We will watch the documentary Cowspiracy in class.
Collaboration of facts about animal agriculture: http://www.cowspiracy.com/facts/
A year or two after I started my career here at Kalamazoo
College, I learned to become very suspicious and uncertain about the authority
structure. I learned about a few historical events that shaped the way we live
today and I started to question the authority structure in many ways, meaning I
questioned the government, the church, education, the food I ate, etc. I
started to do a lot of research into global social issues, history, and
philosophy. I began to learn and realize some of the very dark things happening
on earth. I spent a good portion of a few months locked in my room watching
grim documentaries and reading articles about genocide and famine and
capitalism and colonialism. I became slightly depressed and discouraged (and
still am sometimes) because I realized that it is the way I am living that is
promoting the inhumane, horrific, and greedy atrocities that are happening all
over the world. I am a part of the group that is on the side that is
benefitting from exploitation of other land and other people. We talked a
little about this in class last week where in order to sustain and maintain the
way we live in the United States, there has to be people suffering and living
in poor conditions. I visited Chicago a few days ago and we drove from the
wealthy north side to the poverty stricken south side and I saw the amazing way
people were living in the north side driving expensive cars, living in these
unbelievable modern condos, eating at fancy restaurants, and just unconsciously
consuming. When I got to the south side I saw the factories that produce the
things the wealthy consume and the warehouses and trash piles and the thousands
of broken homes that house the people born into this subordinate role in our
society where they have to work in the factories and accept the extremely low
wages offered for survival. I also became disheartened and depressed because I
wanted to do something to change the way the system works and I became
frustrated when I realized that there was not much I could do at the moment. I
was reading and watching a lot of YouTube videos about the food industry and
the conflict of interest between the government and agriculture biochemical
companies (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gzh2EMn3RY8). I eventually started
to see statistics about the sustainability of animal agriculture. As I was
frustrated with not being able to change the authority structure, I learned
that animal agriculture was the number one contributor to climate change and
the number one consumer of fresh water. I learned that just one-quarter pound
of ground beef took 660 gallons of water to grow. I knew that there was a lot
of terrible and dark and evil things I could not change right now but this is
something I could change right now. I knew I had to stop eating farmed animal
products. There are just simply too many people on earth to be sustained by
farmed animals. The earth does not have enough resources to sustain that. There
are a lot of really great facts about animal agriculture from the link at the
top of the post. This was pretty hard for me to do considering my family’s
culture. My parents are Eastern-European. My dad is from Serbia and my mom is
from Croatia. Eating animals is a huge part of their culture there and they eat
animals with every meal. So even after explaining to my family hundreds of
times why I decided to stop eating animal products, they still do not
understand and annoy the hell out of me for it. But current events are
screaming out for a need for change. California is in big trouble right now
with one of the worst droughts in recorded history. California is actually
making restrictions on the personal use of water by implementing water curfews.
However, only 4 percent of California’s water footprint is from individual use
whereas 47 percent is from animal agriculture (http://www.onegreenplanet.org/news/californias-drought-whos-really-using-all-the-water/).
So what should we do? After watching the documentary, do you think it is
unrealistic to expect people to stop eating animal products? What type of
cultural implications could this have?
At least in the present day, it is not realistic to expect people to stop eating meat. Partly because it is something that we are socialized to do and also because it has, in many cases, great cultural significance. By working to better understand the current agricultural system, and highlighting its inhumane and unsustainable practices, hopefully people will be inspired to buy meat from local and ethical sources, which will also hopefully lead to lower consumption due to higher and quality, more satisfying products, and higher prices. My hope is that we can preserve the important cultural traditions of eating meat, but in a way that respects the animals and that uses restraint. So, instead of eating meat every day, we would eat meat on special occasions. I think this would actually reinforce many of the cultural and religious values that are represented in celebrations, special dinners, religious holidays etc. in that by raising animals in a humane and more sustainable way, and limiting our consumption of meat, we are reinforcing values of respecting life, living in love, and leaving a better world for our children etc.
ReplyDeleteI eat meat and I know that I could stop. With the proper education on how to stop eating meat and what to eat instead, I know that I could stop. However, it is inconvenient in the world that we live today. On restaurant menus, when visiting family and friends, at the grocery store, most things have meat in them, or at least some small animal byproduct. The society and culture in the United States is a meat-eating one. So to attempt to stop everyone from doing what they have been told to do since birth would be incredibly difficult. However, on the local scale there is a lot that we could do to educate people on how to cut down their meat intake and how to support more local farms. I am not sure if I have an answer to these questions that were posed, and that scares me, but I have hope that we will be able to discuss these questions in class and come up with ideas.
