Sacred Cow

Being the middle child in my family, I’ve had this natural instinct to find the middle/more moderate ground on most debates. In this polarized world, the answers to life are rarely found in extreme positions but always somewhere in the middle. I found this to be true in Diana Rodgers and Callie T. Wiser’s documentary Sacred Cow: The Nutritional, Environmental and Ethical Case for Better Meat, because no one walks away from this unscathed, and yet a commonsense solution manages to surface as a result.

Narrated by Nick Offerman, Sacred Cow finds the middle ground of the great meat debate by showing the mistakes and misinformation from the corporate agriculture complex and the rhetoric from militant vegan camps. His opening narration asks the following questions, “Should we be eating meat? In this debate about the planet, ethics, and health, are we arguing about the wrong thing? What if the animal we’re talking about is the key to fixing what’s broken?”

“…finds the middle ground of the great meat debate…”

Let’s start with the evil corporations. The problem with U.S. Agriculture is that farms have been converted into giant outdoor science labs. Its sole goal is to produce a sh!t ton of a single crop in as little land as possible. U.S. farmers grow an overabundance of corn and soy, devasting the land it’s grown on and the agricultural economy. The result is terrible soil and an over-reliance on chemical pesticides and fertilizer to compound the problem.

The same holds for livestock. Look, PETA and other animal rights organizations are correct in protesting the conditions in which livestock is managed. Cows, chickens, and pigs are raised in one large pen rather than roaming and grazing land as they once did years ago. The results are incomprehensible living conditions and lower quality meats in both taste and nutrients. But there is a solution.

On the other side of the debate, we’ve been told lies about the harmful effects of meat, and I’m talking about pure, natural meat instead of processed meats. Science has shown that processed meats can cause cancer and other ailments, but you can’t throw out the baby with the bathwater. It argues that militant Vegan and anti-meat factions are doing more harm than good, and their noble intentions undermine the delicate eco-system it purports to protect.