Becoming a More Conscious Omnivore
I am an omnivore. I like eating meat.
But lately I’ve started to question my meat eating ways, since reading more and more about factory farming makes my stomach turn more and more often — the thought of a juicy chicken breast makes me a little nauseas, knowing a lot of that juice is actually muck-and-feces-filled water soaked up by the meat in the factory process (and I paid for that extra weight!).
I’ve never been one to sympathize with animal rights activists — sure, I want animals that are treated well, but…I also want to eat them, and I know slaughter is a necessary means to that end. Animals in nature have been eating other animals since the dawn of time, and I am just another animal-eating animal. And though it’s within my power — and would not be unhealthy for me — to become a vegetarian, meat is just too damn good.
But then I read about the abuses to pigs in the factory farm system that produces 99 percent of available pork.
Did you know pigs are extremely social and clever animals? According to Eating Animals author Jonathan Safran Foer, they’re legendary for undoing the latches on their pens, returning to undo the latches of their fellow pigs’ pens, often work in pairs, and are usually repeat offenders. Pregnant sows — whose instinct, Foer writes, tells them to build a nest and prepare for their young — are kept alone in cages so small they can’t move and they develop sores from rubbing the bars (apparently the cage prevents them from falling and crushing their piglets, since genetic engineering and confinement make pigs unable to easily lower themselves to the ground).
At the supermarket, looking at the refrigerated wall of meat products, these things now come to mind.
But on top of that, I feel I need to take into account the environmental impacts of eating meat too! Did you know that, according to the United Nations, the livestock industry contributes almost 20 percent of the world’s greenhouse gases — 40 percent more than the entire transportation industry? Maybe I shouldn’t feel guilty, or even all that inconvenienced, driving a little farther to get more sustainably farmed meat. (Issues of offshore drilling and non-renewable resources notwithstanding, of course — I can only worry about so many problems at once!)
I did feel guilty last night eating sashimi at my favorite sushi bar — I didn’t want to ask where the fish came from, or by what methods it was acquired, because I wanted to enjoy the bright, fresh taste of that perfect slab of yellowtail!
How about all the antibiotics being pumped into the water of factory farmed animals? There are reasons — MRSA (methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureaus) being a big one — why we humans need a prescription to get antibiotics. Yet factory farmers feed it like Wheaties to their animals, no vet signature required. (Interestingly, the FDA is tackling this very issue right now, and for the first time in decades may be making progress toward regulating this practice.)
And while I am angry at BP for causing what is likely the greatest American environmental disaster ever (89 to 176 million gallons and counting), did you know the Exxon Valdez spill (11 million gallons) was not necessarily the greatest before it? In 1995, Smithfield spilled 20 million gallons of pig farm feces and waste — stored in a toxic “lagoon” — into a North Carolina river. Oops!
I can’t say whether fecal waste is better or worse than oil, but I know I’ve heard a lot more about the oil — and have probably unknowingly been enjoying Smithfield bacon for years.
For the time being, as I continue reading and researching and learning, I am dedicating myself to being (and becoming) a more conscious eater of animals.
Living in the Bay Area, I’m in a fairly unique position in terms of access to local, sustainable produce and meat, so I’m trying to eat only (or at least mostly) meat from sources I know and trust.
I recently happened across Marin Sun Farms’ roadside butcher shop an hour north of San Francisco, and just last week heard they had opened a shop in Oakland, 15 minutes from my kitchen — their pork, beef, lamb, goat, chicken, etc. comes from healthy, pastured animals on a farm committed to reducing greenhouse gasses in their practices.
From Berkeley Bowl to the little market near my office, I’m discovering more and more sources of sustainable meat — the foodie scene makes it easy to find shops and restaurants, clerks and chefs, who care about this stuff. (Don’t forget, Michael Pollan and Alice Waters are both from Berkeley).
For full disclosure, however, I have yet to ask if any of the animals in my fridge were genetically modified. Committing to buying grass-fed, to me, is an important first step.
That doesn’t make it an easy one, though — Steve’s grandfather just sent us a freezer-filling order of Omaha Steaks. (Where’s the farm in this PR statement: “Our state-of-the-art business facilities include two manufacturing plants, a distribution center, and a freezer warehouse.”)
I can’t refuse an old man’s gift — but how should I feel while preparing and eating it?
While I agree with many points that the factory-style poduction of meat products can be very unhealthy, i’m cautious to get on the free-range-everything bandwagon. I think the health-food (and i guess vegetarian / vegan) culture movement has a habit of over anthropomorphizing animals and preying on the emotional responses this creates.
Though far be it from me to condone the conditions that some produce animals are raised in, I try to take it all with a big pinch of salt – your comments on the intelligent behavior of pigs, I find more appropriate as reason to not eat pork rather than a comparison for the way they are farmed.
I spent about 9 months with a vegetarian flatmate, so all the meals we cooked were meat-free. It gave me a better appreciation for the times when I did eat meat and was a shitload cheaper. Now we only buy meat occasionally when it is a quality cut of meat on special. I guess I should consider expanding that criteria to organic produce that hasnt come from factory farming conditions.
