EATING MEAT TO SAVE THE ANIMALS

A year and a half ago, I wrote about my periodic attempts to put the meat down and back away from carnivorous eating.  You can read about it here.  Today I came across an article on AlterNet by Jenna Woginrich, who realized that refusing to eat meat because of the "twisted world of assembly-line death camps, crippled animals, radiated carcasses and festering diseases" did not, in any way, change the stockyard-to-table cruelty factor.  So, she decided to take the opposite approach, to "...learn to butcher a free-range chicken, raise a pig without antibiotics and rear lambs on green hillside pastures." 

Jenna's reason for writing the article is to remind us that every time we choose to buy our meat from a small farmer who is committed to cruelty-free ranching, we are informing the broader livestock industry that consumers want and are willing to pay for cruelty-free meat.  She says,

"Farmers markets have been on a rapid rise in the US thanks to consumer demand for cleaner meat, up 16% in the last year alone....It's a hard reality for a vegetarian to swallow, but my veggie burgers did not rattle the industry cages at all. I was simply avoiding the battlefield, stepping aside as a pacifist. There is nobility in the vegetarian choice, but it isn't changing the system fast enough. In a world where meat consumption is soaring, the plausible 25% of the world's inhabitants who have a mostly vegetarian diet aren't making a dent in the rate us humans are eating animals. In theory, a plant-based diet avoids consuming animals but it certainly isn't getting cows out of feedlots. However, steak-eating consumers choosing to eat sustainably raised meat are."

Jenna's point is good.  A few years ago, finding organic produce was seriously complicated, and usually involved a trip to a specialty market like Whole Foods.  Today, consumer demand has guaranteed at least a small organic produce section in nearly every grocery store.  Similarly, the market for kosher meats, which are ritually killed in what was - at least before other technologies existed - arguably the least painful method of slaughter.  Point is, if people start voting with their wallets, slaughter procedures might begin to change in response.

I hope you'll read Jenna's full article here.

What Kind of Creatures Have You Created Us, Adonai?

I warn you, I'm about to go a little religious on you. I won't be trying to convert you, though, so you can wade in without fear.

Two evenings ago I found myself preparing something akin to the delectable sweet-and-sour cabbage rolls my grandmother used to make. While draining the fat from my sauteed kosher hamburger, I prayed the prayer I always offer up when I eat meat. Actually, the prayer comes across more like one of those respectful grillings Tevya in "Fiddler on the Roof" puts God through, whenever he is puzzling out the latest challenge the Lord has handed his family. One of those "Just what is your purpose here, anyway?" kind of discussions. I always pray, "You have confused me, Adonai, by creating creatures who take life in order to live." I have puzzled over the possible reasons our Creator could have fashioned our world in this manner, but I will not bore you with that here. Instead, I want to report that each time I engage in this dialogue with God, it crosses my mind that I could choose to be a vegetarian. It crosses my mind in the same fuzzy way it crosses my mind that I could write children's books if I wanted to. I just haven't gotten around to it yet.

I should mention that I was, for two short years at the frontish end of my life, a vegetarian. I worked briefly during college at a vegetarian restaurant in Lawrence, Kansas, where I was more or less brainwashed into changing my eating habits. They made a nutrition monster out of me. Although I returned to a meat-eating lifestyle a couple of years later, meat no longer holds the place it held in my childhood - centerpiece of every meal - even if it was only a crowning meatball on top of a mountain of spaghetti. Don't sneeze. And the nutrition monster still resides deep in my heart.

So, every Thanksgiving, I hold a perfunctory and (so far) academic debate with myself. The me who knows I could choose to be a vegetarian engages in reflective dialogue with the me who thinks she understands what the Torah means when it says that God instructed the Israelites to bring sacrifices because they supply "a pleasing odor to Adonai" (Numbers 28:1–2). The me who finds irony in the fact that sentient lives are sacrificed so that we may celebrate our freedom. The me who is blown away by my recurring decision to choose the pleasing odor of roasting turkey (not to mention the sinfully delicious crisp turkey skin) over the chance to save a life. The me who has the chutzpah to even have this conversation in print, knowing full well that I am planning to cook a turkey for my daughter and her boyfriend. In fact, the bird is already in the freezer. What kind of creatures have you created us, Adonai, that you both wish us to aspire to holiness, and yet have created us nonchalant murderers?

Perhaps we were not always such nonchalant murderers. Perhaps when we were closer to the killing of the animals - when we raised the cow or knew the butcher or the butcher was us - we may not have been so nonchalant. It is something, but not much, of a comfort that these animals are kosher, slaughtered under the watchful guidance of trained rabbis in the sacred and (more) humane manner that makes each of them a sacrifice to the Lord of sorts. And maybe it's the fact that I've never encountered a turkey substitute that appealed to my taste buds, and after all Adonai surely created my tastebuds as part of the survival mechanism.

I know some of you are vegetarian. You are better people than I.

Maybe some of you, dear readers, are like me. Baffled but carnivorous.

But maybe some of you are betwixt and between myself and my vegetarian readers. Maybe, when you eat meat, you are more gutterally appalled by the trade-off of life for meat than as of yet I am. Maybe you are leaning in the direction of a new kill-free commitment.

Whichever you are, if you are willing, I would like to hear from you. I rarely ask that, but I am interested in the ethical, social and religious implications beyond my own thoughts. I hope you'll communicate with me here in the comments section - not on facebook, for those of you who come this way by that portal, but here.

And whichever way your palate leans, I have something for you. Three articles, two by Lou Bendrick, originally published in Grist. One from Amy's Gripping Commentary blog. The first Bendrick article is for those of you who either are already vegetarian, or are leaning that way. It's a report on a taste-test of vegetarian turkey substitutes. The tasters included vegetarians and meat-eaters, adults and kids (kids are the ultimate arbiters of what tastes good!).   A tasting of four meatless “turkeys” for the holiday table Grist.  To go with it, here is Amy, discussing her positive experience with a fake bird product.  The picture to the upper-left is Amy's fake bird, complete with real stuffing.  http://www.deitchley.com/blog/2007/11/25/480/. The second Bendrick article is for carnivores, and published last year.  In it, he offers advice on greening up your turkey selection. http://www.grist.org/article/checkout-line-talk-turkey-to-me/.

And if you happen to be Jewish and curious, or just curious, I've included a couple of websites that ponder God's reasons for requiring animal sacrifice, and why it is that the pleasing smell of the sacrifice is so important to God that it is mentioned multiple times in the Torah.  I hasten to say I have not adopted or rejected the views in these articles. I simply wander through them, Jew that I am, looking for answers.

http://www.mesora.org/jewishtimes246.pdf
http://www.vbm-torah.org/archive/salt-vayikra/24-8vayikra.htm
http://www.segoogles.com/writings/vayikra_ConC.htm


There is much to be thankful for, so long as you are not a turkey.