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camwynThose of you who were reading my LJ at this time last year are aware of the fact that, despite my misgivings towards the official Roman Catholic Church, I observe the custom of the Lenten fast. Tradition dictates that as a sign of penitence - the spirit of the Lenten season leading up to Easter - one ought to abstain from something, preferably some sort of food or drink. Refraining from certain behavior- smoking, swearing, etc. - is also acceptable, so long as it is something that constitutes a sacrifice.
This year I'm repeating the fast I undertook last year. Namely, no food that required an animal to die. By 'animal' I mean 'member of the kingdom Animalia', and by 'required' I mean 'contains one or more ingredients that could only be obtained by killing an animal'. The rocker/bow hunter Ted Nugent pointed out in a recent interview that vegetarians are only kidding themselves if they think their dietary choice doesn't cause animal death, because cultivated fields have to be built at the cost of natural ecosystems, and he's right. For any creature to live, something else has to die. Even plants partially feed off decayed matter that used to be part of living things, unless they grow in purely volcanic soil. Consumption of other things has been part of life since the very beginning; the first organism on Earth was almost certainly a heterotroph, because it is simpler to take up some foreign particle or molecule and incorporate it than it is to run a working photosynthetic process.
I am not denying any of this by what I am doing this Lent. Ted is right in saying that vegetarians have an adverse effect on the environment, but the impact of most meat eaters is greater, because of the nature of factory farming and meat processing. Not only are the native ecosystems cleared away, but the space is then used for the ongoing production of environmentally unbalanced and often cruelty-tainted products. Bowhunting as a form of getting food is probably environmentally more sound than most meat farming in this country. What I am doing is consciously choosing not to make as big of an ecological impact as I have done in times past, or participate as much in an unnecessarily cruel system of food production as I have in the past. I am refraining from meat because my alternative diet is such that I do not need meat to live, and from other products requiring the death of animals because I do not need them, either. There are alternatives; they may not be easy, but they exist. I am not going to fall ill because I cannot eat a marinated grilled chicken sandwich, and I will not develop rickets because of forty days without cheese. (As they said on a Brunching Shuttlecocks rating of Dairy Products, 'it's called rennet, folks, and getting it from the calf is not an outpatient procedure'.) One of the reasons postulated for certain Judaic food law items (mostly pertaining to the killing of young creatures or their mothers) is the idea that God wanted to sensitize people to the suffering of animals. To some degree, that's what this Lenten fast is about - accepting that as a human being in an industrialized country, I have a lot to answer for when it comes to the impact I've had on the world's ecosystem.
But that's not all of it. Eating plants can still contribute to an overall unjust system. Much of the food grown in the United States is produced on factory farms, and that extends to vegetables and grains as much as it does to meats, eggs, and dairy products. Intensive, chemically stimulated production year after year is rarely if ever good for the local soil and water - not to mention the people. We use an astonishing amount of organophosphate pesticide in this country, both for killing things that eat our plants and for treating our farm animals' problems. (Sheep dip, for example.) Recent studies have indicated that even organically produced vegetables can contain pesticides or fertilizers, and I understand that; I also understand that organic fertilizers generally fit into the category of products known as 'animal shit'. I'm well aware of some of the products, like sulphur and copper compounds, classified as acceptable for use in organic fields - I get Peaceful Valley Farm and Garden Supply Catalog every year. The compounds can be pretty nasty and the fertilizers are just as capable of carrying disease as they are of simply grossing someone out. I can deal with that, and with having to wash my food more carefully. (Especially since the local water supply in my state often carries all kinds of freaky chemicals, but then again I'd be washing conventionally produced vegetables with the same water, so we're back to square one.) Knowing all of this, I intend to use organics in my diet when I can for the next forty days. That'll be a good bit harder than usual, but I should be able to manage.
Most important, though, is the nature of food production in America. If there's one thing I've learned from my Management and Labor Relations course at Kean, it's that capitalism is essentially comprised of people trying to screw each other over. That's how the system works; someone offers a product, someone offers a price, and both someones go about trying to get as much as they can out of the other person while giving them as little as possible. It isn't always the case, but much of free enterprise is structured that way, and the agricultural industry is in no wise anything like an exception. Minimum wage laws don't apply to farm workers. Safety rules are significantly different for the poor schlub picking tomatoes in the field than they are for the assembly-line worker in Youngstown, Ohio. Expected profits are far harder to find for the family farmer or regional farmer than they are for the owners of similarly sized businesses in the manufacturing or service industries, and the giant companies that buy such farms up when they fail are less likely to treat their workers kindly or well. The highest rates of job-related accidents appear in the meat packing and processing industries - it's astonishing how many people working for chicken processing companies are missing fingers thanks to the high-speed meat moving systems they have to use, for example. Food production and sale in America is so often tainted by injustice to those who do the physical, actual work of growing it, harvesting it, feeding it, killing it, processing it, and otherwise getting it to the table that a body would be hard-pressed to find something for sale that was both honorably produced and genuinely good for you. Even the organic or natural-food companies are often owned by larger, more conventional companies - I believe Muir Glen or Hain is owned by General Mills, although I'm not entirely sure of that.
But in this, as in everything else, there are degrees. There are foods for sale in the area where I live that are produced in a just and humane fashion, or at least in a more just fashion than other alternatives. They are more expensive, and that's going to hurt, but one gets what one pays for. This is capitalism. That's how it works. If there is ever to be any kind of justice, or humane treatment of farm workers, or humane treatment of farm animals, there has to be a reward for it. Relying on the goodness of people's hearts is a fast ticket to disillusionment. For a little while, I can manage this much. In so doing I can begin to make up for the times I have not been concerned with the welfare of my fellow beings on this Earth. Human and otherwise.
