Still More Bull!

[Guest guest]

Still More Bull!

 

By T. Colin Campbell, Ph.D.

 

EXTRA! EXTRA! According to Reuters News Agency, the World Bank has just

" approved a $93.5 million loan to help nearly 140,000 Chinese farmers raise

cattle in addition to their normal crops. " When added to matching funds from

other sources, a total of about $200 million, this represents about $1400

invested per farmer to increase his annual income $50-$200, using World Bank

figures for calculation. And that's not all! China will also get 130 new cattle

feedlots and employment for about an extra 3000 workers.

 

This would appear to be a great project, for it fits in nicely within the World

Bank's chief mission of alleviating poverty for the poor. And here's a side

benefit, according to a World Bank internal document. " Beef has traditionally

been a luxury meat [in China], consumed only during festival days, but the

advent of the hotel-restaurant-institutional segment and self-service chain

grocery stores offering a variety of chilled or frozen meat cuts is greatly

assisting the consumer acceptance of beef in relation to other meats. " In other

words, while alleviating poverty, these funds will make it possible to service

the fast food chains such as McDonald's.

 

How I wish this were only a crude joke, but it is not! I know first hand much of

this story because I was invited by a couple brave staffers at The Bank to share

my views as well as the evidence from our comprehensive nationwide diet and

health study in China on whether such a decision made sense, especially whether

it made health sense for the Chinese. And there were others who also added their

views not only on the health consequences but also on the likely environmental

impact of this project. After two lectures, a paper summarizing the evidence

from our China study, commentaries on the presentations of others, considerable

correspondence, still earlier lectures at The Bank and correspondence sent to

World Bank President James Wolfensohn, we failed to get the decision that we

thought made eminently more sense. We did not believe that spending this much

money to encourage the production of a very expensive food, only then to produce

very expensive diseases, was in the best interest of anyone except those in the

trade. And ultimately, as the industry grows, the long- range benefits are

likely to accrue even more to those outside of China than to those from within,

given the increasing need for imported grain to feed the cattle.

 

I confess that my original hopes for a better decision were slim, but I

nonetheless thought there might have been substantially more serious discourse

with the decision makers themselves before the decision was made. With all due

respect to the sincere efforts and eloquence of the few brave souls at The Bank

who sought and arranged what discourse did take place, it became abundantly

clear to me that those who make the really critical and final decisions will

arrogantly avoid the relevant evidence if it does not suit their alternative

agenda. The die was probably cast from the outset and any evidence to the

contrary was to be ignored, no matter how persuasive it might have been.

 

It is, of course, true that in China and like elsewhere, there are many policy

makers who sincerely believe that an improved market for beef production and

consumption is in their country's best interests. There also is the vast

majority of Chinese citizenry who will behave just like we in the West did

during a similar phase of our history. When given the economic means to do so,

they, like us, will consume beef and other animal based foods simply for its

taste. Moreover, they, like us, will have been indoctrinated with the

presumption, so long exported from the Judeo-Christian world, that eating beef

is a sign of civilization, a birthright, and an indication of wealth, status and

power. An argument that I have heard on more than one occasion from my Chinese

friends is that if beef consumption helped to spur our " civilization " , why then

could they not enjoy the same.

 

I could spend the rest of this editorial summarizing the evidence, but I prefer

to take a different path. The evidence has been documented in many major, but

usually conservative, expert panel reports and original investigations in

peer-reviewed science journals. I also briefly share some of this evidence in

two companion pieces that also was shared with the Bank. Instead, I will speak

to another view, namely this having to do with whether or not people really want

to consider the evidence that may be contrary to their own interests. And,

except for a few individuals, this World Bank experience illustrates the latter

more than the former.

 

For example, there is something very profound and very personal about the

question of whether to be, or not to be, a carnivore (There is no philosophical

difference between a carnivore and an omnivore, a word we generally find to be

more comfortable - carnivores just don't like vegetables and fruit). People

whose minds are imprisoned within the Judeo-Christian worldview of consuming the

juices, flesh and organs of animals seem to have a very difficult time even

imagining evidence to the contrary. Either they prefer to be relatively

oblivious to the health evidence against these products or, at times, to be

rather hostile to the messengers of such evidence.

 

Permit me to illustrate. In an internal e-mail correspondence at The Bank, a

senior Bank staffer responsible for the beef cattle project, wrote the

following, when asked about potential problems associated with the consumption

of animal-based foods. His response was circulated AFTER my initial seminar and

AFTER I had prepared a paper for distribution; thus I suspect that he was, to

some degree, belatedly replying to my seminar views as well as to those who

supported these views.

 

" Thank you for your memo. Briefly, the answer is no, we haven't taken 'the

serious problems associated with animal-based foods into account.' I don't think

we will do so, either, at least not until China's dietary patterns look a lot

more like Western ones, because to do so could easily be taken as a fairly

extreme form of paternalism or worse. "

 

" To most people in the world, eating foods they like is part of what is called

'living.' Not doing so is part of what is called 'poverty.' Choosing what to eat

is part of what is called 'freedom.' The beauty of prosperity is that it expands

the zone of choice, a zone of freedom perhaps even more highly valued in Chinese

culture than ours. The Chinese masses, with a bit of money, are also consuming

much more tobacco, alcohol, sugar, oils, motorcycles, and other probably

unhealthy commodities than ever before. But, frankly, they seem much happier

than even 10 years ago. When you read the details of the grisly famine of

1959-61, imposed on them by another group of people who knew what was best for

them, perhaps they can be excused a bit of happiness.

