meat

Meat: A Benign Extravagance

mandy — Sun, 03 Apr 2011 20:00:00 +0000

Simon Fairlie’s contribution to the debate over how food choices influence the ecological and socioeconomic health of our communities, collected as sixteen chapters in Meat: A Benign Extravagance, probably will, as the foreword predicts, impact the future of sustainable agriculture. The scope of the project is grand, and Fairlie presents what appears to be both thorough research and sound reasoning regarding several interrelated issues. His readable, likeable style, and mostly objective tone, have led reviewers to interpret his findings in contradictory ways (i.e., we should cut back on meat/we should eat meat), which actually may be a testament to the book’s value.

Fairlie’s willingness to entertain the notion that meat production (if carried out properly, i.e., on small-scale, holistic, integrated farm systems) may be the best model when all variables are considered comes across as a practical, humble, yet mildly self-interested position. He admits he doesn’t have all the answers, but that, as a once economically poor “born-again carnivore,” he still likes keeping livestock and supporting “small farmers and peasants in their struggle against agribusiness.” He recognizes his bias, and explains he feels “instinctively that the world would be much the poorer without domestic livestock and (that he wants) to work out why."

I was originally drawn in to the data orientation of Meat via tables delineating the Mellanby diet (which Fairlie learned from the 1975 book by a Scottish ecologist – Can Britain Feed Itself?). Apparently it all began with highly informal sketches, what Fairlie calls "at best, a back of an A4 envelope job," which should not be seen as "anything other than a rough guide, and a useful framework for thinking about such matters." Such candor and occasional attempts at humor make it a refreshing read, not only for fellow scholars in the various fields he surveys, but also for policymakers (for whom the book seems particularly well suited) and novices (like myself). It’s not every day that an author suggests to readers who are daunted by his voluminous data that they can “cherrypick” whatever is most intriguing. Thankfully, Fairlie’s clear presentation style, and his inclusion of tables and figures whenever they are useful for illuminating his points, makes that unnecessary.

One of the benefits of Fairlie’s multidiscipline approach is that you get the sense that he is exploring the whole terrain of an issue. For example, in the chapter titled "Animal Furlongs and Vegetable Miles" (in which his central theme is the contest between animal power and biofuels, and the general "reluctance to examine animal power") there is an amazing range of perspectives surveyed, from current information about progress in biofuel technology to agricultural knowledge about houses, hectares, and cabbages, to even Ghandi's 1915 opinion on using cows to plow the land. Juxtapose this with highly data oriented chapters analyzing, for example, methane and CO2 versus their relative milk and rice production, down to the gram.

If I had one criticism it would be that Fairlie’s fun titles, like "Holistic Cowboys and Carbon Farmers," did sometimes obscure the nature and purpose of the writing. The chapter reads more like a reflective account of data collection and number comparisons (dollars, tonnes, miles, mycorrhizal fungi levels, soil carbon savings, etc.) than a narrative about contemporary cowboys and farmers. Although I appreciated when Fairlie emerged from the numbers and concluded the chapter with a shot of voice and personality, it nonetheless seemed a bit artificially framed.

While I couldn’t recount much of the data I tried to wrap my head around while reading this book, I did come away with a few conceptual nuggets. For instance, the spread of permaculture (a contraction of "permanent" and "agriculture"), was mainly the outcome of an effort to reverse the destructive widespread plowing in the twenties that led to the dustbowls. In one chapter, Fairlie explores how permaculture techniques might apply to the development of comprehensive land use strategies for vegan communities.

I also liked learning about the dialogue on forestry versus agriculture in the UK, in the chapter titled “The Struggle Between Light and Shade.” In it, Fairlie points out that forest productivity and farming productivity was not separated on such a strict binary prior to the industrial revolution. This helps us understand how a "permacultural approach...will not be one that favours trees on the grounds that they have a superior indigenous pedigree; it will be one that juggles with the dynamic between light and shade to produce landscapes that are rich, biodiverse and convivial for humans."

Fairlie presents his “rich, biodiverse and convivial” vision with clarity, and his attempt to gather data that clarifies the vision’s potential for both accuracy and success is admirable. If there is a downside to Meat, it is that some of the essays are limited in applicability to the United Kingdom or comparable environments. I’ve always been intrigued by islands, though, so this enhanced my experience of a highly interesting and relevant book.

