Defending Beef

November 3, 2014
After learning from her rancher husband the benefits of raising and eating beef, Niman (Righteous Porkchop) delivers a head-on attack against everything negative that has been said about the cattle industry. An environmental lawyer and vegetarian, Niman is a force of nature when it comes to debunking the untruths about how raising beef effects global warming, the connection between eating beef and heart disease, and that eating beef is the reason Americans are fatter than ever. Reading Niman's pointed and convincing prose, like when she states: "compared with other ways of producing food, the keeping of grazing livestock, when done appropriately, is the most environmentally benign," one can only imagine challenging her combination of intelligence, passion, and thoroughness. Despite the title, Niman isn't always on the defensive. In fact, she continually proposes ideas how to make meat production better by promoting the land- and animal-friendly practices of free-range, grass-fed ranching as a safer, more ecological, and healthier alternative to BigAg and industrial meat farming. Niman saves some of her most convincing and damning criticisms for her own vegetarianism as she demonstrates how raising livestock is not only a better option for the world's hungry masses, but also a better option for the planet's health. It sounds hard to believe, but Niman is almost impossible to disagree with.

November 15, 2014

Niman (Righteous Porkchop), previously a senior attorney for the Waterkeeper Alliance, has a simple premise: "We should eat what our bodies evolved to eat." This title lays out her arguments in two sections. The first deals with cattle and how intensive factory farming has had a deleterious effect on certain environmental aspects of raising beef, but the author contends that these have been overstated. The link to climate change has been exaggerated, according to Niman, who claims that if cattle were permitted to graze on grass as they were evolutionarily designed to do, alteration to the earth's temperature might be mitigated, as this would promote carbon sequestration. Traditional cattle farming has other benefits, such as connecting people to the land and to the rhythms of the seasons. The book's second part enumerates the health benefits of beef. Niman contends that bad science from the 1960s has led us to believe that fat and cholesterol should be avoided. We have switched to a diet that is heavy in sugars and carbohydrates and this has resulted in an increase in many chronic health conditions. The author maintains that a switch to less-processed foods and meats would reverse this trend. VERDICT As a vegetarian, Niman is an intriguing spokesperson for the beef industry. Her arguments seem sound and well researched. Recommended reading for those interested in the links between diet and health.--Diana Hartle, Univ. of Georgia Science Lib., Athens

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