
I love my meat and thank god Atkins and his supporters are pure of heart and have no agenda
If meat is so bad, horrible, and gross, why is so much money spent trying to make vegetable matter look and taste just like meat? To me, that is an admission that we evolved to eat meat. If that is what nature intended me to do, then that’s what I’ll do. To do otherwise might upset the balance of nature, right?
TheReganGroup.webnode.com
We have move forward since The China Study. Campbell’s son, focusing on diabetes, published a follow up in 2015. The Hallmark work by Caldwell Esselstyn Preventing and Reversing Heart Dsease is excellent. Simply. Direct. The basis for much of true..nit fake..plant based living. Rob ostfeld has his plan that has loosened a few restraints from Esselstyn. Like Campbell..to help people endure this tough program.
No people on Plant Based are not a cult, stereotyped political beliefs fir diet, unhealthy. I know from experience. My program works. Campbell showed his study directly. A milestone.
But adding foods not in plant based..calling it meat plant based it alcholol plant based..it even vegan vegetarian is nit plant based.
When you add anything not in true plant based to your diet it is no longer plant based…and is reversing the effects.
Search “Are Supplements needed for a Plant Based Diet” Use any search engine.
Why are there so many sites extolling the virtue of plant based diets AND that you will also NEED Supplements lacking in that diet? Why is the bulk (mass) amount of plant protein needed many times greater than that from animal protein AND still missing critically NEEDED proteins? What about The 7 Nutrients That You Can’t Get From Plant Foods? Search that phrase.
Beans & grains eaten together create a complementary protein amino acid intake. It isn’t a secret requiring searching that phrase – agricultural societies somehow got that synergy way beforet this internet era.
Like anything, if someone is pushing plant based while selling a product or gimmick…walk away!
There are entire cardiology wings and whole hospitals where patients are given plant based diets.
Those that write speak teach practice medicine for plant based see it’s extraordinary results.
Others just trying to make money..the foxes.
Real plant based, works!
TheReganGroup.webnode.com
A major reason for the difference in milk productivity between American and Indian cows is not what the cows are capable of producing, but how the cows are used and kept. In America, a high percentage of cows are producing milk, or slaughtered when they become less productive, or slaughtered at a young age. In India, the land of the sacred cow, cows live until they die of natural causes, including any that people don’t have the time or means to milk.
There is another factor for the agricultural percentage of greenhouse gases being higher worldwide than for America: Worldwide, a smaller percentage of the population has cars or electricity or can afford air conditioning or industrial products than is the case in the US.
Another case of correlation does not mean causation and poor sampling. There are so many causal variables between diet and health that trying to pick those foods “best for us”, with possibly a few exceptions, is a fools errand. Genetics, life style and actual food classification in many studies are a big problem.
https://www.healthline.com/nutrition/20-mainstream-nutrition-myths-debunked#section1
Those prone to various health problems due probably to genetics and or life style will have weaknesses regarding certain foods, others not so much. Plus there has been proven falsification of some 1960s studies that are still quoted as gospel.
Regarding “animals produce more highly valuable nutrients for humans, such as proteins, than they consume.”: Can someone post a link supporting such an incredulous claim? Or one showing a mechanism where animals create proteins from non-proteins? I bet not any credible links for either, except possibly for some unusual or obscure exception. At least generally, photosynthetic plants are net creators of protein, and most other life forms including animals, even herbivorous ones, are net destroyers of protein.
The author stated that “86% of livestock feed is not suitable for human consumption”, which certainly appears to support that claim.
The cited source of this claim is “Anne Mottet PhD, Livestock Policy Officer working for the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations” in “A 2017 study published by Global Food Security”
He does not provide a link and searching on those terms unfortunately produces a lot more results than I can quickly scan, but they do seem to take themselves seriously, i.e. The author is not imagining his sources, which I sense is what you imply?
Don,
Have a look at a some info about Ruminant Digestion, you will obviously be very suprised to discover that “animals produce more highly valuable nutrients for humans, such as proteins, than they consume.” holds very true for this type of livestock. Check the link below and scroll down to the heading “Protein Digestion” and see how symbiosis helps it all along:
http://www.thebeefsite.com/articles/2095/understanding-the-ruminant-animals-digestive-system/
JMarkW: Although ruminants eat a lot of cellulose that they can digest with assistance of bacteria in their guts and humans don’t have much ability to digest cellulose, this does not cause protein to be made from materials other than protein & amino acids.
I did read the Protein Digestion, and it mentions UIP which is a kind of protein that requires assistance of bacteria in the ruminant gut to digest, and not all of the usage of that protein is by the ruminant, some is by the bacteria, and the protein in bacteria that die is not all used by the ruminant. Both the ruminant and its bacteria are net destroyers of protein. The argument in favor of ruminants as a source of food is that they can digest vegetable matter that humans can’t. This is usable as an argument that ruminants should only be farmed where plants that are useful for producing human-digestible food can’t be farmed, and plants that ruminants can make use of grow on their own in the wild, or can be farmed.
This does not argue in favor of farming non-ruminant animals for humans to eat, with the exception of oily fish rich in omega-3 fatty acids, although farming of non-ruminants produces less GHGs per kilogram of meat protein than farming of ruminants does. There is the matter that vegetable matter farmed for humans to eat does not require digestion mechanisms specific to ruminants or any other non-humans in order for humans to make good use of such food.
Regarding: “Vegetables and grains are nutrient poor, whereas animal source foods are nutrient rich. Comparing bioavailable minerals, essential fatty acids, and digestible protein would be a much more appropriate measure, but this would tip the scales in favour of animal source foods.”:
Vitamins A and C and some other vitamins are found mainly in vegetable matter. The essential fatty acids are alpha-linolenic acid and linoleic acid, which are found mainly in vegetable oils.