Thoughts on Eating Animals

I really want to be a vegetarian. The main reason I am not one at the moment is not that I can't bear the thought of giving up bacon (believe it or not), but it's rather a matter of convenience. Lifestyle changes don't come easy. I'm not a very experienced cook already, so this just adds another layer onto any cooking anxieties I have. Not only would I need to find a recipe for dinner, but it needs to be meatless while still being something that this picky eater won't turn her nose up at...while also being relatively well-balanced and healthy. Right, that's a cinch. Another thing that makes me less likely to try new vegetarian recipes is that they tend to include some rather intimidating ingredients (nutritional yeast?), or at least ingredients that I don't tend to keep in stock and am somewhat unsure of where to locate.

Then there's the whole fake-meat thing. If I read one more "Go veggie—it's easy!" article that recommends fake-meat hot dogs, fake-meat hamburgers, chicken-less nuggets, fake cheese, fake cream cheese, fake sour cream, etc., I'm going to scream. First of all, I don't really eat those things anyway (with the exception of cheese) and thus am not seeking replacements for them. Secondly, I really doubt "you can't tell the difference!" Thirdly: um, hello? Eating nasty fake processed foods is what I'm trying to avoid by changing my diet.

Obviously my motivations for limiting the consumption of animal products aren't really those of most vegetarians, or at least the ones who write how-to sites.

Is the main motivation for vegetarians really that cows are so cuddly, and even fish feel pain, and stuff like that? I sure hope not, but that's the impression I get. Let me set one thing straight: I do not have a moral problem (well, I have a few faint twinges, but they're at a level I'm prepared to ignore) with killing animals for food. I do not think animals are worth just as much as people (hell, half the time I don't even feel like people are worth as much as people). I do (at least to some extent) think that the fact that we're bigger and stronger and smarter gives us a right to eat the smaller, weaker, dumber species. (Yes, if a polar bear or an tiger or a shark eats me, that's my own stupid fault for not being better prepared. May the best beast win.)

That being said, I do have a problem with killing for the fun of it, inflicting unnecessary levels of pain, killing more than we need, and treating animals entirely like products (while they're alive). Animals aren't humans, but they are life, and we do owe them some degree of respect. We need to be good stewards, I guess, for lack of a better word. Yes, we can raise animals for food, but just because we brought them into this world and plan to take them out of it does not mean we can treat them inhumanely while they're here. Now, I don't mean we should avoid doing anything that hurts their delicate little selves in the slightest or read them stories at bedtime or whatever PETA people think we should do, but we should try to treat them at least somewhat naturally.

Animals that evolved to eat grass should not be force-fed corn they can't properly digest until we kill them shortly before they would have died anyway. No animal should be kept in a cage or pen where it cannot move and especially where the bars bite into its skin for its entire life. Why? Partially because, yes, they can feel pain and pain is generally a bad thing to inflict on anything, but mostly because it's horribly unnatural, bad for the animal, and bad for the person consuming the animal. (The stress hormones that are constantly coursing through confinement operation animals' bodies actually affect the nutritional impact of the meat on the consumer. Similarly, corn-fed beef has bad ratios of omega-6s to omega-3s, has more saturated fats than grass-fed, and so forth.) Just as you can't expect a Dalmatian to be a good pet for a third-floor apartment with no yard, you can't expect livestock to live in the dark in super-cramped cages, wallowing in their own excrement. If we're going to say that we're in charge of the planet, we have a responsibility to at least try to keep the rest of the planet in healthy, decent working order.

The part that really scares me about confinement operations, though, is that in addition to the unhealthy meat exacerbating our obesity epidemic and rates of cardiovascular disease, there are the germs. Since they live in close quarters, in their own feces, and eating foods their systems aren't really equipped to best handle, obviously livestock tend to get sick pretty often. No problemo, right? Just shove antibiotics down their throats. (Seventy percent of antibiotics used in the U.S. are used in livestock.) Only one problem: haven't we learned yet that overusing antibiotics is a great recipe for trouble? All we're doing is encouraging bacteria to evolve to be resistant. Then what will we do, when some resistant strain spreads (like wildfire, due to the close quarters) through our food supply?

