No, Joe Biden Isn’t Banning Meat Eating, But Progressive Activists Would Like Him To

Joe Biden’s Secretary of Agriculture had to come out yesterday and clarify that the Biden administration isn’t planning to ban meat-eating in order to fight climate change.

Politico:

“Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack on Monday dismissed a myth spread by conservative media that President Joe Biden intends to stop Americans from eating burgers and steaks as part of his plans to combat climate change.

“There is no effort designed to limit people’s intake of beef coming out of President Biden’s White House or USDA,” Vilsack said during a virtual briefing hosted by the North American Agricultural Journalists. “Sometimes in the political world, games get played and issues are injected into the conversation knowing full well that there’s no factual basis.” …”

The Daily Mail article about the issue that was published over the weekend went viral. The reality of the situation is that there is an obvious disconnect between 1.) the Biden administration’s stated goal of slashing carbon emissions by 50% by 2030 and 2.) maintaining industrial animal agriculture.

Ezra Klein made this exact point in his article “Let’s Launch a Moonshot for Meatless Meat” which was published in the New York Times on Saturday:

“About a quarter of global greenhouse gas emissions are traceable to the food supply chain. Animal agriculture accounts for about three-quarters of those emissions and nearly 90 percent of those in the average American diet. A 2020 study found that even if all fossil fuel emissions ceased today, the food system would still push warming more than 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels, which most scientists consider unsafe. “The 7.8 billion of us on this planet cannot have a steak every night,” Inger Andersen, executive director of the U.N. Environment Program, told me. “It doesn’t compute.”

It’s these next paragraphs where I fear I might lose you. It’s easier to argue for human welfare than animal welfare. I spent most of my life not just as a meat eater, but as an enthusiastic one. …”

These people are dancing around the issue.

You can’t have a steak every night. It just doesn’t compute. Only people like Michael Bloomberg should be able to afford to eat a steak every night. This is the most elitist shit ever.

They’re not banning meat-eating to fight climate change because obviously doing so is politically radioactive. Instead, the plan is to reduce carbon emissions that come from the food supply chain by offering “voluntary conservation programs that provide financial incentives to land owners to retire environmentally sensitive land from farm or livestock production or to adopt practices on land still in production to help sequester carbon or to reduce other greenhouse gas emissions.” In other words, they want to pay farmers not to raise livestock in order to reduce the meat supply to fight climate change. The overall effect of intervening in the economy like this would be to raise food prices for working class and middle class Americans and nudge them into eating shit like “Beyond Meat.”

Roll Call:

“There is no intent to take land away from farmers. The goal here is to create new opportunities for farmers to benefit by embracing climate-smart agricultural practices,” Vilsack said. “There are a number of things we can do and will do, but none of it involves taking anybody’s land away from them or using eminent domain. It’s not going to happen.”

Vilsack also said there were false claims being made that Biden somehow planned to limit people’s meat consumption to reduce methane and nitrous oxide emissions from livestock.

The land-grab accusation persists despite the administration’s emphasis on voluntary conservation programs that provide financial incentives to land owners to retire environmentally sensitive land from farm or livestock production or to adopt practices on land still in production to help sequester carbon or to reduce other greenhouse gas emissions. …”

You see, it is “voluntary” for now.

They’re asking farmers nicely to stop producing livestock and paying them to do so.

Zack Beauchamp of Vox explains the crux of the problem:

Vox.com:

“Here’s the problem, though: If Biden’s climate plan doesn’t do something about meat, it’s probably going to fail.

Globally speaking, livestock production represents a significant portion of overall greenhouse gas emissions. The reasons for this are intrinsic to meat production itself; there is no way for humans to consume meat in the way we do without abettingcatastrophic warming.

Ruminant animals like cows, kept in numbers much larger due to meat and dairy demand, emit methane gas through their bodily functions — a pollutant more potent than carbon dioxide. Raising allegedly more climate-friendly meats, like chicken, also emits significantly more greenhouse gases than plant-based protein productions. Animal agriculture necessitates clearing huge amounts of land, a significant cause of deforestation in places like Brazil’s Amazon. Concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs), factory farms where animals are crowded into tiny cages and kept in horrific conditions, create massive feces lagoons that intensify the methane problem.

