Inuit only ate meat right? Wrong, the Inuit have an extensive variety of plant foods as well, documented in this wonderful ethnography...
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Melissa McEwen
This blog is about the intersection between evolutionary biology and food. But also about practical applications, sustainable agriculture, and general tasty things. I originally started eating this way to heal from chronic health problems and...it worked!
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Eating Animals
Is eating a fish the same as eating a goat? I would eat both, but the way I relate to these two foods is very different. Food is definitely more than just macronutrients or a list of foods we evolved to eat. Food has social, ethical, spiritual, and psychological aspects too.
Arguing that meat is nutritious doesn't hold much weight to someone who is sentimental about animals. And I don't use sentimental in a derogatory way. Most of us do have sentiments about animals whether it's because of pets or Disney.
Even I have trouble slaughtering animals. The Vegetarian Myth argument that eating grassfed animals leads to higher net welfare doesn't hold much water when you realize that the adorable baby male goats on your professor's farm that are so friendly are going to die. This video addresses the ambivalence even farmers hardened by rural life have about slaughter. Though personally I feel much of the problem comes because the government has regulated large animal slaughter off the farm, which is harder on both people and animals.
At this point I've done slaughter myself. It's not fun, but I was perfectly comfortable eating animals after the slaughter. However, some of the other people in my class told me that it confirmed their desire to be vegetarians.
I read both Eating Animals and The Face On Your Plate. I definitely agree they both obscure the truth about the economics of agriculture AND human nutrition, but it's hard not to react negatively towards the sting videos of slaughter house abuse.
It's also hard to see a dog as a pig as a rat as a boy. There are definitely differences in the way we psychologically and spiritually relate to other animals that in my opinion are above net welfare calculations.
Both fish and meat have protein, but I relate to these two foods very different. When I buy meat I am careful to buy it from a local farmer I know. I ask what it ate and where it lived. I use the meat with reverence, making sure note to waste anything. When I buy fish I do research on mercury and environmental impact, but I could care less about how it lived or died.
I'm sorry
This
just isn't this.
You have to do some fancy counterintuitive ethics to prove otherwise. And this fact does effect how I think about my food.
I'm reading a few good books about man/and woman the hunter and I will definitely post more on this subject.
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Not sure what the dilemma is.
Not sure what the dilemma is. We're higher animals, we eat them - this is the natural order of things.
Being overly sensitized to the natural order of life and death is a weakness in the modern that needs to be resolved. Probably would do us, and animals, a lot of good.
That said, I don't relish the task of gutting and butchering a moose when I'm out hunting (it's a physically demanding, messy job), but it must be done so my family can eat for the year. The killing is the easy part, once you know how to place a shot to drop them first go (humane).
I went ice fishing when I was
I went ice fishing when I was 19. My boyfriend who took me was older and had done it a million times. When we got home to clean the fish... I swear one still moved after he was done. He said it was nerves...It still makes me sick to think of.
I still eat fish, and I'll still catch & clean my own, but I'm damn sure gonna double check it dead first and/or chop of the head before filleting.
Each person has their own feelings & reasons. This is not something that will change with logic.
As for not caring about how
As for not caring about how fish lived or died. Do a little research on salmon farming and see if you ever want to eat farmed salmon again. I bet you won't. Same goes for farmed shrimp. Also, search "bottom trawling" or "long-lining" to understand their implications for the future of U.S. fish stocks.
I read Bottomfeeder by Taras
I read Bottomfeeder by Taras Grescoe and as I said, I do the research on the environmental impact of fish before I but them. Farmed salmon is devastating ecologically and unhealthy for humans as well. Bottomfeeder also does a good job on revealing the ecological devastation caused by bottom trawling.
The closer something is to us
The closer something is to us biologically the more its death reminds us of our own mortality. Also, the less you are acquainted with death the more disturbing it becomes. This is a cultural issue for the most part.
