The Cow is a Life, Not a Solution. By Dr Chapman Chen

Sama Hoole, a prominent X user advocating for livestock farming and the carnivore diet, often criticising vegan alternatives as environmental hazards, posted on March 19 the following:

Activist: "The water usage for beef is obscene. Thousands of litres per kilogram.."

Farmer: "That's rainfall."

Activist: "What?"

Farmer: "The figure includes all the rain that falls on the pasture. The cows drink from the stream. The rain falls whether there's a cow here or not."

Activist: "It's still water consumption."

Farmer: "Should I stop the rain falling on my field?"

Activist: "Grow crops instead. More efficient."

Farmer: "This is a 35-degree slope in the Welsh hills. Show me the crop."

Activist: "Technology..."

Farmer: "To make tractors climb mountains?"

Activist: "There must be a solution."

Farmer: "There is. It's called a cow."

Activist: [checks phone]

The farmer is right to question simplistic statistics. Yet the deeper issue remains unaddressed.

Yes, rainfall exists regardless. But how land is used still matters. Grazing animals converts vast areas into highly inefficient food production compared to direct plant cultivation or ecological restoration.

Water footprint studies themselves distinguish between green water (rainfall), blue water (irrigation), and grey water (pollution). The issue, therefore, is not merely rain, but land use, methane emissions, and systemic inefficiency.

Even where land cannot support crops, it is not therefore destined for exploitation. It may sustain rewilding, carbon sequestration, or biodiversity — not only cattle farming. To use such land for grazing is still to channel ecological potential into a relatively small yield of food through animal bodies.

Even if rainfall is “free”, the life of the cow is not. The question is not only efficiency, but moral legitimacy: do we have the right to take innocent life when alternatives exist?

Rainfall is not the issue. Land use, inefficiency, and the killing of sentient beings are. “It rains anyway” does not justify turning life into commodities.

Rain may fall whether or not cattle graze upon the hills. But the moral question is not whether water exists — it is how creation is served by humans (Genesis 1:26) (note 1).

To say “it is only rainfall” reduces a profound ethical reality to a technicality. The rain that falls upon the field is part of God’s provision for all creatures, not a licence for domination and slaughter.

Even if certain lands are unsuitable for crops, they are not therefore destined for violence. They may be restored, rewilded, or allowed to flourish as sanctuaries where life is protected rather than commodified.

The cow is not a “solution.”

She is a sentient being — a fellow creature within God’s creation — who suffers and dies within a system we have the power to transcend.

The question is not: “Can this land support cattle?”

The question is: “Shall we continue to organise creation around death, when we are called to mercy?”

As it is written, “How the animals groan! The herds of cattle wander about because they have no pasture…Even the wild animals cry out to you” (Joel 1:18-20). The groaning is not caused by rainfall, but by the violence woven into human dominion.

The rain may fall freely from heaven. But compassion must rise from the human heart.

Full Text: https://www.vegantheology.net/post/the-cow-is-a-life-not-a-solution-by-dr-chapman-chen

Notes

1. Prof. Andrew Linzey interprets “dominion” in Genesis 1:26 as stewardship (Linzey 1995: 34). I interpret “dominion (yirdu)” therein as serving the animals (https://www.vegantheology.net/post/dominion-in-genesis-1-28-means-serving-the-animals-by-dr-chapman-chen )