In Defense of Carnivorous Environmentalists
Posted: June 9, 2010 Filed under: Agriculture | Tags: carbon footprint, ethical eats, veganism, vegetarianism Leave a comment »I have a sticker on my moleskin planner that reads Vegetarianism is Environmentalism. I know – this is an abomination to subtlety, just about as intellectually offensive as reusable shopping bags that read “Green is the new Black!” While I do confess to being a lover of stickers and pins advertising my gastronomic ethics (c’mon, a “cow hugger” sticker is just too darn cute to pass up!), I condemn such banners and badges that suggest an ethical superiority. (So why do I own and use a sticker that essentially says “oh, you eat meat? I’m better than you” ? Because 1) it was free 2) I have a compulsory need to personalize my moleskin planners and 3) that particular sticker was available at the time I was indulging in my decorative personalization. Call me a hypocrite, but at least I acknowledge it.)
However, this argument is not about the merits of sticker activism.
Let me preface this post by ensuring you this is not a diatribe against veganism OR vegetarianism OR carnivorism (is that a word?). This is simply a pragmatic discussion of the relationship between eating and the environment, specially meat eating and the environment.
Nicolette Niman recently took on this dilemma in a post for the Atlantic. She was writing in response to a debate in which she participated in Berkley sponsored by the Earth Island Institute and VegNews. Her “opponent” of sorts was feedlot operator turned vegan Howard Lyman who was arguing against the idea that people who eat meat can simultaneously claim to be environmentalists. In her Atlantic post, Niman discussed the difficulty in arguing her dissenting position to a room full of vegans. Niman is a vegetarian, and, like me, she holds some seemingly contradictory opinions on vegetarianism that are difficult for most people to swallow (pun absolutely intended).
But Niman’s opinions are important and should indeed be swallowed. Lyman’s claim that provoked the discussion – that eating meat directly contributes to global warming – has some scientific validity, but not the deterministic value that many a vegetarian and vegan assign it. Niman says in response:
Equally important, to suggest that going vegetarian means you’re “part of the solution” is simply wrong: all food production has global warming impacts, and some of the worst emitters have nothing to do with livestock. For example, wetland rice fields alone account for almost 30 percent of the world’s human-generated methane. British research has shown that highly processed vegetable foods such as potato chips have large carbon footprints. Some soy products in U.S. grocery stores are from croplands created by clear-cutting rainforests in Brazil. And researchers in Sweden discovered that the global-warming impact of a carrot varies by a factor of ten depending on how and where it’s produced. All of which shows that quitting meat does not absolve anyone’s diet of a connection to global warming.
In the same way that using a recycled shopping bag or a Sigg water bottle does not mean that you are single handedly saving the earth, simply eschewing meat does not necessarily mean that you have some sort of environmental superiority to all meat-eaters. The reverse is also true, just because you eat meat does not mean you are necessarily causing more harm to the earth than a vegetarian or a vegan, and Niman agrees: “My modest hope for the evening was to make the case that there is more than one way to eat environmentally and ethically.”
So go ahead guys and gals, take a bite out of that burger (although, it is a grass-fed, free range, organic, biodynamic, holistically raised, had-bedtime-stories-read-to-it-as-a-calf burger right?!)
In fact, many vegan products participate in the same industrial system as factory farming. Do you really know what’s in your vegan cheese? Do you know where those soybeans came from? Are they genetically modified soybeans?! Do you buy things from China? Do you eat processed foods? Do you use an air conditioner do you drive a car do you consume a lot of goods?! I’m asking these questions not to accuse, but rather to point out that there is more than one way participate in global warming, and more than one way to fight it. However, if you are virtuous enough to be able to answer “no” to all of these questions then please, as you were soldier, continue your stone throwing. But let’s face it, we are all contributing to global warming. So stop pointing fingers everybody and fuckin’ hug it out.
