AgWired

Who knew that there was an “Official Blog of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency”? And who would have imagined that a federal agency would allow contributions to it by government employees who want to promote their particular lifestyle or agenda?

An intern at the Office of Children’s Health Protection (whatever that is) who is a “sophomore studying non-profit management at Indiana University” penned a little missive on the EPA blog today titled “Living Without Meat.” The guest blogger talks about how she “never really enjoyed the taste” of meat, and after seeing “a graphic showing of a pig slaughter” in elementary school she stopped “eating pig” and eventually became a “full-on vegetarian.”

That’s great for her since she doesn’t like the taste of meat or the idea of killing animals. But she then proceeds to give us environmental reasons why no one should eat meat and cites outdated or sketchy sources to back her up. One example, “the British group, VegFarm” (maybe a rock band?) to which she provides no link – and I could not find any in Google searches, although I did find a couple of references to this alleged group. According to our EPA blogger, the authoritative VegFarm says that “a 10-acre piece of land can feed 60 people when used for the production of soybeans, 24 people when used for wheat, 10 people when used for corn, and only a mere 2 people when used for cattle.” She also vaguely cites “a book written by Paul and Anne Ehrlich” – which is probably “The Population Bomb” written in 1968 in which they claimed food production could not keep up with population growth and predicted that “hundreds of millions” of people would starve to death in the 1970’s and 1980’s. Later editions reportedly took out that reference since it never happened.

The EPA blogger/intern concludes that “the easiest way to lessen the environmental impacts is to become a vegetarian or vegan.” What is most astounding about this is that the EPA has a disclaimer on the blog which says, “The opinions and comments expressed in Greenversations are those of the authors alone and do not reflect an Agency policy, endorsement, or action, and EPA does not verify the accuracy of the contents of the blog.”

WTF???!!! That’s like a company having a blog and letting any employee (or intern) write whatever they want on it without supervision, even if it might alienate its customers. And this is paid for with OUR TAX DOLLARS!!!! This is just simply WRONG! No disclaimer can correct that. And this from an administration where officials will hardly give you the time of day, much less an interview, without checking to make sure it’s okay with the higher ups.

Add your comments to the EPA blog post here. And while you’re at it, write your congressman and ask why our tax dollars are being used to fund this.