Animal Ag’s Climate Denial and Bizarre PR Tactics | Rising Anxieties

And our first story today that I wanna talk about is from Sentient Media. And, and this is something that you know about, but, but very few people do. Meat is a leading emission source, but few outlets report on it, analysis finds.

And this is this whole analysis of, of a bunch of like a hundreds of different stories from Sentient Media that reveals that less than 4% of climate news stories mentioned animal agriculture as a source of carbon emissions. This is by Joe Fassler, and I guess it doesn't surprise most of us, you know, we've heard that before.

It starts off by saying that food and agriculture, not separating out, uh, uh, meat-based, uh, agriculture, contribute one third of global greenhouse gas emissions, and that's second only to the burning of fossil fuels. And yet the vast majority of media coverage does not include, uh, farming. And the finding suggests that only about a quarter of climate articles in 11 major US outlets, including the Guardian, uh, New York Times, others, mentioned food and agriculture as a cause and only 3.8% mentioned animal agriculture or meat production, which is by far, I think it up to 60% of the emissions of, of, uh, the food sector.

You know, like I, this isn't an article that's shocking you, I know that, but I thought I would... it's really good that they did this like, uh, survey and I have another reason for mentioning it, which I'll get to in a second.

And, uh, so this guy, Mark Hertzgard, the Executive Director and co-founder of Covering Climate Now, he thinks it's not necessarily nefarious. I don't know. What do you think?

I'm not sure nefarious is the word I'd use. I just think it's something that they know that people don't wanna hear it. This points out that, you know, they shy away from the topic due to food's fraught cultural status.

But I think it's also their own fraught relationship with food. You know, uh, most of these reporters probably eat meat, they don't wanna think about it. We all know, we all know how that works. They do mention, um, Michael Grunwald's new book, We Are Eating the Earth where he does, he's not vegan by any means and doesn't really take any kind of animal rights perspective on meat, but he does...

he is the person who's really broken through about, uh, the climate issues and also the, the climate from the emissions, but also the climate from the deforestation. And this article goes into both of those issues. So the next article I wanna cover is from, uh, let's see, what is, what is this from, sorry.

Ag Daily. Ag Daily by Amanda Zalucki. zaluck...  Zalucki. I'm gonna go with that. Why is agriculture always the scapegoat on climate issues? You really, you really can't make this stuff up, can you? I guess they have a different point of view. Um, and she points out that she works full-time outside of agriculture, but she advocates for the industry.

This makes her feel a bit disjointed because she's trying to tell everyone our farms are sustainable, innovative, and modern. Doesn't sound like she's totally outside the industry, but the rest of the world seems dead set on believing that agriculture is the root cause of every environmental crisis.

That is just so ridiculously not true. I'm not saying that everybody ignores it completely though, you know, I think a case could probably be made for pretty close to that, but seriously? Um, and she's sure she's not alone in experiencing this disconnect. I am pretty sure she's alone. And no matter how much we improve, it's never enough.

That could be be, you know, even if that's true, it could be because you're so bad to start off with, even if you do improve, it's not gonna be good enough. You know, we, we have a planet to take care of. Um, and a lot of this is talking not about animal agriculture, it's just about agriculture in general. She talks about fertilizing continuous corn.

I, I guess that's where they just, so by plant corn and grow it and it's driving excessive nitrous oxide emissions. That's one I didn't even know. And of course, corn is raised to feed animals. Of course, we leave that part out. Um. And, and her numbers are a lot different. Transportation accounts for 28% of greenhouse gas emissions in the United States, an impact almost three times that of agriculture.

Boy are the numbers different. She has agriculture at 10%. The other article had agriculture at 60%. I mean, can we arrive at a real number here, folks? Uh. So she has almost everything. Industry is one. Industry is 23%. Any kind of industry? I don't know. Um, they actually referenced that article from Sentient Media.

