Blame the cows and sheep?

Here's another contribution from Goleman's book: "Researchers in NZ mapped the genome of ruminant animals like sheep and cows to discover the genes that regulate flatulence, in order to develop a vaccine that will greatly reduce “flatulent emissions” from livestock  -which now account for 28% of human-related methane buildup. Meanwhile plant-breeding geneticists in the UK are attacking methane emissions via genetic improvements in digestibility, sugar content, and protein-breakdown enzymes in grazing grass." 

Methane is apparently a worse greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide and it's produced largely by sheep, cattle and growing rice. Something in the whole development of the planet's biodiversity did not prevent this from happening. Evolution did not think there is anything wrong with that methane production. But evolution never expected to have such huge numbers of cows and sheep roaming the planet because humans chose to domesticate them and start a mass production of these creatures in order to provide us with tons of meat and dairy products. Nor did evolution calculate on so much rice being grown to feed billions of hungry mouths. So to go and mess around with the animal make-up is a cruelty to me. Those animals can't argue or defend themselves, they are like slaves and we therefore think we can do with them how we please!? OMG! Why don't we change instead something in the human body that will stop us from say being so reproductive (reaching 7 billion people on Earth this year should do, shouldn't it) , or digest meat and milk. Seems creepy does not it?












Michael Pollan points out in his book In defense of food that way back in the days, like centuries ago, human beings were not able to consume dairy after they had been weaned off mummy's breast. It was evolution that eventually gave in and made dairy products digestible for the human body. Vegetarians live a healthier life anyway, so away with beef burgers and bacon. I'm not a vegetarian but once or twice a week a small piece of meat is all that ends up on our dinner plates. If we all ate less meat the number of cows and sheep would automatically go down, that's demand and supply logic. No need to get rid of them completely though. They've been around for at least as long as we have and they deserve it but in small numbers there's less harm, it's more sustainable. Therefore eat quality over quantity when it comes to meat.