Meat - it messes with water, part 2

One of things that I did not write about in my previous post is the impact of antibiotics on water systems and on water supply.

As HFW points out, livestock raised in intensive farms are often fed growth-enhancing antibiotics, which also serve another purpose: they combat the infections that befall livestock living in the cramped, insalubrious conditions of factory farms.

You might think that this is all well, except that antibiotics are deadly, in that they kill bacteria - good and bad. When livestock is pumped full of medicine, some of it passes out through body waste and finds itself in the environment, where it can have unpredictable effects on aquatic ecosystems and water quality. The same goes for the hormones routinely given to cattle in the US to boost milk production - hormones which are banned in most other industrialized countries.

Lastly, and while I am neither a biologist nor a doctor, I'll bet that the overconsumption of antibiotics by livestock could have the same impact as in humans and could lead to new and dangerous super-bugs.
All this to say that the impacts of intensive farming on water quality and aquatic ecosystems are complex and most likely significant. Further argument for staying away from factory meat.

Meat - it messes with water

As promised, I am going to revisit the environmental issues that surround animal husbandry with a particular focus on water.

Before we proceed any further, I have to digress a bit into the field of water chemistry, but don't worry, I'll keep this simple.

Water is "clean" when the ecosystem that lives in it thrives. This ecosystem requires nutrients, which at the most basic level are carbon, nitrogen, and phosphorus (C, N, P). Under normal conditions, bacteria and algae will oxidize these chemicals to grow. As you might have noticed, bacteria are not known for being braniacs and so they'll eat and multiply until they run out of something, be it nutrients or oxygen.


At the simplest level, one of the ways in which water becomes "dirty" or "polluted" is when there is so much C, N, P in it that the bacteria and algae consume all of the oxygen, leaving none - or not enough - for the fish or the rest of the ecosystem. To take it slightly further, the ecosystem can be severely harmed by the intrusion of excess C, N, P, even if not all oxygen is consumed. Some organisms, like trout, require a minimum level of oxygen in water to thrive.

This leads to our first equation :

C, N, P + WATER = POOWATER

There are plenty of sources of C, N, P in this world, including fertilizers, among others. So this wouldn't necessarily concern our meat eating ethics except that there is a second equation:

POO = C, N, P

Those who paid attention in math will know that we can combine these equations to reach this brilliant conclusion (Nobel committee, are you paying attention?):

POO + WATER = POOWATER

That's right, when a cow, a pig, a chicken, a human etc... poos in water, the water gets dirty, and now we have mathematical proof! Thanks to the utter brilliance of the above equation - brilliant because it also works with pee - you now know why it's bad that livestock to poos in water. Aren't you glad you made it this far? Besides C, N, P, poo also contains suspended solids, antibiotics/hormones (if given to the animals), and  fecal coliform, all of which are also bad for the environmental health of water and can be directly harmful to humans.



As is often the case, the amount of damage caused by livestock poo is directly related to the amount of poo as compared to the size (and other physical characteristics) of the receiving water body - river, lake, pond, estuary, groundwater, etc...

To illustrate: 1000 cows pooing on a mile or river means an environmental disaster whereas 1 cow pooing on 1000 miles of river means some happy algae.

Anybody who's been to the country knows that livestock isn't toilet trained, and will tend to relieve themselves wherever they please, which can very much include right on your shoes. So the next question we must answer is: how does poo go from the fields to the river?

The answer is a simple phenomenon called runoff. When it rains, the rainwater runs off the ground and into rivers, carrying sticks, oil, paper, mud, and (you guessed it) poo with it. If the poo is spread out over a large grassy field, there is a chance that it'll take several rainfalls for the poo to make it to the river, but if the poo is stored in a basin (sometimes called a lagoon) that can overflow all at once into the river, you can imagine that it won't be pretty for the fish.



Unfortunately, the above does nothing whatsoever to further the cause of meat eating, and so we're now getting to the interesting part. I've tried to make it clear in the above that it's the dose of poo in the water that's the determining factor. The example I used is a thinly veiled reference to the difference between extensive and intensive farming, and, as stated in other posts, it's clear that it's only extensive farming that can lead to reduced impacts on aquatic environments.

Notice that I didn't say that there would be no impact from extensive farming, just reduced as compared to intensive. The next question therefore is: is this limited impact "worth it" and would we do better by eating vegetables instead?

The obvious answer is "yes, but". As with meat, it really depends on the vegetables (or other vegetarian fare) that we're talking about. Raising plants can have negative effects on the environment as well, to wit: deforestation, pesticides abuse, irrigation, fertilizer abuse, etc... It's not the same thing to eat a piece of tofu made from locally organically grown soybeans and to eat tofu made from soybeans raised on Brazilian factory farms that have replaced the rain forest.

