Meat: My Heart, My Soul, and My Planet (Part Two)

What does eating meat do to my soul?  This question derives from wondering if it is right to kill animals - furry mammals especially - to feed me. Completely separate from the questions of health or ecology.  Simply the ethics of the situation.  Sadly, I have to do this. As my friend says, I can't "un-know" what I know.

I believe that violence and oppression are bad for the perpetrator. They do violence to and oppress the perpetrator's soul. Slavery was bad for the slave holders. They were worse human beings for their acceptance of violence as a way of life. People who abuse children or dogs are diminished by their own actions.

I see being a vegetarian as a more enlightened, more highly evolved state. There are several science fiction books, and even Star Trek episodes, where this comes across. Rational and cultured beings regress to hunting animals for food, and then turn violent towards other people. (Vulcans seem especially vulnerable to this trend.  Maybe eventually we will reach a state where there are synthetic substitutes for meat that are healthful and ecologically sound.) But right now, grain- and soy-based highly alternatives are less healthful, in my opinion, than meat, and therefore not an option.

Factory farming in America is horrific.  I have deliberately stayed away from movies such as Food, Inc., or videos by PETA. I do not need the pictures to know what is going on. Much of my understanding on a visceral level of what it means comes from Michael Pollan's book, The Omnivore's Dilemma, where he buys a calf and follows it through its short and unhappy life. He also explores a farm where cows and chickens and pigs live much more naturally, moving through pastures and forests eating foods they evolved to eat. He has an essay in this book that was the most cogent and reasoned discussion of the ethics of eating meat I have ever read. Ultimately, Pollan goes off hunting wild boar, determined if he is willing to eat meat, he needs to be willing to kill it, at least once. The daughter of my friend was defiantly a vegetarian during her teenage years, but always was willing to hunt, and prepare and eat what she killed.  I've read of the work of Temple Grandin, who has transformed the way some slaughterhouses work so as to minimize the panic and pain of food animals at the end of their lives.

After reading The Omnivore's Dilemma, I swore off mass-produced meat. I vowed to only eat meat from happy animals. This means, as a practical manner, only farmer's market or Whole Foods meat. Whole Foods has a program with at least minimal standards - you can read about them here.  Organic certified in a pinch, though that is less certain what it means to the animals.  Eggs only "cage free", which even the Giant has these days. So I maintained my standards, only eating meat whose provenance I knew of. The food budget went up, but I felt better. I had a chat with a friend at work who keeps kosher. For all practical purposes, that means he is a vegetarian out of his house, because if he isn't sure it's ok, he just passes on meat. I decided I should be as firm in my ethical convictions as he is in religious ones.  (Apparently there is a raging controversy about the role of humane conditions in kosher meat. Some suggest it can't be kosher if it isn't humane, others claim that is irrelevant.)

Now, however, I buy food and cook for other people, using other people's money. Properly raised animals cost extra money, and I waiver between different imperatives.  And some of the family snickers at my notion of meat from happy animals.  "Yeah, right up till they die!"  Is ethically raised meat ethical enough to justify eating it?

On this point, I remain conflicted, but still committed to serve and eat meat. I pick my way through different choices, looking for the sale on grass fed beef at Whole Foods but not refraining from the occasional purchase at the Giant.  So far, I don't feel the need to pick up a gun and hunt my own.

Next up:  the ecology of eating meat.