As vegetarianism gains in popularity (at least in the West), the discourse between those who omni and those who veg grows in volume.
This week’s New Yorker uses its review of Tristram Stuart’s new book, The Bloodless Revolution: A Cultural History of Vegetarianism from 1600 to Modern Times, to examine (and gently refute) arguments for herbivorism from the Enlightenment to today. Critic Steven Shapin notes the tangled nature of humankind’s stance on the issue:
There’s no demonstration of the wrongness of eating flesh that hasn’t been countered by equally powerful arguments for its rightness, and different justifications have a way of both supporting and interfering with one another.
Maybe. Except for the majority of carnivores who justify their meat eating with a “powerful argument” that is basically some variation of John Travolta’s immortal line from Pulp Fiction: “But bacon is good.”
From theology to philosophy to environmentalism, Stuart advances the benefits of a vegetarian diet while Shapin bats them back: Livestock causing more global warning than the world’s transportation systems? Shapin counters that “walking to the local supermarket for a nice hanger steak cut from a grass-fed New Zealand steer may be kinder to the planet than getting into your Toyota Prius to drive five miles for some organic Zambian green beans.” Who’s buying Zambian green beans, anyway? And if our local supermarket has New Zealand steer, doesn’t it also have locally grown winter squash?
Perhaps Shapin just wants to be on the winning side. Near the end of his review, he notes a set of chilling statistics that clearly show where the hearts and stomachs of eaters lie:
[T]he world’s per-capita consumption of meat rises relentlessly: in 1981, it was 62 pounds per year; in 2002, the figure stood at 87.5 pounds. In carnivorous America, it increased from 238.1 to 275.1 pounds, and the practice is spreading in traditionally herbivorous Asia. Indians’ meat consumption has risen from 8.4 to 11.5 pounds since 1981; in China, it has increased from 33.1 to an astonishing 115.5 pounds.
Conservation is tricky. Meat is a terribly costly thing in terms of its impact on the environment. And, speaking as somebody to just had some delicious sausage with his breakfast, I can tell you there is a good reason for people eating so much of it, despite the methane output, underutilization of arable land, pain and suffering of creatures, and other horrors that I as a carnivore am responsible for perpetuating.
The thing to keep in mind is that, like other things that are bad for us (such as having a hydrocarbon-based economy) in the longer scheme of things it’s all unsustainable and will dry up in favor of whatever is left over after we’re through binging. We will eventually run out of dead dinosaurs; we will eventually be forced to give up pastureland to grow soybeans; we will eventually have to all live like we are on a planet with 12 billion people. Vegetarianism and ecopoesis is the future. So, enjoy your sport-utility vehicle; enjoy your sweet, sweet delicious rare aged pound of steak; I do. I do because before I know it we’ll all be walking (not driving) to the market to buy tofu and chickpeas.
Well, here’s the thing – really sustainable farms include animals. They have to. There’s no way to attempt to replicate a natural eco-system (which is what a good farm does) without including animals. Animals graze on land that will never, ever support soybeans. Why do mountain people eat goat and drink goat’s milk? Because goats can convert grass and brush that humans can’t eat into food they can.
I eat pork from a local farmer who raises his pigs using moveable electric fence in woodland. The pigs forage for most of their food – he supplements with some waste from a local organic restaurant and with whey from a yogurt-maker. That land can’t be used for soybeans – unless you’re suggesting he cut the trees? Actually, the vast, monoculture farms in the midwest that give us the soybeans that create vegetarian’s tofu are generally much worse than the small, local farms from which I buy lamb, pork and beef (all pastured – which is rare these days, most animals are kept in feedlots and fed on corn and soy).
That said, yes, people are going to have to eat less meat. We should go back to a model in which meat is used in small quantities, not at every meal. And we should probably try to eat more types of meat – deer and squirrel are both overpopulated and make great eating. But there will be a place for meat in a sustainable future – a world of vast fields of soybeans is NOT sustainable.
what curiousbaker said. just read omnivore’s dilemma to get a good basic understanding about petroleum based farming vs “grass farming”, transportation costs vs locally grown, etc.
its a complicated issue that should have nothing to do with someones desire to not eat meat for whatever reason they choose.