Books, Humane Meat, and the Need
for Direct Outreach
-Matt Ball
There have been a number of recent books that address
where our food comes from, including: Harvest
for Hope: A Guide to Mindful Eating by Jane Goodall,
The Omnivore's Dilemma, by Michael Pollan,
and The Way We Eat: Why Our Food Choices Matter,
by Peter Singer and Jim Mason. Of these, The Omnivore's
Dilemma has been doing the best by far, both
in terms interviews, media exposure, and sales.
It is not hard to imagine why this is so. Goodall,
Singer, and Mason are all known vegetarians who are
concerned with animals. By saying Omnivore
right on the cover, Pollan makes it clear: Not a vegetarian!
I still eat meat! Which book is more likely to receive
favorable treatment by the meat-eating establishment?
Unfortunately, in addition to strawman potshots at
vegetarians and the animal rights philosophy, Pollan
bases his conclusions on falsehoods and debunked claims,
as pointed out in Erik Marcus’ review (first
Spotlight review here).
For example, Pollan contends that vegetarians don’t
really save animals, based on an article by Stephen
Davis that was shown to be totally wrong in the Journal
of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics.
It could be argued that Pollan is reaching new people
with descriptions of factory farming that people like
Singer, Goodall, and Marcus won’t reach. As
we’ve written,
“When it comes to advocating for the animals,
people are looking for a reason to ignore us –
no one sits around thinking, ‘Wow, I really
want to give up all my favorite foods and isolate
myself from my friends and family!’” So
it is unlikely that a large number of people are going
to buy and read a book that says they need to become
a vegetarian.
On the other hand, what does Pollan’s ultimate
message (“Eat ‘humane’ meat”
/ “Vegetarians are anti-social fanatics”)
accomplish? Pollan goes out of his way to badmouth
and ridicule the possibility of being vegetarian:
“the subtle way it alienates me from other people
and… a whole dimension of human experience”
(e.g., “cultural traditions like the Thanksgiving
turkey, or even franks at the ballpark, and family
traditions like my mother’s beef brisket at
Passover”).
His option is to eat meat from “humane”
operations, like Polyface Farms (his main example).
Yet accommodating a diet of “humane meat”
is a practical impossibility for virtually everyone;
e.g., there isn’t a humane option at even 1%
of restaurants. And Pollan points out that Polyface
isn’t looking to expand.
The vast majority of Pollan’s readers are not
likely to decide to eat only meat from Polyface Farms;
it’s hard to find and requires a real commitment.
What his readers get is: “There is this huge
problem on factory farms, but humans need to eat meat
for many reasons. You certainly don’t want to
be a vegetarian!”
This is not to say that people should be discouraged
from taking steps away from consuming the Standard
American Diet (SAD), just as one can be a vegan and
support
reforms. Few people go vegan overnight, and not
everyone will change. But ultimately, the main failure
of the “humane meat” argument, like the
“health
argument,” is that, in and of itself, it
is not strong enough to keep most people from falling
back into the convenient and familiar status quo.
While books like Singer’s are important for
a number of reasons (look for an upcoming full review),
we can't rely on books, “reasonable” compromises,
or the meat-eating media. We must take the animals’
case right to people, in its genuine graphic, gruesome
entirety, and the sustainable steps people can take
to end the cruelty.
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