We don’t usually think that hard about what that means. Calories, yes; occasionally we consider the carbon footprint of our meal in terms of how far it had to travel to us, if it came packaged in plastic or cardboard, etc. But a recent New York Times article brings to light the truly dark side of our eating habits in America: industrial meat production. Mark Bittman begins his article with a shocker, comparing meat to oil:
“Like oil, meat is subsidized by the federal government. Like oil, meat is subject to accelerating demand as nations become wealthier, and this, in turn, sends prices higher. Finally – like oil – meat is something people are encouraged to consume less of, as the toll exacted by industrial production increases, and becomes increasingly visible.”He goes on to explain the meat production industry, and there are some great accompanying infographics. It is in fact just as scary and bad as college groups chaining themselves to fences have led us to believe for years. And then some. It hasn’t stopped the industry, if you’ve noticed. So why does Bittman think it will start to change any time soon? He suggests, in part, a PR approach not unlike the anti-smoking campaign. We’re also, as a nation, more aware of conservationism and the need for sustainable energy sources; the incredible waste of energy involved in our current system of meat production is just as unsustainable as 30mpg cars. Also, this is an era in which people are thinking more about what they eat than they have in a while (hello, organic and locovore movements), so perhaps this is time to hope something could change.
Yet Bittman suggests some things in his article which make me leery of his thought process. For instance, he says rather casually, “Eliminating subsidies would also help; the United Nations estimates that they account for 31 percent of global farm income.” Okay, great. Why do they account for such a huge chunk of change? Could it be due to the fact that industrial agriculture (a) has tons of money, making possible (b) tons of lobbyists? As backwards as it is, they are supporting a giant slice of the American fiscal pie. You can’t just eliminate subsidies. There has to be something to take their place. According to some, we’re already teetering on the edge of a recession; pulling the rug out from industrial agriculture would–and I might be exaggerating here, but I don’t think so–give us a big shove over that edge.
Bittman goes on to say, “Longer term, it no longer seems lunacy to believe in the possibility of ‘meat without feet’ – meat produced in vitro, by growing animal cells in a super-rich nutrient environment before being further manipulated into burgers and steaks.” He offers no sources for this to help explain why it’s more feasible now than ever before. It kinda still sounds like lunacy to me. New Harvest, a consortium for “meat alternatives” (namely, in vitro), makes the same claim, but similarly fails to give grounds for believing this could become a reality in the near future–though they do say the technology does not yet exist to produce unprocessed meat, like steaks or porkchops, so it will be at least a decade until such things are possible. And America ain’t giving up steak.
I’m hardly a vegetarian but I don’t like the meat industry. I don’t like industrial crop farming, either, for that matter; it’s just not quite as alarming to think of millions of acres of threshed grain as it is to think of billions of sick and mistreated animals. So for my personal inclinations, as well as in the interests of moving towards a sustainable way of life, yes, I want to see this industry change. But just wishing won’t make it so.
For starters, Americans need to be reeducated about the role meat plays in our lives nutritionally. I agree with Bittman there. We need far, far less of it than “Beef: It’s What for Dinner” ads have led us to believe. We also need to be educated, period, about how meat gets from calf to table, and that includes the cost (dollar and carbon) of shipping, feed, the impact of bovine antibiotics on human medical antibiotics, the environmental impact of the gigantic swaths of land devoted to animal feed grains…well, there’s a lot we have to learn.
Getting your kids to eat their broccoli? I’ll leave that to the professionals.
The Times article and your response offer food for thought indeed. In the waning light of this century of cheap oil, it seems that we all must reevaluate of our consumptive appetites, before we are handed our just desserts.
The industrialized meat industry is representative of a much larger machine that is literally consuming the world as we debate what to do. It’s so daunting to consider the inertia of such a monstrously large economic meat-grinder, and the prospect of attempting to change a system where so much money and power is consolidated into the hands of so few can leave the best of us with a diminished hope for meaningful change.
Even so, each and every one of us has the power to decide what we consume, and where it comes from. Instead of continuing to feed the mindlessly insatiable appetites of global agricultural/industrial behemoths with our consumer dollars, we can chose to sustain ourselves on food that is grown in our own backyards, in that of our neighbors, and in the fields and pastures of our local and regional farmers.
I think there is hope for the world, in the organic, clean food, and slow-food movements gaining momentum in this country and abroad. When we become aware of and involved in the process of growing and gathering our own food, we begin to find ways to create meaningful and beneficial change; positive change, not only in the health of our bodies and minds, but also in that of our local and regional economies and ecologies.
We must step towards a way of life that is sustainable not only for the span of a political career, but also on a scale of time that stretches across generations and millenia; the scale of time on which nature operates. Our rise as the most “successful” species on this planet has given us much, including the capacity to understand the very real and tangible damage we are causing to the planetary ecology that we rely on for survival. No changes are easy, but the most successful and effective ones start with ourselves.