ReplyDeleteI have been a conflicted vegetarian for six or seven years. I find it most challenging when I want to partake in a family tradition that includes eating meat, or learn about another's food culture as a traveller and/or guest. It's always a tough balance of sticking to my values of not supporting a system that's doing so much damage (while also being away that I support so many other systems that are also harmful in other ways - clothing, technology, etc.), potentially encouraging others to think about meat consumption in a different way, and being a pain in the ass.
ReplyDeleteI’d like to share the work of a great organization I got to know while I was in Philadelphia over break. I met Rachel Atcheson, who runs the Philadelphia branch at The Humane League. (Mission: “to save the lives of as many animals as possible and to reduce as much animal cruelty as we can.”) Though ultimately, they’re advocating for a global vegan diet (which I’m not sure I support), they have impactful projects and initiatives. Part of Rachel’s job is to visit area high schools and colleges and give presentations about factory farming. They way she sets up the discussion is strategic – I’d love to talk more about it in class.
I stopped eating meat when I was 12 years old, mostly because it made me feel physically unwell. The biggest challenge to this decision came while abroad in Thailand where all students had to sign a contractual agreement to eat meat as the implications of refusing meat in some situations could be potentially embarrassing or disrespectful. Eating meat seemed so convenient and I was ready to continue moderate meat consumption after my return to the US. After learning about our food production in the US and considering my personal carbon footprint however I decided to return to a meat-free diet. I think on an individual level there are things that we can choose to sacrifice as a way to tread a little lighter on the Earth. Meat for me has never been a crucial part of my diet and so giving it up is something I am both willing and able to do. What follows is now making sure that my options that I choose as a vegetarian do not contribute equally as much to anthropogenic climate change. This is where the importance of local food once again comes into play. A vegetarian's carbon footprint can sometimes be equally detrimental as someone who chooses, for example, a soy-based alternative that is created using soy beans grown in a deforested area of Brazil. In this case then, a diet that includes sustainably raised meat eaten in moderation, is more environmentally sound option. All in all, understanding our food, where it's coming from, and by what means it's produced are key factors that those of us who have the resources to pursue, should pursue.
ReplyDeleteI think it comes down to personal accountability. Once I became aware of the severe negative impacts of factory farming, I was no longer able to allow myself to eat meat that was made in that fashion. Everyone is different, though. I've heard a lot of people say "I don't want to know" when asked about where their meat comes from.
ReplyDeleteNot once in ~18 years of schooling have I learned how to get the proper nutrients with a vegan diet or about how meat was produced. Ideally, schools would educate kids from a young age and let them decide for themselves what they think is right. Unfortunately, most schools serve factory farmed meat to their kids every day and never educate them about how it is made. If the kids don't have parents that educate them, or a really strong questioning mindset, most kids will be raised meat-eaters. And old habits are hard to break. A lot of people love the taste of meat and think that is more important than the ecological impact, even when it is revealed to them. As I said before, it comes down to personal accountability.
While I'd love to see all of my loved ones join me in transitioning to a vegan diet, I know that this isn't a realistic goal. I continue to hope that people will come to the point where they look inward and ask "is this really how I want to live?" I have learned to stop burdening myself with the task of opening people's eyes. But had I not had someone show me a video or two, I may not have realized how wrong the system was. There is a balance between throwing ideas out to people and deciding things for them. I think it is unrealistic to expect an entire society to take up a vegan lifestyle that they know nothing about! But perhaps if more people were made aware we could see a real change for the better.
I think discussion around meat production and consumption is really interesting for a variety of reasons. Growing up my mother was a vegetarian and I remember eating tofu as a young child. However, over the years my family’s diet changed and by the time I was in middle school we did eat meat, though not a lot and never red meat. I had friends who became vegetarians because they were concerned about animal rights and some because they felt it to be a healthier lifestyle. But truthfully, I never thought a lot about it.
