Gina Pospichal, a Nebraska cattle producer, was recently thumbing through the news on her phone when a certain headline caught her eye. She saw the anti-meat campaign rolling through her social media feed after Ellen DeGeneres made a tagline plea to her more than 77 million Instagram followers. "Be neat," DeGeneres wrote. "Eat less meat … It’s better for you and it’s better for the environment and for the animals."

On behalf of America’s cattle producers, Gina took great offense to those false statements which sparked this campaign. As she said, it was one more “punch in the gut to America’s cattle producers.” So, she decided to pen a letter to Ellen herself. 

She recalled the memories of her father who was tough as nails, yet shed tears when his favorite cow died of old age. She wrote of her eight-year-old son who once spent the night in their barn to try to help nurse an injured calf back to health. And she remembered her husband who, as those severe floods raged through their farm last March, risked his life to save a calf in danger.

This is what the trendy food fads and campaigns fail to realize: feeding the world is more than a job. It’s an identity and a way of life for many Americans. It’s generations of hardworking farmers, ranchers, and ag producers like Gina who have been nurturing and regenerating our land for hundreds of years. 

Still, anti-meat crusaders – equipped with faulty logic and cherry-picked statistics that villainize beef producers – think they wear a crown of moral authority.

A recent Bloomberg editorial beckons Americans to “curb their appetite” and “give up meat” claiming livestock are the boogeyman of greenhouse gas emissions. But if you look at the facts, they tell a completely different story.

Click here to read the full opinion piece.