They, they unsurprisingly don't like it. And, um, she points out that in her opinion, activists have long maligned animal agriculture as the worst source of climate emissions. I guess that's true. Activists have, nobody's listening. If only we give up our meat and dairy, the world will be saved. Well, not really.

No. I, I agree that that's not enough, but it would go a long way. Um, according to the United Nations, generating power is the biggest source of greenhouse gas emissions. You know, it's no wonder people just don't know what to think. It really is... the bullshit, the, I use the term advisedly, the bullshit out there in the world about these issues.

It's just so frustrating. She would like to start the climate solutions by focusing on reducing our consumption and supporting renewable sources before coming after farmers. Yeah. Okay, let's do that. We'll just wait until that's done and, and then, you know, we'll fix some of the sources. Or let's stop cutting down the forest that absorbs CO2.

Well, you know what, why do, why does she think they're cutting down the Amazon? Like, why does she think? Oh God.

God help us? 'cause nobody else seems to be wrapping presents for the cows. This charming, uh, little article is from, uh... this new program I'm using doesn't tell you where things are from. Um. I am sorry.

It's, uh, it's from something, uh, some dairy, dairy site. And anyway, it's such, so annoying. It's this cute. Oh, it's, it's pretty, I'm pretty sure it's from Hordes Dairyman. Um, all right. Wrapping presents for the cows. They're starting Christmas early on the farm. After all, we only want the best gifts for our cows.

This is, I'm, I'm only using this article. It's not news or anything, it's just nauseating. And I know you enjoy getting nauseated by the industry. Our gifts for the cows come in the form of giant piles of yummy silage, bales of hay, and corn for them to enjoy all year round. So they raise food to feed these poor imprisoned animals all year, and they act like it's a Christmas present.

It's just these people are so weird. It is truly the gift that keeps on giving day after day, and we know they appreciate it. Well, yeah, they probably appreciate not starving to death. I, I guess, uh, and, and talking about how they, they store the feed into large cement bunkers and cover them neatly with large sheets of plastic. And she always equates it all with wrapping Christmas presents.

She must have had some pretty weird fucking Christmases when she was a kid. There's no doubt that our cows are happy with the food as they're present yet again this year. Well, yeah, food most animals do appreciate, um... they, there's this charming picture of, uh, you know, imprisoned cows.

Um, they sometimes get new beds in the form of stall mattresses, or they've been happy to receive back scratchers in the past. Apparently that's not really regular. We even gift them experiences in the form of foot baths and pedicures on occasion.

Seriously. Seriously, I am at a loss for words. Alright, also from Hordes, uh, uh, Dairyman. Plant and dairy labor struggles. This is, you know, one of their favorite issues that, you know, there's just no Americans who will do this work. Good help can be hard to find. This is by Erin Massey. Um, there is a very hard topic out there, she says, that requires unity, our farm and processing plant labor. And she, by plant, she's talking about processing plants, I think she means milk processing because it's a dairy site. So even though they frequently call slaughterhouses processing plants, I'm not sure that's what she's talking about. She grew up milking cows.

The level at which these people are in love with themselves is, is truly staggering. I thought the plant side, again, the factory where they process the milk, would be an easier career. However, I was wrong. Uh, when you are raised doing the hard work. It is never viewed as optional.

I recently saw someone in tech with farm kid on their LinkedIn profile. I almost rolled my eyes, but then I thought about how much that simple label conveys. It carries even more weight if your farm is a dairy. Oh. So she's taking the position not only are kids who grew up in farms, like, like much better in every way, including that they know the value of hard work, unlike the rest of us slobs.

Um, there are fewer and fewer dairy kids in the US but she's taking the position that dairy... kids who grew up on dairy farms are even better than kids who grew up on other farms. Our dairy farm numbers continue to diminish. Yeah, I wonder why. But our production and cow numbers remain strong. Because the industry is consolidating.

Um, one summer in high school, my dad asked me to round up some guys to help patch the fence. He paid pretty well, and it could be done with a flexible schedule. Guess what? They all said no.

