Meat eaters worse for the environment than Hummer drivers

Animal rights groups have been touting a United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization report issued last fall which states that the livestock business generates more greenhouse gases than all forms of transportation combined. Advertising campaigns are springing up informing consumers that switching to a plant based diet is better for the environment than switching from a Hummer to a Camry.

Backlash to such campaigns, seen by some as opportunistic, was inevitable. Kevin Binkle of Houston is one of a growing number of rabidly carnivorous anti-environmentalist auto mechanics across the nation who have opened specialty garages offering to modify customer's S.U.V.'s to run, not on gasoline, but on meat. “We can do the switch in about four hours. Six if you want the chicken option, too.” Mr. Binkle says every one of his customers so far has been pleased. “They're totally happy. They can fill up at the McDonald's drive-through while they get lunch. And mileage is pretty similar too. Sixteen to twenty miles per Big Mac patty. You do gotta scrape the special sauce off real good, though, 'cause it tends to clog the valves.” But even he agrees only the most die hard greenhouse-rejecting meat-glutton will likely invest in the expensive vehicle alteration.

Hoping to cater to the poorer but no less devoted beef-loving tree-haters are bio-fuel entrepreneurs like Donald Calhoun from Jackson, Mississippi. Dr. Calhoun is working on a fermentation technique which turns cattle directly into ethanol. “The animal rights camp argues that it takes more fossil fuels to raise a single head of beef cattle than the average American car burns in a year. I'm a scientist. So I say the obvious solution is to get that energy back in the most efficient manner possible.” He admits the development is still in its early stages but he hopes to secure governmental funding for further research. “My dream would be to some day march 'em dogies up the ramp on one end while filling the tanker trucks on the other end. But that Xanadu is a few years away.”