Is Small-Scale Slaughter Better?

In Eating Animals, Jonathan Safran Foer documents the decline of small-scale slaughterhouses, focusing (if I recall correctly) on a facility in Missouri. I was surprised, then, to find a not insignificant listing of slaughterhouses and processing facilities in Kentucky, most of which look small scale. (Caveats: the directory is a bit old, and I'm guessing some of the facilities that don't list their "weekly capacity" are big.) Eat Wild lists several Kentucky farms which use local processing facilities. Of course, this isn't what you get in the store, and it turns out that even "Kentucky Proud" meats aren't necessarily processed locally. However, the Lone Tree Cattle Co., which supplies the Better Beef store in Berea, does claim to use local slaughterhouses. Of course, "smaller operation" does not entail "more humane slaughter," but if it's true that industrial processing facilities are slaughtering up to 400 cows per hour (how is that possible?!), I'm willing to bet that the animals who take their last steps into the small-scale slaughterhouse get a bit more undivided attention (before being divided).

I haven't eaten a terrestrial animal in about a year--that is, I still eat fish and shrimp once or twice about every (roughly) two weeks, but no beef, pork, chicken, etc. I know that the seafood we get is probably unsustainable, and so I've been thinking that if I am going to eat some meat, I'd be better off with better beef. (There's also a local fruit and vegetable vendor in Richmond which, I've been told, sells local chickens, but I'm not a big fan of chicken anyways.) I've been thinking, however, about why I don't get off my duff and head down to Berea. Eating meat just isn't a priority anymore. (I guess in the back of my head I'm worried about setting myself on a slippery slope: if I eat a grass-fed better beef burger, will I be more inclined to get a cheeseburger at McDonald's one night on the road?)

Perhaps equally pressing--from something like the perspective of consistency--is the amount of milk my family consumes, and the ugly truth about "industrial" milk (even if the cows are hormone-free). I just found some information about Real Milk, so I guess I'd better go explore.

Respect My Choice?

(Revised; ignore the previous version of this post if you read it; I was not quite happy with it and shouldn't have posted it.)

Foer's Eating Animals is, on the whole, a worthwhile read, especially for someone who needs an introduction to factory farming. An Amazon reviewer characterizes the book as "an urban book by an urban author for an urban audience that surely needs a good shake as it reaches for the package of cheap Tyson chicken thighs at the Fairway." This is not entirely unfair, and Foer is honest about his status as a "city boy." Of course, factory farmed meat isn't "urban"; it's utterly pervasive in the U.S. Nevertheless, there might be something to the idea that Foer's most sympathetic audience will be urban because he is urban. Presumably, this is because we are most inclined to listen to those with whom we might conceivably sit down and have a meal. Those who can't take the "city boy" seriously can always turn instead to books like Howard Lyman's Mad Cowboy, which I haven't read, but appears to be the "country" equivalent to Foer's book (though it's a bit old, given the fact-driven nature of these books. However, my impression is that the basic facts about factory farms haven't changed that much).

As I was reading Foer's book, I was also reading about athletes who've turned to a vegetarian diet (and readers will be glad to know that Prince Fielder has returned to usual form). In reading through some of the (often predictably bad) comments (yes, we all know that reading comments on news websites is a bad idea!), I was struck by the following one, which is somehow connected to the pervasive thought that choices about what we eat are "personal":

I personaly don't care about how the animals are treated, or how they are butchered as they are being turned into my next meal. They are still "animals" as in below humans. And if ya'll don't like it, thats ok, eat your soy and beans, I'll not try to stop you, just please give me the same respect. I'll take mine medium well done thank you.

Really, this is just another thoughtless waste of internet space, and I feel a bit apologetic about framing any thoughts in response to it. (I feel like the man in the cartoon who says to his wife, "I'm busy right now! Someone said something wrong on the Internet!") But there's an idea encapsulated in this stupid remark that I've been thinking about: the idea that what we eat is a "personal" choice.