Written by: Julie Ann, April 3rd 2011

Jonathan Safran Foer (01/19/2011)

brittany — Wed, 09 Feb 2011 20:00:00 +0000

London School of Economics

London, England

Jonathan Safran Foer spoke about the issues in his most recent book Eating Animals to a packed house at the London School of Economics. I haven’t read the book yet, or either one of his other two titles Everything Is Illuminated and Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, so I went bracing for a preachy rally full of vegetarian dogma.

For those of you who have read the book, you probably know that I had no reason to fear. I’m a vegetarian, but both vegetarian activists and passionate meat eaters alike bother me. I tire of vegetarian propagandists shoving violent pictures of animal cruelty in people’s faces in an attempt to convert the nonconvertible. Just the same, I grow weary of telling people I’m a vegetarian and fielding questions like “No meat? What the hell do you eat?!” “Why? It’s natural to eat meat, y’know” or my favorite, “Ok, but jamon you eat, right?”

Thankfully, there were no leaflets handed out for either cause. Rather, I was captivated by Safran Foer’s social and environmental observations gained from the three years of research he put into the project. Safran points out that at this point in society’s development, everyone can recognize that eating meat is an “issue”, something we care about. However, voices from both sides are overly judgmental.

Safran Foer says vegetarian activists have helped create this strict dichotomy between meat eaters and non-meat eaters so much so that people do not see the benefits of just cutting down on meat consumption. “They have created a framework in discussing this so that they feel there are only two options: you’re a vegetarian or you’re a carnivore. And, most people cannot condition themselves to become a vegetarian… I think most people can condition themselves to eat less meat.” According to Safran Foer, if Americans can attempt to not eat meat for just one meal every week, the influence on the environment would be the same as taking five million cars off the road.

Vegetarians are often teased that they have canine teeth because humans are meant to eat meat naturally. Perhaps that was true during times when food was simply putting calories in our bodies. But Safran Foer points out that the huge social discourse surrounding the meat industry and the great lengths they take to create an idealistic picture of factory farms plays a much larger part in what we eat than we realize. According to Safran Foer, the animals in factory farms in the U.S. consume eight times more antibiotics than humans. Safran Foer asks “Is it natural to eat these kinds of animals that are raised in these ways? What’s natural about eating an animal that cannot survive without antibiotics? What’s natural about eating food that most nutritionists biologist and doctors I’ve spoken with say is probably the reason why girls are going through puberty at ages nine and ten?”

The system in which meat is produced is so distanced from consumers that we aren’t conscious of the externalized costs to the environment. Safran Foer says fast food “is presented as the cheapest food that’s ever been produced, when in fact it’s the most expensive food that’s ever been produced.” Indeed, the cost rung up at the supermarket does not include the destruction done to the environment. Safran Foer says the Global South has paid a huge price for this. Africa, South America, as well as parts of Eastern Europe all export food that they grow themselves but don’t eat to American and European companies. Their natural environments are destroyed in the process. Safran Foer asks “For what? Only for burgers. Not to solve the healthcare problem. Not to create peace in the Middle East. It’s for cheap burgers that make us fat.” Safran Foer also found that ninety-nine percent of the world’s soy crop is fed to animals concluding that, “No one eats tofu like meat eaters.”

Safran Foer claims that Eating Animals exists to begin a discussion about how people eat meat. He was not trying to create a book to persuade readers to become vegetarians, which is why he approached it journalistically, relying on the industry’s statistics and using two fact checkers. Even if you’re a die hard carnivore who scoffs at anything coming from the Kingdom Plantae or if you’re a vegan who refuses to swat a malaria carrying mosquito or somewhere in between, you should read Safran Foer’s book, if for no other reason than to learn about the affect the foods you choose to eat have on the rest of the world.

Photo courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

An mp3 recording of the event can be accessed here.

Written by: Sara Custer, February 9th 2011

Ham: An Obsession with the Hindquarter

admin — Tue, 29 Jun 2010 08:00:00 +0000

By Mark Scarbrough, Bruce Weinstein

Stewart Tabori & Chang

Finally, a cookbook with some pizazz! Ham: An Obsession with the Hindquarter was written by Bruce Weinstein and Mark Scarbrough, food lovers, life partners, and exactly the kind of people who could breathe life into the sometimes stale world of food writing.

