I thought this was interesting.....seems that no matter how
harmful the SAD may be......the "big brains" in our
universities are still beating the drum.......I'm sending
the whole thing along for those who always want to
know the source.......but I've put *****'s around
the sections that particularly struck me.......with
my comments................................

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Walk The Path With Practical Feet!


Forwarded from Gaia-l List.......................

   UniSci - Daily University Science News

   Applying the "polluter pays" principle, a Cornell University ecologist
   and author suggests a way to improve the environmental sustainability
   of agriculture: Levy taxes according to food-chain ranking so that
   products with the worst environmental impact cost the most.

   "We should internalize the costs of dietary preferences. If one
   chooses to eat high-impact food, one should pay the full costs of such
   a choice," says David Pimentel, the professor of ecology and
   agricultural science who is a co-editor and co-author of the newly
   published book Ecological Integrity: Integrating Environment,
   Conservation, and Health (Island Press, 2000, ISBN 1-55963-807-9).

******************************************
   At the top of the ecologist's tax table -- and highest in his ranking
   of foods that require the most resources to produce while wreaking
   more environmental degradation -- are meats from factory-farmed
   mammals, such as beef, pork and eggs. The same foods are the least
   healthy when consumed in excess, Pimentel notes.

   To be taxed the least are products at the bottom of humans' food chain
   -- foods that are more efficiently grown while causing less
   environmental impact -- such as legumes, grains, vegetables, starch
   crops, fruits and nuts. People eating plant-based diets generally
   consume fewer health-care resources, the author maintains.
******************************************
****My Opinion.....this is the same story that has been preached
for many generations......but in my opinion, the diet heavy in
legumes and grains and starchy foods is a "poverty" diet....
as in beans and rice, or cornmeal mush......we didn't evolve
to eat this way.......and our obese, diabetic population
should prove that to anyone with a lick of sense.....the rest
of this is the original post.....no opinions from me...........
Ardeith.................................................*********

   Pimentel's beef with beef and other mammalian food products at the top
   of the food chain centers on efficiencies of production and their
   "true costs," including long-term degradation of the environment.
   Writing a chapter on agricultural sustainability with Robert Goodland,
   the tropical ecologist and adviser to the World Bank, the Cornell
   professor offers statistics to spoil the appetite of filet mignon
   fans:

   o Seven pounds of cattle feed is required to produce a pound of beef,
   compared with two pounds of fish feed for some aquaculture species.

   o In the United States, the 104-million-strong cattle herd is the
   country's largest user of grain.

   o Growing an acre of corn to feed cattle takes 535,000 gallons of
   water.

   o Agricultural production consumes more fresh water than any other
   human activity. Worldwide, about 70 percent of pumped fresh water is
   consumed (is not recoverable) by agriculture. In the western United
   States, the figure is about 85 percent.

   o Worldwide, food crops are grown on 11 percent of the Earth's total
   fertile land area.

   o Another 24 percent of the land is used as pasture to graze livestock
   for meat and milk products. Marginal land for pastures makes possible
   the production of meat and milk products on land unsuitable for food
   crops.

   o Most cropland is threatened by at least one type of degradation
   (including erosion, salinization and waterlogging of irrigated soils),
   and 10 million hectares of productive land are severely degraded and
   abandoned each year. Replacing agricultural land accounts for 60
   percent of deforestation now occurring worldwide.

   The new book, with 23 co-authors and three co-editors, represents the
   synthesis and findings of the Global Integrity Project. Since 1992,
   that project has brought together leading scientists and thinkers from
   around the world to examine the combined problems of threatened and
   unequal human well-being, degradation of the ecosphere and
   unsustainable economies. The contributors examine key elements of
   ecological integrity and consider what happens when it is lost or
   compromised.

   For his part, Pimentel notes that "a powerful trend to eat lower on
   the food chain" has started in many developed nations. U.S. beef
   consumption, after peaking at 95 pounds per person a year in 1976, has
   dropped to around 65 pounds today. Beef consumption in Europe and the
   United Kingdom never reached those levels and is now falling even
   faster than in the United States.

   "But the countervailing trend is for people in developing nations to
   eat more meat as they become richer," Pimentel says, noting that
   China's pork consumption jumped 14 percent in 1995 alone.

   Pimentel and Goodland called on international aid agencies such as the
   World Bank to phase out investments in intensive livestock production
   in Third World countries, "especially grain-fed livestock, and leave
   it to the private sector." Such groups, they write, "should ensure
   that good economics prevail, including accounting for full
   environmental and social costs."

   The authors would make exceptions in their tax plan for small-scale
   meat and milk production, such as natural range-fed cattle, the family
   cow or pig and scrap-fed chickens. But they know where the food chain
   tax collection should focus for the greatest bureaucratic efficiency.

   In the United States, they write, "beef sales are the single-largest
   revenue source within the whole agriculture sector. Only four
   meatpackers in the United States hold 82 percent of the market,
   suggesting a low-cost place to tax." - By Roger Segelken
   [Contact: [3]Roger Segelken]
   3. [log in to unmask]


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