Inaugurating a new UMB feature, these reviews will be of targeted messages to consumers by industrial groups, or even specific companies, in defense of their activities. This post might be considered a ragged, unfocused predecessor of this series.
So I received this one in email, but here it is online:
In the wake of the Green New Deal, which supposedly endangers the beef industry, this defends the beef industry by examining its many uses. I appreciated that the makers of this video, made (apparently) by Tech Insider, supplied references for their claims. I spot checked the bovine insulin claim and it appears to be accurate, although perhaps a little strongly put.
Clearly, though, the film makers are amateurs. Gelatin’s important in the making of … Gummi Bears? Collagen is important for … smoothing wrinkles out of faces? The selection of examples should exemplify the indispensability of cattle in the manufacture of products important in our everyday lives – not superfluous little shit that we would never miss if it had never been made.
All that said, perhaps its strongest defect is in what it doesn’t address. Speaking globally, there are often alternative solutions, sometimes environmentally or even economically superior, to the world’s problems. Suggesting that the utility of cattle makes it indispensable is intellectually deceptive so long as they don’t supply arguments to suggest why the cattle-associated solutions are far preferable to alternative solutions, especially on balance against the amount of feed (or just call it food) consumed by the beef vs how many people that food would support if eaten directly, as well as the climate change gases associated with cattle. That omission is disappointing.
In the end, its unintended message is, oddly enough, simply too many people.