The recipes featured in Ham are solid, easy to follow, and delicious, but I was pleasantly surprised by how witty and well-written the book was. Along with the recipes, readers are treated to informative pig/ham-related tidbits sprinkled throughout, testers’ notes for many of the recipes, and personal stories from the writers. It was this last bit that I was particularly fond of.

I’ve never laughed out loud reading a cookbook, but after following the couple’s attempt to make their own dry-cured ham at home I couldn’t help but chuckle at the absurdity of it. If it’s done incorrectly and consumed, it can result in “respiratory failure and paralysis,” but even when the ham is drying properly, it goes through a period where it is regularly “dripping ugly bits of mucousy sludge.” Obviously, dry curing your own ham isn’t a good idea, but checking out this cookbook is. Follow Weinstein and Scarbrough on their endearing journey as they reveal all you ever wanted to know–and in some cases, some things you didn’t want to know–about that porky, fatty thing people all over the world call ham.

I already know this is one of those cookbooks I will go back to time and time again for family get-togethers, dinner parties, and plain ol’ good eatin’. I’m not one to spend a tremendous amount of money on meat when grocery shopping, but I couldn’t have done this book justice without trying one of the duo’s recipes for fresh ham. Thankfully, the book appeared on my doorstep just around Easter, which provided good reason to schlep a massive ham home from the local Mexican market. Which, by the way, was the only non-Whole Foods-like market around to have fresh ham; different than the variety you see at grocery stores around April that are pre-cooked. The recipe called for a ten pounder, which would reportedly feed “six teenage boys, sixteen adults, or twenty-six ‘twentysomething’ models,” so I knew my bone-in twelve pounder would be enough for my voracious family.

The roasted fresh ham with a maple-spice glaze was ridiculously delicious and so unlike the bizarre, overly sweet orange juice-glazed and pineapple-ringed monstrosity I grew up eating when my grandpa did all of the holiday cooking. No, this was crispy-skinned, moist, and had the perfect amount of sweetness thanks to a sugar, cinnamon, allspice, clove, and nutmeg rub down and a good basting of Grade A maple syrup.

All of the other recipes I tested revolved around prosciutto, that salty, fatty, delicious Italian ham that Weinstein and Scarbrough managed to work into everything from pizza to quesadillas–and I loved it all. Some of my favorites were the pizza with dry-cured ham and artichokes. Stubborn as I am, I refused to use store-bought dough as the recipe called for, but I think the dish was better for it because good lord, everyone needs to eat a homemade pizza laced with fatty Italian ham and artichokes.

When testing recipes on my parents, as I often do, my mom would always complain that I never used enough meat; the woman loved her some meat. She seemed excited to hear that I was testing recipes from a book devoted to pork, one of her favorite animals (to eat). One of the last meals I ever cooked for my mom before she died unexpectedly in early May was Ham's recipe for chive and cheddar ham biscuits with honey mustard. I threw some cheese on her biscuit for good measure because if there’s anything she loved more than meat, it was cheese. Needless to say she loved it and I love that a silly cookbook provided one of our last moments together as mother and daughter. Life–and food–is funny like that sometimes.

Written by: Tina Vasquez, June 29th 2010

The Butcher and the Vegetarian: One Woman's Romp through a World of Men, Meat, and Moral Crisis

admin — Sat, 24 Apr 2010 00:00:00 +0000

By Tara Austen Weaver

Rodale

Food writer Tara Austen Weaver was raised in a vegetarian home since her birth. As an adult, she unexpectedly gets diagnosed with thyroid disease. What’s she to do? Fast for forty days? No. Go macrobiotic? Nope, not that either. Instead, Weaver must eat meat—by doctor’s order. So she turns to a carnivorous diet. What unfolds is part chick lit-cookbook and part treatise on farm animal rights.

Weaver’s introduction to the world of animal flesh brings her into contact with many meat-industry types. Some she casts in an ethical light. These include kind butchers and organic cattle ranchers. She also comes to know a charming meat blogger. Readers may object to the notion of ethical, caring cattle ranchers and butchers, but I can assure you these characters would cause anyone to re-examine their assumptions.

Throughout the The Butcher and the Vegetarian, Weaver’s writing is lively and clever. Readers will enjoy her wit and keen use of hyperbole. At one point she describes a Holy Grail-like experience wherein she smothers her steak in a rapturous chimichurri sauce.

