So Miyun came up with the title "Gristle." And we then tried contacting a bunch of relative experts in their respective fields, or experts in their respective fields, to see if they would contribute chapters. And we got lucky because we ended up with a really interesting, eclectic, well-informed bunch of people who have all contributed amazing chapters about each respective aspect of the consequences of animal production.

Welcome to Vegetarian Elite for the second part of our special feature on multiplatinum musician Moby, and “Gristle,” a newly released book he co-edited with Miyun Park. Today, we will look further into this information-packed guide that has received a wide range of supporters, from celebrities, to doctors, to the ordinary consumer. Supreme Master Television interviewed Moby and asked him what he hopes readers will gain from reading “Gristle.”

The main message is for people to be more aware of the ramifications of animal production, specifically animal production on factory farms. So it’s a very factual book, we have 15 different experts in their respective fields, writing the different chapters. We’re just sort of presenting the facts and hopefully letting people make up their own minds.

The chapters and their authors include: Environment by Lauren Bush, Workers by Christine Chavez and Julie Chavez Rodriguez, Zoonotic Diseases by Dr. Michael Greger, Children’s Health by Sara Kubersky and Tom O’Hagan, Global Hunger by Frances Moore Lappé and Anna Lappé, Taxpayers by John Mackey, Climate Change by Danielle Nierenberg and Meredith Niles, Animals by Wayne Pacelle, and Communities by Paul and Phyllis Willis.

Present at the first stop of the book tour in Los Angeles, USA was two-time Canadian Ultramarathon champion, Ironman triathlete competitor, and vegan, Brendan Brazier, who wrote Gristle’s first chapter on Health.

When they asked me if I could contribute and write about health, I thought, “Well that’s a great opportunity and I’d love to spread a message that I feel very strongly about and feel as though it could really help a lot of people and animals and environmental issues, all kinds of things. So, I’m really, really proud to be a part of it.

Within this opening chapter are facts about meats, eggs, and dairy, as researched by the prestigious Harvard University in the US. For example, did you know that 90% of chicken flesh tested at retail is contaminated with E. coli and campylobacter from fecal matter? This statistic makes chicken the most common cause of food poisoning, affecting millions yearly. Just one bout of campylobacter can lead to an entire lifetime of irritable bowel syndrome.

Or did you know that the leading cause of seizures is from a brain parasite called Taenia solium, which is a tapeworm found in pork. The studies also found that a single infection of salmonella, often found in eggs and other contaminated meat products, can leave one with painful, chronic arthritis for the rest of their life. And did you know that mad cow disease, which can even be humanly contracted from eating farmed fish that was fed infected cow meat, can be fatal? In fact, the pathogens cannot be cooked out, even at temperatures high enough to melt lead.

One of the most popular topics of the evening was tax subsidies for the meat industry, a subject often shielded from public knowledge.

The meat lobby, the factory farming lobby is not so happy about our book and so they issued a statement saying something like, “Oh, it’s easy for rich rock stars to eat vegan, but what about the rest of us who can’t afford it?” I was like, “Well, remove the subsidies, create a level playing field, and a pound of beef without subsidies would on average costs about what, $25? A meal for 4 at McDonalds, if you removed all subsidies, would be about $75.”

Removing subsides from dairy production, from beef production, from tobacco production, why not? I mean, if we’re talking about lowering the money that we pay into federal taxes, why not cut out subsidies? Vegan food is inherently less expensive than animal food, it just is. It’s more efficient, and it’s less, inherently less expensive.

Food subsidies, in a very egregious way, distort the cost of food. It’s easy for me to talk about veganism because it’s a healthier way for people to live. And if you removed food subsidies it would be a less expensive way for people to live. I don’t know if people are talking about lowering their tax bill and employing free market economics, animal production would be a great place to start. Let a pound of beef cost what a pound of beef actually costs without tax payer subsidies.

Without much public knowledge, billions upon billions of tax dollars are pumped out to subsidize animal factories. A 2008 report from the Union on Concerned Scientists found that every year, US$1.16 billion goes to subsidize distributing and applying manure to fields, $1.5 – 3 billion in taxes is wasted on animal agriculture’s antibiotic overuse and public health impacts.

In total, over $30.1 billion in taxes has been used to fix manure lagoon leaks and paying for falling property values. In effect, unhealthy fast food meals cost dramatically less than nutrient rich organic fruits and vegetables.

Part of my childhood, I grew up in the inner city and we were very poor and so I know exactly what that’s like. We wouldn’t have access to fresh food, so we’d just go to McDonald’s or Burger King. McDonalds, and In & Out Burger, and Burger King, the reason they can charge nothing for their food, is because it’s so heavily subsidized by tax payers.

You remove the tax dollars or redistribute the subsides so the subsides go to promote healthy agriculture and go to promote food stuffs that actually don’t kill people. A family of four, a woman who’s just finished her shift and just wants to feed her kids, is she going to go to McDonald’s if it’s $75 to feed her kids a meal? No, she’ll go somewhere else, or he’ll go somewhere else.