A Vegetarian at the Thanksgiving Table
Posted: November 23, 2009 Filed under: Agriculture, Finger Foods | Tags: ethical eats, veganism, vegetarianism Leave a comment »The Huffington Post posted a slide show today titled “Thanksgiving Turkey Substitutes: The Least Appetizing Choices.”
This piece asks readers to vote on the pictures, “Rate the most outrageous turkey substitutes,” on a scale of 1: “I Eat That Daily!” to 10: “Is That Even Food?”
Now I realize that meat substitutes can be less than appealing, especially to an incredulous meat eater, but the Huffington Post’s piece was just plain offensive and in bad taste. (Excuse the pun.)
Some of the captions to the photos include, “Quorn, a substance that is meat free and soy free and made from mycoprotein, comes in these vacuum sealed bags. Kinda creepy?” and “Seitan is made out of gluten, but it looks a lot more like meat than like wheat… or maybe it just looks funky.”
The irony here is that these meals are emulating their meat counterparts. The chef’s took their inspirations from the meat eater’s kitchen; from the turkey roasts and roulades of the traditional Thanksgiving table. So in critiquing the palatability of the vegan and vegetarian substitutes, the Huffington Post is indirectly criticizing the food culture of the beloved meat eater. How is a thick slab of turkey flesh rolled around a filling any less appetizing than a grain formed into a malleable dough rolled around a similar stuffing?
Another issue with this piece is the disrespect to food culture. As we all know, food choices move far beyond the necessities of health and nutrition and into conversations of lifestyle, culture, and religion. In critiquing what or the way someone eats is an indirect, and sometimes direct, attack on that person’s integrity. Think of the racist insults that include food as an implication of degradation: fried chicken, rice, dog, etc.
The Huffington Post would certainly not post a slide show titled “Hindu Thanksgiving Turkey Substitutes: The Least Appetizing Choices,” or “All Non-Traditional Thanksgiving Meals: The Least Appetizing Choices.” Those pieces would immediately be tagged as racist and off-color.
But that’s exactly what vegetrainism and veganism are – food cultures. It’s a personal lifestyle choice; it’s a statement on morality and ethics; it’s environmentalism. So critiquing our food choices is no less acceptable than questioning the foodstuffs of any other culture.
Veganism is a Pragmatism
Posted: June 17, 2009 Filed under: Agriculture, Finger Foods | Tags: ethical eats, food policy, veganism Leave a comment »Visions of my post-graduate life are of bucolic bliss in upstate New York, but recently my desire for dirt under my fingernails has taken the pitchfork to my rational mind’s thirst for an overpriced education. I recently picked up my library’s copy of Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year in Food Life by Barbara Kingsolver. Kingsolver’s exceptionally well written narrative of her family’s trials and success at living solely off of their land has beamed me to the middle of a tilled field amongst a flock of chickens – in no hope of sane return to my Manhattan apartment. Moving back to Manhattan at summer’s end gives me a similar feeling to when a nurse approaches me with a butterfly needle to make sure I’m getting enough iron – nausea accompanied by self-pitying tears.
I’m aware of the disconnect between the grocery store produce in my fridge and its original parent soil (which explains my loyalty to my local farm and farmer’s market), but Kingsolver’s witty observations about the minutiae of conventional food wisdom has increased my perception for typically overlooked food offenses. My boyfriend and I were in Shop Rite the other day to pick up ingredients for enchiladas when we stopped by the “vine ripened” tomatoes. He picked out a rich red, plump bunch and examined the penny-sized sticker on one of the tomatoes: “Product of Holland.” However, the considerably larger pricing sign would have you believe that these tomatoes were grown in the vicinity of the grocery, or at least the United States. The sign read: “Home Grown Taste.”
