Apparently, I need better watchdogs. While I spend a lot of time scouring the internet and combating online misconceptions and issues pertaining to agriculture and food production, I sometimes will miss a situation happening right under my nose. A friend of mine brought this flier to me yesterday. This flier about reducing your carbon footprint was hung in the Student Union at South Dakota State Univesrity, a land grant institution, promoting a meatless diet.

The flier reads, Make a change in YOUR carbon FOODprint. Did you know that producig a pound of beef creates 11 times as much greenhouse gas emission as a pound of chicken and 100 times more than a pound of carrots? Did you know that if every American had just one meat-free meal per week, it would be the same as taking more than 5 million cars off our roads? Did you know that eating one pound of meat emits the same amount of greenhouse gases as driving an SUV 40 miles?

I’m so disappointed that I missed this opportunity to host the first ever SDSU Meat-In Day, like the events held at Penn State by my good friend and fellow Beef Ambassador, Chris Molinaro. However, I’m proud that my friend was able to get the dining services to take these posters down. Did you know that one in every three college students experiments with vegetarianism? We need to get the facts out about meat as a healthy part of a well balanced diet. Don’t listen to the hyped up statistics. Before we point fingers, we need to take a look at ourselves. How often do you drive a car needlessly? How much water do you waste every day? What is your carbon footprint? Let’s make the change within ourselves instead of pointing fingers at beef cows. To me, that makes a lot more sense. -Amanda Nolz