I do not have access to reliable figures about the relative merits of extensive/intensive animal husbandry/farming and so I can offer no objective and definitive conclusion concerning the morality of eating meat from the point of view its impact on water. Except, of course, to say that meat raised under extensive farming conditions will best intensively farmed meat any day, and will probably beat intensively farmed vegetarian food most days as well.

Boeuf Bourguignon

In parallel to reading the River Cottage MEAT Book, I've been trying to make very good meat dishes, not least of which I like eating them, but also because it's important to respect the animal who died to feed you: prepare his/her meat in the most delicious manner and enjoy it to the fullest.

We decided to have some friends over and to make boeuf bourguignon, for which I happen to have found a great recipe online a few years ago, rumored to have originated from Bernard Loiseau's kitchen. If enough people ask, I will translate it into English - this translation is not perfect.

The thing about boeuf bourguignon is that it is truly a labor of love. You have to love the food, and the people who will eat it, and you have to love the meat. If you don't you'll never spend the time to make this delicious dish.

The first cool thing you have to do is boil some wine and flambé the alcohol. This will definitely impress whoever happens to be in the kitchen with you (in my case: my 4.5 year old daughter). 

Then you let the wine cool completely before marinating the meat, carrots, and onions overnight in the refrigerator. For the meat, I chose some shoulder (paleron) and some beef cheek. It turned out that the cheek was much more tender than the shoulder. It's also a piece of meat that many people won't eat (their loss!), and so it's a great way to participate in the total consumption of the animal.

Here are the marinated ingredients after a night in the refrigerator.

To me, one of the joys of cooking comes from sharing with my daughter. I try very hard to find things for her to do whenever she wants to participate in the kitchen, sometimes handing her a knife that's entirely too big and sharp, but she still has 10 fingers. In boeuf bourguignon, one of the garnishes is glazed onions, which you make by boiling the onions in sugar water under a wax paper cover. I got little hands to help me with making the wax paper cover.
      

Cooking the glazed pearl onions.

The next step is to saute some lardons, which are dices of pork belly (poitrine). The trick is to blanch them first (put in cold water and bring to the boil) as a way for getting rid of both some of the fat and some of the

You also need some mushrooms, best when sauteed in pig fat (saindou) on high heat. Season at the end to keep them from sweating too much.

The garnish, prior to being added to the dish.

Once the meat has cooked for 2-3 hours (the longer the better), have to separate the meat from the onions/carrots. You then puree the onions/carrots in the wine, and pass them through a sieve to extract the juice and leave the gritty solids behind.

This requires a bit of work, particularly if your sieve's handle happens to be broken.

You then reassemble all of the pieces: meat, garnish, sauce, reheat over high heat, and serve with sautéed or steamed potatoes

It's delicious, and you'll wish you'd made more of it.

Cooking... with children

If you're the not the artsy type or don't have ready access to the outdoors, it can sometimes be hard to find activities to enjoy with your children. Unless, of course, if you like to cook.

I grew up in a family where food was important, and my father loved (still does) going to the market and cooking very nice meals for all of us to enjoy. Unfortunately, I don't have any recollection of his ever teaching me how to hold a knife or how to make blanquette- though my grandmother taught me how to make vinaigrette, with tarragon. Most things I learned by observation and by trial and error. Perhaps I never asked to be taught or shown.

My daughter, by contrast, has been wanting to participate in food preparation for a few months at least. She's still young (4.5 years old) and not particularly well-coordinated, but as she's been growing older, her attention span and dexterity have both improved. Today, I try to encourage her to help me whenever she asks to, even if it means that it'll take me longer to fix lunch - or dinner.

I like to think that she'll assimilate the basic techniques that I try to teach her (really just a bag of tricks I've accumulated over the years), but I am more interested in her learning about where food comes from, how it's made, and what it takes to make it taste good, so that she'll grow up to have a choice to make her own food instead of relying on precooked meals.

In the hope that it will help other parents find a system that works for them, I'll make a quick list of rules and tricks that have worked for us:

• Dad is in charge: his word is final and not up for discussion
• Cooking is dangerous: there are lots of sharp and hot things - Dad knows what's safe and he'll tell you
• Daughter must ask before doing anything, particularly anything involving a knife of something hot, unless previously and explicitly authorized
• Messes are great: if your daughter wants to stick her hand inside a raw squid, let her
• Messes are cleaned up: little hands can also wield a sponge
• Anything not dangerous can be tasted or touched, warm or cold, including warm butter or cold pig fat (small amounts), for example, but not raw chicken, obviously...
• Peelers can be safe knives for 4 year olds, but little hands can have trouble handling them, so don't focus on technique: let the child peel the potato/turnip/kiwi however she wants and praise the results, if warranted.
• Giving a 4 year old a real, big-person, cooking knife is a mark of trust that will be appreciated (don't let it out of your sight and keep your hands close by), but daughter must ask before picking it up.
• Measuring a great activity for a child, and a good way to play with numbers
• Daughter needs a step stool or similar prop to be high enough to work at the counter
• Little eyes will be more affected by onions because they are closer to the chopping board
• Trusting a child will be rewarded by an improvement in behavior (I suspect that this works in other areas of life as well) and in the attention paid to the activity.
• Be prepared to repeat yourself, it's not because a child is cooking with you that she's not a child