The Butcher and the Vegetarian’s cover art depicts tiny hearts and cute cartoon characters, but the book offers up several dark and unexpected twists. One minute I was reading about pork tenderloin; the next thing I know, Weaver is describing how her mother's boyfriend molested her when she was thirteen and her two subsequent suicide attempts. Woah! Hold it right there, meat lady. I need a minute to digest!

Although surprised by the confession, I appreciate Weaver's honesty and think the topic of abuse deserves a place in the book. Weaver's relationship with meat mirrors her relationship with men. To her, meat is a very masculine experience.

In passing, Weaver mentions that she doesn't consider fish to be meat. And as for chickens, I was equally shocked to find out she puts them in the category of "almost not a meat." Still, The Butcher and the Vegetarian shares some good information about the treatment of farm animals and the truth about our (and their) sources of food. These facts are of great value to readers.

Although once a vegetarian, Weaver is no activist, and she also makes her preference for food over animal welfare transparent from the beginning. It does strike me as suspicious, however, that someone so horrified at eating a steak and so knowledgeable about the farming industry would be okay with consuming eggs and dairy. I wonder if she doesn't recognize the incongruity.

Personally, I could care less about how to prepare meat; it’s simply not part of my life. Though The Butcher and the Vegetarian is well written, Weaver lost me at each mention of fine cuts of X or a special preparation of Y. What I did find fascinating (and thoroughly graphic) was Weaver’s research visit to the farm where she witnesses the process of slaughter. She writes that seeing this occur repeatedly has a desensitizing effect, that it becomes ordinary, or even "normalized."

In my experience, there was nothing normal about it. When I was in veterinary school, I witnessed the slaughtering process several times, and the blood of those poor cows still floods my nightmares. Maybe that makes me overly critical. But it’s the truth.

Written by: Laura Koffler, April 23rd 2010

Why We Love Dogs, Eat Pigs and Wear Cows: An Introduction to Carnism

admin — Sun, 28 Mar 2010 08:00:00 +0000

By Melanie Joy

Conari Press

I will say it, here and now: I eat meat. Now that I have announced that, I fear that Melanie Joy will fly through my window to tell me how the meat industry recapitulates Nazism. Okay, I don’t really. But you catch my drift: this woman is serious.

As a person with very close vegetarian friends, and who has also purchased, prepared, eaten, and enjoyed seitan, quorn, and tofu, I would say that I have a decent understanding of vegetarianism without actually practicing it. I am not convinced, however, that Joy’s book offers much that is new to the vegetarian rhetoric.

The title led me to expect a book that delved into humankind’s history with animal relationships, that would try to scratch the surface of when and why certain animals took on specific functions in our lives and others didn’t. But rather than that, this book is focused on the psychology that “allows” humans to be comfortable with meat eating. To talk about this topic, Joy has made up a word for meat-eaters: carnists. She defines carnism as “the belief system that enables us to eat some animals and not others.” Throughout the work, Joy examines how the carnist mindset and the meat industry work together to keep animals as a dinner item despite various displeasing realities connected with the practice. While doing this, Joy describes the inhumane conditions at slaughterhouses and factory farms, and the effect that the meat industry has on the Earth.

And I don’t dispute any of that. I believed it the first time I read it, in books such as Fast Food Nation and The Omnivore's Dilemma, which Joy quotes and references an obscene number of times in her 150-page book. So much of the book is gleaned from other works that it reads very much like a college thesis paper; I suspect it once was.

Despite her legitimate arguments regarding the disgusting and hidden reality of factory farms, Joy doesn’t take into account people who raise their own animals in perfectly humane conditions or who hunt legally, or people who have any number of health issues that make a vegetarian diet anywhere from impractical to dangerous. The meat debate is a huge topic that goes far beyond the dualism of carnism and vegetarianism, and Joy doesn’t come close to covering all the bases here.

As I implied before, this book also has an irritating tendency to mention Nazis a lot. While I understand the connection Joy’s trying to make on a cerebral level, something about describing meat eating—not cruel factory farm conditions or inhumane slaughterhouses, but just eating meat—as being akin to being a member or supporter of the Gestapo is just distasteful to me.

