The latest fad by the faux green is tying their hatred of meat generally and processed foods in particular to global warming. Let’s forget for a moment the central thesis of my environmental blogs— it is already too late to stop catastrophic climate change—and instead focus on the merits of the growing movement in Scandinavian countries and among the ultra-trendy to convince you that eating a hamburger is the equivalent of owning an SUV. This dovetails with PETA insanity which equates having a dog with cruelty to animals. This is zombie logic rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic.
Human ancestors evolved to be carnivores and evolved further to become omnivores. We share traits like stereoscopic, color vision and canine incisors with other predators. A Chimpanzee will eat other primates and even other chimps if they are peckish. Being a carnivore enables an entity to reduce the volume of its food mass by 2/3. There’s a reason cows eat all day long.
Humans who go vegan must rely on a complex, expensive regimen of beans and legumes in order not to damage their brains, because otherwise our bodies will harvest protein wherever they need must. I’m looking at you, Adolf Hitler. Did you know your doctors snuck meat protein into your food when they realized you were losing your shit as well as the war? Well, they did.
Some groups like the San !Kung are lucky to have the mongongo nut, rich in calories and proteiny goodness to carry them through thin times, but most humans in most places who don’t have the budget to import food have relied on meat for the last several million years in order to cobble together enough protein to survive. The ones who couldn’t were described as “Ox-like, limp and leaden-eyed.” Today, modern day Dorito Chip vegans voluntarily experience the draining of consciousness into ethics.
In our portion of global history, myths extolling the virtues of procuring meat abound. Gilgamesh, the Iliad, the Ulster Cycle…. Even the Torah devotes a surprising amount of space to meat, its proper preparation, which cuts are appropriate for which rituals. Jesus may have preferred fish and a bowl of hummus, but the G-d of Abraham liked a nice lean brisket.
My point is that eating meat is part of our genetics, our history and our core beliefs. Back in the 18th century, when I was a young Boyo, the English made it quite a point of pride that they ate beef while the French ate chicken. My favorite French king, Henri IV, won over the masses by promising “There shall be a chicken in every peasant’s pot.” Punch illustrators frequently mocked the French for this. Never mind that a lot of the beef and pork which fed the tables of England came from Ireland where the peasants survived on potatoes and fried blood. Eating beef allowed British artistos to grow an average of a foot taller than the stout yeomen and under-classes. The psychological advantage height gave the ruling classes explains much about political life in England in the 18th and early 19th centuries.
This is not to condone raising pigs in offal lagoons nor factory-raised cows and chickens, nor slaughtering animals in needlessly cruel ways. Again, I find the Torah a pretty humane guideline for butchering meat, and if anyone can turn me on to a kosher, free range meat source, holler at your boy.
The present discussion of the ethics of what’s wrong with eating like humans lacks sense. Here’s a good presentation of how fatuous the Whole Foods, Vegan bullshit is:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/31/opinion/31niman.html?_r=1&ref=todayspaper
The term “organic” as I understand it, is any chemical involving a carbon molecule, or at least it was when I studied organic chemistry. The holier-than-thou greens, the ones who don’t realize that a jet flight somewhere negates driving a Prius for a year, feel morally superior for supporting “free range” or “cruelty-free” products. If I run out in a field one night and tip a cow, does that mean she can’t be sold as “cruelty free?” I suggest various New Age, poison-free ideas for my gardener friends to avoid having their fruit eaten by raccoons, their vegetables harvested by insects, blights and climate instabilities. Dilettante gardeners should be commended for staying out of the Monsanto aisle at Home Depot. However, I can’t begrudge working farmers for trying to maximize their investments, and I’ve been up in the Hudson Valley this summer which was a climate and blight disaster. There’s a reason that Monsanto rules the world. Their shit is brutal – environmentally, morally, pharmaceutically—but it keeps farmers in business, and if I were a farmer forced to choose between rabbits and my family, I’d go with my family.
Point two is that the swells who shop at Union Square (The name has nothing to do with trade unions. Send me an email if you want to know more) will happily pay $8 a pound for ground beef, even though they have nothing to go on but words like “organic,” “cruelty free” and “free range” written on cardboard signs on which to base their purchase. I put this in the same folder as McDonald’s “Healthy Choices.” It still remains illegal in Bloomberg’s New York to announce that products contain r-bst, and the “green mayor” is happy to sell kids high-fructose corn syrup drinks as long as they aren’t soda. Look at the ingredients of Arizona Ice Tea’s Honey and Ginseng or anything by Snapple.