Oh, but antibiotics aren't all we have to worry about. I mean, there's e coli and salmonella and stuff, but that's beneath my radar. The really, really, really disturbing thing? The swine flu that we're all panicking about (well, nobody's really panicking anymore/yet, but whatever—it is a big public health issue). I mean, this one is kind of a big deal and all, but there's nothing keeping a much, much worse influenza virus from developing in swine because of—you guessed it—confinement swine operations.

See, pigs can get viruses from humans, and pigs can get viruses from poultry, and then pig cells are just fantastic at mixing up and recombining little bits of RNA—voila, a new virus that can pass back to humans. (See this Newsweek article—it starts getting relevant about halfway throught the second page.) So, since we have these "four-legged viral mixing vessels" living in close proximity to each other and often to poultry and humans, we're all set for more viruses to emerge from confinement operations to sweep the globe. Sure, most of them may not be particularly harmful, but it's really just a matter of time until one is. For instance, if the kind of flu that kills people but isn't easily transmitted combines with the kind of flu that's easily transmissible but not particularly deadly and the kind of flu that's resistant to Tamiflu...we're all doomed. (Doomed, I say!)

On the plus side, if we all get wiped out by a new super–swine flu, we won't have to worry about global warming, which is where I was headed next before I got so caught up with superbugs. You know, farts, land use, methane, inefficiencies in growing food to feed to food instead of just eating food, blah, blah, blah.

Basically, I'm just pretty damn sure that our food supply system is going to kill us all, but since I can't really control the entire system, I'll just try to eat lots of whole grains and veggies, which are considerably less likely to kill me and destroy the planet. Plus, you know, I like being in whiny minorities that hold the high moral ground.

Food Marketing

Is it not disturbing to anyone else to think of farming as just another industry and crops as just another product to be marketed? I'm not talking so much about Pop-Tarts and Go-gurt commercials, though those are disturbing as well (and if I thought about it for a few more minutes, I'm sure I'd be horrified by that concept, too, but that's not where I'm going at the moment), but more about the marketing by various crop associations to large corporations, other industries, and even other countries.

It seems to me that the world as a whole and farmers in particular should think of growing food in terms of providing good nutrition, not in terms of growing market shares and such. Yes, making money is important, but the rise of agribusiness is taking it a bit to the extreme. Each crop, be it corn, wheat, soybeans, hogs, beef cattle, or dairy (because yes, animals are considered crops—another somewhat unsettling aspect of agribusiness) has its own association (or several), which lobbies Congress for various things to be included in the newest farm bill, provides information to its members, and tries to develop and grow a market for the crop.

One form this marketing takes is the various consumer-oriented campaigns: "Got milk?" (California Milk Processor Board), "Beef: It's what's for dinner" (National Cattlemen's Beef Association), "Pork: the other white meat" (National Pork Board) and so forth. These are not terribly disturbing until you realize that these associations (at least the beef and pork ones) are quasi-governmental associations and that the advertising is funded through checkoff programs, in which mandatory dues are paid for each beef cow or hog sold for the sole purpose of marketing these products.

I would be almost entirely comfortable with the U.S. government running advertising campaigns or public service annoucements to try to increase, say, milk consumption because of its health benefits—in fact, this is what I thought was happening until recently—however, it seems the goal of such advertising is primarily to increase the domestic market for these home-grown food products. I'm not sure there's much of an argument to be made that the U.S. government should try to convince Americans to eat more beef for health reasons. Red meat consumption has lately been even more strongly linked with heart disease and colon cancer, and at least the way beef is produced in America (corn-fed, in confinement operations, overloaded with hormones and antibiotics) makes it even worse. Corn-fed beef has higher omega-six to omega-three ratios than grass-fed; confinement operations and the various drugs used there decrease the animals' immune systems, cause the production of stress hormones which in turn affect the consumer, and can increase the spread of disease, especially when bacteria develop resistances to the antibiotics.

