LSAT Logic, the Environment, and Vegetarianism

LSAT Blog reader Emily wrote the following LSAT-style analysis of a real-world situation. Please share your questions for her, and thank her for sharing her analysis, in the comments!

***

I based the following on an article titled: Becoming Vegetarian Can Harm The Environment.

The study in question claims that "A switch from beef and milk to highly refined livestock product analogues such as tofu could actually increase the quantity of arable land needed to supply the UK." This statement is not entirely well summarized by the title of the article, "Becoming vegetarian 'can harm the environment". After reading through the clip, the limitations of the study become clear, and the notion that vegetarianism is more detrimental to the environment than eating as an omnivore appears more and more fallacious.

The important question that this article highlights, and that is probably what draws most people to read it after noticing the title, is about whether modern vegetarianism is actually good for the environment or not. Can vegetarianism harm the environment? Despite leading us to believe otherwise, that is not a question that can be answered by this study. Several dubious assumptions are implicitly made in drawing this specific title from the research that is presented.

For one, the study deals exclusively with British interests. Collins claims that eating processed analogues can harm the environment, yet from what we read we see that the research is very particular to qualities of the United Kingdom. The study compares the pro's and con's of raising livestock for meat in Britain, and in importing processed vegetarian alternatives. Given that Britain is an island, the environmental "con" of importing goods is much weightier than it would probably be in most other countries. It is thus misleading to generalize geographically about the environmental costs of importing food.

It is also wrong to generalize based on the idea that meat is produced more responsibly domestically. If Collins is to claim that replacing meat with tofu can be environmentally irresponsible, he should note that if you live in a country where farming practices are poor (unlike the United Kingdom) then the reverse may be true.

But neither of these ideas would really be relevant in the end, because it makes no sense for meat production to shift to less regulated countries when more people become vegetarian. If the British farming industry suffered, it would be because demand was reduced, not because people were buying more imported meat. In addition, there is no explanation for why crops like soybeans would have to be produced abroad rather than at home, were the number of vegetarians to increase in Britain.

Extending this initial claim beyond the borders of Britain shows a myriad of other discrepancies in logic. It would be one thing for the whole population of Britain to become vegetarian. Perhaps more land would be cleared elsewhere for other crops if Britain could not sustain its own tofu industry.

Yet were the logic to be applied on a global scale, the results would be different. There is no clear comparison of how many acres of land it takes to produce a unit of tofu compared to a unit of beef, but it seems unlikely that beef would require less land. Therefore, the claim that replacing meat with meat analogues uses more land in general may be wrong. Additionally, if meat eaters around the world were replaced with vegetarians, there is no evidence here that the net amount of transportation required for food distribution would increase. Presumably food would need to travel from one place to another either way, even if those pathways were sometimes reversed or shifted.

Lastly and most crucially, Collins makes the assumption that transitioning from eating meat to not eating meat means replacing animal products with processed analogues on a 1:1 basis. He does not explain whether the trade-off is made by weight, volume, calorie, etc., but regardless of the conversion factor it is a faulty assumption.

Nowhere in this research, to my knowledge, does it say that residents of the United Kingdom eat an equivalent amount of analogue products to their previous animal consumption when they become vegetarian. Based on the study, the ONLY way that vegetarianism could potentially harm the environment is if people consume products like tofu at a rate equal to or higher than their past meat consumption, and this seems to be the most far-fetched assumption yet made.

The research is presented by Collins in a way that first traps the eye and leads one to think that broader and better substantiated claims are being made in what is about to be discussed. Unfortunately, while the research itself appears sound, it is not the wide-sweeping blow to vegetarianism that some may have hoped for. Interesting study, but extremely difficult to generalize from.

Photo by texhex