Last night’s winner on Top Chef served grilled shrimp with a pickled chili salad and miso smoked bacon. The dish looked delicious, and who can blame the judges for going with the clear winner: bacon. What self-respecting meat eater doesn’t love the salty, crispy stuff? On a recent episode of Iron Chef America, Cat Cora referred to maple and brown sugar bacon as “pig candy,” which I find both hilarious and a little disgusting. Regardless, one thing is clear: many of us freaking love bacon.
Here’s the bad news: Smithfield Farms, the world’s largest hog producer (based, regrettably, in my home state of North Carolina) is responsible for true environmental injustice in rural communities in NC and IA…and now they’re expanding to Europe. Grist reports (emphasis mine):
In the 1990s, Smithfield perfected the meat industry’s infamous “vertical integration” strategy that it’s now unveiling in Eastern Europe. In an old-school meat market, packers bought livestock from independent farmers. But starting in the early ’90s in the United States, dominant meat packers began to raise vast numbers of their own animals, stuffing them into concentrated animal feedlot operations (CAFOs).
In doing so, they put independent farmers in direct competition with [Smithfield's] own livestock operations — a game that the meat packer usually wins. Farms go out of business in droves, unable to sustain themselves on the low prices offered by the packers; survivors scale up, mimicking the packers’ intensive techniques. That is, they CAFOize, using debt to erect large confinement buildings into which they stuff thousands of hogs. Most of them essentially cede their independence, working under contracts wherein the packers supply the feed and the hogs.
The trends now playing out in Poland has already flattened small farmers in Iowa and North Carolina. When Smithfield first bulled its way into Poland in 1999, after buying an old state-run processing plant, it declared its intention to make Poland “the Iowa of Europe.”
The fact is, Smithfield Farms is a stain on Eastern North Carolina, and that stain is unfortunately spreading. Not only is the company responsible for the loss of countless family farms and small-scale livestock operations, their open-air hog lagoons contribute to groundwater and air pollution that deeply degrades the quality of life for rural populations that are disproportionately poor and racial minorities.
I’m a fairly staunch omnivore, but seeing firsthand the devastating impact of industrial hog farming forced me to reconsider “pig candy.” We all have a responsibility to take whatever steps we can to support farmers who raise livestock in a way that is environmentally sustainable, socially responsible, and builds local economies. Eating bacon all the time might not be the healthiest choice, but it’s a choice nonetheless; many folks don’t have a choice when their water is contaminated by hog waste or the air outside their house is filled with particulates and stench.
If you’re interested in eating bacon that only makes you feel guilty for the salt and fat content, try finding a local hog farmer through this site. And–particularly with Spring arriving–be sure to find a local farmers market; search here to locate a local source of fresh vegetables and responsibly-raised meats.
Image used under a Creative Commons license courtesy of Flickr user Gone-Walkabout.
God I love bacon.
Agreed. As my dad often says, “bacon is good food.”
Now the question is: are bacon and cookies two great tastes that taste great together?
http://neverbashfulwithbutter.blogspot.com/2007/12/experiments-in-deliciousness-bacon.html
Good post, Taylor. You’re absolutely right about Smithfield.
I don’t really understand the omnivore’s dietary justifications though. Pigs are at least as smart as dogs. Would an omnivore eat dog meat, as people do in some parts of the world, if it tasted as good as bacon does?
Here’s what I think in a nutshell:
For better or for worse, whether by evolution and natural selection or by the decree of God, we’re at the top of the animal foodchain. Our role, as I see it, is to occupy that position with dignity and justice — whether your personal choice be not to exercise that role at all (vegan/vegetarian), or to make sure your food was not abused while living, or something else.
Granted, not many of us live up to this role — including me. But I don’t justify my omnivorous diet by animal intelligence or lack thereof… if cows were the most intelligent animals on Earth (next to us), I would probably still eat steak. But then again, I don’t know if I could say the same about dogs. Or gorillas. Or pandas.
However, Ashish, your argument — that we don’t eat dogs, and pigs are smarter than dogs, therefore we shouldn’t eat pigs — makes a large assumption that we don’t eat dogs because they are smart. Is that why we don’t eat dogs? Or is it because of our emotional attachment to them as pets? Or is it because dog meat just tastes bad? I don’t know the answer, but the logic as you’ve presented it is inadequate, in my opinion.
