Why Humane Meat is an Oxymoron -
The Lyman v. Niman Debate

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Why Humane Meat is an Oxymoron -
The Lyman v. Niman Debate

By Michele Simon (reprinted with permission), Appetite for Profit


The subtitle of the event asked the question, Can you be a “good environmentalist” and still eat meat?

Full disclosure: this is not an objective review of what transpired. Having spent many years as a vegetarian and now mostly-vegan, I’ve thought long and hard about these issues and I’ve concluded there is no moral justification for eating meat. I decided to write this post because much of what I heard last night was not adequately addressed by the speakers and I want to add my own thoughts.


Ms. Niman certainly held her own when it came to the scientific and environmental arguments for sustainable meat, disputing Lyman’s claims that any type of animal farming harms the planet.



First, she said that humans have been eating meat for hundreds of thousands of years, so it’s a natural part of our diet. But humans have not been slaughtering cows and chickens for all that time. It’s certainly true that humans have eaten meat throughout our evolution and Niman was right to correct Lyman when he claimed that we are natural herbivores. Humans are omnivores, which simply means that we can eat both meat and plants, not that we have to. The dispute is really whether we should.


Next, Lyman and Niman disagreed on just how much destruction is caused by our conventional food system in general. Niman tried to argue that all food production causes harm to animals, presumably from various disruptive farming techniques. Lyman dismissed this argument by saying there’s a difference between nematodes and cows, to which Niman responded that she also meant wild animals.


Niman then proceeded to bury herself even deeper in the ethical morass by making the astonishing claim that animals suffer a lot in the wild, since it’s such a dangerous world out there, and aren’t they better off under the care of humane, kind ranchers like her husband? This sounded chillingly like the arguments for slavery. You know, blacks were really much better off getting free room and board and they weren’t treated all that badly were they?


Next, Niman had to explain the disconnect between how she herself is a vegetarian and her defense of humane meat. She said in many different ways that being vegetarian is a personal choice and that she does not try to persuade others to make the same decision. But isn’t factory farming also an ethical issue and isn’t she trying to persuade those to perpetuate those immoral business practices to stop doing so? Why do her ethics of caring about how animals are treated stop at the point of slaughter?

Moreover, it’s an ethical cop-out to claim that being vegetarian is a personal choice. Of course it is, but that doesn’t mean we cannot as a society recognize moral standards we expect others to follow. We do it all the time in many contexts. For example, when we say murder is wrong, rape is wrong, driving too fast is wrong, etc. You name your law, I will give you a moral argument that backs it up.


When asked if she ever bonded with an animal, she talked about a cow she and her husband loved so much because she was “special” and so they decided to give her a “pass” from slaughter. How lucky for that animal, and how unlucky for all the others on the ranch who apparently were not special enough.

During the Q&amp;A session, I tried to ask Niman how exactly sustainable meat could ever work on a mass scale considering that her husband’s own company failed to live up to difficult economic challenges. (See this article for how Niman Ranch was forced to merge last year with its largest investor due to economic hardship; Bill Niman himself left the business back in 2007 over ethical standards disputes.)

She bypassed the heart of the question, instead explaining how an academic report showed that it’s theoretically possible for humanely-raised, sustainable meat to feed the world, but only if people cut down on their meat consumption, a concept which she supports (on this point we agree).

But she failed to acknowledge that in our current profit-driven, capitalistic society, it’s extremely difficult for anyone who wants to run a business “ethically” to compete, again, as her own husband learned the hard way. Lyman tried to make this point by saying the system is rigged in favor of the large, unethical producers. This is exactly right, as the recent oil disaster also proves.

Moreover, I don’t hear any “eat less meat” messages coming out of the American Grassfed Association. Rather, you can learn at an upcoming meeting, about “growing your grassfed business.” And herein lies the rub. In order for any large business to succeed in our economy, it must grow or die. Growth and sustainability simply do not fit in the same sentence.



I am a public health lawyer whose first book, Appetite for Profit, exposed food industry lobbying and deceptive marketing.