Thankfully my own tomato plants are chest high and showing signs of future edibles:
Similarly as strange, my mom and I were eating breakfast one morning when I reached for her jar of Stop and Shop brand apple jelly. I wasn’t surprised to find high fructose corn syrup as one of the ingredients, but I was shocked to see corn syrup as one of the ingredients in her ultra-pasteurized half and half. I stand by my choice to no longer drink milk…corporate milk, that is.
Veganism was a way for me to stick it to the corporate food conglomerates who force animals into CAFOs (concentrated animal feeding operations) for the sake of “increased production,” i.e. more profit in less time. But being vegan means eliminating things from my diet mainly because the big guys render them inedible due to unnecessary animal cruelty. It makes sense to bring down the bearers of bad behavior by not giving them my honest money, but then I realized a more productive and tastier mode of food anarchy: making cheese in my own newly renovated kitchen. Barbara Kingsolver assured me in her book that making cheese is not the stuff of legend (I no longer vision a provincially dressed man surrounded by infinite wheels of Brie as he stirs something in a barrel). All I need is a few stainless steel pots, the rennets and cultures which you can buy online from the “Cheese Queen,” and some ethical (and tasty) local milk from local, happy cows. Ok, so obviously eating cheese is a grave violation of the vegan canon, but I feel justified in supporting local farmers – the people that industrial operations are driving into poverty. Perhaps I am a pragmatist after-all.
Once my paycheck from waiting on grumpy, golf savvy lawyers clears, I’m going to order the rennets and cultures. I’ll have my ethical cheese, and be able to eat it too.
Earth Day Round-Up (no relation to the Monsanto pesticide)
Posted: May 7, 2009 Filed under: Agriculture, Finger Foods | Tags: veganism, vegetarianism 4 Comments »For three hours on April 22nd, the top floor of NYU’s student center was transformed into a vegan sanctuary in celebration of Earth Day. The event featured three speakers, including the vice president of PETA, and a complimentary vegan dinner of chick’n nuggets, tempeh patties, and steamed veggies. Although the event used plastic dishes and utensils – deserving of a slap on the wrist considering it was Earth Day – we did walk away with a few “Meat’s Not Green” stickers and posters as well a feeling of meat-free empowerment.
The opening speaker was NYU Philosophy professor and self-righteous vegetarian Ward Regan. He discussed how vegetarianism and veganism (a word not recognized by my version of Office, damn you Bill Gates) relate to a wider “paradigm shift in our consciousness” about the environment and our country’s politics. The way we perceive the world needs to change in order to make change. Affecting change with…change. Fancy that.
Regan was lacking only the pounding of his fist when he zealously admonished the “continually criminal behaviors of our leaders,” a line followed by enthusiastic clapping from the audience. Regan understands being a vegetarian or a vegan as a way to escape the “orthodoxy about life enforced by an ever more powerful organism.”
After Regan’s dictator-esque tirade, the second speaker was like a refreshing drink of non-genetically modified soymilk. Andrew Kropf, the manager of Migliorellli Farms in upstate New York, nervously discussed his farm’s thriving biodiversity. Biodiversity is an exciting word for any avid-agriculturist. Consider how most super markets carry two or three varieties of apples, some which are transported from Mexico or other estates abroad. Thanks to the corporate sphere’s love of profit laundering, there are hundreds of delicious apple varieties resting peacefully in orchards unknown to the average Granny Smith consumer. These varieties are also on their way out as monocrops of apples perfect for the tumultuousness of transport are driving out (excuse the pun) the prized diversity.
Migliorelli farms, which caters to the Union Square Green Market, grows a total of 167 different crops including 12 varieties of peaches, 4 varieties of pears, and 27 varieties of apples. Unfortunately, Kropf’s farm is not organic. Considering that he was speaking to a room full of advocates of sustainable living, I was slightly shocked at his admission. He cited economic feasibility as the reason, “I think organic is a great concept but it’s hard to do in a small farm setting. We want to provide affordable local food for every home in the city.”
Kropf’s farm also does not use any genetically modified seed and practices sustainable farming techniques such as no-till fields and crop rotation.
