Month: June 2006

At least I try not to be.

Meg lays it out on food choices (I hope my reply to her original post didn’t provoke her second point). But I think her first point may be more true than she fears. I don’t think most people have their eyes open.

Veganism, foie gras and personal choice:

Since my return to meat, I’ve learned more about food and garnered more pleasure from eating and sharing food with friends than I had in years. My culinary world has expanded in ways I’d never imagined — I’ll actually order bone marrow and liver when I’m out to dinner. And I’m more engaged and aware of food production methods and practices than I ever was as an AV. I eat with eyes wide open, with the full knowledge that an animal was bred and slaughtered for my consumption. And I am OK with that.

This leads to what angers me about the recent foie gras bans, PETA, and animal rights activists in general. First, there’s the assumption you must be eating meat because you’re ignorant of where it comes from. I support efforts to educate consumers about factory farming (though I draw the line at the propaganda activists produce that utilize intellectually dishonest methods to support their “arguments”) but trying to convince anyone of anything by initiating an argument with an insult isn’t particularly effective.

Second, there’s the moral superiority that oftentimes accompanies said argument. Great, YOU made YOUR choice because it aligned with YOUR values and beliefs. That does not mean your choice is right for me, and your condescension isn’t going to convince me of anything. Keep your veggie burger, and leave me my Shake Shack.

As with everything in life, eating is a series of personal choices. The more education we have, the better choices we can make. I believe in personal responsibility and the freedom to make choices, and I don’t think the government should be in the business of restricting them. Factory farms, whether they produce milk or eggs or beef or berries, are environmentally unsound and cruel. And I do not support food produced in this fashion (with I’d wager about a 95% success rate in reality). In my ideal world, everyone would be aware of the conditions under which their food is produced and we’d all purchase humanely treated meat and organic vegetables.

I disagree with the argument that government has no place in restricting choices but I think there should be more information, ie transparency, available to the consumer. I think food production is an abstraction to many people. To many, beef is a sliced shrink-wrapped commodity, not the product of a lengthy food chain that includes petrochemical fertilizers, antibiotics, indigestible (for the animal) feeds, and somewhere in there, a cow. I think there’s an argument against scale and industrialism underscoring Pollan’s book and the whole Slow Food movement. Economies of scale and efficiencies are fine for commodities like cars and TVs, but not for salad greens, cheeses, and meats.

Who had a burger for lunch and can say “I eat with eyes wide open, with the full knowledge that an animal was bred and slaughtered for my consumption. And I am OK with that.”