All my life I’ve had a secret wish to be a vegetarian. Hm, no, scratch that… but I’ve had the wish for at least the last twelve years, ever since I met my wife. Why? Because after over a decade of discussing and thinking about it, I’m persuaded that (1) it’s generally healthier, (2) it’s better for the planet, (3) it moots the entire issue of trying to define “animal cruelty”.
It all began when I met my wife in college. She told me she was a pescatarian. Well, actually, nobody used that word in 1995, but it’s basically someone who won’t eat any animals other than fish and seafood. I asked her if it was a moral/ethical issue for her (“meat is murder?”), and she calmly explained that she had stopped eating birds and mammals at age 13 because she didn’t want to support animal torture via “factory farms”. (At this point in my blog entry, I don’t have time to go into a long diversion about what factory farms are… but they are terrifying things that torture millions of animals and poison the environment. And they’re the norm for all animal farms; 99% of all meat you consume comes from them. To learn more, read the famous book Diet For a New America.)
I was horrified to learn about factory farming, but was also relieved that my wife didn’t actually believe that eating animals was a sin. I’ve always been of the opinion that there’s nothing inherently unethical about eating animals, considering that millions of years of evolution (and the planet’s entire biosphere) is based on the idea. What matters is the way in which you participate in the food chain. Do you do it respectfully, the way the Native Americans did? Or do you systematically torture creatures and destroy the planet in the process?
Unfortunately, there’s always been one big obstacle between me and vegetarianism: I love meat. I was raised in a meat-centric U.S. culture, doubled by a meat-centric Jewish culture of deli-cured delicacies. My childhood and teen years are peppered with fondly-told stories of how much meat I ate at various events. The taste is in my mouth… I drool when driving by the hot-dog factory, despite my knowing of what disgusting animal parts are poured into a hot dog. When I want to really celebrate, I still have initial thoughts of finding a fancy steak somewhere. In a nutshell, whenever I’ve experimented with vegetarianism, I’ve always crumbled after a week or two, like a nicotine addict reaching back for one more cigarette. It’s embarrassing. (People are sometimes surprised when they find out that we’re raising our kid pescatarian; I think of it as an act of mercy, sparing him from a lifetime of guilty cravings.)
However, there’s finally some hope to my story.
When I moved in with my wife, I learned to live by the rules of her kitchen and house. Her rule was simple: no meat in the house, ever. Throughout our marriage, we’ve kept that rule as our own personalized sort of ‘kosher’ law, and our friends are all aware of it and respect the rule when they come over. Why would I go along with this rule, you might wonder, when I’m not a vegetarian myself? Easy. It’s a nice halfway-point towards my ideal. If I can’t go totally pescatarian like my wife, I can at least dramatically reduce my meat intake. I’ve learned to cook without meat, order meatless dishes for take-in, and just eat meat “outside the house” when the opportunity arises. It simplifies our domestic life as well: no need to worry about my accidentally cooking food with meat, or whether or not I can share my meals with my spouse and son. And because our guests respect the rule at parties and such… well, that’s ten fewer Mu Shu Beef entrees ordered from the local Chinese restaurant, which nudges our economy just a bit more away from meat. Hooray.
Still, though, I’ve become less satisfied with this halfway point. I still eat meat for lunch every weekday (whether it be at a restaurant, or Google feeding me lunch)… and the ethics of eating tortured animals has slowly been gnawing at me over the years.
So my latest experiment is to do what my friend Karl Fogel did: become a pescatarian who only eats untortured meat. This decision has no effect on my domestic life, where I eat 2/3rds of my meals. But it’s made eating food outside the home much more tricky. The fundamental problem is: how do you define animal cruelty? No doubt my vegan friends would describe any sort of meat consumption as inherently cruel, but I’ve already explained how I disagree with that. Well gee, you say, what about all those corporations advertising “free range” animal products? Aren’t I the target for their marketing?
Sure, but while the U.S. Government may have tough standards defining “organic”, they’re really flimsy on defining “free range”. The realm of animal cruelty is a big fuzzy space. If a chicken is allowed out of its tiny cage (just barely big enough to hold it) for 5 minutes a day, to walk around in a 3’x 3′ pen exposed to the sun, is it now a “free range” chicken that lays “free range” eggs? There’s barely any regulation on this stuff.
I was hoping that Whole Foods would be my refuge. I’ve heard all sorts of great rumors about how Whole Foods only sells free-range meat. But when I went to their meat counter last weekend, I found no labels on any products. The phrases “organic”, “local”, and “free range” were nowhere to be seen. When I asked the butchers behind the counter where the various meats came from (“which farm? how was it raised?”), they all hemmed and hawed and scratched their heads. (“I think some of it comes from um… Arizona? No, maybe Colorado?”) The only literature they were able to give me was a generic brochure talking about how the company had created a whole new foundation to increase animal compassion in farming techniques. Hooray and applause for Whole Foods, but… that still dosen’t tell me whether their hamburger is cruelty-free. Even the Information Desk was unable to help me.
When I got home and did some Googling, I found out that Whole Foods only buys meat from farms that meet some pretty hard-core requirements. The farms can’t use hormones or antibiotics on the animals, nor fed animal by-products. The whole system must be heavily documented and re-audited each year. The thing that stood out, though, was the requirement that “the time on a feedlot cannot be more than one-third of the animal’s life.” Hm. Two-thirds of a life grazing freely in a field, but one-third of one’s life in a feedlot? A feedlot is basically thousands of cows crammed into a giant lot of hard-packed dirt. It’s hard to move, there’s nothing to graze on, and the animals are force-fed grain to give their muscle tissue more fatty “marbling”, something they’re not evolved to eat at all. Once again, Whole Food’s definition of “compassion” is just one point along a fuzzy scale, and I’m not sure it’s compassionate enough for me. It makes my quest for humane meat all the more challenging. :-/
My wife imparted words of wisdom to me. She works Heifer International, a huge non-profit organization that teaches sustainable agriculture to impoverished communities around the planet. As you might expect, a number of their employees are either vegetarian, or at least extremely conscious about eating sustainable, ethical, locally-produced food. For most of her co-workers, the general rule of thumb is: if the cook can’t tell you exactly where the animal came from (i.e. “Joe Blow’s farm, 7 miles northwest of here”), they won’t eat it.
With that idea in mind, I will admit to eating meat twice in the last month. First, I bought some buffalo-burgers that came from a specially-advertised farm I could read about. Today, I went and ordered a pork burrito from Chipotle Yes, you read right: the scary burrito fast-food-chain that was once secretly owned by McDonalds. Despite my general revulsion to fast-food, their website actually tells you about their standards for raising pork, and when you walk into the restaurant, there are signs that say exactly which farm it came from!
Net result: I think I’ll be able to survive as a full-time pescatarian, provided I’m able to get a once-every-two-weeks “meat fix” from a source that I’ve ethically pre-screened. It’s going well so far. My drastic reduction in meat consumption also has me feeling lighter and healthier than I have in years. The planet is being slightly less ravaged by my decrease in consumption, and even when I do eat meat, I have no ethical qualms at all.
As a postscript and reward for reading this far: a fascinating book related to local food production is The Ominvore’s Dilemma. It really makes you aware of how we produce food, and why it matters what you eat.
