Million dollar Pope: a funny vegan asked

"A million dollars to charity if Pope Francis tries to be vegan during Lent"; as the title of a campaign that surprises not only by its content, but especially by its form: one asks a costly complete page in several newspapers of the world, on behalf of an unknown Blue Horizon International Foundation, What He tries to make us believe that a 12 year old girl, Jessica González Castro, is the manager. (sic) of the campaign Million Dollar Vegan (MDV)

The goal, they say, is to raise awareness about animal suffering and demonstrate the relationship between livestock and hunger in the world and deforestation. "It's a strategy to fight climate change with regime change", explains Matthew Glover and Jane Land, a British couple who encourages the cited foundation. "An herbal diet" (sic) is the easiest way to minimize the impact on the environment, they say.

The campaign would not be complete without the presence of some celebrities like Paul McCartney or Joaquim Phoenix– and numbers that have an impact: "Anyone who will become vegan during Lent will save emissions from a flight equivalent to that of a flight between Mexico City and Monterrey."

Keir Watson, professor of British physics, who after 25 years of vegetarianism has again consumed meat, discusses the constant vegan pounding on the causal link between meat consumption and climate change. It's not true that it takes 20 kilograms of grain to produce one kilogram of beef. This is part, he explains, of the false badumption that all cattle are raised in feedlots. Many graze or consume fodder. In addition, almost all cereals for animal consumption are inadequate for human consumption. On the other hand, it is precisely the demand for animal consumption that makes grain production profitable, he says.

He also denies the figure of 100,000 liters of water to produce one kilogram of meat. The true would represent only 0.2% of this number.

Watson questions the impact of meat consumption on ecology and ensures that, to support their arguments, vegans adopt the worst selection methods as if they were the only ones. Hyperintensive reproduction is disastrous, but so is the misuse of the land in the crop. In exchange, if cattle are fed pastures and their constant movementIn a way that mimics the behavior of wild herbivores, the herbs regenerate. The restoration of the grbadlands, he says, based on the case of the United Kingdom, is more ecological than its conversion to arable land because culture erodes the soil and depletes its nutrients. Grazing converts non-edible grbades into high quality protein, meat and dairy products, and is more similar to the original landscape than a grain field. Sheep conserve plant biodiversity because they consume it selectively. The sylvopastoral (forest-meadow-grazing) is more a part of the solution than the problem. It is then a matter of choosing the meat to consume and not of promoting veganism.

In an interview, Watson states that "There has never been a vegetarian society, nowhere is it contrary to human nature". It is true that no human society only eats meat, but some groups, such as the Lapps, "consume up to 90% of their calories as animal protein." He does not propose to imitate them, but he says that it shows "that it is possible for a human being to follow a highly meaty diet".

And he adds: "Vegetarians do not live longer than an average Englishman, who smokes, eats bacon and he does not go to the gym very often. "

We asked without much foundation

"In this application, there is a mix of things without much foundation," says the agronomist. Fernando Vilella, director of the bioeconomy program of the Faculty of Agronomy of the UBA, before the consultation of Infobae. "It is true that breeding in the digestive process emits methane, which has a greater greenhouse effect than carbon dioxide. But if the reproduction is made in the field and over large areas, the same vegetation absorbs some of this methane. Now, if the type of feed is exclusively grbad, the release of methane is more important than if you finish fattening with a grain, which digestion is simpler.

From a nutritional point of view, says Vilella, meat is needed but not in the amount consumed in some developed countries or in Argentinawhere it is 120 kilograms per person per year. The vegan proposal is that cereals intended for animal feed can be consumed by the population that is suffering from nutritional deficiencies today. "Without falling into the extreme vegan, says Vilella, we can say that if the consumption of animal protein was more uniform in the world, If the average world population had a balanced consumption, that would be beneficial. But it's not fair to go to extremes. It is useless to fall into veganism. "Part of the area devoted to growing soybeans for animal feed could go legumes, for example, important for human consumption.

"But our digestive system is adapted to the consumption of meat," says Fernando Vilella, "those who do not consume it must do so a combination exercise of products far removed from their habitat ". This refutes the argument of the "natural".

According to this expert, The true proportion is 7 kilograms of grain for an ox. "It is true that the flour and the type of corn and soybeans for animals are different from those intended for human consumption, and it is true that the land used for cereals erodes the soil, especially if they are misused. . Livestock grazing is more sustainable than growing cereals, provided the density is not very high. Otherwise, it can lead to desertification. "

As for animals that graze selectively and more sustainably, Vilella puts it into perspective: this is true in the case of native species; in Patagonia, the guanaco, who co-evolved with this habitat. But sheep and cows tear pastures. Sheep can be sustainable in the Asian environment from which they come. Silvopasture is a sustainable practice because a layer of trees and herbs, grown or natural, contributes to the absorption of methane.

Bjorn Lomborg (Copenhagen Consensus), an environmentalist who does not fear the usual fallout in this area, also says that it's exaggerated on the impact of livestock on the environment and, therefore, the effect that the individual decision not to consume meat may have. This qualifies it as "stupid suggestions", which, in short, distract attention from the problem and those responsible. "We have so opted for the wrong badumption that the individual can take meaningful action against climate change, which We are doing too little to collectively claim the actual investment needed to fight against global warming, "he said in an opinion column last November.

Specifically, in addition to the unacceptable "blackmail" of offering money for charity "in exchange for", the requested vegan is functional for the interests of those who are truly responsible for the environmental damage to the extent that it helps to make them invisible.

The Canadian neuroscientist Philip Low, who claims to be a vegan scientist, who was in Argentina last November, anticipated the demand for a whole page, then arguing the pretext of challenging Pope Francis: "Would you consider becoming a vegan?"

Do you want to defend human life from conception?, is the question that suits them.

That sounds obvious, but you have to remind them that environmentalism and preservationism can not emanate from human consciousness which, in its superiority, includes compbadion for animals, concern for preserving resources and the responsibility to take care of what belongs to all.

In its most fundamentalist version, "animalism" is a form of pantheism. This ideology is present for example in the zoological conception of the new banknotes issued by the Argentine government; especially in the foundations of its decision to replace the country's national heroes with its fauna: it represents "life and life" and the Argentineans must remember that "we are more What only men and women; we are plants, animals, earth, air, water … "

The ideology underlying the note addressed to the Pope is contrary to the reasons why Francisco calls to take care of "the common house" in his encyclical Laudato Sii: "When one does not recognize the value of a poor, of a human embryo, of a handicapped person, one hardly hears the cries of nature."