Environmental Justice: Rabbi David Rosen
Why does it matter that beef and dairy consumption contribute to climate change through the methane emissions of cows?
The impact of methane gas and other forms of degradation that come from the livestock trade, the animal, beef production and the dairy industry, poses a threat to our environment. They contribute enormously to climate change through the production of methane gases but it’s not only that. It’s also the degradation of forests and our natural habitat and total disproportionate use of natural resources that could be used so much more productively that lead to a moral challenge to any religiously, spiritually sensitive person.
If you believe that this world is a creation from a Divine Power, therefore the creation itself manifests that Divine presence as it says in Psalms “the heavens declare the glory of G-d and the firmament declares the work of His hands.” In other words, the whole cosmos around us is a manifestation of the Divine. If you are a Divinely sensitive person, whether you want to define that as religious or spiritual, then the well-being, the health, of the environment and the creation is a religious imperative for you, a spiritual imperative for you.
In addition, if we don’t care about our environment, about our home, our global home, then everything else becomes irrelevant because we won’t have a home to live in. The metaphor I often use is that all other issues are moving the deckchairs on top of the Titanic as we head towards a catastrophe, so global climate change and the environmental crisis should be an imperative for every religious person.
For the past several decades, scientists have been worrying about climate change yet global consumption of meat, eggs, and dairy has increased. Why is it that people either don’t understand this connection or are unwilling to change their behavior?
A change in lifestyle is a big challenge. It is not a simple thing to do. People who have not kept kosher, who become kosher, it is an enormous challenge – you have to completely re-orientate yourself. And if the changes are demanded by moral crises and challenges then, to some extent, you yourself are being questioned in terms of whether your lifestyle is morally legitimate or not. So it is very natural for people to want to live in denial when they are hooked on something, on a certain lifestyle, on certain products; and as our world becomes a more consumerist world and people consume more, then, paradoxically, their need to deny the consequences of their own lifestyle becomes even greater.
We can see actually that this was the situation in the early days when we had tried to combat the dangers and the damage done by smoking. Initially there was strong denial and smoking was continuously increasing exponentially. It took a while before the full impact of what smoking means started to permeate society’s consciousness. And, today, we can say we have been pretty successful in combating smoking – not enough – there are still those who are polluting themselves and their environment by smoking, but more or less we can say that internationally it’s been a successful campaign against smoking. We are now, I believe, at the beginning of a tipping point with regards to dietary lifestyles. You can see an incredible increase of vegetarianism and of veganism in our world. The implications and the consequences of our lifestyle are beginning to permeate public consciousness. But paradoxically, the tipping point comes at the moment of where consumption is actually at its highest because people are so hooked on the intensity of that lifestyle and because material affluence facilitates such consumption with its terrible consequences.
How does this all impact human health?
The conditions today under which animals are maintained and are treated and prepared for slaughter in the livestock industry involves pumping them with antibiotics and with hormones and these are retained within the flesh of the animals, multiplied so many times over because it’s the end of the food chain. And for these then to be absorbed into the human person is self-destructive. It is a complete desecration of the teaching in Deuteronomy that “you must take good care of yourselves” which Maimonides understands to be any aspect of your health and of your well-being you have to be able to be concerned about. So today, even on a health basis, the question of consumption of animal livestock products is a serious challenge to this obligation to live a healthy life.
About 70% of grains in the US are fed to animals whilst 11% of the global population is malnourished. How does that grain which people feed animals relate to distributive justice?
The disproportionate use of animal food that is provided to livestock in order to provide for human consumption of animal products is not only a desecration of the prohibition against waste, Bal Taschit, but it is also in conflict with our obligations and responsibilities to care for other human beings and to be able to provide for their well-being. It is a scandal that there are millions dying all the time in our world when we have the resources to be able to feed them. This can’t just be a question of public policy.
An enormous amount of grain is used in order to produce animal flesh for public consumption. In addition to 70% of grain which is used to produce the pound of flesh, there’s the use of water and arable land at least 10 times of which could be used to provide for the needs of the hungry in the world. And it’s a scandal… There is enough food in our world to feed everybody. It’s just not distributed in a fair way, and part of that problem is the lifestyle that we in the West are leading that is the result of the consumption of animal products. Leading a plant-based lifestyle is the only lifestyle today that is consistent with our responsibilities to be able to provide for the needs for all human beings on this planet.
Is the vegan system of manufacturing of food the only ethical one?
I told you the story of how I started my journey towards a vegan diet, through having been on the Beit Din, on the court, in Cape Town and having visited the slaughter houses. I did notice when I compared the Jewish slaughter to the general slaughter, that Jewish slaughter at least involved giving the animal some sort of personal attention. It was definitely better than what I saw in a general slaughter house which might have been more aesthetic, but was actually more barbaric. Why? Because in a general slaughter house, animals are pushed in to the slaughter assembly line at such a rate to meet public demand that the nodes for the electrocution (which hang down from the ceiling and that a worker puts on the animal to stun it before it is actually poleaxed) are not always truly hitting the animal and stunning it effectively. That is just one illustration of the barbarity which is simply a consequence of the demand and the numbers of animals that have to be slaughtered in order to meet this human indulgence. Now that principle goes right across the board in livestock production.
It is not possible today to produce for the demand in society for animal products in a manner that is compassionate, in a manner that respects the animal. Masses of animals are therefore pushed into this assembly line of slaughter. The process in which these animals are maintained, and certainly the way in which they are taken to slaughter, is without any compassion or consideration for the well-being of animals. So all the Jewish teachings about how you must ensure that the animal is treated compassionately, how the slaughter must be in the most compassionate manner, are actually desecrated today. And this applies to the area of egg production, the dairy industry; the conditions in which the animals are treated are so barbaric as they never were, even before, that today it is not possible to be able to get your products on a commercial basis, in a manner that is consistent with Jewish teaching. It therefore demands of us to adopt a plant based diet to be consistent with what the ideals of kashrut are all about.
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