Next on the agenda was the anticipated keynote speaker, the vice president of PETA, Bruce Friedrich. His list of organizations included the Catholic Vegetarian Society, the Christian Vegetarian Society, and the Society of Ethical and Religious Vegetarians.
Mr. Friedrich’s introduction caused some furiously furrowed brows at our table of passionate leftists because although we attend a liberal university, we are secretly receptive to exclusively liberal ideals. The second we hear “John McCain,” we bleeding-liberals upturn our noses and head for the nearest hip coffee shop (preferably Think). We all began to scribble this poor man’s name onto our Republican hit lists when he took the podium, “I sound like a Jesus freak!” A few guilty chuckles ensued.
“Did you hear Bill Gates bought the Seattle Times this morning?”
Every journalism student in the room cursed their future job opportunities.
“He buys it every morning.”
Ba-dum-chh. We all looked at each other with knowing smiles that implied, “Maybe this guy won’t be so bad after all.”
Friedrich dove right into a discussion of the global consequences of a meat-eating diet. The U.S. grows 90 percent of its soy to feed industrially farmed animals. Contrast that with the 1.4 billion people living in dire poverty and the 187 million people living with a nutritional deficit – a euphemism for starving. “That’s a human rights crime,” Friedrich said. Being a vegan eliminates the competition between the affluent meat eater and the world’s poor. Most shockingly, 70 percent of antibiotics produced in the U.S. are given to industrially farmed animals so they can sustain the brutal conditions.
From an environmental perspective, consuming meat is unsustainable. Meat production accounts for 18 percent of global warming; the transportation of meat used one million metric tons of biofuels in 2008; and industrially farmed animals produce 30 times more excrement than humans. Because there is no universal waste-management system for animals, their waste pollutes surrounding waterways and the air, often at the expense of near-by homes (Peter Singer discusses this problem at length in his book The Ethics of What We Eat).
Friedrich saved the cruelty issue for his last point. He called up a picture of a wide-eyed cat onto the two PowerPoint screens, “Would anyone here eat my cat Gracie?” Of course not Mr. Friedrich, but we get your point, “There is no moral difference between my cat and farm animals.” He then ran through a montage of wincingly cruel photos of animals in the factory farm setting. He emphasized the recurring vegetarian argument that if the pictured animals were cats or dogs, their owners would be in jail.
Friedrich finished with an encouraging list of ways to live more sustainably (another word that Office does not recognize – and you call yourself a humanitarian Mr. Gates…).
1. Buy local and/or organic
2. Avoid genetically modified foods
3. Buy less
4. Educate yourself
5. Practice personal advocacy
6. Practice political and economic advocacy
During the question and answer, Friedrich discussed breaking the U.S.’s cultural and social connections with eating meat. He pointed to periods in history when hierarchical relationships between sexes and races were considered the norm, but have since been proven unjust, “the exact same thing is true of eating meat.”
Regan, however, needed to have the final, ominous word, “It’s simple, we have to save the animals from working in the machinery of death.”
Veganism is a Humanism
Posted: May 3, 2009 Filed under: Agriculture, Finger Foods | Tags: ethical eats, veganism, vegetarianism 2 Comments »At fifteen years old, I made a life altering decision.
I decided to become a vegetarian.
This was unsurprisingly hard for my mother to stomach considering our Filipino heritage. Meat and fish are at the core of traditional Filipino fare. Typical holiday cuisine includes deep-fried pigs leg, blood stew, and duck fetus.
Because she grew up on a farm, my mom saw no harm in raising animals for food. She could not comprehend why I would stop eating meat. She was devastated.
Four and a half years later, I made the transition to vegan. A vegan does not eat meat or any animal products, including eggs, dairy, gelatin, or honey. Some choose not to wear silk, leather, or wool.
