Regarding Meat

[aka: Kristina's first post,
with some apologies to my husband for changing the layout of his blog without his knowledge]

The debate over whether vegetarianism/veganism is better for people and/or the world will probably rage on forever.  I can see compelling arguments for both sides and I don’t believe one could say that either side is “right” or “wrong.”  Just different.  (oh why is it so hard for us to sometimes just accept difference and  Let.  It.  Be. ?)

So, I’m not going to even broach that whole issue.  Rather, I’m going to talk about MEAT.  If you have decided to remain/become a carnivore, then there are two ways to approach it, that I can see:

1. The CAFO way

CAFO stands for Concentrated Animal Feeding Operation, and it generally means you’ll get the most meat for your buck.  Animals are: corralled into unnaturally cramped confines with their peers, made to stand/sit in concentrated fecal matter, fed diets that their systems were not designed to be fed (e.g. corn-fed beef), given antibiotics and hormones liberally to ward off disease (induced by aforementioned conditions) and increase weight, and slaughtered in a manner ranging from acceptable (“humane”) to brutal.

Whether you consciously think about it when you buy meat or not, you have probably been made aware of CAFOs and the conditions under which their animals are raised, so I will not belabour the descriptions too much.  A plethora of books has been written on the subject and I’m sure a YouTube search will yield more videos of grueling intensity than you could possibly have imagined.  I do encourage you to further educate yourself on this topic, though, if it’s a new one for you, and to at least watch a few videos of CAFOs at work if you haven’t already.

In any case, there are reasons people may opt to follow the CAFO way:
 - limited income but desire to eat meat
 - ignorance of the origins of what they are consuming
 - apathy, when aware of the conditions of CAFO livestock
 - the view that animals as meat are commodities rather than living beings


2. The OTHER way

The OTHER way is a conscientious decision to do things “better”:  better for your family’s health, better for the planet, better for the animals involved.  These three, though intimately connected, are not mutually inclusive.  Let’s explore that issue:

The impetus behind my writing this little piece was a whole chicken that we recently bought at Earth Fare (“the healthy supermaket”), part of which my family greatly enjoyed eating last night for supper.  (You can see a photo of said chicken attached).

When one goes into a supermarket such as Earth Fare and reads its stated philosophies, which include “NO inhumane treatment of the animals providing us with dairy, meat and eggs,” one tends to get a warm, fuzzy feeling (or at least I do).  Indeed, it really is nice to be able to shop in a store where there is a higher regard for the origin of food and its constituent ingredients.  The problem is when the warm, fuzzy feeling makes us so comfortable that we cease to question some of the assumptions we may automatically make in a store called such as “Earth Fare.”

I know it is one of my failings, but I suspect that it holds true for others as well, that when I tend to think of “personal health” in conjunction with food, I automatically associate with it “health of planet,” and “health of animals” (in the case of meat).  And so I buy a whole chicken from Earth Fare and happily oven-roast it for my family, along with a selection of locally-grown and organic produce.  Except, not quite happily.

You see, I have come to the point where I can no longer delude myself entirely, much as I might like to.  The chicken I bought was raised on organic feed without animal by-products—check!  No antibiotics or hormones administered—check!  No seasonings or salt water added—check!  Probably slaughtered in a relatively humane way (we’ll never know for sure, but I can hope)—check!  Free-range—check!

Uh oh.  And here is where my trinity of “healths” starts to unravel each from the other.  I believe strongly that it is in an animal’s best interest (for mental and physical health) to live in a way whereby it can exhibit its natural behaviours.  For chickens, this means being given:  adequate clean space, a place to forage/scratch and dustbathe, a clean and dry place to perch and roost/nest, and access to nutritious food and clean water.  Having these requirements met is what one generally conjures up when one comes across the term “free-range”:  we picture an idyllic setting where chickens are free to roam through the vegetation, scratching at the ground and pecking at insects to supplement the high-quality grain they are fed, returning at night to a daily-cleaned dry coop to roost and rest.

But even as I happily picked the whole chicken out of Earth Fare’s refrigerated section (“happily” because we hadn’t eaten chicken for some time), I knew that the term “free-range” was not quite used here in the same way as in my ideal imaginings above.  Because, a chicken with this quantity of breast meat would scarcely be able to walk well, if at all.  So, even if given access to the outdoors (“free-range”--and that can mean a piddly little enclosed run that is devoid of grass, all vegetation having been scratched from the area), this bird may not have been able to make much use of it during the later weeks of its short life of about 8 weeks’ length.