I highlighted the similarity between the intelligence levels of pigs and dogs because most people separate animals in their mind according to, inter alia, how clever the animals supposedly are. So most people place dogs, cats, horses, apes, monkeys, and dolphins on one fairly high level of moral consideration and cows, pigs, chickens, sheep, and birds on a much lower level. The first group of animals elicits a great deal of solicitude and anthropomorphization. But we are largely indifferent to the second group’s welfare, even when those animals are charmingly portrayed in media (Charlotte’s Web, Chicken Run, etc.)
Of course, you’re right that people have an emotional attachment to dogs that prevents them from eating Fido. But do you really think emotional attachments are the proper foundation for moral consideration? If not, what is? What determines the moral status of an entity?
I also don’t really follow what you take to be the significance of this: “For better or for worse, whether by evolution and natural selection or by the decree of God, we’re at the top of the animal foodchain. Our role, as I see it, is to occupy that position with dignity and justice — whether your personal choice be not to exercise that role at all (vegan/vegetarian), or to make sure your food was not abused while living, or something else.” The fact that we occupy a place of dominance in the natural world doesn’t justify the conventional understanding of that role. In other words, this claim begs the question against animal rights proponents. It doesn’t do to say, “Oh, eating meat is everyone’s personal choice to take up or forgo because that option is our inheritance.” What is precisely at issue and where the debate between animal rights folks and defenders of the status quo takes places is at the intersection of what we have inherited and what we have claimed for ourselves without due cause.
Your reasoning could just as easily be deployed this way: “For better or for worse, whether by evolution and natural selection or by the decree of God, we men are the dominant sex. Our role, as I see it, is to occupy that position with dignity and justice — whether your personal choice be not to exercise that role at all (believing in equal rights/feminism), or to make sure your wife’s submission isn’t taken to the point of degradation.” Clearly, the fact that men do possess some physical attributes that could let them physically dominate women wouldn’t settle the issue. And, thank goodness, it didn’t–but only because of the work of people who challenged the unreflective invocation of “the natural order of things.”
Since I posed the question to you, I should probably answer it myself…I think the proper basis for moral consideration is not species membership or the soul, but mental properties, and in particular the ability to feel pain and have interests. The pain inflicted on animals on farms and the termination of their interests through their deaths outweighs our interest to have a good meal, particularly when comparable experiences can be had through alternative vegetarian or vegan meals. Therefore we should not eat meat.
Ashish, I think you would find Omnivore-guru Michael Pollan’s thoughts on this subject to be worth a read (he reacts to Peter Singer, who I’m assuming you hold in high regard). He evokes what i think my view is, which is to say that I find no problem eating meat from animals that are raised in a way that minimizes suffering (distinguishing suffering from pain). I don’t view animals as moral equivalents to human beings, but it is not my intent to inflict suffering on any living thing…not even snakes. And I wouldn’t eat a dog because I love dogs as pets and they’re more cuddly than pigs. That might not be the strongest philosophical response, but I’m willing to admit my true reasons fully aware that other persons or cultures may make different choices for equally (or less) frivolous reasons. This Pollan piece is a long one, but I’ll excerpt a bit:
“Whether our interest in eating animals outweighs their interest in not being eaten (assuming for the moment that is their interest) turns on the vexed question of animal suffering. Vexed, because it is impossible to know what really goes on in the mind of a cow or a pig or even an ape. Strictly speaking, this is true of other humans, too, but since humans are all basically wired the same way, we have excellent reason to assume that other people’s experience of pain feels much like our own. Can we say that about animals? Yes and no.
I have yet to find anyone who still subscribes to Descartes’s belief that animals cannot feel pain because they lack a soul. The general consensus among scientists and philosophers is that when it comes to pain, the higher animals are wired much like we are for the same evolutionary reasons, so we should take the writhings of the kicked dog at face value.
[...]
That said, it can be argued that human pain differs from animal pain by an order of magnitude. This qualitative difference is largely the result of our possession of language and, by virtue of language, an ability to have thoughts about thoughts and to imagine alternatives to our current reality. The philosopher Daniel C. Dennett suggests that we would do well to draw a distinction between pain, which a great many animals experience, and suffering, which depends on a degree of self-consciousness only a few animals appear to command. Suffering in this view is not just lots of pain but pain intensified by human emotions like loss, sadness, worry, regret, self-pity, shame, humiliation and dread.
