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Legendary vegetarian Mollie Katzen eating chicken? Celebrity vegan Mariel Hemingway noshing on steak?? In an article sure to stir up debate, Christine Lennon over at Food & Wine writes in “Why Vegetarians Are Eating Meat” that with the advent of humanely raised animals, many vegetarians are turning to the fleshy side.
For ethically minded former veggies, “eating sustainable meat purchased from small farmers is a new form of activism—a way of striking a blow against the factory farming of livestock that books like Michael Pollan’s The Omnivore’s Dilemma describe so damningly.”
Lennon also believes that sustainable meat is more nutritious than the Frankensoy products on the market. She quotes a nutritionist who touts the benefits of all-grass-fed beef: It’s lower in fat than conventionally raised beef, and has higher levels of omega-3 fatty acids. Soy-based fake meat products, on the other hand, are “incredibly processed, and you have to use chemicals to get the mock flavor. Any other whole-food diet is going to be a lot better for you,” says a dietitian.
Hemingway even cops to that old antivegetarian “anemic” argument: “When I was vegan, I was super-weak. I love animals, and we should not support anything but ethical ranching, but when I eat meat, I feel more grounded. I have more energy.”
As for Katzen, she says, “Somehow, it got ascribed to me that I don’t want people to eat meat. I just wanted to supply possibilities that were low on the food chain.”
Of course, people have different reasons for choosing whether or not to eat meat, and if you’re opposed to killing animals, no amount of grass-feeding is going to appease that. But could it be that when it comes to sustainability, health, and animal welfare, vegetarians no longer have the ethical upper hand?
I'm all for more humanely produced meat. I think that people are now paying attention to how farm animals are treated is a very promising trend, even if it's just because they're grossed out by factory farms and think it's bad for their health. And I applaud the farmers who have taken the risk and tried it. Small farmers were hurt badly by the introduction of large commercial factory farms.
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I'm all for more humanely produced meat. I think that people are now paying attention to how farm animals are treated is a very promising trend, even if it's just because they're grossed out by factory farms and think it's bad for their health. And I applaud the farmers who have taken the risk and tried it. Small farmers were hurt badly by the introduction of large commercial factory farms.
However, I do take issue with calling it "guilt-free" and "humane enough for vegetarians to eat." Meat production is hardly humane; what they call "humane" is really "less cruelly produced." Here are some issues that often get passed by in these humane meat articles.
They often show the cute young animal happily frolicking in grass. Then they show the adult animal, followed by a picture of a piece of meat at some gourmet restaurant. If you really want to do a fair and balanced article about meat production, you need to show the slaughter. Besides all the news recently about the horrors of slaughterhouses, logically you have to wonder how someone who kills all day can psychologically deal with having empathy for the animals they're killing. The farmers in your article often don't slaughter themselves, but get the fun part of raising a cute animal and getting the pats on the back for their humaneness, while they let someone else do the difficult task of killing them. A US slaughterhouse worker is a job with with one of the highest turnover and injury rates, and often they hire people who do it because they don't have a lot of options (like immigrants). Slaughter is bloody and gorey and intense and horrific. That's an important part of any meat story.
Some other questions to ask:
- Are predators killed? Do predators kill the animals? Predators are always attracted to easy-to-kill domestic animals. Do farmers set steel jaw traps for coyotes or shoot them, or let raccoons pull chickens through wire piece-by-piece?
- How much space do the animals have? Free-range standards don't necessarily match the pictures in humane meat articles.
- Do they receive medication and vet care if they're sick? Organic animals aren't allowed to receive commercial medication, even if it will save their life, so they either suffer and die, are killed, or are auctioned off; chickens rarely receive medical care at all.
- Do the animals pollute? Do they infect spinach with E coli...
- Do they buy from hatcheries, which are pretty much factory farms, and spread all the same pathogens people are concerned about?
- Do they alter the animals without anesthesia, such as dehorning, debeaking, or castrating?
- Are the young animals torn from their mothers? Do the animals have a natural family unit? I assure you that mothers grieve for their offspring. Most farmers don't bother with letting parents raise their young, or have dads around.
