Liberals are having it both ways right now. It’s nuts to suggest Joe Biden has a plan to take away your meat. But the eco-lefties really want to limit everyone’s meat intake, especially beef. On Saturday night’s All Things Considered, NPR host Michel Martin brought on New York Times columnist and food writer Mark Bittman for an interview headlined “Food World Ramps Up The War On Meat.”
Martin began by explaining “It was falsely suggested multiple times on Fox News and by some Republican members of Congress that President Biden’s climate plan will limit red meat eating in order to curb greenhouse gas emissions.” But that doesn’t mean the left isn’t eager for a meat limit.
Bittman insisted “it is safe to say that agriculture in general and animal production in particular — and most particularly beef — so sort of in that cascading order are huge contributors to climate change. And the production of beef alone generates around — and a real broad around — 10 percent of our total greenhouse gases.”
Then Martin bizarrely told Bittman “you’re not an ideologue on this point, if I can sort of put it that way.” Oh, but he is. He favorably cited the leftist Seventies book Diet For a Small Planet. When she asked about the controversy over the food site Epicurious declaring it won’t post any new beef recipes, Bittman came to their defense:
BITTMAN: There’s no reason to be critical of it, I mean, no reason at all. First of all, if anyone invents a beef recipe that doesn’t already exist, kudos to them because that’s a really hard thing to do. Second of all, they’re not saying we’re not publishing beef recipes. They’re saying we’re not publishing new beef recipes. They have thousands in their archive.
Third, it’s brought the issue a lot of attention. Here we are talking about it. It’s a great move by them. Look. Joe Biden doesn’t have the power to get us to stop eating meat, obviously. But we do need to eat less meat for a variety of reasons, and that is the trend. It’s going to be the trend. We’re going to be eating less meat 50 years from now than we do now. It’s to everyone’s benefit. So the fact that we’re talking about it, the fact that people are doing it – these are good things.
Martin asked why Epicurious drew such controversy:
MARTIN: Is there something about beef that’s connected to feeling affluent or something? What is it?
BITTMAN: I think it’s more that there’s something about beef that’s connected to the same kind of rights that we associate with guns. I think it’s just — people – there are people who don’t want government to govern, to make decisions that are beneficial for all of us like reducing the number of guns in the United States would be a good thing. Reducing the amount of meat that we eat in the United States would be a good thing.
But Bittman isn’t an ideologue?? Once again, All Things Considered only considered interviewing leftists who don’t like meat-eaters. The meat-lovers didn’t get a rebuttal.