Problem is I also have some environmental awareness. I'm not going for cow farts=global warming anymore than I would dinosuar masturbation=rise of mammalia, but there are problems in farming that national, not supra-national governments can effectively address. One is agricultural run-off. There is no private market incentive for a farmer in western VA to fence their streams to protect the Chesapeake bay. Government can provide that incentive. Same with CRP that everyone stomped on to grow ethanol feed. In the end the farmers benefit whether from a healthy bay providing an alternate economy that lessens their tax burden or from agri-tourism(aka Hunting farmland).
There's a lot of people on board with you, but when you have very bad governance, the knee jerk reaction is to lash back at them even if they have a good idea once in awhile. Their use of a 'good idea' historically has also been to get their foot in your door and leverage .gov more and more into your life.
The hypocrisy and arrogance of government has lost them any moral authority or respect that they might have had.
If you are forced to not only buy but also subsidize the production of a bad product (ethanol fuel) why wouldn't the first reaction to the government telling you to eat less meat be firing up the grill and throwing a porterhouse on it?
The UN- don't even get me started. Once they start cleaning up the slavery, human rights abuses, pollution, etc in their other member nations, they can start worrying about what's on my dinner plate...
In my particular area of the country, you will be sued out of existance if one of your cows does its business too close to a stream, yet the biggest city in my state (Milwaukee) routinely dumps billions of gallons of raw sewage into Lake Michigan every time it rains- with impunity.
It might take time, but the free market should fix the problems, though it can take time.
I used to laugh at 'organic' meats and vegetables, but now, I typically won't buy meat unless its local anymore. The mega factory farm has brought the prices of eats down, but at the same time have brought the quality down to the point where you are bringing a disgusting half-spoiled biohazard into your kitchen. The same can be done with runoff- market it as 'zero run off' meat. It might take awhile, but it will catch on.
