How'd that Corpse Get on Your Plate?

   

The conversation between vegetarians and carnivores often gets heated. Arguments such as, Is meat even essential to human diet? How was the animal treated prior to slaughter? Was the animal humanely raised or industrialized? How was the animal euthanized? This week we read from the book Table Comes First by Adam Gopnik, Chapter 6 Meat or Vegetables.  We also had guest speaker, Dr. Karen S. Emmerman, who touched on legal protection for farmed animals and the correlation between animal oppression and other types of oppression. We ended the week by watching the heartwarming movie Okja which was about the relationship between a genetically modified "Super" pig and a little girl.  

From resources this week the general concept was, is meat eating ok if the animal is well cared for and responsibility harvested/killed? Our resources have lead us down a very windy road of thought provoking scenarios which as a meat eater leaves me questioning my dietary choices. Our resources have lead me to believe that reform for animal production, how their cared for, and how they are harvested/slaughtered is urgent and necessary. 

The chapter from the book got me thinking and lead me to explore the idea, should animals have rights as they can demonstrate emotions such as anxiety, fear, and happiness.  It also made me realize animals most surely feel pain.  I mean I knew they felt pain. I've stepped on a dog a time or two had them squeal out in pain, but I never correlated that to the pain and anxiety that my "burger" went through on its way to my plate.  Dr. Emmerman was intensely passionate on her stand against animal slaughter and cruelty.  She provided a dramatic view of what animals go through and how it compares to oppression.  The movie seemingly tied everything together for me.  It showed how animals have the ability to show affection, problem solve, have fear, and how inhumane the slaughter process can be. 

In the book, Table Comes First, Chapter 6 Meat or Vegetables, it used stories of two chefs' and references author, Jonathan Safran Foer's book Eating Animals. Chef Fergus Henderson owns a restaurant dedicated to his wholistic approach to animal consumption with concern for how the animal is treated prior to and at the time of slaughter. Chef Alain Passard's restaurant is dedicated to the vegetarian and natural, organic foods. Foer is a passionate anti-carnivore who dramatically expresses his stance on not eating meat. Table Comes First also introduces arguments regarding animal oppression and opposite to that, nature's natural instinct of predation.  

Chef Fergus Henderson's devotion to using the "odd bits to unordinary animals" is displayed throughout his restaurant's menu that includes ox tongue and tripe, lamb's brains, and pig's heads, and other exotic animal parts. He states he "... believes not only the animals should be happy by being raised well, slaughtered humanely, and eaten entirely, but that you can taste the emotional state of the animal on your plate." He goes on to say a meal at his restaurant balances somewhere between the "don’t eat it impulse" and the "dare you to eat it impulse."  His wholistic approach to using the entire animal carcass is done out of his respect for the animal's life.  

Chef Alain Passard has a restaurant that caters to the vegetarian. He experiments with fruits and vegetables combinations in his restaurant because as he states "... I no longer wanted to be in a daily relationship with the corps of an animal." He expresses that he found himself daily trying to be creative with a dead corpse.  The thought of that daily relationship with a dead corpse made him feel nervous, uneasy, and anxious.  When I think about why he might be so nervous about meat, I consider really what goes it to getting the meat to the restaurant.  Let's think about it for a second.  The cost, the freshness, using it before it goes bad, preparing it in a way that it will sell in a timely manner, and keeping a menu fresh and new and appealing to restaurant consumers.  If you leave it right there, that is stressful enough.  But if you take it a step further and begin to contemplate what the meat went through to get to the plate, it might likely give you even bigger reasons to be anxious.  You might think was it from a local farm?  Was it raised at an industrialized farm? What was it fed? How was it slaughtered? Did the animal know to be afraid?  Those questions when given consideration cause me anxiety. Chef Passard said all of that anxiety went away when he stopped including meat in his dishes.  He is very passionate about each step that goes into making his food natural and organically grown.  

Both chefs seem to value the animal.  Chef Henderson believes he is honoring and respecting the animal by using the entire animal with minimal waste.  Chef Passard believes he can meet his customers' dietary desires with naturally and responsibly grown fruits and vegetables without use of animal meat.   

Jonathan Safran Foer presents a case of the likeness of animal feelings to human feelings. There are three tiers to his argument that meat consumption is at the expense of animal oppression. One argument is that animals feel pain and killing them causes pain. We, as animals ourselves, have no right to inflict pain on another living creature. The second argument is that the slaughter of animals is just really cruel.  He goes onto say "… and to execute inarticulate and helpless animals for our pleasure because they can't speak, organize, or struggle is finally as cruel as executing babies would be because they can't speak or struggle." These arguments, in my mind, help to build a case that animal meat consumption might lead to animal oppression. Finally, should we eat dead animals even if they are painlessly slaughtered? Raising animals on big industrial farms is not natural and even if we fix the suffering and inefficiencies of these farms including disease outbreaks that often occur, Foer believes that you would still have a sad animal.  

The argument intensifies with the analogy "the emancipated slave goes on to make his own life, however hard; the emancipated animal, with a few feral exceptions, is in every sense a dead end." The argument that eating meat is cruel and unnatural continues to be challenged by nature with the fact that big fish eat little fish; lions eat gazelles; frogs eat bugs. These arguments might sway me back to thinking in eating meat is natural and ok.  

Is the real issue about eating animals or how the animal lives and dies? More evidence of animal oppression was brought forth by Dr. Karen S. Emmerman. During her talk she covered legal protection for farmed animals, two major moral arguments against using animals for food, ecofeminism, and how animal oppression linked to other kinds of oppression.  

