Jim Zeigler: Progressives push to limit your steaks and burgers in ‘War on Beef’

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Jim ZeiglerI am naming the newest attempt to control your life the “War on Beef.”

To me, this newest meddling in other people’s lives is proof positive that the international environmental agenda is more about controlling people than about avoiding environmental damage.

It is almost unbelievable. Progressives have decided that cows damage the environment. Ten years ago, they complained about cow flatulence – cows passing gas, thereby damaging the ozone layer. Now, it is a broader condemnation of cows. They have decided that cows are “greenhouse-gas-intensive.” Consumption of beef must drop drastically to avoid an environmental catastrophe.

So-called progressives want you to stop enjoying your steaks and hamburgers.  Instead, they want you to:

  • Eat ”bleeding burgers” with no meat.  Why they name it this is as mysterious as their agenda.  “Bleeding”?
  • Eat blended burgers with only about 1/3 meat.
  • Switch to pork and chicken. I suppose pigs and chickens do not have as much flatulence and other effects on the atmosphere as cows, but I wonder who personally tested for this.
  • Eat veggie burgers. How that is different from their “bleeding burgers” remains a mystery.
  • Eat bug burgers.  No, this is not a joke.
  • Eat mealworm burgers.
  • Eat in vitro meat burgers from cows artificially grown in labs. (I guess cows do not pass gas indoors.) With artificial insemination of cows, they also eliminate the need for bulls, further protecting the environment.

Be on the lookout for attempts to put an environmental charge or tax on beef.  Be on the lookout for international agreements similar to the Paris Accords requiring signatory nations to limit their consumption of beef.

I have no problem with individuals who want to alter their own diets for environmental reasons – or whatever reasons. That is each individual’s choice.  But the activists do not stop with their own behaviors. They want the government to enforce their dietary restrictions on us all.

When they started a War on Beef, they “went to meddling.”

God put cows on earth for a reason – for the use and enjoyment of mankind, including beef and milk.  When you say this using the God word, progressives’ heads explode. So let me restate in a way that progressives can better understand: Mother Nature put cows on earth for a reason – for the use and enjoyment of mankind, including beef and milk. (With some progressives, you cannot talk in terms of God doing anything. But saying “Mother Nature” did it is apparently okay.)

Think this is a false alarm? Think that a cow tax and beef credits cannot advance like carbon taxes and credits?  Read this article in which CNN (naturally) explains the War on Beef in all positive terms — as if it is reasonable, thoughtful, and is here, now.  Not later.

I am not buying it. I am buying my steaks and burgers. And milk. CNN and the progressives did not talk as much about limiting milk.  If you are going after cows, you are also fighting the major source of milk.

I refuse to cooperate with the War on Beef.

I have coined a slogan, maybe even a song, for the people’s battle to save beef:

When they’re runnin’ down ol’ Bessie,
They’re walkin’ on the fightin’ side of me.

Jim Zeigler is the State Auditor of Alabama. He was previously an investigative reporter.