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Food

The Texas Ag Commissioner Has a Bone to Pick with Meatless Monday

The animal agriculture industry is pulling out all the stops to try to convince schools and parents that kids should be wolfing down cheeseburgers every day of the week.
Hilary Pollack
Los Angeles, US

Don't believe the animal protein armageddon promised by mythical piles of off-menu meat: Americans are actually eating less beef than their grandparents did, as beef consumption has been on a quiet decline since it peaked in 1976. The milk industry, too, is in a bona fide "crisis" as we increasingly opt for soy and almond milk.

Basically, it's not a great time to be a cattle rancher. And Texas Agricultural Commissioner Todd Staples knows this.

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Last Sunday, Staples wrote an editorial for the Austin American-Statesman titled "Keep 'Meatless Mondays' campaign out of schools." It was a response to the fact that a number of Texas school districts in the Austin and Houston metropolitan areas—most recently, the Dripping Springs Independent School District—have adopted the practice of serving vegetarian meals in their cafeterias on Mondays. (Students are welcome to bring lunch from home if they prefer to eat meat.) In the editorial, Staples dismisses Meatless Mondays as an "activist movement" that ultimately "seeks to eliminate meat from Americans' diets seven days a week." He also argues that "meat is a critical part of a balanced diet" and "to deprive [children] of a meat-based protein during school lunch is most likely depriving them of their only source of protein for the day."

During a recent appearance on Fox News, Staples made his case for why there shouldn't be one day a week in which children aren't offered hot dogs, cheeseburgers, and chicken tenders by their educational institution. "We know that a balanced diet is what children need," he said. "And the people that are really pushing this are saying that having Meatless Monday options is somehow a healthier option menu, and that it's somehow better for the environment." His message is consistent: that children are better off eating meat every single day.

The Meatless Mondays campaign does focus on the supposed health benefits of cutting back meat consumption. "Our message of 'one day a week, cut out meat' is a way for individuals to do something good for themselves and for the planet," the campaign states on its website. But when Staples appeared on Fox & Friends, he attributed the spread of the program to "anti-animal agricultural activists…who are trying to blame animals for some of our environmental problems," and insists that "transportation is much worse [for the environment] than any kind of ag production."

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I asked Bryan Black, the director of communications for the Texas Department of Agriculture, to clarify Staples' stance. "This isn't a meat-versus-vegetable debate. This is really a choice-versus-restriction discussion," he said. "The commissioner would be leading the same charge if a school took fruits and vegetables off the menu. We just want to make sure that children have choices and parents have choices. So absolutely, have a vegetarian option. But also have a meat option as well."

Black also suggested that the Meatless Monday agenda isn't crystal clear. "We believe that there are activists behind it," he said. "We believe that they want to claim that raising livestock hurts the environment. And number two, they want to take out meat, not just on Mondays but every day."

But what's so wrong with offering tofu, seitan, beans, or legumes as a protein source? "The commissioner wants to make sure that students and parents have a [meat] option every time that they go in a cafeteria," he reiterated. "Absolutely, if folks want to have a vegetarian option that's great. But there needs to be a meat option as well—five days a week."

I asked him if Staples truly believed that there was no benefit whatsoever, for health or for the environment, to eat meat-free one day per week. "The op-ed speaks to that," he replied.

But recent research doesn't agree with Staples. On the environmental front, a 2006 UN report determined that industrial cattle-rearing actually produces more greenhouse gas emissions than transportation, and that the livestock industry is "among the most damaging sectors to the earth's increasingly scarce water resources," with its by-product cocktail of animal waste pollution, antibiotics and growth hormones, production chemicals, and feed-crop pesticides. And it turns out that eating less meat, even as an individual, can have a measurable impact on the environment. The Journal of Environmental Science and Technology found in 2008 that "shifting less than one day per week's worth of calories from red meat and dairy products to chicken, fish, eggs, or a vegetable-based diet achieves more [greenhouse gas] reduction than buying all locally sourced food."

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That's precisely what some Texas school districts are trying to do by implementing a weekly meat-free day. Dale Whitaker, the director of communications for the Dripping Springs Independent School District, stands by the move. "Students can receive adequate nutrition, protein, and essential amino acids from both animal and plant sources," he told me over email. "In recent years, Dripping Springs Independent School District has had more requests from students and parents for both vegetarian and vegan menu choices."

But schools are only the latest battle ground for Meatless Mondays, and Staples is hardly the first agriculture bigwig to take issue with the campaign. In 2012, the National Cattleman's Beef Association openly condemned an internal memo issued by the USDA that suggested participating in Meatless Mondays to reduce one's carbon footprint, and the USDA responded by redacting its statement after realizing that it had sent the beef industry and Republican legislators into "an uproar." Senator Chuck Grassley of Iowa tweeted that he would "eat more meat on Monday to compensate for stupid USDA recommendation." Fellow Iowan representative Steve King followed suit by tweeting that he would "have double rib-eye Mondays instead."

Staples, a former rancher who has received $116,000 in campaign contributions from beef and ranching groups over the past four years, referred to the USDA memo as "treasonous."

It would be hard to pinpoint a single reason for America's collective shift away from beef, but some might say that maybe we're starting to wise up just a little, to know better than to eat double cheeseburgers for breakfast, lunch, and dinner and expect great results for our planet or our health. A decade or two ago, environmental groups and nutrition experts saw study after study painting a picture that fruits and vegetables are pretty great; bologna and chicken-fried steak, maybe bad in large quantities. The public no longer seems to care whether we've "got milk?" or even where the beef is, because we know that we have more options.

Staples is likely less worried that kids will go hungry from eating bean and cheese burritos one day a week, and more concerned that they'll like them.