A better way exists to reverse global warming than by choosing a vegan diet as proposed by Lance Baker (March 6). We can produce animal foods locally on grass. When this is done, the cost in fossil fuel for their production, quoted from Professor David Pimental as 8 percent of national consumption, changes to an energy surplus. Pimental’s energy audit includes petrochemicals used in animal production for fertilizer, herbicides, pesticides, refrigeration and gasoline for transportation. These inputs become negligible with local pasturing plus the demonstrable fact that grazing animals are able to rapidly improve soils. Soils, according to Pimental, are weakening at a rate that within 25 years may force the United States to cease exporting food.

Pimental’s vegan premise, and presumably that of Baker, is that croplands could be more advantageously employed to grow grain directly for human consumption. Using current corn and soy farming and processing methods, the energy debt for plant foods is similar to that for animal production. Neither do cattle on grass contribute to global warming by emitting methane, as formerly proposed. Like the bison that grazed in numbers exceeding those of cattle, their emissions are balanced by their contribution to the life of the soil.

The assumption that a vegan diet solves any global problems is insupportable.

Animal foods (meat, dairy and fish) are essential to humans for normal growth, reproduction and a reliable immune response.

Cows run well on local sunshine.

Joann S. Grohman, Dixfield

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