In discussing my move away from meat (at least mammals and birds), a not-unsympathetic family member attempted to summarize my decision by glossing it as a "personal choice." My response was, "Well, if I thought it was just a personal choice, I'd still be eating bacon, because bacon is tasty!" At the same time, I try to resist the urge to get "moralistic," which is presumably what the commenter above doesn't like. But this is hard once one has a vivid impression about just how inhumane, disrespectful, and plain gross the factory farm industry is. At least, it's hard not to take the occasional jab. Is that disrespectful? Surely not.

I have no idea why anyone would need to "try" not to stop someone from eating beans. What exactly is the corresponding "respect" the commenter above wants? I'm not going to try to take his steak away from him while he's eating. I have other things to do. (Does he have a strong impulse to slap veggie burgers out of the hands of others?) Does he want his choice to be respected? "Respect my choice." What does that mean? Not to criticize it? But that doesn't make sense. Even if a choice is "personal," that doesn't seem to rule out the permissibility of criticism of a sort, as with style and music criticism. But let's grant that criticism of that sort is merely "aesthetic," and so there's plenty of room for disagreement in taste and choice on such matters. Is what we eat merely "personal" or "aesthetic" in that respect? The easy answer, I think, is that it can't be "merely" personal because what we choose to eat affects other living beings (including farmers, who've been either marginalized or forced into being mere "producers" for the meat industry with little control over their animals).

I understand, more or less, why people continue to eat factory farmed meat--which is just about the only kind of meat you can get in a grocery store or a restaurant. The intellectual transition, for me, has taken some time. (And I'm still not really a vegetarian since I'll still eat fish and shrimp, but the more I read about "bycatch" and the environmental problems with fishing, the more my appetite wanes. That said, the practical transition is pretty easy in comparison to the intellectual one.) I'm sympathetic with the idea that grass-farmed animals, and even responsibly hunted animals, could be respectable sources of food. I'm not (yet?) prepared to go vegan, and so it's hard to achieve true "consistency" in food choice. (Eggs and dairy products present lots of problems, too.) But to demand respect, especially on the grounds that one "personally does not care" where one's meat comes from, just seems stupid and obnoxious. And this, as Foer (and others, like Michael Pollan) bring out, is really the problem: most people just don't seem to care where their food comes from. But on what grounds could that indifference--whatever you're eating--possibly be worthy of respect?

Eating Animals

"The justification for eating animals and for not eating them are often identical: we are not them."

This line, for whatever reason, stood out to me as I've been working through Jonathan Safran Foer's Eating Animals. (Check out the website here.) I'm about halfway through, and was very hesitant to get this book--not because I was "afraid" of what I might learn (though I have learned some things from it, and the book has extensive references), but because I thought the book would be cute and mildly pretentious. (I don't know anything about Foer, haven't read his novels, but have this probably unfair image of him as a NYC literati hipster...hence my reservations.)

But the book is in fact quite good so far. The problem is that between this and Michael Pollan's The Omnivore's Dilemma, there isn't very much left to eat on a daily basis that can leave one feeling very good. That is, it's easy to be overwhelmed by the thought that there's nothing one can do right when it comes to eating. (The butternut squash I purchased at the new Meijer store in Richmond today was shipped from Mexico; how much oil did that take? One might say: at least it didn't suffer during the ride...) When one confronts the problems with "industrial" food, whether meat or produce, it's hard to know where to start with righting one's own ship, at least until the local farmer's market opens in June...

I hope to have something more cohesive to say about Foer when I finish the book. I've been eating quasi-vegetarian (with some shrimp and fish--though fish is looking like a worse deal the more I read and learn) for several months, but I don't have strongly settled views about most of the subtleties of the "eating animals" debates.

But back to Foer's line above: what do you make of it? It's easy, perhaps, for the animal liberationist (say, Singer) to say that "we are not them" is a red herring (ha ha) (speciesism, etc.) when it comes to justifying eating animals, but is that right?