ReplyDeleteNow responsible for my own diet and making my own purchasing decisions, I rarely eat meat. Primarily because meat is expensive and I can’t afford to have it more than once a week. However, I also have started to consider the implications of a meat consuming society. For me, I think it’s a very complex issue. As Petar pointed out, there tend to be a lot of cultural practices around meat consumption that can make it hard to stop eating meat or even question the ethics around it. As food is so closely tied to identity, culture, and tradition, I can understand why people sometimes are defensive about changing their practices. In discussions about changing perceptions around meat consumption, I think it is vital to recognize how meat might be connected to such issues. It seems to me that by acknowledging and engaging people in conversation about the way they connect to food, we might be able to learn a lot about the historical practices of meat production too and how that has changed with time. For example, meat production and consumption has only recently exploded. When I think of my father’s family and their affinity for meat consumption, I realize that due to their history of farming and raising their own animals, they have a different understanding of what meat production can be. It doesn’t have to be detrimental to the Earth. Rather, if we look historically at production and consumption patterns, we might be able to re-conceptualize a balance.
Since humans have been eating animals for many years, it’s unrealistic to expect them to stop anytime soon. Eating meat has long been a sign of wealth, status, and often masculinity. As a result, our society needs a complete cultural shift in the way we think about meat. Personally, the aspect of modern animal agriculture that bothers me the most is simply how it leads us to view animals. I think Ghandi put it well when he said, “The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way its animals are treated.” I wholeheartedly agree — it says so much about our society that we exploit these living beings that can’t speak for themselves.
ReplyDeleteThis topic also makes me think about pets in the US. Even though there is still an astonishing number of stray cats and dogs in the world, many Americans pamper their cats and dogs, treating them as “one of the family.” Most people would be horrified at the thought of eating their beloved Fido. Yet we allow chickens, cows, pigs, and other animals to suffer tremendously because we like the taste of meat. Of course, it’s not this simple. Much of the issue comes down to ignorance and deeply ingrained cultural norms. However, as long as we continue treating animals as merely commodities, the negative effects of the meat industry will increase. I don’t think there’s anything inherently wrong with eating meat, but the way our culture has evolved this practice is harmful to the animals, the workers, the consumers, and the environment.
Wow, this is such a great discussion already! And now I really can't wait to hear what questions you are all going to have for Nicolette Hahn Niman after you read her book "Defending Beef"! (In which she, essentially, defends beef-eating.)
ReplyDeleteGrowing up on a dairy farm, I drank a lot of milk and ate a lot of cows during my childhood. When I grew up and started to be able to choose my own diet, I stopped eating much meat, though that was really more because I didn't enjoy it than for any ethical reason. Once I learned about factory-farming, I made a decision not to eat animal products from those types of farms if at all possible but I never made the decision to become a vegetarian. (I DO still feel really conflicted if I go to a friend's house and they offer me something they've cooked that I know has unethically farmed animal products in it. Usually my mid-western upbringing gets the better of me and I politely eat whatever is served.)
One thing that was really important to me in making the decision to continue to eat meat was that I participate in slaughter. I felt that if I wasn't willing to look an animal in the eye and then kill it for my food, I didn't have the right to ask someone else to do that for me. So when I lived at Lake Village Farm in my early twenties, I volunteered for chicken-killing day. We did it the old-fashioned way with a stump and an axe. My aim with the axe wasn't so good, so I held the chicken with its neck stretched out over the stump while my boyfriend swung the axe. Afterward the body would twitch and jerk with crazy motions, sending blood from the neck stub spraying all over me. It seemed like a lot of work for a chicken dinner, especially since I really wasn't that fond of chicken.
I have good friends, though, who would be devastated at the thought of no more chicken dinners. It seems like their bodies crave meat in a way that mine doesn't and so I'm hesitant to say that we both should give up something that they love and I could easily live without. Petar makes some good points about the destructiveness of our animal agriculture system, though. I guess my question is--if we all gave up animal products, what are we eating instead? Are we eating textured vegetable protein products made out of GMO soy?More processed foods made out of GMO corn? Or could we come up with an entirely new vision of our cultural diet?
I think your post and the video clip point out a lot of important issues. First, beyond populating our earth with animals we need to eat, we are over populating the earth with humans. I think this over population done on the part of the human species is bound up in the mentality that we have to conquer nature. Once again, I am going to put the onus on capitalism. It tells us to want more and more, and in order ot acheive more we have to do it at the expense of the earth and other people. What do we do? I think we need a serious cultural change. Yes, we can limit the amount of live stock consumed, however, that seems like a bandaid to a deeply rooted problem in our culture. We need to treat the earth as something we coexist with rather than conquer and exploit. We need to think not only about how to use less of the earths resources, but also how to replenish them. To me, the things that Amy and John are doing with the farm, is revolutionary. This farm, and other similar farms are proving that we can live on this earth and nourish it too. So, in short, we need a culture change. How can we accomplish this? I'm not sure, It has seemed that the world has been on the brink of revolution since the 60's. These values have existed, they are not new? We need to identify what is stopping the spread of these values and reimagine how we moblize the masses.