This is not in any way to suggest that we give up and drive over to White Castle for a bag of sliders. Food manufacture is more beastly now than it was when Sinclair Lewis wrote the Jungle. The lack of beta testing in the food industry is likely a leading cause of death in the United States, as well as a host of other maladies. Consider
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/11/10/AR2009111017411.html?icid=main|htmlws-main-n|dl4|link7|http%3A%2F%2Fwww.washingtonpost.com%2Fwp-dyn%2Fcontent%2Farticle%2F2009%2F11%2F10%2FAR2009111017411.html
Egalitarian America evolved as a culture where eating lots of meat was the goal of every citizen. For the immigrant masses who came from places where eating meat was reserved for feasts and festivals, the promiscuous meat diet was ultimate proof that America was the promised land.
But America being America, we overdid it. No holiday better illustrates this than Thanksgiving. What began in appreciative devotion to Providence for allowing us to feast before the scarcity of winter has become an orgy of eating for its own sake. My friend Saint Kevin G spends every Thanksgiving in a homeless shelter preparing meals. To me that it a more meaningful way to give thanks than shoveling food into your pie hole until you have to unbutton your pants and collapse insensate on the couch from all the triptophan while the Lions lose quietly in the background.
In Texas they say, “If it ain’t brown or gray, it ain’t food.” Most Americans eat meat with every meal. Consumer America serves up absurd levels of processed factory meat, enhanced by antibiotics, steroids, hormones and various plastics. Yet, our longevity has never been greater, in part because the same people who are tainting our victuals also sell us the drugs that compensate for the toxins they feed us which is a win/win for them. We also eat animals bred and slaughtered in cruelty which has an effect on us spiritually. This is something we as a society should discuss, once we’re done debating whether giving people health care who have none is equivalent to Nazi death camps.
I completely support vegetarians who choose to eat lower on the food chain, even if most have no idea what they are doing to their bodies, although I know many intelligent vegetarians who do. I take exception to the zombie logic that if you choose to eat brains (in this case yours), I have to eat brains (I guess mine) as well doesn’t work for me. Taking an ethical stand against meat is admirable, trying to force other people to take your ethical stand defeats the purpose of taking a stand. I support equal rights, and I will use my persuasive power, my consumer power and my political power to make sure that everyone is protected under the law. What I’m unwilling to do is harass or damage people who do not agree with me.
I also support people who demur from having pets or children. No one should bring unwanted life forms into the world because it is the expected thing. Every day in the JC I meet bad parents and worse pet owners. There is never a justification for calling your own offspring “nigger” or raising a vicious, paranoid dog. At the same time, I meet folks who are great parents. They give me hope for the future. I also meet a lot of people who provide their animal companions with love and security, who derive a feeling of uncritical love and purpose from their pets.
I am not sure that there is any such thing as cruelty free. I watch the swells at Union Square pay $9 a pound for “organic” ground chuck, and in the JC I watch moms with a fistful off food stamps load up on dry beans and the poorest cuts of meat, put things back when they mentally calculate how much they have to feed their families for a week.
The imperative of all life is to survive. Bertold Brecht wisely noted that “Food is the first thing morals follow on. So make sure that all who now are starving get proper helpings when we all start carving.”
We don’t condemn mice, mosquitoes or cockroaches for being disease-carrying parasites. They are tiny selfishness machines. What the faux greens don’t realize is that they are selfishness machines, too. Buying “fair trade” lattes at Starbucks does not exonerate you from what Globals are doing in your name to the rest of the world. If a tree falls in the Amazon but you aren’t holding the chainsaw, you still made a noise.
Thirty million children starve to death on this planet every day. At least one billion people are malnourished. The problem isn’t that we lack the knowledge to feed ourselves. India and China broke the cycle of famine with the green revolution, which, yes, involves some degree of GM foods and Monsanto Frankensteinianism. The problem is that most neo-colonial countries don’t control their budgets or their destError running style: Style code didn't finish running in a timely fashion. Possible causes:
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