[...]
As humans contemplating the pain and suffering of animals, we do need to guard against projecting on to them what the same experience would feel like to us. Watching a steer force-marched up the ramp to the kill-floor door, as I have done, I need to remind myself that this is not Sean Penn in ”Dead Man Walking,” that in a bovine brain the concept of nonexistence is blissfully absent. ”If we fail to find suffering in the [animal] lives we can see,” Dennett writes in ”Kinds of Minds,” ”we can rest assured there is no invisible suffering somewhere in their brains. If we find suffering, we will recognize it without difficulty.”
[...]
There is, too, the fact that we humans have been eating animals as long as we have lived on this earth. Humans may not need to eat meat in order to survive, yet doing so is part of our evolutionary heritage, reflected in the design of our teeth and the structure of our digestion. Eating meat helped make us what we are, in a social and biological sense. Under the pressure of the hunt, the human brain grew in size and complexity, and around the fire where the meat was cooked, human culture first flourished. Granting rights to animals may lift us up from the brutal world of predation, but it will entail the sacrifice of part of our identity — our own animality.
Surely this is one of the odder paradoxes of animal rights doctrine. It asks us to recognize all that we share with animals and then demands that we act toward them in a most unanimalistic way. Whether or not this is a good idea, we should at least acknowledge that our desire to eat meat is not a trivial matter, no mere ”gastronomic preference.” We might as well call sex — also now technically unnecessary — a mere ”recreational preference.” Whatever else it is, our meat eating is something very deep indeed.”
@Ashish: I had written up a longer response while I was traveling over the weekend, but since Taylor, in my absence, responded along similar lines as I would have, I’ll only leave these thoughts.
- I believe you are probably right that a majority of people distinguish animals into groups based on intelligence in the fashion you describe. But is that segregation the same basis by which people choose to eat or not eat those animals? Maybe there’s correlation, but are you sure there’s also causation? Again, I don’t have evidence either way… do you?
- Although the parallel you draw between my remarks and gender discrimination is convincing (especially given the charged and emotionally loaded nature of the latter, which makes it a difficult minefield for me to tread in my response), I think it is ultimately flawed.
First, those two arguments operate on two different orders of magnitude: rights among members of the same species, and rights among different species. It’s like comparing a green apple to a red apple, versus comparing an apple to an orange. Thus, I believe that the two issues are not very comparable.
Secondly, I believe you misinterpreted my reasoning, or I did not make it clear enough. You criticize my argument on the basis that “the fact that we occupy a place of dominance in the natural world doesn’t justify the conventional understanding of that role.” Did I ever argue anything to that effect? No, quite the opposite, actually. I first stated that it is an unchangeable fact that, as a species, we are at the top of the food chain. Of course being omnivores is our inheritance. Do you disagree either with the truth or unchangeable nature of that claim? If so, that’s a different argument, so I’ll operate for the moment as if you agree. I next state that because of that fact, we must choose to exercise that role (for lack of a better word) with justice. It IS a choice for each of us to make. It’s not just going to happen by itself. To return to your analogy: did not men, despite the scientific fact that they are the physically stronger sex, have to concede dominance in order that women could access and enjoy their rights as equal members of the species?
Again, I sought not to justify any sort of behavior because of our dominance, only to point out that the fact is indeed true: we are at the top of the food chain, as a species. I believe it is beyond our control. Just like it is impossible - as far as I can imagine - for men to render their gender physically weaker than women, so I believe it to be impossible for humans to not be at the top of the food chain. And given that, it is for individuals and communities to choose how to play that part with justice. That’s all.
- I do agree with your overall suggestion that neither intelligence- nor emotion-based evaluation of the morality of eating any or all animals is proper. You suggest that it is an animal’s ability to experience pain and have interests that should govern the choice. How do you define an animal’s interests? An interest in survival? What is the difference between an animal having an interest to survive and a plant having an interest to survive?
Also, for bacon lovers: http://www.gratefulpalate.com/?p=MultiOption_31&parent=Page_47.