Another thing that's really neat about cooking with a child is that they will get to ask all sorts of questions about the things we're preparing: "where are the fish's teeth?", "what's this black thing?" (a seed), "why is this turnip white and purple and that one yellow?", "will my tongue turn green if I eat this?" (let's try), etc... It's a great opportunity to answer questions, even if that means postponing an answer to look things up on the Internet.


We have a great time cooking together, and while a 4 year old can be silly and sometimes frustrating to cook with, it's a good way for me to spend some quality time with my daughter, especially as her younger brother (1 year old) cannot participate yet. She also likes to come to the market with me, and I sometimes let talk me into buying things that I normally wouldn't, as I try to encourage her curiosity.

Last but not least, cooking together makes it much more likely that my daughter will try, like, and eat the things that we prepare together - and that's never a bad thing.

Mystery picture contest #2

Make your guesses in the comments section, if you'd like.

 

To see pictures from the previous contest, look here.

ANSWER: this is a photo of a saucepan,filled with flaming wine, which is the first step in the preparation of boeuf bourguignon. 

You know times are tough

When the savings extend to not installing a yellow light at the bottom of the traffic light.

Bilbao traffic light

Comfort zone

"If you don't work at the edge of your comfort zone, your comfort zone will shrink"

                                                  - Alan Oppenheim

The environmental consequences of animal husbandry

My second criteria for moral meat-eating is that the meat should be raised in an environmentally benign way.

The relationship of all living things with the environment is one of birth, resource consumption, waste production, death, and decay. This cycle, replayed within and across a complex web of relationships that encompasses all living things from microbes and lichens to killer whales and baobab trees, is our ecosystem and it is dynamic. This is to say that any equilibrium can be perturbed, for good or bad, by chance or design. This is the stuff that drives evolution, mass extinctions, etc...

We therefore know that the world that we inhabit is affected by our actions, both in predictable and unpredictable ways - nothing Earth shattering here, this is a banal assertion. What we see perhaps less clearly is that the environment that we consider to be "natural" is man-made to a significant extent, particularly in the US and Western Europe. This is particularly true of what we like to call "the countryside".

For example, in Les Vosges, the mountains would be covered with dense forests if it were not for pastures grazed by farm animals (see pictures). The hedgerows of Bretagne and Normandy are a man-made environment, which would revert to moor or forest if it were not maintained by man and its animals. In this way, we are no different than some other large animals; elephants come to mind. Similar examples exist in the US, I am sure, and HFW gives several examples in the UK. Below are some pictures from Les Vosges.

Would letting pasture revert to forest be so bad? After all, isn't forest "good for the environment"? isn't it better than pasture?

Well, perhaps or perhaps not: some species have conquered the pastures of the Vosges and Bretagne, and would doubtlessly find themselves challenged in dense forests. In some ways, this environment that we've created has created its own biodiversity and ecosystem, which one could argue are worthy of some form of protection.

Why do I go through all of this trouble to argue for the future of pastures, hedgerows, and the animals and flowers that inhabit them? It is because extensive animal husbandry is a prime factor in the maintenance of these rich environments. Should we abandon the consumption of meat altogether, we would remove all incentive for farmers to maintain this environment. What would likely happen is that steep slopes would be surrendered to forest (perhaps not a bad thing), but flat areas would likely be turned over to farming wheat, corn, or carrots, as there would be no financial incentive for the farmer to maintain the fractured environment, and no help from livestock.

Farming plants, unless it is done by hand on small holdings, uses mechanized equipment which is hampered by hedgerows and small parcels. Fractured pasture and fields, fenced off by hedges, low walls, or trees are much more resistant to soil erosion from wind and rain than plowed fields.

A farmer with pastures and fields, who rotates the use of his land over time to raise animals and plants (fodder and/or human food), will preserve both the rich ecosystem of "the countryside" and raise tasty meat in a way that is arguably environmentally and "ecosystematically" equivalent to one raising plants only.

Need I point out the obvious: this ain't no factory farming that I'm describing here.

Next: livestock, water, and the atmosphere.

Animal suffering

I'll try to address here the first of the criteria for moral meat eating.

The first thing that we have to remember is that livestock animals (cows, sheep, fowls, pigs, and all animals that we might raise for food) are mortal.

