The New York Times Ethics of Meat contest - my entry

The NYT challenged readers to submit a 600 word essay answering the quesiton "Why is it Ethical to Eat Meat.  Entries were due by April 8, 2012.   They commisioned 5 judges -  Peter Singer, Michael Pollan, Mark Bittman, Jonathan Safran Foer and Andrew Light - all of whom question or attack the idea of eating meat.  The prize - the best essay(s) are to be published in an upcoming issue.  Below is my entry.  It is amazing how little you can say in 600 words!

The question is asked:  “why it is ethical to eat meat”?  In other words, why is right, or proper moral conduct, to eat meat? Perhaps a better question would be, why isn’t it?

The anti-carnivores speak of meat as if every ounce comes from animals brutally raised in factory farms.  This meme has caught on with particular strength among Americans who have no experience with farms or farm life.  With no other image to set against this, it becomes a simple moral decision.  Who doesn’t want to be a good person and do the right thing?  If eating meat means that you must support “factory farms”, where animals are inflicted with suffering, perhaps it is unethical.  But there remain farmers who raise livestock in a traditional manner, who focus on animal care and health.  A blanket statement that meat eating is unethical is a condemnation of these farming practices too, and says only wild animals have an appropriate life.

Many critics focus on slaughterhouses, saying that we should not be killing animals, that killing is morally wrong.  That these animals suffer too much, given the size and speed at which modern slaughterhouses work, there is no possibility of death with dignity.  Yet not all slaughterhouses are huge industrial operations.  There is a revival underway of small local abbatoirs, once a fixture in most communities throughout America.  All of nature is based on individual species harvesting others for food. A blanket statement that meat eating is unethical is a condemnation of all of nature, and says only passive plants have an appropriate life.

Many critics focus on environmental issues, and say that eating meat supports the debasement of the environment, that it leads to excess greenhouse gases and pollution of our waterways (which may be true for many modern forms of meat production).  Yet enormous herds of herbivores roamed the planet for millennia without causing the outcomes about which critics are concerned.  And many traditional farmers have husbanded their land and resources wisely without ecological abuse. A blanket statement that meat eating is unethical is really a cry against overpopulation, and that really what we should do is commit mass suicide.

Some critics say that meat eating is unhealthy, that we are naturally vegetarians and should eat only plant products as we evolved to do.  Yet this ignores the body of science emerging from physical anthropology that meat eating is what made us Homo sapiens sapiens and fueled the development of our large brains and bipedal long-distance running bodies.  It ignores the overall health and vitality of mature adults in traditional societies, which almost universally consumed meat, compared with our own sedentary and overweight elderly. A blanket statement that meat eating is unethical is a condemnation of our genetics, and says we should ignore 4 million years of evolution.

How does nature do it? All vertebrates are both predator and prey by turn in what are basically energy capture relationships.  Who are we to play god and say it should be different? In some cultures playing god is tantamount to blasphemy.  It is amazing to contemplate how our relationship with meat is woven inextricably into our human cultures.  For example, according to one authority (Mark Smith, The Origins of Biblical Monotheism as referenced on Page 69 of  Beef: The Untold Story of how Milk, Meat, and Muscle shaped the World by Andrew Rimas and Evan D.G. Fraser), the nation of Israel gets its name from an ancient bull god, El, or yisra-el, (El, the God of Israel) who was actually the father of Yahweh in the original polytheistic religions of the Levant.  A blanket statement that meat eating is unethical is really a cry of self-hatred, and says that we should turn our backs on who we are and where we came from.

I Like Meat

I was recently reading the comments to an on-line article about the ethics of meat-eating.  What follows is my response to the comment “What we need are place-based, not plant-based, diets.”  I couldn’t have said it better, and so I wrote:

"I eat animals because I like them.  I like their meat, and I like them.  I like being around them, I like seeing them in the fields around me.  At this time of the year I like seeing the newborn calves in the fields.  I liked being in the barn earlier today feeding hogs, touching the long hairy bristles on their rumps.  I really enjoyed unloading several bison from a trailer this afternoon and watching them run.  I especially liked spending an evening last night smoking some trout on my back porch before going to bed.  Then I liked stepping out of my backdoor this morning at first light and watching several flickers fly off the lawn into the forest.  Just before my rooster crowed to start his day. Did I mention I like animals?  I like being surrounded by them, all kinds of them.  I enjoy sharing their lives, in all ways.  I enjoy nourishing them, and letting them nourish me.  I am glad that I can eat whole foods, knowing the life they lived in life, and sharing their body in death.  There is a richness and variety here that is unsurpassed.  I am glad I do not have to take pills to make up for  impoverished food, that I do not have to spend my evenings trying to figure out what nutrient I am missing and how to compensate for it.  That is just one carnivore's take on life.  I have no problem with vegetarians or vegans.  It’s their life, their choice.  But I love my life, and my choice.  I think it rich beyond compare. I sometimes wonder the degree to which Disney can be seen as a seminal figure in the development of veganism, with his vision of animals as sentimental cartoons.  I am sure this vision influences many young people, who make choices based on inexperience and emotionality.  Animals aren't cartoons, they are real, with a real place in the scheme of things.  However, it also occurs to me that veganism is a natural response to the fear young people feel looking at the future, and at ongoing environmental degradation, the sense that something vital is being damaged beyond repair, and they have to do something to fix it.  In that sense, veganism appears to be an entirely rational, as opposed to emotional, choice.  It does make me sad, because I like animals.  And I see young people making these choices to save the natural world that mean that animals have no place in their world. At least, not in the same way that these wonderful creatures are in my world.  Not in the urban world which I observe to be the common habitat of the wild vegan.  That, it seems to me, is part of the backdrop of this kaliedoscopic modern conversation around meat and ethics which is growing more heated.  One of the strange dilemmas of a warming world of 7 billion heading toward 9."

