Cowspiracy: The Sustainability Secret Page #7

...or are you gonna sell her off again

to another dairy, or into the beef industry?

There's very few places on this planet

that have this type of environment.

But the demand on dairy-based protein

in the world is only gonna increase.

And there's not enough land

on the planet...

...to do this type of dairying

around the world.

It's just the environment is not

gonna be that way. The land's not there.

So I guess on a global scale...

...the conclusion would be

dairy's not sustainable.

Unless we start digging up houses

and putting pastures back.

And the only way to start digging up houses

and development is to have less people.

But we only know that the population

is gonna continue to grow.

So that means more

commercial dairying, I'm sure.

Either that or somehow

lower demand by the people?

Yeah, or some other product's

gonna take its place.

We see there are all sorts

of soy milks and almond milk...

...and a lot of other products

that are coming out.

And different blends, you know,

where you take juices and proteins.

I think you'll see a lot more of that.

He was right.

How could cows' milk be sustainable?

For one gallon of milk, it takes upwards

of 1000 gallons of water to produce.

Doing research

on grass-fed livestock...

...I kept coming across

the work of Allan Savory.

Almost a third of the planet's land

is becoming desert...

...with the vast majority

due to livestock grazing.

Savory claims that the best way

to reverse this desertification...

...is to actually graze more animals.

This reminded me of Oceana saying

the best way to help fish is to eat fish.

This is the same man...

...during the 1950s

working as a research officer...

...for the Game Department

of what is now Zimbabwe...

...came up with a theory,

in spite of scientific evidence...

...that actually elephants were

the cause of desertification there.

And his solution was convincing

the government to kill 40,000 elephants.

Yet after 14years of relentless slaughter,

the conditions only got worse.

His theory was wrong.

The culling finally ended...

...but not until tens of thousands

of elephants and their families were killed.

This is not someone I would ever

take ecological advice from.

It turns out the cattle industry

is having the same effect...

...on wildlife in the United States.

The government has been

rounding up horses en masse.

We now have more wild horses and

burros in government holding facilities...

Fifty-thousand wild horses and burros.

...Than we have free on the range.

Basically you have ranchers

who get to graze on our public lands...

...for a fraction of the going rate.

They're getting this huge tax subsidy.

It's about one-fifteenth of the going rate.

And the Bureau of Land Management

has to say:

"How much forage and water

is on the land?"

And then they divvy it up.

They give so much to the cows,

so much to, you know, "wildlife"...

...and so much to

the wild horses and burros.

And what we see is the lion's share

of the forage and water...

...is going to the livestock industry.

And then they scapegoat

the horses and burros and say:

"Oh, there are too many horses

and burros. Let's remove them."

I always tell people, wild horses

and burros are just one of the victims...

...of the management of our public lands

for livestock...

...because we also see

the predator-killing going on.

We know wolves are now being targeted

by ranchers, to get rid of wolves.

USDA has aircraft, and all they do

is aerial gunning of predators.

All a rancher does is call up

and say, "I've got coyote here."

They'll come over and shoot the coyote.

Or they'll shoot the mountain lion

or the bobcat.

And this is all for ranching.

In Washington State, after cattle

were found to be attacked...

...on public lands

where they were grazing under permit...

...Washington State decided to

kill the entire Wedge pack of wolves.

And those wolves were not introduced.

They had in-migrated from Canada.

But they're no longer there.

And it starts at the local level,

with the Bureau of Land Managements...

...but then it goes all the way

to Congress.

And we see Congress willing to allow...

...this type of mismanagement

of our public lands to continue.

It is the insistence of,

and the lobbying power of...

...the animal agriculture industry...

...that continues to see wolves killed...

...continues to see an insistence

that predators be maintained...

...at a low level

that does not benefit ecosystems.

I've seen so many pieces of land, looked

at so many environmental assessments...

...from the

Bureau of Land Management...

...where they say the range lands

are not meeting standards.

And they say, straight-up,

livestock grazing...

...is a cause for

not meeting range standards.

And yet they will continue

to allow livestock grazing.

They're at the very core

of making sure...

...that cougars are treed by hounds...

...and that wolf packs are run down...

...and that hunting seasons

are opened up year-round...

...and that traps are set

so that they can suffer.

If anyone cares about wild horses

and wildlife and public lands...

...and the environment,

you can't ignore the livestock...

The negative impact that livestock grazing

is having on our public lands in the West.

I've added up the costs

of animal food production...

...that the producers don't

actually bear themselves.

These are the hidden costs

or the externalized costs...

...that they impose on society.

And those are in categories like

health care, environmental damage...

...subsidies, damage to fisheries,

and even cruelty.

If you take those externalized costs,

which are about $414 billion...

...if the meat and dairy industries were

required to internalize those costs...

...if they had to bear

those costs themselves...

...the costs of the retail prices

of meat and dairy would sky rocket.

So a$5 carton of eggs would go to $13.

A $4 Big Mac would go to $11.

The problem with these externalized costs

being imposed on society...

...is that whether you eat meat or not...

...whether you're an omnivore

oran herbivore...

...you are paying part of the costs

of somebody else's consumption.

So when somebody goes

into a McDonald's...

...and buys a Big Macfor$4...

...there's another$7 of costs

that's imposed on society.

I'm paying that. You're paying that,

whether you eat meat or not.

When you look at who's benefiting, and

who lobbied for this system of agriculture...

...it's the largest food producers

in the country...

...and the largest meat producers.

And once they become so

large and wealthy...

...then they can dictate the federal policies

around producing food...

...because they have

so much political power.

Was this why Al Gore,

even during his vice presidency...

...never addressed the issue

of animal agriculture...

...and failed to talk about it

in An Inconvenient Truth...

...or his organization,

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