There is, in short, no way around the problem: If we want to keep climate change at a manageable level, we need to change the way we produce and consume animal products.

The Biden administration may or may not eventually take steps to deal with this problem. But the hysterical reaction to a falsehood that it is going to be doing so suggests just how explosive the reaction will be if Biden actually moves in this direction. …

To make matters worse, animal agriculture is also a huge business, meaning that billions of dollars would likely line up behind pro-meat Republicans. A new study reported by my colleague Sigal Samuel found that animal agriculture industries have already spent millions trying to undermine climate policy, when there’s been no federal effort to intentionally reduce American meat consumption. Imagine how hard they’d fight if there was one.

This conjunction of forces — the cultural power of meat and the interests of Big Agriculture — make the issue of reducing meat consumption politically challenging. …”

We’re not saying you have to eat Michael Bloomberg’s Bug Burgers.

We’re just totally saying that we are going to have the government tinker with the food supply chain in order to raise the price of meat to nudge you into eating Bug Burgers.

Note: You might have to live in a bugman capsule too.

About Hunter Wallace 12379 Articles
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39 Comments

  1. A ” bold step towards fighting climate change” would be ending immigration, since every single migrant is highly increasing their CO2-“footprint” once entering the USA (which is one of the worlds top CO2 producer per capita). So yes, woketards, let’s fight “climate change” by closing borders.

    • @Brett Clever

      Anyone who is not demanding an immediate end to ALL immigration is not at all serious about climate change.

      I’ve asked hundreds of people about this online, and not a single time have any of them said, “yes, let’s stop immigration to prevent climate change.”

      No, mass immigration is the number one priority for them and they don’t care at all about climate change – they are lying, clearly. They have another agenda, the climate change stuff is just a distraction.

      • @ Banned Hipster. Yep, totally agree. This meat thing is another “distraction” or diversion from the big issues like “immigration”, which should be called, “invasion”.
        I see the same thing with people. They have no real idea of how many are in this country. It’s like living in a house and seeing an occasional cockroach, while there’s nests of them under the floorboards.

  2. It is no coincidence that 5 pounds of hamburger meat at Walmart went from 15 dollars to over 19 dollars just when this push started, only a few days ago These rotten dirtyfu@cks are trying to starve us.

  3. Environmentalism requires sacrifice (problem for progressives is that they understand the magnitude of the change that is required but many of them themselves won’t do it and also they don’t get that democracy runs antithetical to this). I think we need to deal with cars/emissions before meat. And population reduction could allow for more meat consumption (other countries/continents like India, China, and Africa must be reduced), but I digress.

    People are obssessed with freedom and gluttony (America is obese as shit). Taking away meat, and any type of food, is as Anti-American as it comes. America would rather see the entire Earth, human species extinct, animals extinct, etc, die, than stop consumption.

    Your article which is written in such a way which proves why Nationalism is Liberalism in many ways. And fails.

    Even the Nazis would hate you (who had some of the first animal rights, environmental laws, etc). Hitler was a vegetarian. I doubt you’d call him a hippie.

    You want freedom, obesity, consumerism, etc, that makes America, America. You just want a more homogenous 1950’s America. You just want a more racist Liberalism.

    No one in Vox said bug burgers. Lab-grown is not bug burgers. Are you for real? Yes, Vox is shit. But there’s no reason to just make up things that clearly aren’t said by what the guy said.

    They are dancing around issues, because they’re cowards. They know, like I know, like you know, that America will not stand for it. The issue has already been decided- as it’s baked into the values of the country. American is about eating and eating and eating and eating. The average American looks like a swine more than a human. The Vox article is stating the obvious. The country will not change and undergo the change needed in order deal with the approaching crisis. We lack the will and spirit and resolve. We lack the iron resolve and embracing of hardship (that the Right ironically likes to play lip service to but wants the comfort that Liberalism provides).

