Meating Need
Don’t set an Amazonian ranch hand
To cut or burn the rain forest for beef,
As animal husbandry is the thief
Of earth. Pork and mutton degrade the land
No matter how organically they’re farmed.
Then, however well-tended, there must be
The trauma of the slaughterhouse, To see
A grassy grazing meadow is to be charmed
By an idyll, concealing the bolt gun
And letting blade. Also, there’s the methane.
Yet the world can be fed all its protein
Once precision fermentation’s begun,
And three quarters of farmland reconciled
To a natural carbon reserving wild.
D. A.