If we accept that livestock are animals like any others, an argument voiced to argue against their organized slaughter, then we must accept that, as herbivores, they are in the middle of the food chain, destined to be some other animal's prey. As such, their destiny is to be hunted down and killed, whether by a lion, a bear, a wolf, a human, etc... Alternatively, they can die of disease, fire, drowning, or starvation. Dying from old age isn't quite an option for animals, except for pets. Old and/or weak herbivores (think gazelles, zebras, gnus...) are the easiest preys for the lion, crocodile, or what-have-yous that lurk in the tall grass. As part of natural selection, predators routinely pick-off the weakest prey. It's not philosophy, it's Darwinism.

In the wild, to the extent that such places exist, the herbivore has a fair chance at escaping his predator. Domesticated livestock meets their demise at an appointed hour. This is because we control every aspect of their life, from birth to breeding to slaughter. This control, in turn, means that we have a dual responsibility to ensure that:

1. the life of our livestock is free of the pain and suffering that befalls wild herbivores
2. the manner of death is as painless and stress free as possible

The farmer is therefore responsible for ensuring that his livestock is raised under comfortable conditions. This is to say that the animals have enough space to roam, have appropriate shelter, are protected from predators, are availed plentiful, adequate food, and are given medical care. In short, they trade their freedom for comfort. Medical care cannot include the massive preventative application of hormones or antibiotics, while space and shelter must be sufficiently roomy so that animals can follow their rooting and exploring instincts. Food must be natural, to the extent possible, not result from human transformation processes.

One might object that a cow born in captivity has not willingly entered into this bargain: comfort and death against freedom. However, HFW makes a convincing point that, on a species basis, livestock animals have entered into this bargain with humans, growing more numerous and healthy than they could ever have dreamt to be in the wild (i.e.: compare the number of gazelles to the number of cows worldwide). In this sense, a symbiotic relationship of sorts has been established between humans and livestock, albeit one that involves the slaughter of one half of the symbiosis to feed the other.

Going back to item 2 above, the farmer is also responsible for choosing a slaughterhouse where his animals can meet their demise in a stress-free manner. While this might seem unrealistic, it should be clear that there is a big difference between a place where animals are killed after a wild stampede where some might be gored or trampled to death, and one where only a few animals at a time are killed in individual pens, by a person who administers a swift death. The difference might seem artificial, but it is fundamental in my view.
It should be clear that what I described above is the exact opposite of factory farming, where animals are kept in confined spaces, pumped up with antibiotics and hormones (in the US), and fed fish or other animal meal. Further, I essentially rule out eating meat that has been slaughtered in an industrial slaughterhouse.

Of course, that means ruling out most of the meat available in supermarkets in France and US today, but that's another story.

The morality of eating meat

Eating meat is under attack. Countless vegetarians make potent, rational, and cogent arguments about the moral precariousness of eating meat. However, these arguments have never felt completely compelling or satisfying to me, and so I've kept on eating. At the same time, I've had a feeling that I couldn't quiet provide an appropriate response to my vegetarian friends. Now that I'm reading HFW's book, I feel that I can better articulate a moral position for meat eating, and so I'll try to do it here and in future posts.

While I am no great philosopher, I can see that encouraging the suffering of sentient, social animals for my selfish pleasure is wrong, especially as alternative sources of food abound. I can further see that consuming a product whose production is bad for the environment is morally fraught. I understand and respect the position of moral vegetarians, but I think it is too narrow.

I am just not convinced that it is inevitable that meat will be both the result of great suffering and bad for the environment. I posit that meat consumption can be moral if it complies with the following:

• the meat I (and you, perhaps) consume came to my plate without additional animal suffering, as compared a hypothetical 'wild' state.
• animal husbandry does not harm the environment any more than its absence would.
• meat consumption is total, meaning that every part of the slaughtered animal is consumed as food, fuel, leather, or other raw material, etc... and no part is wasted.
• the consumption of meat is done with full disclosure of the conditions under which the animal is raised, slaughtered, aged, and sold, so that meat consumers can understand the provenance of their meat and be responsible for their actions.

I will attempt to discuss these points individually in later posts, but before I go any further, I'll state outright that most of meat consumed in the developed world fails to meet these criteria.

Who's funding Mitt Romney?

In today's NYT, you'll find this nice bit of multi-lingual humor.

It turns out that one of the large contributors to Romney's "Restore our Future" PAC (love the doublespeak!) is one Edward Conard.

Now, Mitt Romney, who speaks French very well, ought to know what that name means, and I'm sure he's banking on the fact that few Americans will know that one of his 1-million dollar sponsors is really named Edward Asshole.


PS: ok, I'll concede that the spelling isn't exact, as the correct spelling of the French insult is "connard"