In 2008, 3.2 percent of the population identified themselves as vegetarians. Less than one percent recognized themselves as vegans. My support group is as limited as my options are for dining-out.
My initial reasons for becoming a vegetarian were more reactionary than ethical, but as I made the shift to vegan, my diet evolved into an emphatic raised middle finger aimed at the corporate food system and a salute to a local America.
Meat, rice, and a full glass of milk made-up the average dinner at my house. Refusing the obligatory glass of milk represented the first stage of my teenage rebellion. I was starting small.
Giving up meat was the next step.
A fifteen year-old has a hard time seeing past all of the nuances of puberty. I was too busy worrying about what boy “x” would think of my newest zit to develop a significant argument for being a vegetarian. I cited animal cruelty as my first defense, assuming the role of my animal-loving best friend, who has been a vegetarian since I met her in third grade.
At that time, being a vegetarian was more of a way for me to appear avant-garde and rebellious in our conservative, Catholic high school than to take an ethical stance.
So my initial justification for not eating meat lacked political fervor, but as I grew older and my mind more critical, I realized the broader environmental and political impacts of a meat eating diet.
It takes 7.5 pounds of grain to produce one pound of pork and five pounds of grain to produce one pound of chicken. This means that we lose 90 percent of our grain protein to animal feed.
Industrially farmed animals produce about 30 times more excrement than human beings. Because there is no efficient animal-waste-system, this excess excrement pollutes surrounding waterways as well as the air.
As my political passion increased, so did my vegetarian conviction.
However, the past five years have not been an idyllic vegetarian utopia. I did occasionally struggle with my new diet, especially at the whiff of a delicious burger or bacon frying in a skillet.
I briefly regressed to a carnivorous diet my senior year of high school because of an unfortunate run in with a Peruvian style chicken drumstick. I couldn’t resist the succulent sight of the glistening drumstick, especially after witnessing my friends indulge. After the hiatus, I returned to my vegetarian diet my first semester at college.
The second offense came this past summer when my then boyfriend and I were staying with his aunt in San Francisco, part of a ten day road trip up the California coast. His aunt was excited to have the young company and had her Indonesian boyfriend cook us a traditional stir-fry.
When she placed the serving bowl in the center of the table, I realized that dinner was going to be a true test of my morals. The traditional stir-fry consisted of peppers, onions, and shredded chicken. Normally, in a situation like this I would pick out the offending meat or choose a different offering of the meal. Unfortunately, the meat was shredded to the point where I couldn’t separate it successfully and the only other dish was plain rice. In fear of offending or inconveniencing his aunt, I spooned a helping of the stir-fry on top my rice.
Although I felt defeated and guilty, I also felt justified. I felt O.K. knowing that I had prevented food from going to waste.
That’s when I realized that being a vegetarian is not just an anti-animal-cruelty fashion statement. Being a vegetarian means being an environmentalist, an advocate, and a humanitarian.
With this realization, I gradually eliminated eggs and finally dairy to complete my dietary shift. This was the toughest aspect of my foodstuff rebellion. I have always been a huge lover of fine cheese – fontina, gorgonzola, and brie just to name a few of my favorite offenders.
Around this time, I also began to advocate for organic and local food, which correlated with my vegan lifestyle.
My mom and I joined our local Community Supported Agriculture in upstate New York. We worked early mornings on the farm twice a week in exchange for weekly shares of produce. We felt empowered knowing that our food was not doused with chemicals and did not use unnecessary fossil fuels in transport. We were supporting local farmers rather than corporate super-market-savages.
Imported foods and packaged products that have traveled long distances in fuel-guzzling trucks dominate grocery store shelves. Our choices are limited to what the corporate distributors believe will make them the most profit.
After a year of suffering my anti-corporate rants and my non-animal product diet, my mom dropped an atom bomb in the form of her own dietary restrictions.
She decided to reduce her meat intake to once a week and drink only soy milk. I was floored.