Sorry for scatterbrain comments, keep up the good work :)
Rich –
I absolutely agree that the vegetarian/vegan movement relies too much on anthropomorphizing animals and “preying on the emotional response this creates.” For the most part, that’s why I’m not a vegetarian — it doesn’t bother me that animals are slaughtered and treated like commodities.
But that being said, I also feel like there are huge environmental and health risks in treating animals poorly — animals and people (and produce) have co-evolved to each others’ benefit, but that evolution is based on small scale farming, animal husbandry, and environmentally sustainable practices.
Factory farming changes the whole picture — now, for example, there are too many pigs on one “farm” to reap the other benefits of pig farming: you can’t use manure for fertilizer because there’s too much of it and no non-pig-farm-land nearby to fertilize; you have to store all that manure in lagoons that often (yes, often) leak into nearby rivers killing millions of fish and destroying ecosystems; you can’t keep track of your animals’ health so you pump them (and therefore any watershed nearby) full of antibiotics that decrease those drugs’ viability in people; you create awful working conditions for slaughterhouse workers who have to process thousands of pigs in a day; and that doesn’t even take into account all the packaging and petroleum used to do all that and get meat to meat eaters!
I could give a similar account for poultry production, and though from my reading it seems that cows have it a little better, it’s still not great.
I guess all in all, I’m more concerned with sustainable farming than with animal welfare. I know I’m going to eat animals — but I don’t want to eat them blindly, or support a factory farm model that is so blatantly bad for us and the environment. And I guess living where I do, where it’s relatively easy to buy sustainably farmed meat, I would feel a little guilty not doing it!
But enough — I almost doubled the size of the blog entry with this response!!
Glad you’re reading (and happy meat eating),
Sarah
A great discussion has been started here. This is a topic that should be granted as an evolving course, available yearly, to grade, middle, and high schoolers. Food 101, 102, 103…
If I could add a differently psychological perspective to the conversation it would be to look at the impact that the industrializing of the animal, as a food commodity, has on the collective unconscious. The point about anthropomorphizing animals is poignant. Too often we do so at our own peril. That is, in seeing the animal as human we lose the opportunity to see the animal in ourselves.
Clearly, animals aren’t human. But aren’t we, too, animals? Surely, the popular cultural cosmology of the past two thousand years, at least, would have us think not. We can thank Darwin for returning us to our senses. But, even the Dawinian slap is yet to fully awaken us. We still live in this fantasy where our social value is measured and paid for by our production rate. Most are granted only the fleeting hours of the evening or regimented block of the weekend to exercise our animal selves. And even then, we may carry the inherited mandates of our cultural lineage, born of Descartes, Luther, and the rationalism of the Enlightenment, that inform us not to get too animal.
The problem of denying the animal nature of our human-ness is so fundamental to the neurosis of the modern person that entire psychological disciplines have been born too address it. In fact, a case might be made that psychology itself is the Western person’s attempt to re-connect and re-integrate the animal self. Famous patriarch of depth psychology and unrepentant rebel of Freud, Carl Jung, held as his formative goal of psychological development the re-integration of the “anima mundi”, the soul of the world, the animal soul.
How we treat the animal soul is how we treat ourselves.
Rich, I like your point about “preying on the emotions” of others by anthropomorphizing animals. It seems this is only possible because there is something inherently in the animal that reflects ourselves. Sarah, your reference to the treatment of factory workers is astute. The industrializing of animals, it seems, can be seen as metaphorical of the industrializing of the animal nature within ourselves. Yoked to the time clock, regardless of wants, needs, passions, feelings… regardless of our health – do you have sick time left?
The corporate shadow is cast broadly. Perhaps, we can see the reflection of ourselves in the shadow cast over factory farmed animals.
Yes, comparing “animals” as a whole and humans doesn’t make sense because human is clearly one of the species belonging to animals. It’s quite clear without any advanced science: we walk on legs, we breathe, we digest food in stomach and bowels etc. all very similar to many other mammals.
Anyways, what we are or what cows, pigs etc. are isn’t really important. The argumentation that slaves may be mistreated in any way you like because they aren’t citizens is equally pointless as using the identity of animals to legitimize their mistreatment. What is relevant is what we do with them in each case and there is certainly a boundary of fairness.
Although historically animal farming was (and is still in some regions) a reasonable way to provide nutrition when human-consumable crops can’t be harvested sufficiently. However, when talking about the industrialized farming, this argument vanishes completely, because livestocks are fed with soy, maize and wheat that can be very well directly consumed by humans (and it would be far more efficient to do so). Therefore the question of eating animals must be critically rethought for the exact current situation. I can’t really think of any argument apart of the luxurious (recreational) value. I’m not saying this from a vegetarian’s perspective because it’s not my invariant principle not to eat meat, but I just feel a strong need to critically reevaluate our habitual consumption patterns.
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I just read your post while doing research about the Omaha steak company. Last night I got a phone message informing me that somebody is sending us Omaha steak for Christmas. I can not prepare factory farmed beef – I purchase my meat direct from a local rancher who pastures his cattle until the very end. So, I think what I am going to do is give the meat to an organization that feeds people who are moving out of homelessness. This organization (called Family Promise) is one that my church supports by providing shelter and meals on a rotational basis with other churches in our area. If that doesn’t work out for some reason, I will give the meat to a shelter that provides hot meals to the homeless. Thanks for your post and keep up the conversation! :)