ReplyDeleteAs someone who grew up in a mostly vegetarian household and never really developed a taste for meat (which is something I have been regretting recently) it is easy for me to stick to a meat free diet. However if someone asked me to give up soy products, which is an important part of my diet, I would have trouble finding a substitute. Because of prices and convenience of factory farmed meat in the United States, I realize it is too much to ask for everyone to be a vegetarian or raise their own meat. For some people, access to healthy vegetarian options is not possible. Because of the large human population and our increased dependence on industrialized farming we have become so detached from the process that goes into meat production. It is difficult to expect people in urban areas to feel some type of connection to the nature involved in creating their foods, if they have never been to a farm. I think now more than ever it is important to have programs that can expose people to aspects of our food industry to empower them to make their own dietary choices and develop informed opinions on food production.
ReplyDeleteWhen it comes to meat production, I strongly believe grassfed is the way to go. Many people argue that grassfed livestock still produce greenhouse gases. However, these figures do not take into account the fact that grazing livestock can actually help remove carbon from the atmosphere. Grasslands are more capable of carbon sequestration than any other ecosystem, and livestock can enhance carbon incorporation into plants and soil. Some estimates have even shown that proper farming techniques can effectively make grazing livestock carbon negative. Grassfed livestock also produce usable manure that fertilizes the grass and helps replenish the soil.
ReplyDeleteMeat is an essential part of a healthy diet. Humans evolved eating meat. Our large brains and higher cognitive function were made possible because our ancestors consumed nutrient-rich meat, organs, and other animal products. Meat provides essential nutrients and vitamins that are extremely difficult to obtain from any vegetarian source.
I really enjoyed reading your post and watching the video clip in order to gain some more insight on animal agriculture. I agree with you in regards to factory-farming being a horrifying system within our capitalist society; however, I don’t believe it is completely realistic to expect people to stop eating animal products because it is already so established and socialized. According to Jose Andres, raising cattle has become so industrialized that it’s cheaper to buy a pound of ground beef than a head of broccoli. What?! The huge corporations have such a huge influence on what is on our plates every night. With that being said, I do believe that it’s imperative that our society continues to educate itself on the food industry (through various books like ‘Fast Food Nation’ by Schlosser, The Omnivore’s Dilemma by Pollan, etc.) Increased education and general awareness of the food industry will open the doors to living more sustainably. People will begin to understand (hopefully) that eating lots of meat is bad for them (with its connections to cancer, diabetes and cardiovascular disease) as well as the environment (it’s so energy intensive!) Through small farms, like Amy’s, I am hopeful that people will begin to respect the cultural values of eating meat.
ReplyDeleteGrowing up in the south, with grandparents who are beef farmers, my relationship to eating beef always seemed simple. While my grandparents would not consider themselves organic, sustainable farmers, they more or less are. They only administer antibiotics when a cow is really sick, they let the cattle graze, and their land is plentiful enough they can rotate them around in way that does not really deplete the land. In the winter they typically feed the cattle hay that was cut from wildly grown fields. Usually they would sell the cattle, often keeping one to slaughter for our consumption. And when they did it was more than enough for my entire extended family to get a share. In my mind my grandparents were doing great things, feeding us and sharing their surplus with many, many other people. Primarily because land is so cheap in the rural south, this method for raising cattle seemed, and I would hope actually is, the most profitable way for them to raise cattle.
ReplyDeleteIt was not until leaving for college that I discovered there were other ways that cattle could be raised: in close quarters, fed artificially enhanced corn feed. However still to this day when people mention how harmful the meat industry is, all I can picture is my grandparent’s farm where I go to hang out with happy cows and bottle-fed calves. As Rachel mentioned, there is both a problem with over population of livestock produced for human consumption (and often times waste), as well as over population of humans. While I have significantly cut down my own meat consumption for health and environmental reasons after coming to college, I hope that when we continue these discussions we can explore ways that beef production/consumption could be positive.