We'll do anything to avoid talking about meat and climate change
Tu B'Shvat is the Jewish Earth Day. This year, it should have been the perfect opportunity to talk about food system pollution.
One of the rare bright spots of 2020 for me was the Great Big Jewish Food Fest, a previously in-person food festival that went virtual early on in the pandemic. I watched someone make a challah on one session and a food writer talk about his Instagram-ready Shabbat dinners on another. It was just the right amount of community, food and, dare, I say it, fun, during a time that was absolutely no fun at all.
So when I, a climate journalist, saw that this same group was now putting on a Jewish climate festival, I was thrilled. But as I scrolled through the offerings, I was disappointed to see just one talk about climate change that touched on food — a single presentation given by a kosher regenerative livestock farmer touting her “zero-carbon steak.”
I sent an email to the organizers at the time, requesting more sessions about the food system’s impact on climate change and politely suggesting that claims around "zero-carbon steaks” are probably questionable, but was told that the climate festival had less financial support than the larger food festival, with the panels pretty much self-selecting. I was disappointed but hoped next year might bring a better showing.
Unfortunately, this year it was worse, with no discussion of food at all. Given that plant-based companies were part of the larger Great Big Jewish Food Fest, the organizers must know at least a few Jews involved in the transition away from animal agriculture who could lead a panel. So what happened? My guess is the organizers decided food was just too touchy a topic, even among climate activists, and they decided to avoid talking about it altogether.
The festival finished up right before Tu b’Shvat, a Jewish holiday that falls on the 15th of Shvat or Shevat, the month we’re in on the Jewish calendar. It’s also known as New Year for the trees, but in recent years it’s been celebrated as more of a Jewish Earth Day, a time to commit to environmental action.
While I’m not anywhere close to a Torah scholar or an expert on Jewish holidays, it seems to me that the ties between this holiday and the food system are so very clear, and to avoid tough conversations about meat and its environmental impact on this day is especially egregious. The holiday’s ancient origins are thought to be rooted in an agricultural festival, later evolving into a holiday that celebrated the gifts of land and trees, two parts of the ecosystem we need to preserve from farmland expansion in order to fight the effects of climate change.
So it hit me, on this my first Tu b'Shvat as a vegan, here is yet another community I’m part of that doesn’t want to talk abut the environmental impact of what we eat. It’s one thing to have disagreements over what that impact is; quite another to avoid even having the conversation. But that’s what we do, isn’t it? Even a few very well-known climate scientists are reluctant to talk too much about the climate impacts of meat for fear that the public will lose focus on lowering carbon emissions. In reality, we need to be addressing all of it.
What happens when we don’t talk about the food system? We can’t make the choices that really matter. According to one study, 81.6 percent of survey respondents defined a sustainable diet as “locally-grown.” Around 44 percent said that eating less but higher quality meat was a way to eat sustainably, which tracks with what I hear from my “regular” friends (the ones who don’t work in or write about food and climate). Only a little over 18 percent chose eating plants, the solution actually backed by the research.
The food system accounts for more than a quarter of all emissions globally. Most of that comes from livestock emissions, primarily methane from cattle belches and land use. Research suggests that eating less meat and more plants is one of the most highly-effective climate solutions.
What this constant refrain of ‘eat better meat, not less meat’ shows is just how much we as a society don’t want to give up meat-eating. In fact, as reported in Wired UK, the USDA approved a program in November to label beef that meets certain conditions as “low-carbon,” presumably to appeal to consumers who want to do their part for climate change but still want to eat beef.
I get the struggle. The idea of going vegan seemed absolutely out of reach to me too for a very long time. How could I live without butter or cheese? Turns out, it’s really not that hard at all. There are so many good vegan substitutions on the market these days that I don’t miss meat or cheese or butter at all. Of course, not everyone feels that way. The rest of my family still eats some meat and dairy (more dairy, probably), but I enjoy the challenge of making vegan dishes good enough that they don’t miss the animal products. The result is that while the rest of my family still eats meat, they eat a lot less of it. And more importantly, we’re having those tough conversations about the impact of our food system. We’re talking about what we’re eating and why. That’s what I want more of, for everyone.
Participating in Veganuary? I have some tips.