Next Slaughterhouse Extinction Wave

This should be the slowest time of the year for butchering, but T&E Meats is booked months in advance, like the other small meat processing plants in my area. We’re all working at almost full capacity to bring locally grown, pasture-raised, and humanely slaughtered quality meats to market. The local food movement and the bad economy have motivated people to return to their roots, but the infrastructure to support such a movement is threatened with extinction, and there’s a chance that the USDA will seal the deal if we don’t act now.

Picture an hourglass and you’ll understand the local, sustainable meat crisis: there are plenty of willing consumers out there looking for humanely raised, quality local meats, and there are more and more farmers looking to “meat” that consumer demand (sorry – couldn’t help myself!), but the real bottle neck is processing capacity.  Small, community-based meat processing plants have become an endangered species in America, done in by an ocean of super-cheap industrial meat and the challenge of meeting the Byzantine demands of USDA regulation requirements without a Ph.D. in microbiology.

Although species go extinct on earth on a regular basis, every so often there is a major event that comes along and wipes out 40 or 50 percent of all species.   The same happens in the small business world.  A few businesses fold every year due to retirement, poor management, and changes in the market, and that is quite normal.  But then every so often a catastrophic event comes along that causes a wholesale wipeout, such as the recent global credit crunch. 

In the small meat businesses in America, catastrophic events result from changes high up in the regulatory food chain that make it very difficult for small plants to adapt. The most recent extinction event occurred at the turn of the millennium when Small and Very Small USDA-inspected slaughter and processing plants were required to adopt the HACCP Plan system.  It has been estimated that over 20%, perhaps more, of existing small plants went out of business at that time. Now, proposed changes to HACCP for Small and Very Small USDA-inspected plants threaten to take down many of the remaining local plants, making the availability of healthy, local meats a rare commodity.

HACCP is a food safety plan approach that stands for Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Point Plan, and the intent of HACCP is to prevent contamination of meat by harmful pathogens. Plant HACCP plans are approved and overseen by the Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS), the inspection arm of the US Department of Agriculture.  On March 19, 2010, the FSIS published a Draft Guidance on HACCP System Validation, outlining new rules which would institute regular, year-round validation testing of all meats, whether or not a problem has been identified.  The problem is that these rules do not identify the hazard that they are attempting to address.  It is testing for testing’s sake, and it will cost small plants tens of thousands of dollars, perhaps even hundreds of thousands, every year. The financial burden appears great enough that this will destroy much of the remaining community-based meat processing industry, which is enjoying a renaissance and creating jobs. 

Small, local meat processors have always supported food safety. At our plant, we have had a functioning HACCP Plan since 1999, and it works.  We undergo extensive E.Coli testing every year, with zero (0) positive results, ever.  The purpose of HACCP is to employ well-recognized, established processes and process control parameters to produce safe meat products – processes and parameters recognized and published by the USDA itself.  Now, for some reason, the USDA is attempting to test safety into the system and requiring excessive end-product microbiological testing, rather than allowing us to depend on these well-recognized process controls.  Perhaps a large plant slaughtering 5,000 animals per day can afford its own lab and microbiology staff, and can pass the cost along to the consumer, but most small plants can’t.  And perhaps they should – those are the plants where a massive beef recall can involve millions of pounds.

In my opinion, the USDA needs to recognize that "One Size Fits All" inspection no longer fits current industry practice and consumer demand. These new HACCP Validation requirements are going to cause a train wreck in a portion of the industry that is growing due to consumer demand for the first time in years, and then the USDA is going to have a serious embarrassment on its hands. Someone needs to take a clear-eyed look at this situation and find a way to split the agri-business mega-plants from the community-based localized plants within the regulatory structure. This does NOT mean that small plants are not serious about food safety. It is because consumers are serious about food safety (and food security) that they are coming to us, and we need to keep local infrastructure alive in this country.  We need an inspection system which recognizes that the small plants do not put either the economic food system or millions of people at risk in case of a food safety event.