- Do they go to a slaughterhouse, and how far are they transported? Some animals are transported huge distances without food and water, and sustain injuries.
- Are they heirloom animals, or those genetically selected for high growth rate, milk production, or egg production? Animals selected for these traits above hardiness often suffer as a result. Unfortunately, most of the animals in agriculture are, while hardy, healthier breeds head for extinction.
- Are they protected from temperature and weather extremes? Do they have adequate shelter? Animals die during heatwaves (millions -- including free range -- died a few years ago in the California heatwave) or get frostbite during freezes.
- Are they given a comfortable environment? For example, chickens are forest creatures, not plains creatures, so they feel insecure and scared in open pasture with no trees or cover, and are easy prey.
Humans throughout history have been pretty violent. They pick their tribes and justify doing whatever they want to the people and animals who are not in their group. They've had slaves and slaughtered entire civilizations and tortured. We still do. So I'm not idealistic in believing that suddenly we might change our self-serving ways and care about creatures that can't stand up for themselves. I think we can pretty much rationalize anything so we can feel OK about it. But don't kid yourself that any form of meat you eat is entirely "humane" and was produced without suffering.
Unlike many people who offer opinions on these issues, I have farm animals who I care for, and both mom and dad happily raise their young. I have farmers in my family and was in 4H. I've been present when animals were slaugthered. I live in a rural area, teaming with wildlife, so I'm aware of nature and her ways. I have a biology degree. It's apparent to me that domestic animals are different from wild animals, in that they have been dependent on people for survival since pre-3000 BC. They can have the same relationships with humans that your dog or cat can have: it's really just a matter of how you treat them. They aren't stupid.
There are people who become vegetarian for health reasons, kind of like I give up chocolate cake every so often. But just like cake ends up in my stomach anyway, they aren't that committed to the diet when presented with something they think tastes good. For most vegetarians, the thought of eating the flesh of an animal is so disgusting to them that they can't do it. So while I've never successfully given up cake, and can think of all kinds of reasons to cheat when I'm hungry, I haven't eaten meat for over 20 years. So please don't insult us by saying that humane meat is "good enough for a vegetarian to eat." We aren't eating it.
And those of you who eat it, but wouldn't think of raising and slaughtering an animal yourself, you're kidding yourself that you're humane -- you're just passing the buck to someone else to do your dirty work for you.
But humans are what they are, and they don't tend to think about the suffering of other creatures, so I say, hooray for less cruel meat!-COLLAPSE
I just can't imagine eating meat to begin with. The idea is about as appetizing to me as eating roadkill.
Humanely raised meat is an oxymoron. . Raising a living creature to eat it, is not humane. Letting it live and getting protein you can REALLY assimilate and use from other sources would be 'humane'. I have been a vegan for over 30 years and I look _at least_ 10 years younger than my peers - my husband works out 3 days a week and has been vegan for 35 years. There is no REAL health reason for...+READ
Humanely raised meat is an oxymoron. . Raising a living creature to eat it, is not humane. Letting it live and getting protein you can REALLY assimilate and use from other sources would be 'humane'. I have been a vegan for over 30 years and I look _at least_ 10 years younger than my peers - my husband works out 3 days a week and has been vegan for 35 years. There is no REAL health reason for anyone to eat animal.-COLLAPSE
Humanely raised meat is wonderful for the limited population that 1) can afford to pay the premium for it 2) has time to go to farmer's markets and discuss the finer points of animal husbandry with artisanal meat purveyors. It is unlikely, however, that a nation of 300 million, much less a world of 6 billion, can eat this way on a regular basis. For the broader population, a diet with reduced...+READ
Humanely raised meat is wonderful for the limited population that 1) can afford to pay the premium for it 2) has time to go to farmer's markets and discuss the finer points of animal husbandry with artisanal meat purveyors. It is unlikely, however, that a nation of 300 million, much less a world of 6 billion, can eat this way on a regular basis. For the broader population, a diet with reduced emphasis on meat, as well as the use of cultured meat (probably feasible within 5 - 10 years), is probably a more realistic scenario.-COLLAPSE