The ecology of meat (III).

• Author: Friedrich, Bruce
• Position: On the Ecology of Meat, GM Crops, and the Embodied Energy in a Car - Letter to the Editor

I am responding to Mark Muller's letter defending "sustainable" ("environmentally appropriate") animal killing, and Mindy Pennybacker's "Green Guidance" column (September/October). The sad thing is that people of good will continue to use the idea that there are places where raising and killing animals is part of a sustainable system, to defend their own support for current and horrifically cruel factory farms.

Even leaving aside the factory farm, the fact is that raising animals for food in the United States (where most readers live) is unnecessary at best, which means that consumers of grass-fed beef and products from so-called sustainable farms are causing animals to be raised and killed for nothing but a palate preference. Even those so-called sustainable farms require far more water, land, fossil...