Eating Bison May Have Saved Them
“…bison are flourishing again because they have the evolutionary advantage of tasting good and having survived to a time when we all need to eat leaner. We win, and bison win. Of course, the individual bison we eat lose, but the nature of the paradox is that most never would have a chance at life at all if we didn’t provide a reason for their husbandry. Vegetarians may argue that no life is better than one cut short at slaughter, but in terms of maximizing their genetic expression, Bison bison would have to disagree.
Plus, there’s another reason to eat bison: doing so is good for the planet. Bison are leaner than cattle because they are still wild animals who range and eat grass; they do not tolerate confinement well, and so they cannot be fattened the way we do cattle, which we have bred to eat rich corn mixtures their entire adult lives. Growing corn to feed cattle costs the nation dearly in terms of pesticide and fertilizer runoff. The pollution and inhumanity of the confinement-feedlot beef system make it one of postwar America’s biggest ecological blunders.
I know I eat buffalo for a number of reasons, mostly because buffalo do have a smaller footprint on the ecology than beef, but also because there are buffalo ranches right here and I can buy from ranchers I can meet and see, and whose ranches I can visit.
I’ve known for a long time that those animals humans consider useful or endearing are more likely to proliferate than those we don’t know about or don’t like -with the exception of fleas and cockroaches, which seem to proliferate no matter what.
What I’d like to see happen is for humans to take into our stewardship not just the critters we like, but all the creatures on Earth. Of course, to make room for all those animals and plants, we’d have reduce our own footprint by voluntarily reducing our own burgeoning numbers.
Ebonypearl 