For My money, the best thing to happen to vegans is the factory farm. There's not a day that goes by that I don't hear someone, on the radio, on TV or in my face prattling on about how bad it is that we still live in a world where people still eat meat. What nonsense. I've noticed lately, that this sentiment seems to be spreading. I see a whole crop (yes, I meant to use the word crop -- totally intentional) of anti-meat eating business out there. Books like Fast Food Nation and The Omnivore's Dilemma, (and who can forget that wonderful Skinny Bitch?) movies like Food, Inc., websites like "Meet your Meat", philosophy professors (in general), and all those other folks who like to say that they can't eat anyting with a face or experiences pain (there are two really good dirty commants there, but I'll ignore them for now). I don't think that in all of my lifetime that I've ever heard the word "organic" as much as I've heard in the past six months. I'm trying hard not to think that Obama has something to do with all this health talk. But it does seem a little more than coincidental. I heard it said before, but the standard cud-chewers litany goes a little like this: if people had to render their own meat, the wouldn't eat meat. This suggests that, for most people, having to look a cow in those big, dumb, eyes before you take him out to devour his muscle would turn even the most die-hard meat eater into a sniveling apologist for every person who ever ate an animal's flesh. There's the othre point that if we saw what goes on in the factory, none of us would want to eat meat (that's why they like to pull out the pictures of veal calves. It's funny, now that I'm thinking about it somewhat, that so many people who are plant eaters are also pro-choice. They are unphased by pictures of dead, aborted fetuses, but moved to action seeing a chicken in a cage. I'm not trying to open up that can of worms, but it is something worth thinking about.) I think that, at least on the first part, that they are wrong. I cannot say that having to kill my own food would turn me against eating meat. In fact, for some people, it has the opposite effect. Until quite recently, many people lived on farms, or at least had more to do with where their food came fromm other than waiting for it to be delivered in 30 minutes or less. For some of us, we are a generation or two from people who had to kill their own meals, at least from time to time. People who are raised on farms know that the animals amy be cute and cuddly when they are young, but they are not pets. There is s reason why you have cows or pigs or chickens on a farm -- one day, you will be eating them. The ast of killing one's dinner is, of course, not for everyone. And we've all heard the stories from people who were raised on farms who (usually when they were kids) spirited away papa's best tom turkey before it became Thanksgiving dinner. The story usually ends up that the kid eventually wins over the family, and they have a wonderful, cruelty-free vegetable dinner (I'm not saying that these stories are made up, but they do tend to sound the same. All I'm saying). If you don't want to kill your own food, don't. I'm not going to question anyone's manhood if they don't or can't. What I'm saying is, is that for every person who hid the chickens from grandma so she couldn't wring their necks, there is a Ted Nugent, who gleefully hunts his food with a bow and arrow! By the way, a Time Magazine article called "Cow-Pooling" (June 15, 2009) shows the new "trend" in meat eating -- families who buy meat directly from the farmer. A woman who was profiled for the piece called this practice "inspirational". They say that the meat is better quality and it allows people to get to know the farmer who is raising their meat, so it eliminates the potential yuck factor in that knowing the farmer means seeing where the meat was raised and more importantly, rendered for human consumption. As for the second point, that the conditions under which meat is made meat, there's a point there. I do have a slight queesiness when I look at the label of my ground beef, and it reads, "product of Canada, Mexico and USA". It's a little unnerving when you don't know exactly from where your food comes from. Especially when it is a mix of every cow from here to wherever. I'll cede the point that there is a problem with the fact that most Americans don't know how to provide for themselves (myself included), and that we are too far removed from the food-making process. I think this is why there are people who are revolted by the meat industry. We should be. It's disgusting how we get our food -- meat and vegetable. But, I don't think that that's enough to give up eating meat. The fact that cows are made to eat other sick cows or that chickens are pumped up with hormones to the point that they are all breast meat can be remedied. I heard in a movie, it was a pretty shitty movie, but a character said to another that she thought that her friends were vegetarians because they're afraid of death. I don't think that that's too far off. The fact that, in order to get meat, something has to die, and the fact that something does does not sit well with alot of people. Maybe the problem really does have something to with death. Death, no matter how you pull it off, has some amount of brutality to it (some may say it is the fact that things die that makes death brutal, regardless of the circumstances). I think that some people see becoming another animal's meal as especially unbecoming of a creature. It's kind of a low reason to die. But if we look around, that's the reason why I'd say the majority of animals go. If you ask me, a lower reason to die would be that some asshole who runs your government decides that he wants to invade another country, so he send a bunch of people to go fight his war for him -- compared to that, nourshing another animal seems like a downright noble reason to die. I'm politicizing here. Sorry. What I think is happening in the mind of my vegan planet earthers is a very noble, albeit misguided (maybe a little too simplified) notion of human nature. Most people that I know who object to eating meat on moral grounds are generally optimistic people. They tend to see the good in people. (or say that they do). I think that they see eating meat as a brutal practice that is done by brutal animals (although you may be hard pressed to get then to admit that any animal is actually "brutal"). They see people, because of their intelligence and capacity for self improvement, as better than what we often are. So, if we get rid of those parts of us that are brutal, we will be better people. If we stop eating meat, we will end world hunger, save the whales, end the genocide in Darfur, end the oppressive patriarchy that enslaves women and brown people across the world, and of course, spread a wave of socialism that will lift each person up and oppress no one. There will be peace finally if everyone would stop eating meat. Somehow I feel that even if everyone decided that we sould reduce our carbon footprint and stop eating meat tomorrow, that .... well.
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