I dunno. It's like, did he really pay well? Uh, I don't know. So she had to do it. Because she's, the salt of the earth is our little Erin.

Yes. We have plenty of people in the us. Okay. She finally gets to the point at the end, but most are not willing to do the work, even those who are able. Because we're all a bunch of lazy slobs. We need the ability to get this labor legally year round. That's what they want. They want immigrant labor. They want it contracted in a way that they have no choices and they don't get paid much.

The ones who show up, roll up their sleeves and do the hard work right there beside you. That's who we need in dairy. Especially if we don't have to pay them a lot of money and they're desperate. Yeah. Uh, all right. Finally, just as a little treat, I'm gonna tell, talk about an article about food poisoning.

Prepared pasta meals linked to deadly listeria outbreak. I bet you're surprised to hear that pasta is potentially poisonous. This is a bad outbreak. Uh, the multi-state outbreak that has led to 20 total illnesses, and then they break down those illnesses. 19 hospitalizations, four deaths, and one fetal loss... well, that's a lot more than 20... um, one fetal loss.

Four deaths, yeah, that's pretty serious. For... alright, the, the, they first track down this chicken fettuccine alfredo. And then, um, there was a public health alert for the linguini product, expanded to include an additional pasta meal. The reason I'm talking about this is because they do mention there's chicken involved, like they just call it pasta all the time.

The supplier of the affected pasta, uh, blah blah, blah. Precooked pasta, blah, blah, blah. Linguini pasta, blah, blah, blah. The pasta supplier, uh, yeah, maybe it was the chicken. What do you think?

And that's it for this week's Rising Anxieties. Before I let you go though, I do want to remind you that it's that time of year and we are doing our annual fundraising pitch, and we always start it on Jasmin's birthday, which is uh, October 30th.

So that's this Thursday. And uh, and you know, this is when we raise, like the vast, vast majority of the money that keeps us going through the year. And you know, we've been doing this since the beginning of time, I think. Well actually it's only been uh, 15 years, but it feels like a long time. I thought we'd be further along.

I thought the world would be vegan by now. Um, alright. So this year, as you know, I think because we never shut up about it, we started this like new format where we are, we're on YouTube, it's actually doing pretty well. We've had 16,500 views on YouTube, um, and 8,000 podcast listens across platforms. And, um, so that's, we're up to 862 episodes and also 125 episodes of the Animal Law Podcast.

And, and, uh, yeah. Uh. It's never ending. Apparently I will, I will die here at this desk. Alright, everybody's gonna get mad at me now that I said that. Um, alright. We have been struggling the past two years. Last year was really, really tough, but we did have some people come through, our amazing Barnyard Benefactors, our highest level donors, and they put together this fund every year and then asked, we asked our listeners to match that. If we could raise $20,000 total by December 31st from listeners, we should be good. We should be good for another year.

And, uh, we, I mean we also have had like a lot of help in the, uh, this... this donor wants to remain anonymous, but for the past, this is our last year. It was a three year program, this is our last year. That means that any donation you make will not only be matched by the Barnard Benefactor fund, but will also be tripled.

Uh, I mean, we'll be tripled all together. So there'll be the, your donation will be matched by the barnyard benefactor fund will be matched by this anonymous donor. And that has really, because last year was, it was scary, but, uh, we got through it and that this is the last year of that. So next year we may be begging, um, but hopefully we can make it through another year.

And if you're not part of the flock yet, please join us if you can. Um, options start at $10 a month or a hundred dollars a year. And I know it's a, it's a tough year and I know everybody's going nuts and I know there's probably a lot of things you wanna donate to, so I understand if we're not one of them.

Um. You know, uh, we're gonna try to keep going and, and, uh, if you want to, uh, if you particularly love Jasmin, not that you don't love me as well, but you know, my birthday isn't around now, uh, you can make a donation for her birthday. And, and that's at ourhenhouse.org/support. And if you can spread the word to others, not just about donating, but you know about listening, that's what we really appreciate more than anything at all.

So thanks for being there for us.