This is but one example of how one must be truly aware of what one is buying.  If your purpose in buying non-CAFO meat is primarily for the personal health of your family (ie. decreasing your family’s direct exposure to potentially harmful chemicals), then this organic chicken from Earth Fare would fulfill that purpose admirably.  If your purpose in buying non-CAFO meat is generally geared towards lightening your environmental footprint on the Earth, then this chicken probably adequately fulfills that criterion (as its feed was organic and thus did not require pesticide use.  Here I would still question what exactly is done with the poultry waste products, though).  If your purpose in buying non-CAFO meat is to support the TRULY humane raising and slaughter of the animals you are planning to eat, then it would be my opinion that the Earth Fare chicken does not satisfactorily measure up, as it was bred to maximize quantity of muscle tissue at the expense of allowing the chicken to locomote in a normal fashion.

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Whether you decide to eat meat raised humanely, inhumanely, organically, locally, etc.,  my point is simply that you ought to be aware of what you are buying (and buying into).  Try to make the best choices that you are able to, with the information and resources you have.

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Just FYI:
The cost of cheap chicken:
http://www.all-creatures.org/anex/chicken.html

Sorry for the hiatus, between vacation and a cold this blog has fallen to the wayside.

I have been contemplating what to write for this post and have vacillated between warning of worker /social manipulation and the reemergence of popular movements from our own social past. So I will try both.

Not too long ago the vast majority of blue collar workers in the country worked under what would be best described as “sweatshop” conditions. My own Great Grandmother and Great-Great Uncle where sold to a textile mill at 8-10 years of age. They lived worked and ate at the mill, my Great Grandmother worked there until my Great Grandfather bought her contract when she was 15. My Grandfather worked for a sawmill, that provided you with a home, store, utilities and any other service that they chose to provide you, but they did not pay you enough that you could leave.

It was really only after World War II that conditions which most Americans worked in greatly improved. As the economy continues its downward journey, and U.S. companies face ever increasing competition from other countries that do not have to be concerned with workplace safety, the pressure will increase to decrease the regulations that have so greatly improved our work lives.

The people most vulnerable to this type of exploitation will be those with no marketable skills. Unfortunately most of us do not have marketable skills in what amounts to a 1930-50’s economy. We are not machinists, carpenters, architects, mechanics, woodworkers, or any other of the myriad of jobs our parents and grandparents had. I really don’t think that there will be a high demand for Laboratory Information Management Systems Administrators 20 years from now.

If your job is reliant on complex technology or have expensive infrastructure that is necessary for your workplace function, then you might want to start thinking about a hobby that will be useful in the future. You can also take steps to make you home more energy efficient, find a local food supply and prepare for rolling brown and blackouts that may come as energy demand outstrips energy supply.

I do fear my sons and grandchildren having to work under similar conditions that my great grandmother worked under. This is the main reason that I am endeavoring to have a farm for my sons to inherit. One of the reasons that my great grandfather was able to buy my great grandmother was the fact that he had 160 acres of productive farmland. He might have been cash poor but his farm was able to supply most of his wants and needs including providing him with a wife.

My father counts some of the happiest days of his childhood were the ones when he lived on his grandfather’s farm. And I would like to provide those same kinds of memories to my grandchildren as well as giving my family a means to support themselves that is independent of others (as much as that is possible).

The other factor is increased social/racial violence as the American concept of Manifest Destiny is defeated. We are already seeing this in those who do not believe that our first black President is a natural born citizen, and tougher laws against illegal immigrants and for legal immigration. As the American Southwest stops being dominated by White Anglo Saxons Protestants and whites across the nation loses their once dominate status, we will see more racial strife.

These social upheavals will become more pronounced as our economy and standard of living decreases. The best defense against this is to have a resilient community where neighbors know each other and work together. This will become ever more essential as local communities can no longer to pay for the maintenance of local infrastructure, like sewage and garbage pickup. It is only by working together can communities prevent the type of disease outbreaks (cholera, typhus etc...) that where once common.

We really need to pay attention to the social cues that are around us and that we ourselves give off. It is only by being socially aware that we can prevent much of the violence and oppression that haunted my great grandparents lives.