I do applaud Joy on her willingness to acknowledge the suffering of slaughterhouse workers and others whose employment in the meat industry is dangerous and taxing. Many times, when it comes to arguments against the meat industry, I feel as if workers are under attack for earning a paycheck and given no sympathy whatsoever for the dangerous work they do. This author doesn’t suggest that the fate of the human animal is less important than other animals, and I appreciate that.

Written by: Kelly Palka Gallagher, March 28th 2010

Cleaving: A Story of Marriage, Meat, and Obsession

admin — Wed, 20 Jan 2010 17:01:00 +0000

By Julie Powell

Little Brown and Company

Julie Powell wrote a blog called the Julie/Julia Project, which was turned into a book entitled Julie and Julia: My Year of Cooking Dangerously, and last summer Julie & Julia hit the big screen as a movie featuring Meryl Streep. Admittedly, Julie & Julia was a heartwarming, sticky sweet account of Powell’s mission to cook her way through Julia Child’s Mastering the Art of French Cooking. The blog/book/movie led us to believe that Powell was a somewhat quirky woman who loved to cook, occasionally cursed, and had a ridiculously lovely marriage.

In Cleaving: A Story of Marriage, Meat, and Obsession, we learn that the public image Powell carefully crafted wasn’t true to form. Cleaving will surely smash any goody two shoes image fans may have had of Julie Powell. Though it does feature a few recipes and go into great detail about butchery, these things are more of an afterthought; Powell’s fucked up marriage and obsessive extramarital affair take center stage.

Out of the blue Powell decides to take up butchering and because she’s a go-getter, she sets out to obtain an apprenticeship at a butcher shop to the great confusion of her husband. Apparently it’s just a strong compulsion she feels. I call bullshit on that. It’s obvious to me that this would make an unlikely, though interesting second book idea. Perhaps her editors were breathing down her neck, or maybe Powell needed some kind of food-related slant to pacify her foodie fans while still being able to dissect her marriage in print. But it seems unlikely that it doesn’t just suddenly occur to a thirty-three-year-old to be a butcher. This is the same woman who famously dreaded boning a duck for months, after all.

During the months leading up to her apprenticeship, Powell’s marriage to her long-time husband Eric is falling apart thanks to a torrid love affair with a man she calls D. She cheated on Eric once before with D. while in college and when he calls her sometime after her Julie & Julia fame, the two pick up where they left and thus begin the meat metaphors. While hacking away at some animal, Powell will force a metaphor out of the skin and bones and sinew. Did you know that when “one has eaten a beautiful dry-aged steak, one remembers it, longs for it? That longing doesn’t stop. At least, it hasn’t yet and it doesn’t feel like it’s going anywhere.” Is she talking about the steak or D.? Oh Julie Powell, you’re clever.

In certain areas of her life Powell boasts that she’s tough as nails; she’s just “one of the guys.” She won’t ask for help in the butcher shop, won’t admit she’s afraid of using tools that could slice off arms or decapitate her. Julie Powell is a warrior, except when it comes to D. If he doesn’t respond to a text or e-mail, Powell goes off the deep end; sobbing, going through two bottles of wine a night, writing and calling him obsessively, even stalking him. These situations don’t illustrate the fragility of Powell, but rather her need for serious medication and therapy.

Powell’s portrayal of herself and her marriage aims to be complex, but it’s just perplexing. Her husband knows of her affair, but it’s never really discussed. She never really expresses guilt; she actually rubs her husband’s nose in it; bruises from D. cover her body and e-mails and “sexts” are left in plain view. When Eric begins an affair of his own, Powell seems happy for him. Despite all of this neither considers divorce. A divorce, Powell explains, is not a “clean break” like cracking open a joint with one “delicious pop.” It’s more like snapping a bone, which requires hacking, sawing, and destroying. I’d argue that a divorce couldn’t be any worse than what she’s already done to her marriage, but that’s just my opinion.

Powell is defined by the men in her life; she lets them shape and mold her into different women, whichever fits their needs. With Eric she is the asexual wife; cuddling, drinking wine in front of the television and making dinner together is enough and supposedly illustrates their intimacy. With D., she is the sex kitten, wanting to be taken, more than happy to submit to him and his every whim.

Powell wants to have her meat and eat it too, and for some reason, the people in her world allow her to carry on like this while remaining in her life. I’ll never know who the real Julie Powell is, but if she’s anything like the character in Cleaving, I wish her luck and something in the way of self-esteem.

Written by: Tina Vasquez, January 20th 2010