Then there's the way these various associations grow their market shares in more insidious ways. The corn growers have perhaps been the most successful in the past few decades, and as a result, it is quite difficult to find any sort of processed food that doesn't contain some ingredient derived from corn (high fructose corn syrup being perhaps the most ubiquitous, certainly the most recognizable, and currently the subject of much hot debate). This might not seem inherently problematic, but for one, it causes our entire food industry to be way more interdependent than is perhaps wise. One really bad year for corn, and suddenly it's much more difficult to produce a wide variety of products—and they likely cost more, too. For another thing, there is some reason to think corn may not be as great for you as the corn industry, for one, would like you to believe.

Lately, I've had occasion to encounter a number of interviews with farmers, officers on various crop associations, members of farm bureaus, and the like. A number of them mention trips to China and other developing markets to grow the international market for, say, beef or soy. Yes, the Chinese have been eating soy for probably millennia, but the soybean association isn't content with selling China soybeans for soy sauce and tofu or whatever other traditional uses there might be. No, they won't rest until they get the Chinese hooked on soybean oil and, even sneakier in my mind, introduce soy meal into Chinese meat production. To me, it seems that the American food industry is trying its hardest to export the parts of our food supply system that have made it the most artificial, unhealthy, and, yes, dangerous.

One interview that particularly bothered me was with a woman who worked at the National Soybean Research Laboratory. She waxed poetic about the myriad new uses for soybeans they were developing at the NSRL, which sounded interesting and exciting until I realized some of them were largely useless. She talked about using soy flour and other such products as good ways to increase protein consumption in poor Africa schools where cheap nutrition was really necessary. OK, so far, so good. But then she went on and on about how one could substitute between one-third and one-half of the wheat flour in, say, cookie or cake recipes, with soy flour, and so on and so forth. She never really explained why one would want to do such a thing, though. (Soy flour and wheat flour have basically the same calories and fat content, though soy flour does contain a bit more protein.) Apparently soy flour has a weird consistency, which is why one can't replace all the flour, so all in all, it seems like a lot of trouble to go to for only a tad more protein—and since when do Americans need more protein in their cookies, anyway? I am personally somewhat scared of soy (possibly irrationally so) because of the estrogens it contains and the possible effects of those. In general, I think it's unwise to be intentionally attempting to weave an ingredient so deeply into the food supply chain that when unpleasant news does come to light concerning its health effects it is nearly impossible to avoid its consumption (as is currently the case with corn).

What I find the most disturbing of all, though, is that the attitudes of so many in the agriculture industry who seem to view such expansion into overseas markets as their due. They complain about the stricter rules the European Union has, for instance, against genetically-modified grains, or that South Korea has, for instance, on the ages of imported cattle (an attempt to prevent mad cow from entering the country). I'm kind of concerned about our food producers having so much of an agenda of their own, separate from growing what consumers actually want. And really, when they begin to expand their production of meat or grains that adhere to whatever rules other countries have in order to expand their exports to those countries, America is going to be left with the inferior food because we have laxer rules—and that just seems backwards.

Note: My issue is not with expanding the use of corn or soy per se. For instance, I laud the development of corn-based, biodegradable packing peanuts and with the use of soy oil in glass to reduce shattering, and I have nothing against marketing those uses heavily. What concerns me is what seems like pushing the consumption of these ingredients in forms the health benefits or detriments of which have not yet been fully established (or regardless of the health detriments that have been established), working these ingredients into the food supply chain so thoroughly that they are almost impossible to later remove, exporting America's bad food habits to other countries, and, most of all, doing all this in such a way that the average consumer isn't even really aware of it and doesn't know how to comment on it if he or she is.