Giving up on the Future to save the Past

This week I gave up space travel, not just for me personally but for the entire human race for the foreseeable future. I realized that in the next twenty to forty years no country on Earth will be able to afford to waste their precious resources on manned space flight and that I might die being the last person living who can remember man walking on the moon. I was just a month shy of being 2 years old when my Mother took me and my brothers out to wave at the man on the moon. I remember her saying that this was very important and that I should remember it, I also remember not connecting that act with the actual fact that a man was on the moon.




You see for me space flight was the ultimate destination of Man; all of history was pointing to the time when the human race would leave the planet and colonize the stars. This came from growing up close enough to Marshall Space Flight center that we could hear the rocket engines being tested and watching Skylab missions on television (back in the days of 4 TV channels). I devoured science fiction books and fantasized about leading my on space crew on an interstellar flight to colonize some strange new world. But alas, I have to contend with the limitations of this one and not live in the dreams of exploring other planets.



Ironically the reason why I gave up on manned space flight was that I realized another one of my childhood dreams/fantasies had come true. You see I can also remember complaining to my Mother that I wanted to live in another time that was more exciting than my own, like the Roman Empire at its height. Well I don’t live in the Roman Empire but the American one and not at just the American Empire’s height but also at the peak of the Industrial Age. The problem with being at the peak of something is that once you are there you can only go down. Centuries from now historians probably will define the actual peak of the Industrial Age as the 1960’s and 70’s but when it actually reaches its peak doesn’t matter. All that matter’s is that we are within sight of it, and we will soon (if we aren’t already) travel down the downward slope of a collasping civilization.



I am not talking about a Mad Max type apocalypse, but something much worse a long, slow decline. You see if there was a sudden collapse then 20 to 40 years latter there would still operational modern technology and a few people left who knew how to operate it. Not only that most libraries would still contain readable books and most of our culture would be preserved. The problem with a slow decline is that no one realizes that something should be preserved until it is already lost.



I will give you an example, how many of you own a slide ruler much less knows how to do calculus with it? We are so dependent on our technology now that most of us do not remember how to get by without it. Vacuum tubes can be made with hand tools, and with vacuum tubes you can make radios, and large simple calculators, but does anyone know how to make a vacuum tube much less be able to pass own that knowledge in a meaningful way so that our great-great grandchildren can make them?



Our whole industrial society depends on cheap energy which comes in the form of fossil fuels. Petroleum which contains the most energy of all of the fossil fuels is already half used and the part that remains is harder to extract and refine. Soon both coal and natural gas will be past their peaks also, and with nothing to fuel our economies they will starve and the Industrial Age will die. Not in some big bang and flash of glory but in a slow whimper. You see we have nothing that can replace the energy that we get from fossil fuels, not nuclear, solar, hydro etc… nothing can keep our lifestyle going as it is now. As Richard Heinberg so aptly put it “The Party’s Over”.



I know what you are saying, that there is no way we can lose the accumulated knowledge that we have now, someone will think of something. Well 1800 years ago a Saxon king was buried in Britain with pottery that would have been considered poor quality even for a slave in Roman Briton just 200 years before and now it graced the table of a king. You see the Romanized Britons where so concerned about day to day survival that they did not think about learning or passing down their knowledge of ceramics and the same fate could await us.



But since history is linear and some Irish monks preserved much of what we know of the ancient world we can take precautions to preserve and pass down knowledge. First and foremost we can acquire a library of anything that we think is worth passing on to future generations. This can be do-it yourself books, philosophy, science fiction, the speeches of Winston Churchill…what ever you think is worth preserving. If you can get it on acid free paper so much the better, but get it anyway. Future generations will pass down what they think is useful or entertaining. You can also learn to play a musical instrument and pass on the ability to play tunes that you enjoy.



The knowledge that most needs to be passed to future generations is the same knowledge that our own grand and great grandparents had. How to knit, sew, spin wool, make shoes, butcher animals, tan leather they are skills that were common just 70 years ago but are quite uncommon now. We are lucky in that organic gardening is very advanced now, plus that it is common knowledge that germs cause disease, you get your water upstream from where you go potty and that personal hygiene can prevent illness. These will serve us well as the public health, food distribution and industrial agricultural systems breakdown.



One of the things that will be most helpful is the scientific method as it pertains to ecology. Understanding how to observe and model an ecosystem will be extremely helpful with food production when we do not have fossil fuels to rely on.



I will continue with technologies that need to be preserved and ways in which we can preserve them in the next post.