    By the way, I eat a lot of meat (for protein intake). I’m willing to eat lab-grown meat, if that’s what it takes (not bug burgers which I’ve seen thrown around in some articles). I work out a lot(well before the pandemic lockdowns anyway). I’d rather have some “vegan organic food soy drinking skinny twerp liberal with nerd glasses” than some “fat gluttonous dumb Magatard suffering heart disease and cartilage pain from all the [fast] food he shoves down his mouth and wails about his freedom 5 times a day.”

    • Much truth in what you say. Many of these buffoons were near suicidal because they couldn’t “go out to eat” during the shutdowns.

    • Hitler was a vegetarian only after 1936, when his gall bladder started acting up and he couldn’t digest fats as well anymore. Before that he had an ordinary diet and ate meats. It’s in the Hitler Medical Casebook. What Hitler did was ban kosher slaughter and as he aged ate mostly yogurt. No meat for Jews and blacks. Problem sorted out. No fried chicken.

      • “Hitler was a vegetarian only after 1936, when his gall bladder started acting up and he couldn’t digest fats as well anymore. Before that he had an ordinary diet and ate meats. It’s in the Hitler Medical Casebook. ”

        Any evidence that you can link me to?

          • Thank you for the link.

            I do highly doubt this, but I’ll look into this.

            If what you said was true, the environmental laws and animal rights laws that occurred in the Reich wouldn’t have happened. Let alone the Hitler Youth Corps planting trees, etc. I mean, blood and soil, is a pretty explicit idea. I have no other reason to believe this was not ideological in nature. Not simply due to Hitler’s supposed cholecystectomy.

          • Believe what you like. The waiter at his cafe in Munich said he enjoyed meat until the mid thirties and the duet changed radically after that to yogurt. You got your agenda whatever it is.

          • This is a crock of shit.

            Hitler was a vegetarian because of his love for animals. He called meat eaters “corpse eaters.” He had a sweet tooth from living in the back of a bakery in Vienna,never drank alcohol or smoked tobacco.

        • Other less important medical issues that Hitler had were also investigated by the Hestons. The first recorded medical illness for Hitler began in the 1930’s and continued for the rest of his life. It was characterized by sharp, cramping right upper abdominal pain occurring shortly after meals. These clinical findings suggest biliary colic most probably due to a stone in the gallbladder to the Hestons. This illness brought Hitler together with Dr. Theo Morell would become Hitler’s personal physician from then until Hitler’s death in April 1945. In September 1944 Dr. Morell made an observation that Hitler was jaundiced. Jaundice may be seen in obstruction of the biliary duct system by a small stone but may also be seen in other disease entities such as certain liver diseases . Given the long history of frequent right upper abdominal pain following meals, this reader concurs with the authors in suspecting that a stone in the gallbladder was the primary process and that the jaundice was due to a separate small biliary stone which had temporarily occluded the lumen of common bile duct or common hepatic duct and which subsequently passed on its own. According to the authors, none of Hitler’s doctors considered these diagnoses. Surgical treatment to remove biliary stones was readily available at that time. In additon, Dr. Morell’s diagnosis for the abdominal pain and jaundice was viral hepatitis.

          It’s from one of the book reviewers on Amazon. He wasn’t a vegetarian as a matter of preference by any means. The medical records prove it to a great degree. Gall Bladder problems are huge.

  4. It’s important that we tell people that the anti-meat agenda is a part of the neoliberal austerity agenda of lowered standards of living for the masses so that the super-rich can hoard even more of the nation’s wealth than they hoard now. This is coming down from the top economic elites, just like everything else. It’s not coming from “progressives” do gooders. Those people are pawns in this.

  5. They’re going to try and make meat very expensive so many can’t afford it. It’s already happening, not just meat but food prices in general.

  6. That wasn’t Fuentes, it was one if his body doubles. Apparently he is on ZOG’s no fly list and couldn’t get here.

  7. Standing right behind Lauren Witzke and Michelle Malkin, HW! Should I introduce myself as a correspondent for Occidental Dissent?

  8. Anglo Saxon culture started to associate social status with beef consumption at the end of the middle ages.

    So..

