Frank J. of IMAO is wise beyond his years:
Nothing says freedom like a drawer at work full of unused ketchup and hot sauce packets.
Meanwhile, McDonald's is often blamed for the destruction of rainforests:
How the rainforest is destroyed It's a simple concept really. McDonalds sells beef. Many beef suppliers get their beef from Central and South American countries. These cattle farms are usually placed on rainforest land that had been cut and cleared. The poor soil of the rainforest can only sustain life (grain for the cattle to fed upon) for up to a decade (although the mean is 2 years). The beef suppliers must move their farms every few years and consequently destroy more rainforest. Rarely does the forest regrow, even if replanted (which is even more rare).
On the same subject, Jonah Goldberg has the funniest post of the day:
EAT MEAT: SAVE THE RAINFORESTS [Jonah Goldberg ]The Brazil[]ian rainforest is being destroyed to make room for rapidly expanding soy farms. Damn those vegans.
From the linked article:
"It's clear that the soy boom is an important element of this in the southern Amazon and if ways are not found to minimize the impact of the inevitable spread of soy farming, it is difficult to see these figures falling in coming years," he said.
Here's the International Vegetarian Union's take:
Hamburger chains frequently get blamed for deforestation in Latin America. This isn't really true, and saying it over and over just makes us look bad, since knowledgable carnivores can just refute it.The situation is this: in Brazil in particular, but throughout the region, governments, attempting to repay crippling foreign loans, sell/give away land to 'developers' at fire sale prices as long as they do something to 'develop' the land.
The cheapest way to do this is to clear cut and use the land for cattle pasture.Thus cattle grazing is a main cause of deforestation.
The problems w/going from this to blaming the Whopper are: as the knowledgable meat-eater will tell you, most Latin American cattle have hoof and mouth disease and just waste land for the sake of wasting land because they can't be sold for beef.As a result, the Amazon is a net beef importer, and second, rainforest land is so poor that it's only suitable for grazing for a few years.
An excellent book on this and other rainforest issues is _The_Fate_of_the_Forest_ by Susana Hecht and Alexander Cockburn.Other sources indicate that, while South America IS a net importer of cattle (ignoring the huge quantities of processed meat product exported from Argentina and Brazil to the U.S.), central america does export live cattle to the U.S.
These cows are labeled as U.S. when they cross the country line.Another important aspect to this is that soya cattle feed, grown on rain forest plots, is exported in huge quantities to feed the cattle in other countries.
It is not possible to say that the beef burgers in the U.S. are not directly or indirectly responsible for the destruction of the rain forest.
It is not possible to say that the U.S. imports NO beef from the rain forest.Even if the cow herself has not been on rain forest land, the food that she has eaten most likely has.
(Emphasis added.)
Posted by oscarjr at June 27, 2003 08:10 PM | TrackBack