Maybe it's just because there's no hot water in my house today, but a new campaign encouraging Californians to Skip Showers for Beef seems like a pretty desperate publicity stunt by an industry that's feeling the heat.

Mother Jones and The New York Times' Mark Bittman have been all over the general topic of water use and the food supply, largely echoing common sense. It takes a shit ton of water to make a cow, 

In theory, the disclaimer at the bottom of the site ("SkipShowersforBeef.com is a grassroots sustainability initiative funded by America's most concerned beef producers, distributors, and consumers") should tell you almost everything you need to know. But among those consumers is famous vegan Moby, who once recorded a punk album called Animal Rights.

Whoa! What does Moby have to say, in this black-and-white video with lots of images of dry lakebeds, backed by a somber piano part?


Noting that a pound of steak has a water footprint 1800 gallons, and that forgoing 37 showers will make up for a single Quarter Pounder, he wants Californians to know that, "I also believe it's possible for you meat lovers to enjoy your meat responsibly," 

Little disagreement there, except that Moby continues. Skip Showers for Beef's site has "tips on how to save water, stay clean, and enjoy your guilt-free, zero-water-impact beef."

Tip on how to stay clean, eh? The pdf brochure isn't nearly as bad as that McDonald's thing that told its low-income workers to break food into small pieces to hold hunger at bay and to sing as a way of managing stress, but it's got some good ones: freeze your jeans instead of washing them, spray fabric softener around the house, avoid spicy foods so you don't sweat, clean your skin with sandpaper, scrub down with a dirty washcloth, use a clay mask (and peanut oil to remove it), and my personal fave: "Dry shampoos thoroughly clean all kinds of hair (from the drapes to the carpet)." That's downright saucy of the California Beef Council to suggest!

At the same time, you'll find nothing about what steps the beef industry is taking to reduce its water footprint or "How about some public outcry about all the water-sucking alfalfa we export to China?" because there are no political, agricultural, or industrial solutions to the drought, only nano-improvements in personal consumption.

But the bigger problem is that if you stopped showering for an entire year plus five extra days, you would offset only 10 fast food burgers, and virtually every omnivore eats more than that — way more. With the caveat that we wholeheartedly respect a gentle, non-judgmental approach to encouraging people to think more critically about where their food comes from and the ramifications of eating it, the math just isn't there. (The subject of methane emissions from cattle farts is also not a trivial issue when it comes to sustainability, and it's not even mentioned).

Ultimately, you should shower less and eat less beef, and the beef that you do eat shouldn't be factory-farmed crud from Mickey D's, gobbled down with a clean conscience. In the end, this is just a transparent, corporate-funded effort to get people to absolve themselves of the consequences of their behavior and reinforce the status quo.