The Meat We Eat: Part One

I was inspired to write this post after an interaction with a customer at yesterday's farmers market.  This customer was coming back to buy more meat and to tell me about his FIRST experience eating meat, some grassfed lamb he purchased from us the week before.  You see, this gentleman was a meat virgin, never having consumed animals flesh (directly) in his life before.  He was happy, ecstatic about his experience, and hungry for more.  Vegetarians and vegans that read my site will be saddened about the falling of one of their brothers.  I, on the other hand, was satisfied knowing the first meat this guy ever ate was from antibiotic-free, pasture-raised lamb that had never consumed grain or spent a day in a feedlot in its life.  I was also happy that this gentleman was going to be consuming an amazing source of Omega-3 fatty acids that instead of coming from over-fished cod or flax grown on the prairies, it came from an animal perfectly suited to the valley and foothill grasslands of California.  I was happy about the countless other nutrients that this guy would now be getting in sufficient quantities- things like iron, vitamin b12, and healthy fats.  I don't question his change-of-heart.  He said he was just waiting all these years for the right source of meat to come along.

This exchange and many others that I have with vegetarians who purchase our eggs or former vegetarians who now heartily consume our meat recalled a passage in Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall's book called, The River Cottage Meat Book.  Unlike anywhere else I have ever read, Hugh sums up in the most eloquent and personal way the reasoning for omnivory (i.e eating both plant and animals-based foods).  Since his first chapter, titled "Meat and Right" is five pages long, I will only read to you the very beginning for this post:

"So there are two fundamental questions that I would like to consider at the very beginning of this book.  Why do we eat meat?  And is it right, morally, that we do?

Most meat eaters never really ask themselves these questions.  That fact in itself sheds some light on the issue.  Unthinkingly, we are carnivores.  And historically, we are carnivores.  For hundreds of thousands of years we have hunted animals, and for tens of thousands we have farmed them, so that we can eat their meat.  It is likely that we were meat eaters throughout that period of our development when our moral capacity could be said to have evolved.  There is continuity in our meat eating and it is, in some deep-rooted, even hard-wired, way, natural.

In eating meat, then, I am doing what comes naturally.  But that's not enough to resolve the moral dilemma.  In order to be an untroubled carnivore I need to persuade myself not merely that it's been okay for my ancestors to eat meat for the past several millenia but that it's still okay for me today.

Things change.  We continue to evolve, and so does our relationship with the animals with whom we share the planet.  For a long period of evolutionary history, our primate ancestry was primarily, or even exclusively, vegetarian.  Today our cousins, the gorillas and orangutans, survive- indeed, thrive- without a scrap of meat in their diets.  On the other hand, our other relatives, the chimpanzees, do hunt for meat, usually killing other monkey species or even cannibalizing other chimp troupes.

So why has the human primate hung on to the meat-eating habit?  Why indeed, argues the vegetarian, who sees abstention from meat as a mark of moral progress.  Why not mark the ascent of civilized values by abandoning a wholly uncivilized historical habit?  Some carnivores in search of absolution may try to argue that meat is essential for human survival- though, when pressed, they will usually moderate the claim to "essential for good health".  Others have a tendency to become quite vociferous in defense of their carnivorous ways and, on the basis that attack is the best form of defense, you may hear them argue that vegetarians are pallid, pasty-faced types, who are missing something good in their diets.  All they are really observing, though, is that ours is a meat-eating culture essentially hostile to vegetarians- some of whom, through ignorance and lack of support, manage their diets badly.

Pro-meat arguments based on habit, health, or survival, persuasive though they may feel to their protagonists, do not really bite on a pragmatic level, let alone in the realm of pure ethics.  At best, they establish the self-evident fact that they human race is, and has long been, meat eating.  But we carnivores must also concede that, in all but a few extreme environments, meat is not essential for human survival or even for good health.

The real problem with these arguments is that they are often born of a gridlocked antagonism between meat eaters and vegetarians, who each feel the need to defend themselves against the implied critism of the other's position.  They miss the moral nitty-gritty by a wide margin because the issues at stake have become almost tribal: two groups feeling mutually threatened, throwing sticks and bones.  This is an unhappy, contaminated forum in which to conduct a reasoned moral discussion."

In the next part of this series I will share Hugh's thoughts on "The Limits of a Vegetarian Utopia" and "The Morality of Killing Animals".

P.S. The picture above is thick-cut bacon from our pasture-raised pigs that we raised.  I have taken to broiling bacon nowadays since it keeps the strips flat and cooks them more evenly that in a fry pan.

Comments

[Walter Jeffries]

We broil our bacon too, also from our pigs, but up on a wire rack so the fat drips down and can be saved.

As to vegetarians and vegans, been there, done that, got the T-shirt. I raise my own meat. I'm part of the natural world, part of the web of life. We all shall be eaten in our time, unless you go for extra crispy (cremation) or pickled (embalming) which are silly wastes of resources and energy. When my time comes I want to be composted and spread on my apple trees.

[Grass Fed Beef]

A meat virgin? I didn't think those people existed in the world today.

[rich]

Thanks for posting this. The recent book 'Compassionate Carnivore' uses the analogy of a dinner...vegetarians who advocate for better animal treatment are stepping away from the table in this regard, not allowing their dollars to match their values.

I look forward to part 2

[Anna]

I've begun making bacon with a rack on a sheet pan, though I keep the temperature lower than broiling, about 250°F (300°F max). It takes longer, about 40 minutes or more, but the bacon stays very flat, there are no grease splatters in the oven or when opening the door, and the grease that collects in the sheet pan is very clear and white, with very little brown protein bits to filter out (when saving the grease for cooking).

When my husband and son go camping with their YMCA group, I precook the bacon with the method, removing the bacon when it is about 2/3 done. Then I wrap of the cooled bacon and store it in their cooler. They can finish cooking the bacon without the problem of too much hot grease and long cooking times. My husband took a lot of teasing the first time he showed up with precooked bacon, but now the precooked bacon is expected and missed if not sent.

[Louche]

That quote is bizarre. I'm vegan, and I find the argument that it is unnecessary to slaughter animals for meat quite satisfying. But I will be interested to read more on what the guy has to say.... although the last time I did something just because I was drawn to the bizarreness, I decided to eat some "vegan beef" which was quite disturbing and which I don't plan to do again.