CLR, I believe it is a life choice for me. I believe you should feel free to do what you want and support your right to do it, however disagreeable it is to me. There are several points in the vegetarian-non vegetarian argument that I am sure you are aware of - most recently water consumption and the environmental impact of raising livestock have been used as strong reasons by the vegetarian activists. The protein argument is also well hashed, so I don't want to go through what can be retrieved quite easily by searching for it on the web.
What I hope for, is more consensus on the humane treatment of animals consumed for food and the disgraceful practices of factory farms. You are no doubt aware of the Westland/Hallmark Meat Company testimony in front of congress; a few execrpts from today's NYT:
(CEO of the company): "I was shocked. I was horrified. I was sickened,” by video that showed employees kicking or using electric prods on “downer” cattle that were too sick to walk, jabbing one in the eye with a baton and using forklifts to push animals around. The video was taken by an undercover investigator from the Humane Society of the United States. One tape showed a worker using a garden hose to try to squirt water up the nose of a downed cow, a technique that Representative Bart Stupak, a Michigan Democrat who conducted the hearing where Mr. Mendell testified, referred to as waterboarding.
Do you think that the behavior described here is an exception? I look forward to the day that a bulk of our meat comes from cultivating bio-engineered animal tissue. Once the economics favor it, it will happen and the debate becomes moot, IMO.
ShortSquareLeg,
I do not for a moment disagree that the Meat Industry in the United States is a disaster at several levels. I was talking about meat as a food matter, not as a consumer item that is often foisted onto the public in proportions much larger than necessary. Ergo, what I want to say is that I find red meat delicious, but I do not eat it more than once a month because it is unhealthy at my age, and also because it would be boring conspicuous consumption. However, in the fattest nation in the world, kids are stuffed with saturated fat and sugar from a tender age through enterprises like McDonald's. Meat becomes a consumer product through the use of chemical addictives; it becomes so when people eat it more than necessary, when they eat it out of inclucated habit rather than out of pleasure or nutritional concern.
The factory farms that you mention are there because meat has become a cheap, mass produced entity (have you read Fast Food Nation)? Burgers should not cost a dollar and a half. This is the other extreme. Poor people eat at McDonald's and compromise their health because the food is inexpensive. This is because the entire food system is organized as a world turned upside down: what should be rarer and high maintenance in terms of the eco system (the cow) is being farmed like cabbage and shoved down the throats of the public.
I eat a steak once a month. I make sure it is organic and costs north of thirty dollars. I have it medium rare and the taste stays with me for the next thirty days (the kobe beef I had in Seattle a month and a half ago, is still with me). The rarity of the experience is what makes it special. This culture is what I grew up with, when meat appeared on the table on special ocassions (it also made the ocassions special) and festivities. Now it distresses me when high school kids gobble on hot dogs and soda like junkies; they turn fat and thanks to the growth hormone pumped meat, hit puberty before their ten years old.
This is a picture starkly different from India, where a person (regardless of whether he/she is Muslim) often finds that beef is the cheapest form of meat protein that can be found, being much less pricey than chicken or goat.
It is the global culture of consumption that is worrying. I grew up eating fish. Now my young cousin in Kolkata is doing the same. The difference is, I was happy with one piece a meal. He, on the other hand, must have three, even though, I suspect, he does not enjoy the last piece. It somehow is strangely comforting to him and his parents that they can afford three. It gives them a spectral sense of life style and comfort -- the thing to do -- in a competitive market of increasing salaries and rising prices. Meanwhile, here in the US, because I do not like chicken or seafood everyday, I have turned into a part time vegetarian (at least three days a week).
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December 06, 2006, 07:07:25 AM