Lent is about taking responsibility for one's actions and repenting of one's sins. It's very, very easy to eat without a second thought; we've been doing that in this country for years. For now... for now my goal is to think first, buy well, and eat with a clear conscience for a while.
We'll see where it goes from there.
This year I'm repeating the fast I undertook last year. Namely, no food that required an animal to die. By 'animal' I mean 'member of the kingdom Animalia', and by 'required' I mean 'contains one or more ingredients that could only be obtained by killing an animal'. The rocker/bow hunter Ted Nugent pointed out in a recent interview that vegetarians are only kidding themselves if they think their dietary choice doesn't cause animal death, because cultivated fields have to be built at the cost of natural ecosystems, and he's right. For any creature to live, something else has to die. Even plants partially feed off decayed matter that used to be part of living things, unless they grow in purely volcanic soil. Consumption of other things has been part of life since the very beginning; the first organism on Earth was almost certainly a heterotroph, because it is simpler to take up some foreign particle or molecule and incorporate it than it is to run a working photosynthetic process.
I am not denying any of this by what I am doing this Lent. Ted is right in saying that vegetarians have an adverse effect on the environment, but the impact of most meat eaters is greater, because of the nature of factory farming and meat processing. Not only are the native ecosystems cleared away, but the space is then used for the ongoing production of environmentally unbalanced and often cruelty-tainted products. Bowhunting as a form of getting food is probably environmentally more sound than most meat farming in this country. What I am doing is consciously choosing not to make as big of an ecological impact as I have done in times past, or participate as much in an unnecessarily cruel system of food production as I have in the past. I am refraining from meat because my alternative diet is such that I do not need meat to live, and from other products requiring the death of animals because I do not need them, either. There are alternatives; they may not be easy, but they exist. I am not going to fall ill because I cannot eat a marinated grilled chicken sandwich, and I will not develop rickets because of forty days without cheese. (As they said on a Brunching Shuttlecocks rating of Dairy Products, 'it's called rennet, folks, and getting it from the calf is not an outpatient procedure'.) One of the reasons postulated for certain Judaic food law items (mostly pertaining to the killing of young creatures or their mothers) is the idea that God wanted to sensitize people to the suffering of animals. To some degree, that's what this Lenten fast is about - accepting that as a human being in an industrialized country, I have a lot to answer for when it comes to the impact I've had on the world's ecosystem.
But that's not all of it. Eating plants can still contribute to an overall unjust system. Much of the food grown in the United States is produced on factory farms, and that extends to vegetables and grains as much as it does to meats, eggs, and dairy products. Intensive, chemically stimulated production year after year is rarely if ever good for the local soil and water - not to mention the people. We use an astonishing amount of organophosphate pesticide in this country, both for killing things that eat our plants and for treating our farm animals' problems. (Sheep dip, for example.) Recent studies have indicated that even organically produced vegetables can contain pesticides or fertilizers, and I understand that; I also understand that organic fertilizers generally fit into the category of products known as 'animal shit'. I'm well aware of some of the products, like sulphur and copper compounds, classified as acceptable for use in organic fields - I get Peaceful Valley Farm and Garden Supply Catalog every year. The compounds can be pretty nasty and the fertilizers are just as capable of carrying disease as they are of simply grossing someone out. I can deal with that, and with having to wash my food more carefully. (Especially since the local water supply in my state often carries all kinds of freaky chemicals, but then again I'd be washing conventionally produced vegetables with the same water, so we're back to square one.) Knowing all of this, I intend to use organics in my diet when I can for the next forty days. That'll be a good bit harder than usual, but I should be able to manage.
Most important, though, is the nature of food production in America. If there's one thing I've learned from my Management and Labor Relations course at Kean, it's that capitalism is essentially comprised of people trying to screw each other over. That's how the system works; someone offers a product, someone offers a price, and both someones go about trying to get as much as they can out of the other person while giving them as little as possible. It isn't always the case, but much of free enterprise is structured that way, and the agricultural industry is in no wise anything like an exception. Minimum wage laws don't apply to farm workers. Safety rules are significantly different for the poor schlub picking tomatoes in the field than they are for the assembly-line worker in Youngstown, Ohio. Expected profits are far harder to find for the family farmer or regional farmer than they are for the owners of similarly sized businesses in the manufacturing or service industries, and the giant companies that buy such farms up when they fail are less likely to treat their workers kindly or well. The highest rates of job-related accidents appear in the meat packing and processing industries - it's astonishing how many people working for chicken processing companies are missing fingers thanks to the high-speed meat moving systems they have to use, for example. Food production and sale in America is so often tainted by injustice to those who do the physical, actual work of growing it, harvesting it, feeding it, killing it, processing it, and otherwise getting it to the table that a body would be hard-pressed to find something for sale that was both honorably produced and genuinely good for you. Even the organic or natural-food companies are often owned by larger, more conventional companies - I believe Muir Glen or Hain is owned by General Mills, although I'm not entirely sure of that.
But in this, as in everything else, there are degrees. There are foods for sale in the area where I live that are produced in a just and humane fashion, or at least in a more just fashion than other alternatives. They are more expensive, and that's going to hurt, but one gets what one pays for. This is capitalism. That's how it works. If there is ever to be any kind of justice, or humane treatment of farm workers, or humane treatment of farm animals, there has to be a reward for it. Relying on the goodness of people's hearts is a fast ticket to disillusionment. For a little while, I can manage this much. In so doing I can begin to make up for the times I have not been concerned with the welfare of my fellow beings on this Earth. Human and otherwise.
Lent is about taking responsibility for one's actions and repenting of one's sins. It's very, very easy to eat without a second thought; we've been doing that in this country for years. For now... for now my goal is to think first, buy well, and eat with a clear conscience for a while.
We'll see where it goes from there.