Taylor–
It’s best not to get too tangled up in notions of “rights” here. There is only one real right I think animals can claim from us, and that is the most important right of all–the right to be left alone. So the question isn’t really whether animals have rights, but whether they deserve moral consideration.
I noticed neither you nor Jarred have suggested what you think the proper basis for moral consideration is. If I were a meat-eater, I would probably balk at the prospect as well because it is difficult to draw a moral circle that includes those entities we want to see protected while excluding those we want to see on our plates.
Could species membership be the proper foundation for moral consideration? That would certainly seem to make our sympathy for a range of fictional non-human characters (Data from Star Trek, ET, etc.) seem silly. Could it be free will and the ability to participate in moral communities? That criterion would exclude severely retarded infants, who do not and will never possess those traits. Could it be the soul? Well, possibly, but that would require establishing various theological principles that are very difficult to demonstrate.
As for Pollan’s comments…No animal rights theorist’s arguments depend on establishing that animals and humans have identical responses to stress. Suppose, following Dennett, that we make a distinction between pain and suffering (a distinction that might, indeed, be accurate). Even factory farm animals that lack robust self-consciousness–and again, pigs do not fall in this category–or Lockean personhood will experience severe pain during throughout their lives. It doesn’t matter if the cow heading for slaughter dreads the blade or reflects on his fate the way a prisoner heading to the electric chair would; what matters is if the cow has a nervous system similar enough to ours that we can reasonably say that the cramped, filthy conditions leading up to that grim march frustrated the animal’s natural instincts and inflicted discomfort and if you can imagine the pleasure you receive from your meal outweighing those misfortunes. A person would certainly suffer much more torment in factory farm conditions than a cow or pig, but that doesn’t soften the pain factory farmed animals experience. And let’s be clear: Factory farmed animals endure those cramped, filthy conditions for months while you savor your meal for a few minutes.
Pollan’s invocation of “animality” reminds me of the appeal to the “sanctity of marriage” made by gay marriage opponents: Both are conveniently numinous ideas that circumvent empirical and analytical scrutiny. And the vaguer an idea is, the harder it is to refute. At any rate, I think there are higher virtues than those offered by our ancestral inheritance–mercy, for one. As Milan Kundera put it, “True human goodness, in all its purity and freedom, can come to the fore only when its recipient has no power.”
Jarred–
Interests are cognitive properties related to seeking and avoding various environmental cues, and cognitive properties emerge from the mind. Plants lack minds, so they lack interests too. But if you can cite any biologists or philosophers of mind who think plants have minds, I’d be interested in seeing their, um, reasoning. But even if plants did have interests, we would simply be forced to choose between the lesser evil–eating corn, say, or eating a full-grown mammal.
But you know what all those animals in factory farms eat? Plants. In fact, “Though some 800 million people on the planet now suffer from hunger or malnutrition, the majority of corn and soy grown in the world feeds cattle, pigs and chickens. This despite the inherent inefficiencies: about two to five times more grain is required to produce the same amount of calories through livestock as through direct grain consumption, according to Rosamond Naylor, an associate professor of economics at Stanford University. It is as much as 10 times more in the case of grain-fed beef in the United States.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/27/weekinreview/27bittman.html?pagewanted=all
I’m not enough of a biologist/ecologist to know the difference, but I’m pretty certain that what plays the largest part historically in which species we eat is their cultivatability (is that a word?) — or which animals are most easily husbanded, kept domesticated, etc.
Does anyone else remember reading about a handful of studies recently that pretty convincingly showed that there are certain nutrients (or proteins or something?) that are only found in meat? Point being that while we do eat way too much meat as a society, the moral consideration of the abstract individual isn’t entirely settled. We have evolved to be human, in large part, because we eat meat. Although, our mastery of technology may preclude us evolving along true lines of “natural selection” anymore, so that too may be moot.
Just an interesting fact, that adds to Ashish’s final factoid: “The United States kills 8 BILLION chickens a year.” (David Edgerton, The Shock of the Old: Technology and Global History Since 1900. Oxford UP, 2007. page 174)
An interesting article in Newsweek about Chipotle’s commitment “to serving humanely raised, sustainably grown food at [its] restaurants, including meat and dairy products that are free of antibiotics and hormones.”
http://www.newsweek.com/id/135376