LEMONDE.FR | 26.01.12 | 08h42 • Mis à jour le 26.01.12 | 08h55
January 26, 2012
January 25, 2012
HFW's Meat Manifesto
Clearly, the kind of meat you buy has several ramifications. The most obvious are taste and texture, morals, and economic.
Morality comes into play because buying intensively farmed meat means that you condone the bad treatment of animals that is commonly practiced on intensive farms. While it's possible to be a moral person and eat meat, it's not ok to willingly engage in practices that deliberately hurt another living creature. I would argue that if you can't afford to eat meat that is farmed in a way that doesn't hurt the animals, you should eat less meat. Call me elitist, but at the same time realize that most people eat way too much meat as it is.
There's an economic component, clearly, to the kind of meat you buy. Of course, it's not the same thing to purchase meat that is mass-produced by giant conglomerates as to purchase (possibly for a higher price) meat produced by a single smallholder who carefully raises individual animals in humane and even comfortable conditions. With one option you are furthering a world where the concentration of the means of production leads to the reduction of choices and a sort of tyranny of large corporations (which we accept in return for the appearance of lower prices). With the other, you are fostering competition between smaller producers who retain a degree of independence that is the best guarantee against the uniformization of culture and the preservation of regional differences that form the rich cultural fabric that sustains us as humans.
In this way, the economic component becomes a cultural preservation component. Please note that I am not making the case that smallholders are inherently better, culturally speaking, than large corporations. Rather, I am saying that the fact that smallholders must be numerous, they will provide more diversity of options and cultures than a single large corporation. This diversity will manifest itself in the types or breeds of animals that they will raise, in how they will butcher them, etc... even within a single country. This diversity is what leads to a genetic guarantee against debilitating diseases that could wipe out a too uniform livestock population, saddening everyone from PETA-types to meat lovers.
All of these considerations, together with others raised by HFW, mean that a meat eater must be educated, adventurous, and thrifty with meat, ensuring that he gets the most of the meat that he purchases so that it is a satisfying experience informed by a carefully articulated moral stance.
Morality comes into play because buying intensively farmed meat means that you condone the bad treatment of animals that is commonly practiced on intensive farms. While it's possible to be a moral person and eat meat, it's not ok to willingly engage in practices that deliberately hurt another living creature. I would argue that if you can't afford to eat meat that is farmed in a way that doesn't hurt the animals, you should eat less meat. Call me elitist, but at the same time realize that most people eat way too much meat as it is.
There's an economic component, clearly, to the kind of meat you buy. Of course, it's not the same thing to purchase meat that is mass-produced by giant conglomerates as to purchase (possibly for a higher price) meat produced by a single smallholder who carefully raises individual animals in humane and even comfortable conditions. With one option you are furthering a world where the concentration of the means of production leads to the reduction of choices and a sort of tyranny of large corporations (which we accept in return for the appearance of lower prices). With the other, you are fostering competition between smaller producers who retain a degree of independence that is the best guarantee against the uniformization of culture and the preservation of regional differences that form the rich cultural fabric that sustains us as humans.
In this way, the economic component becomes a cultural preservation component. Please note that I am not making the case that smallholders are inherently better, culturally speaking, than large corporations. Rather, I am saying that the fact that smallholders must be numerous, they will provide more diversity of options and cultures than a single large corporation. This diversity will manifest itself in the types or breeds of animals that they will raise, in how they will butcher them, etc... even within a single country. This diversity is what leads to a genetic guarantee against debilitating diseases that could wipe out a too uniform livestock population, saddening everyone from PETA-types to meat lovers.
All of these considerations, together with others raised by HFW, mean that a meat eater must be educated, adventurous, and thrifty with meat, ensuring that he gets the most of the meat that he purchases so that it is a satisfying experience informed by a carefully articulated moral stance.
January 22, 2012
A presumptuous announcement and endeavor
Because nothing comes of doing nothing, and because it's time I did something other than complain or mock others (no matter how pithily) on this blog, I've decided that I'm going to re-start this great book that I've been reading and keep a journal here.
Announcing, with great presumption and pretentiousness, the start of a blogging extravaganza about "The River Cottage MEAT Book" by Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall (HFW).
OK, so I love to eat meat, and it's a bit of a problem, if you will, because I'm also an environmentalist and a water specialist to boot. It's hard to combine a love of meat with a philosophy of respect for the Earth and its non-human inhabitants. I decided to read this book in its entirety because I started reading it months ago at some friends' ranch in Texas and I know that it offers a different philosophy about meat eating (also, because my wife bought it for me for Christmas).
You'll have to excuse the haphazard way in which this is going to go, because I'm not much good at book reports (never was, really). What I'm going to do is read a few paragraphs or pages a night and drop down a reaction here.
HFW and I agree that there's a major problem with the way most of the meat produced in the Western world reaches the plates of the people consuming it. There's a problem with quality, there's a problem with quantity, there's a problem with preparation. In addition, there's an ecological problem: the intensive production of meat is extremely bad for the environment, and a moral problem: intensively farmed animal live miserable, sick lives in inhumane (one should say in-animal) conditions.
While HFW is a bit of a megalomaniac, aiming to change the way millions of people consume meat (no less), he's got a very good point and one worth making at length and in detail, so that we can learn enough that we'll never have to finish our plate (of meat) and be sorry that "an animal had to die for that".
Announcing, with great presumption and pretentiousness, the start of a blogging extravaganza about "The River Cottage MEAT Book" by Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall (HFW).
OK, so I love to eat meat, and it's a bit of a problem, if you will, because I'm also an environmentalist and a water specialist to boot. It's hard to combine a love of meat with a philosophy of respect for the Earth and its non-human inhabitants. I decided to read this book in its entirety because I started reading it months ago at some friends' ranch in Texas and I know that it offers a different philosophy about meat eating (also, because my wife bought it for me for Christmas).
You'll have to excuse the haphazard way in which this is going to go, because I'm not much good at book reports (never was, really). What I'm going to do is read a few paragraphs or pages a night and drop down a reaction here.
HFW and I agree that there's a major problem with the way most of the meat produced in the Western world reaches the plates of the people consuming it. There's a problem with quality, there's a problem with quantity, there's a problem with preparation. In addition, there's an ecological problem: the intensive production of meat is extremely bad for the environment, and a moral problem: intensively farmed animal live miserable, sick lives in inhumane (one should say in-animal) conditions.
While HFW is a bit of a megalomaniac, aiming to change the way millions of people consume meat (no less), he's got a very good point and one worth making at length and in detail, so that we can learn enough that we'll never have to finish our plate (of meat) and be sorry that "an animal had to die for that".
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