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DOI 10.60531/INSIGHTOUT.2023.1.4| HAMMETT: WHAT FUTURE FOR QUEER COWS?_ INSIGHTOUT 1(2023) 27 productivity that has been in operation in agriculture for a very long time continues to be reproduced. This also has implications for the lives and bodies of cows continuing to reproduce and to produce milk, in huge amounts. The next section will explore how cows feature or don’t feature in imaginings of sustai­nable futures. Sustainable Futures When considering how a sustainable food system is to be achieved, one approach has been to examine the possibility of transitioning to plant-based diets. For example, there has been a study that compa­red the carbon footprint of cow’s milk to that of soy “milk” to try and determine which would be better. 35 Whilst nutritional factors were also considered, the study mainly relied on comparing carbon footprints. Another study points to the large emissions caused by the agricultural sector and proposes as a solu­tion a move towards plant-based diets on a“worst first” basis, meaning that the transition away from beef should happen first because that sector has the highest emissions, and cow’s milk, having the second highest, should be next. 36 Such a shift is framed as a“protein” shift, away from animal sources towards plant-based sources. Cattle are reduced to protein, their liveliness is erased, their worth reduced to their ability to provide a particular food group for humans. Whilst it is widely acknowledged that moving toward plant-based diets will be necessary, this is not what I take issue with; it is that its ethical ramifications are often not broached. It is clear that cows, particularly Holstein cows, are tied to the reproductive futures of humans, and if cows are deemed unnecessary in this equation, because food sources can be drawn from elsewhere, then they are no longer required. That is often the end of the discussion, instead of conside­ring what this could mean for the lives and futures of cattle. Another element in the discussion of the futures of cows is affected by the concept of nature and culture. As stated before, I believe cows are queer because they do not fit in the categories of either nature or culture, and it is clear from numerous contributions to literature that they are seen as more disposable because of it. For example, George Monbiot, in his article“Unholy Cow”, claims that raising livestock or­ganically over a relatively large area of land is very destructive to the environment. 37 Monbiot, when tal­king about regenerative farming, states that “[l]ivestock farmers often claim that their gra­zing systems‘mimic nature’. If so, the mimicry is a crude caricature. A review of evidence from over 100 studies found that when livestock are remo­ved from the land, the abundance and diversity of almost all functional groups(or‘guilds’) of wild animals increases.” 38 There is a clear hierarchy here with“livestock” pla­ced in a category clearly different from that of wild animals. Land that is taken up with cattle and other farm animals is seen as a waste, providing very little protein and producing high levels of emissions, while that same land could be far more productive ecolo­gically if given over to“wild” plants and animals. The logic of productivity is still being used here but the argument is turned around: Cattle are not produc­tive, whereas wildlife could offer so many more be­nefits for carbon storage and biodiversity. Monbiot argues that meat and dairy should be created in a 35 See Benedetta Coluccia et al.,“Assessing the carbon footprint across the supply chain: Cow milk vs soy drink”, Science of the Total Environment , 806/3(2022), 151-200. 36 See Helen Harwatt,“Including animal to plant protein shifts in climate change mitigation policy: a proposed three-step strategy”, Climate Policy , 19/5(2019), 533–541. 37 George Monbiot,“Unholy Cow”, https://www.monbiot.com/2022/08/19/unholy-cow/(accessed 27 May 2023). 38 Ibid.