If any individuals are interested in providing comments to the USDA on this matter, I urge you to do it by the new deadline of June 19th, 2010. The original deadline was April 19, but it has been extended due to the great interest and concern that has been generated around this issue.  You can learn more at the Association of American Meat Processors web site, at www.aamp.com/Validation.php. or the Niche Meat Processors Assistance Network at http://www.extension.org/pages/NMPAN_Comments_on_FSIS_Draft_Validation_Guidelines  Please submit a comment if you care about community-based meat processing and humanely produced meats.  Your comments really do matter. Submit your comments to the email address DraftValidationGuideComments@fsis.usda.gov or to the Docket Clerk, USDA, FSIS, Room 2-2127, 5601 Sunnyside Avenue, Beltsville, MD 20705.

Surprise

Ever hear the phrase "Sometimes life is what happens when you are making other plans?"  I purchase pigs regularly for our sausage making enterprise, and almost always have some in the barn.  Imagine my surprise yesterday to come in and find my little herd had grown by 6!  Someone had shipped a pregnant sow to me and no one had caught it.  An abbatoir is not typically known for warm and fuzzy feel-good stories, but here was a little moment of grace.  We got out the heat lamp and moved Mom and kids to a private suite.  Everyone is doing well and going back to the farm next week.  No doubt they will come back up one day but we won't dwell on that.

The Beauty of Local Hogs

Why eat local? Why know your food source? Why care about humane husbandry practices? As owner/operator of a small local slaughterhouse, I see a lot of pigs over the course of a month. Some of them are mine – mostly raised in industrial conditions in Pennsylvania farms, and purchased to be converted to sausage in my plant. The rest are brought in by small farmers from all over Virginia, to be slaughtered and processed for sale in farmer’s markets, to restaurants, and directly to consumers. All of them spend from a day to several weeks in my humble little barn behind the plant. The moments when I go out to feed and water them are among the best parts of my day. Alone in the cobwebby old structure, I talk to them, bring them their corn ration, and take a moment to just watch them being pigs. This morning it was cold, and I had to smile looking at a pile of Joel Salatin’s Polyface pigs peacefully sleeping in a big puppy pile keeping warm.

Feeding pigsIt is fun to step into a pen full of hogs – and informative. Joel’s little pig dudes run up eagerly like curious dogs, and you immediately have your legs covered with inquisitive round snouts checking out the smells. Is it dinner yet? No fear or shyness here. They run and jump around, snurfeling excitedly. Black, tawny, red, spotted, their coats literally shine with health. Glossy bristles give their bodies a bright sheen. Step into a pen of industrial hogs, and the atmosphere is completely different. Sunk in a sleepy torpor, they lack the alert awareness that would tell them you are coming, and they startle with alarm. Startled pigs bark like dogs, and scurry mindlessly around in an attack of high anxiety. Perhaps I should say hobble – many of them limp about in a strange sore-footed way. Raised on hard concrete, their feet and joints have developed wrong, and they live their lives in constant pain. The deep sawdust in my barn is the best they have ever had it. Their white flanks and shoulders are covered with bloody scrapes – they have been fighting, working to establish their dominance hierarchies in middle age. Not having grown up together like the Polyface pigs, they have no sense of a pecking order. The contrast between the two types of pigs could hardly be greater.

I like to touch the pigs in the barn while feeding them. Lay my hand on their round hip, feel the warmth and the coarse bristle against my skin. Perhaps this is strange, knowing we will take their life in a day or two, but I appreciate the sense of connection. Pigs don’t like the touch. But Joel’s hogs, raised in the woods in their little band, perhaps feeling secure with their brothers, don’t react at first, then mildly move away. My Pennsylvania hogs, twice my size, bark in alarm and hobble away. They clearly show fear. I have no doubt that they have been frequently physically abused, given their fear. Or perhaps they live in a state of psychological distress.

The local farmers bring in pigs of all size, shape, and color. Berkshires, Durocs, Old Spots, mutts. My Pennsylvania hogs are typically uniform – boring white hogs with washed out blue eyes. No doubt they have superior genetics for certain traits, courtesy of a breeding program out of Iowa State or elsewhere. Perhaps they mature on corn 17.3 days ahead of the control groups, and are 8.6% leaner. Certainly they are dependably available and cheaper – that’s why I have them. But I can’t help but feel that something is lost. Hard to put your finger on it. Beauty, variety, individuality, ability to fatten on acorns, apple gleanings, or table scraps – these are not the goals of USDA sponsored breeding programs. But surely these are traits worth supporting with our consumer dollar, too. If the consumer doesn’t do it, perhaps these unique races of animals will disappear. Or maybe not. I remember the lady who unloaded her pig, and smiled as it went to its pen and immediately plunged belly first into its water trough. “She loves water so much”, the owner confided to me, as if she were delivering her pig to a day care center, not the abbatoir. This sense of loving their animals, yet holding the boundaries of utility in place, marks many of my clients attitudes. I think they would continue to raise their pigs under almost any market conditions.

Originally published January 22, 2009