In the recent past, death, animal carcasses, blood and entrails were part of daily life. It is very ironic that today's first world societies are so squeamish in regards to death and killing, yet we have such an insatiable appetite for meat. This infantile and hypocritical cultural artifact is an unfortunate consequence of the separation of death from nourishment that has taken place in the modern psyche as a result of the "green" revolution, and the subsequent loss of the family farm and the disintegration of American hunting culture. In effect, animals have become cute and cuddly while the grotesque reality of modern industrial agriculture has proliferated out of sight.
The bottom line is that
The bottom line is that humans are not meant to socialize with their own prey animals. Pastoralism is just as evolutionarily unnatural as agriculture, it just happens to be healthier. You can get a dog to befriend a rabbit (just check youtube) or kitten, or anything else it would otherwise think of as food or competition, simply because dogs are social animals and respond to socialization. If there is a spiritual component to the food chain, then we blaspheming the hell out of it when we break the cycle of hunger->hunt->butcher->eat repeat. Raising an animal from a baby to your plate is simply a strange thing to do.
I definitely agree.
I definitely agree. Agriculture and pastoralism created this problem. For that reason I feel more comfortable hunting than slaughtering...the closeness of the relationship on the slaughterhouse floor is completely unnatural.
I would also not give my children herbivores as pets. Cats and dogs are our allies. I don't generally eat carnivores, with the exceptions of alligator and snake which I admittedly find very tasty.
That lamb will taste
That lamb will taste fantastic!
It's a goat LOL. Goat meat is
It's a goat LOL. Goat meat is very underrated though and there is plenty of it thanks to the popularity of goat cheese and the use of goats as brush control. It mostly gets consumed by immigrant in the US.
Hey, came across your blog
Hey, came across your blog from a random google alert. Sorry to crash the party, if posting here is considered rude of something of that nature, let me know.
I am interested about the specific complaints you have about Foer's Eating Animals.
You are right that a dog is not a pig is not a rat is not a boy. They all have a series of differences. Difference isn't the question, the question is morally relevant criteria. For example, a woman is not man. But most of the time, those distinctions that make a man not a woman are not morally relevant.
The lines blur even more when you say that a fish just isn't the same as a goat. Of course they are different, but are they different in morally relevant ways? We've learned so much about fish's intelligence, sociality, etc. But fish come across as more alien, as Michael said. But ethics, if that term is to have any worth or meaning, isn't to draw us into meaningful relationships with those beings we would already care about, but to draw us into relationships is the wholly other, the alien, the stranger. This is why ethics is hard, is meaningful, is useful. Because this can't all be at the level of intuition, because our gut isn't a good way to determine the good. Left to our own devices we are often quite parochial beings, we care more for those immediately around us and to those that are like us. The real challenge comes from trying to be concerned with those who are other from us.
It's a very interesting
It's a very interesting problem and one that I don't have the solution to, though I continue to read about it. My inability to thrive on a vegan diet was disappointing to me, though now that I have researched human evolution further...it's not really surprising. I do know healthy vegans who have been vegan for a long time, perhaps their bodies are more robust than mine.
Either way, even Peter Singer admits it might be silly to worry about the individual suffering of something like a scallop. There is a bit difference for me between the human value of individual life and the ecological values that govern nearly every other species. Working in agriculture and ecology, I saw it would be detrimental to me to apply my love of individual life to these webs of ecology in managing them.
Working with bees for example in a lab, I certainly killed many of them to analyze their health. The more I studied them, the more I realized that to save them I had to respect their structure, which automatically favors the survival of their colony above all else. Individual bees vs. curing colony collapse disorder? Hmm.
Then there are the park rangers who have to deal with tougher animals, like deer. Humans have been a predator for deer for thousands upon thousands of years and have influenced their evolution. Deer populations that are not subject to predator pressure make The Road look like a Hallmark Movie.
For me, working in this field and now eating animals, it is important for me to overcome my sentimentality and instead prioritize ecology. I view it as undesirable to subject animals to unnecessary pain, of course. My friends who are veterinary or scientific researchers have the same conundrum. I think all of us understand the complexity and amazing intelligence of many animals from mantis shrimp to cows, but we derive different implications from that fact than animal rightists do.