At the beginning of her talk, she said that 10 billion animals a year are slaughtered for food and that's only the industrialized animals like cows, pigs, chickens, etc., that number was shocking to me. When she talked about the animal protection laws, she made it seem like the animals at the industrialized factories had no protection at all. The only thing that protects the animal is the minimal over seeing that the FDA provides to the factories and slaughter industry. The 28-hour transport law which mandates animals can only be on a moving truck for 28-hours and then its required to let them out and eat and rest before going the rest of the way to their destination. The humane methods of livestock slaughter act are intended to prevent animals from suffering in the process of being slaughtered into food. This eye opening for me because I think I am a caring and conscious person.  I just had no idea what animals might go through. 

Dr. Emmerman's two major moral arguments were Utilitarianism and Rights Views against using animals for food. She explained how Utilitarianism concept of the greater good of the majority applies to stopping animals being used for food. Her goal is to maximize the quality of life of the animal and decrease pain for the animal. She discussed with us the ideal of treating all suffering alike. Her example of a sick pig is going to get medical treatment where as a sick chicken gets thrown in a dumpster to die was very disturbing to me.  I believe this cruel treatment by most standards should be criminal. The chicken suffers a horrible death and is not euthanized humanely. She brought about the idea that Utilitarian has more of a welfarist view than abolitionist. The welfarist view is more of a middle ground taking what currently exists and improving it versus the abolitionist view of just getting rid of the current situation. When talking about rights views she explained respecting the rights of beings who have rights. It is her belief that the raising and killing animals for food violates the animal's rights. Dr. Emmerman referenced a chicken factory when comparing a welfarist view and an abolitionist view. She indicated that a welfarist would most likely want to enlarge and improve the living space for the chickens where as an abolitionist would have wanted the factory shut down.  

Dr. Emmerman gave an intense overview of how animal oppression is linked to other types of oppression such as objectification, rape, and exploitation. She went on to compare this to human affliction in those areas of oppression. It was a little hard for me to understand where she was going with this until I had watched the movie Okja. 

The movie Okja embodied all the resources' viewpoints into one easy to understand storyline with animal cruelty, objectification, rape, and exploitation of animals.  

Mija, a 14-year-old girl, and her grandfather raised Okja, one of 26 genetically modified super piglets, in the hills of Korea. For 10 years, Mija and Okja established an unbreakable bond. Throughout the movie Okja demonstrated, as most domesticated animals often do, trust, appreciation, and affection for her caregiver, Mija. The super pig also demonstrated the ability to learn and problem solve.  

In the movie, the corporation that owned the super pigs treated them as a assets and/or possessions.  When Okja was separated from Mija and transported from Korea to New York, the super pig felt anxious, fear, and sadness. This really brought to light for me the correlation of how animals are objectified, exploited, and touched on how animal activists would equate rape to animals.  

Okja to the corporation was an object/possession and was given no consideration to the bond she had with Mija. She was exploited by the corporation when introduced as a wonderful disposable invention that is cost effective and tasty. Okja was violently and forcibly breed by another male super pig in an unnatural setting touching on animal oppression and rape view.   

The movie introduced a "feed lot" where the other super pigs were held prior to being killed and slaughtered. The slaughter showed frightened animals being electrocuted and shocked to get them up a ramp where they would be shot in the head by the "Knocker."  Their bodies would then be dismembered by other workers. In the movie Mija is able to purchase Okja before she fell to the same fate of death and dismemberment. To the corporation, Okja just like the other pigs were a possession with a price tag but to Mija she was her companion. 

The movie really tied everything together for me. It showed animal rights, animals cruelty, how laws can be unjust when it comes down to animal welfare. 

In Stephanie Meyer’s the Twilight series there are good Vampires and Bad Vampires. On the moral grounds that all human life is precious, a very small proportion of vampires in the Twilight universe receive their sustenance from animal blood (good vampires). They jokingly call themselves vegetarians. The examples are the Cullen family and the Denali coven.  

Edward Cullen and the other Vampires like him maybe considered more ethical Vampires (good vampires).  They only eat animal blood. The bad Vampires consume any type of blood they can get their filthy fangs in. Vampires who wish to blend in with human society steer clear of consuming human blood. However, on occasion, the appeal of human blood can be so enticing that a "vegetarian" vampire will lose control, especially if their self-control is weak. To a "vegetarian" vampire, carnivores' blood is more appetizing than herbivores, though still not quite as good as humans.  

So, we can compare this movie to the same philosophy of ethical coexistence because if vampires treat the human with kindness it's still not ok to eat them. That goes right back to my concept of is meat eating ok if the animal is well cared for and responsibility harvested/killed? 

This blog has walked a fine line between whether it is ok to eat animals if they are well cared for and happy prior to being harvested/slaughtered for human consumption. The argument can be made that its natural in nature for animals to consume animals.  Then there is a subsequent contradicting argument that the human body does not need animal protein to be sustained and that there are several other means by which humans can meet their dietary needs.   

Question: So, why are we at a stalemate?  Is it ok to eat meat if harvested humanely?   

For centuries, back to the caveman days, men have eaten meat. Many ways of thinking have changed over the years.  Yet one thing remains the same people still continue to be CARNIVORES.  So, if we take a welfarist approach to animal consumption, I think as a whole is the best hope for the critters of the world.  As I don’t think it is likely that the world's population as a whole will ever entirely stop eating meat, lets ensure that animals produced for consumption live in humane conditions, free from undue distress and suffrage.  Let's make sure that we take an active stance on the oversight and enforcement of laws and rules of the harvesting/slaughtering of animals and minimalized animal waste.  We can take it a step further and educate young people about food and nutrition and ways to fuel their body with alternatives to meat. If the younger generations of people start early learning about nutrition and what the best type of diet people should eat, then in the future we can finally have a solution that all people would be happy with even meat is involved in the diet. 

Ryan Lusk

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