    Anyway, the main problem is beef.
    Chicken & Pork are fine..

    Especially Pork. 😉

    • Beef Eating built the Empire. Starving Fritzs, vegetarian Chinks and vegan Gurus got to lay down and take it. The problem is over consumption of a substitute for a fist full portion of beef. Carbs. Processed potato mostly. Half of Napoleon’s army was starving while English troops in the peninsular or about ships got to eat red meat. Ffs the Cowboy is the American archetype too.

    • That’s interesting in regards to “especially pork”. Castro did away with bovine meat for the masses in Cuba shortly after the revolution and then encouraged widespread yeoman hog production. Prior to the Castro revolution, the annual per capita consumption of beef rivaled and often exceeded that of Argentina. However, I don’t think that Castro ever used reduction of methane/greenhouse gas emissions as a pretext to eliminate beef cattle from Cuba’s agricultural production menu. I don’t know what his stated motives were. He and his elite cronies did, however, continued to enjoy quite a bit of filet mignon and the Cuban proletariats soon referred to beef as “red gold”.

  9. I eat a steak once every few months, but apparently that is even too much for this vermin. Hamburgers about the same. Otherwise I rely on a smattering of sausage, nuts, deer (I kill my own), chicken, and eggs. I am really, really, really beyond sick of Jews and liberals. Really sick of these people.

  10. I don’t know what kind of crap they inject US livestock with but you don’t see that “Walmart shopper look” in France where these things are more tightly controlled. These factory farms are owned by usual suspects and they have a close relation to Big Pharma. Take a tip from Uncle Adolf and reduce your meat consumption for the sake of your own health.

  11. They want to further physically weaken men already hit hard by estrogen-caused halved sperm counts which are due to the use of cheap plastics & other chemicals in food packaging.

    Just LOOK at that open mouth-grinning soyfag in the photo above: can you even inagine your father bitch-smiling like that? Today there are millions of such half-men, and (((they))) intend to make billions more.

  12. We can and should eat less poor-quality meat in favor of organic, humanely-raised meat. The whole industrialized meat industry needs a major rethink. It’s cruel to animals, wasteful, packed with hormones and chemicals, and the end product tastes like garbage. Like farmed salmon. Or crappy, oily Walmart mince meat. Slimy Tyson chicken.

    We could have community farms where a family buys one pig or steer per year, or whatever they need, and nothing is wasted. The animals would be grass or corn fed and looked after with plenty of space.

  13. Even Uncle A wanted to do away with mass beef consumption. I normally buy steaks if they’re on sale already. Now if lamb wasn’t so damn expensive.

  14. There is a 100 percent chance the regime will eventually ban meat. Of course, just like Gavin Newson attended a gourmet dinner with his fellow fat cats sans mask while requiring his subjects to wear masks even when alone outdoors, members of the elite will still meat. However, the little people won’t be allowed to. How will the ban be implemented? I can think of two ways. The first is a packed Supreme Court declaring animals have the right not to be eaten. The second follows the new trend toward rule by mega-corporations. First one mega-corporation, most likely Amazon, will stop selling meat and then the others, under increasing pressure, will follow. For a while, small retailers will sell meat, but then local bans and attacks by liberal cockroaches will put an end to that as well.

    Like cancer, liberal ideology is progressive. It never stops getting worse until it kills its host or is itself killed by countermeasures.

  15. Michael Bloomberg?! Why am I not shocked I don’t need waste my time to look at his early life section on Wikipedia do I

    I don’t care if bug burgers have more protein then beef the body can only absorb so much protein at a time anyway. Let the soyfaces eat their bug burgers

    Bean burgers are okay on occasion but I make my own and freeze them. The beyond meat ones are disgusting filled with fat, overseasoned and overpriced

  16. So 500 years ago instead of cows there were 20 million Bison roaming around the American Continent producing the exact same amount of waste. This is just nature, before Bison we had Brontosaurus doing the same thing. I’ve always thought vegetarians were crackpots, this only confirms my judgement.

    • You make an excellent point. It’s so obvious that I’m amazed it’s not part of the anti argument.

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