 

[This] project is aimed at permitting several hundred thousand desperately poor

peasants to profit by improved husbandry of beef cattle. Our mission is

eradication of poverty in China. "

 

This diatribe needs no further elaboration; it speaks volumes for itself.

Nonetheless, following this and other 'dialogue' of a similar nature, we were

led to believe during the Spring of 1998 that the project had been dismantled

and that we had been persuasive in our arguments against its funding. However,

during the summer of 1999, we got word that it was being resurrected, if indeed

it was ever tabled. It was then that a few Bank and IFC individuals who hoped to

air some of the concerns organized a public symposium. Five speakers, including

myself, were invited, including a senior Bank staffer quite familiar with, and

presumably supportive of the proposal. It was during the panel discussion

following the presentations that I first learned from my fellow Bank panelist of

the prevailing view amongst the project advocates within the Bank. We learned,

quite surprisingly, that the well-known evidence supporting the health value of

a plant-based diet was not sufficiently persuasive to these folks. Of course,

these same folks did not attend the symposium, thus suggesting that they really

had little or no interest in the evidence.

 

What are these project advocates thinking, especially after so many national and

international reports from expert panels over the past quarter century have

concluded that we should be shifting to a plant based diet? And what about the

evidence from rural China itself, the most comprehensive survey of any country,

showing a highly significant association between the consumption of even small

amounts of animal based foods and increasing prevalence of heart disease,

cancer, and similar diseases so common here in the West?

 

For me, being convinced of the evidence in favor of a plant-based diet is not

about the evidence or the facts. Instead, it is about issues of a very different

kind. Ignorance I can tolerate, for it means that we have failed to adequately

articulate the evidence. Personal preference in the face of actually knowing the

evidence also is tolerable, for who am I to tell others what to eat? But

arrogance, that state of mind which aggressively determines important policies

for the public at large while intentionally avoiding the evidence, is a very

different matter. It is not acceptable! Such arrogant behavior, for example, is

exactly that which inflames public anger against the World Trade Organization.

 

Decisions of this sort are not new, of course. Please be assured that I am not

quite that naïve. Like so many have said before, those who make the golden rules

are the very same ones who have the gold. Such behavior has gone on for a very

long time and it is not expected to be suspended any time soon. The arguments

against the consumption of animal based foods, on grounds of ill health, is very

old indeed. Long before the advent of the Western World's Judeo-Christian view

emerged, there were the views of the ancient Greek philosophers who already knew

the health consequences of consuming such food.

 

Socrates, according to the writings of Plato in " The Republic " , wondered about

the consequences of people becoming affluent, especially as they moved to urban

centers. He claimed that there would be a need for " great quantities of all

kinds of cattle for those who wish to eat them " . He then went on to rhetorically

ask, " shall we not experience the need for medical men to a much greater extent

under this than under the former [dietary] regime? " He also was far ahead of his

time when he wondered how it would be possible to get the extra land for

producing cattle meat, when compared with the land required to produce the same

amount of food from plant material. Why was Socrates, and others even before

him, 2500 years ago, so smart while we, eons later, are so dumb? It seems that

we have learned far more how to manipulate information, and far less how to

understand and to share information.

 

Although my cynicism remains relatively intact, I could be persuaded that maybe

we are about to enter a new and more promising age. Perhaps, we could use these

rapidly emerging and powerful information technologies to spread the word

ourselves, without going through the jungle of bureaucracy heretofore controlled

by the few for the few. But--and this is very important--we also must figure out

ways to promote information that is articulate, sincere, and reliable if we will

ever be able to develop this desperately needed new world view.

 

In summary, this IS NOT a rich country - poor country issue. Nor does it

represent a paternalistic attitude. If anything, it is the opposite. Developing

a livestock industry in a country that can ill afford the obvious future medical

and environmental costs, along with the acreage and imported grain [from rich

countries?] needed for cattle raising, will only create an inequitable

distribution of goods and services, thus a paternalism and dependence of a

different kind. No, this is about the rich and powerful arrogating to themselves

the important decisions of a society as a whole, wherever it occurs and whomever

it involves.

 

http://www.newcenturynutrition.com/NCN/webzine/lead.shtml

 

See also T. Colin Campbell's letter:

http://www.newcenturynutrition.com/NCN/webzine/letter.shtml

 

The Cornell-Oxford-China Nutrition project, conducted in mainland China and

Taiwan, is a massive survey of over 10,000 families designed to study diet,

lifestyle, and disease across the far reaches of rural China. By investigating

simultaneously more diseases and more dietary characteristics than any other

study to date, the project has generated the most comprehensive database in the

world on the multiple causes of disease.

http://www.newcenturynutrition.com/NCN/china_project.shtml

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