So, I think it’s key to the idea of examining subsidies and removing subsidies from really nefarious agricultural practices that hurt the animals, that hurt the environment, that hurt the communities, and that hurt the consumers.

If you look to the plagues of the 20th and 21st centuries - heart disease, cancer, obesity, diabetes – these are all related to diet, and they’re all related to diet that is subsidized by our tax dollars. And so end the subsidies and shift the focus away from industries that create unhealthy food to industries that create healthy foods.

When we return from this brief message, we will examine one of the hottest and most relevant topics of our era – climate change and its worrisome effect on the environment and our existence. You are watching Vegetarian Elite on Supreme Master Television.

Welcome back to Vegetarian Elite. In our brief intermission, could you guess how many animals were slaughtered simply for consumption? In those brief two minutes, around 43,500 innocent animals had been killed in the US to be the meat on someone’s plate.

So they got this one page and it says, "Number of animals killed per year in the United States: it’s 11,429,831,400.” That’s in a year and that’s a huge number! But then you break it down, and then number of animals killed per day: 31,314,000. And then number of animals killed per minute in the United States: 21,750. One minute!

The book’s editors discussed several topics often unknown to the general public – the filthy and hazardous conditions of factory farms. One in four animal farm workers suffer from respiratory problems like asthma and bronchitis brought on by noxious gases including hydrogen sulfide, methane, and ammonia. Dust and harmful bacteria generated by decomposing manure can cause toxic, oxygen-deficient, and explosive atmospheres. To contain the toxic waste produced by the animals, factory farms make manure pits.

The National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, NIOSH, they are so concerned about these manure lagoons that are on so many factory farms, that they actually have a publication that’s called, quote “Preventing Deaths of Farm Workers in Manure Pits.” Human Rights Watch has determined that working in a slaughter plant, is the most dangerous factory job in the country.

And no one wants to live by a factory farm. Gristle’s chapter on Communities details the falling property values around factory farms. Pig factories in the US state of Iowa lowered by 40% the value of homes located within half a mile; homes within 1 mile were robbed 30% of their property values.

An undisputable part of the event’s discussion dealt with climate change and meat production. A report by the United Nations Food and Agriculture (FAO) underlined that livestock production is the number one cause of climate change, causing at least one-fifth of all greenhouse gas emissions.

It’s so strange that people will talk, be advocates for climate change, and still eat animal products and still support factory farming. I mean it is, not to indulge in too much hyperbole, but that’s the equivalent of like, working on heart disease and lung cancer and smoking cigarettes.

CNN and CBS legal analyst, and attorney Lisa Bloom, also present at Gristle’s book event, offered her comments on the direct connection between meat raising and environmental degradation.

Well I’m a lifelong vegetarian and I’m a vegan now. There’s no question that the number one contributor to climate change is livestock production. In fact, more than all of the cars, planes, trains, and boats in the world contributes to climate change.

And climate change is the biggest threat to my children’s generation. It’s probably going to be the biggest humanitarian crisis in world history. So I think we all have a moral imperative to do whatever we can to stop it. And the quickest way to make an effect is to immediately start on a vegan diet. It also happens to be delicious and good for your health so it’s a win-win.

But you know, the methane gas that cows produce which is a big contributor to climate change will very quickly disappear from the atmosphere if we stop producing livestock, versus the CO2 stays in the atmosphere for a very long time, so it just makes sense on so many levels to stop eating meat, to stop eating any kind of dairy products or eggs, from a climate change point of view and also to reduce animal suffering, and also for human health.

Towards the end of question and answer session with members of the audience, Moby offered a poignant notion for consideration.

There’s a fallacy called “The Is-Ought Fallacy,” which is to justify the continuation of a bad practice because it’s already in existence, which is what, how people use the argument they used to justify the slavery. Saying like, “Oh, well, slavery exists because it’s always existed.”

And one of the arguments before the Civil War, for the continuation of slavery was that it was the economic engine that ran the country. So people, a lot of people pre-Civil War said, “Yes, slavery is bad, but without it, what happens to our industry?” And unfortunately, from an ethical prospective, I don’t think that’s it’s enough a justification for continuing really nefarious practices.

In this particular case, animal products are an incredibly inefficient use of resources, specifically grains. It takes an awful lot of grain, let’s say, 20 pounds of grain to make 1 pound of beef; chicken is even less efficient. And so, if you’re making less animal products, it actually does more to solve the issue of global hunger, and more to solve the issue of keeping people fed in the inner city, because you have all this extra grain that can suddenly go to feed people directly, rather than fattening up cows and chickens.

Thank you for your company today on Vegetarian Elite. We would like to express our gratitude to Moby, Miyun Park, and all the contributors of this informative book. May your dedication as purveyors of truth bring awareness to the public about the harrowing effects of animal agriculture which jeopardizes all facets of life.

And now, please stay with us for Between Master and Disciples, coming up next on Supreme Master Television. May wisdom and compassion guide your life always.

Find out more about Moby and “Gristle” at Moby.com and Gristle-Book.com