Overcoming the tribal instincts is important in many cases, but humans are also somewhat unique in the common view that individual life is important. We seem to be more than willing to apply that to animals. It's a real challenge to overcome that too and one that perhaps are an academic in the humanities you are lucky enough to not have to grapple with.
That's what drives me nuts
That's what drives me nuts about scientific research. We love something, so we dissect it. We want to study it, so we kill it. Colony collapse is most likely related to one of many destructive practices humans currently practice (from what I have read). Since things are all related in the ecological sense, we should be solving these problems anyway. Is it really necessary to dissect the problem to figure it out and solve it? What if we worked to fix the root of all sorts of different problems, instead of the symptoms? Then we wouldn't have this false dichotomy of individual vs. group. I don't ever want to kill something I don't have to, if I don't have to. It just doesn't feel right to me, I don't even like animals as companions. I just respect them as I am able (and went vegan years ago, with no physical issues at all).
You may like "A Language Older Than Words" by Derrick Jensen. I didn't care for the un-vegan parts, but that might make it perfect for you. it expands on some of the ideas you have presented. Whether or not you agree, there are great things to chew on.
Colony collapse disorder is
Colony collapse disorder is likely many problems working in synergy. The problems the bees I worked on were experiencing had nothing to do with pesticides, GMOs, or anything else people are now blaming (no entomologist I worked with believed these were the problem). I call that kind of understanding "folk ecology." Because while it involves some ecological principles, they have been misconstrued and separated from any actual science.
We were in an exceptionally pristine area, but animals can still suffer from problems. I sometimes thought we should just let the local colonies infected with varroa mites to just die off. Some colonies might have survived and if we built up colonies of immune bees we wouldn't have to worry about mite infections anymore. But that was a big might to risk.
I have read A Language Older Than Words and I've seen Jensen speak several times. My experience with anarcho primativism could take up an entire post :) Regardless, it doesn't make much sense to be a grain eating vegan if you are anarcho primavist. I knew some raw vegans in the movement, but they weren't exactly thriving and neither was I on that diet.
But if you think about honey bees from that perspective, we definitely should have let them die off. Honey bees are a non-native species in most areas they are kept. Being non-native is an advantage for many species, but for every python swimming in the Everglades there are many many more exotics that perished from inappropriate habitats. And some invasion ecologists argue that at some point all invasive species will suffer their problems as local diseases/parasites evolve to be able to utilize them and/or their food develops defenses (obviously not applicable for bees which plants benefit from). It's possible the honey bee has reached that point. The mites sure are having fun these days.
Honey bees have become keystone species in places like Sweden because of agricultural . There are many many native bees that are enough to support native plants and trees.
True, all these things are
True, all these things are quite complex. I can see why you do the work you do.
(FYI--I often don't eat grains because I find them bland, but eat cooked veggies and beans as desired. Am not into health veganism anymore than you!). I myself am working in agricultural sciences, and am constantly questioning it, but there are somewhat immediate/practical needs I am addressing as well.
I don't know what the answer is--but something about the way we have to cut everything apart in science really bugs me. It just doesn't seem right to be observing nature more than acting as participants, but I don't really have an answer or alternative, either. It's not a scientific or ethical argument on my part, just a feeling I keep getting intuitively that I'm not able to fully understand yet. I guess we are all just doing our best.
Hm, interesting. I don't like
Hm, interesting. I don't like fish, but I love fishing and have no problem killing and dressing fish then giving the filets to people who do like to eat fish, nor with killing and eating e.g. lobster and crab.
But I've never killed and dressed a rabbit, goat, chicken, pig, deer, etc and I'm not sure I could do it. I guess the Disney anthropomorphic brainwashing still sticks -- I grew up about a mile from Disneyland in Anaheim, CA.
You've obviously never had a
You've obviously never had a pet fish. Just because you personally don't find any affection/appeal in something with scales (snakes and lizard and crocodiles would fit here to, for you, then?), doesn't mean that others don't.
Humans are able to feel affection for all sorts of things, including plants, and inanimate objects. Every thrown out an old diary? Ever break a statue that was meaningful to you? To argue that we should consider furry critters as requiring exemption from their place in the food chain due to sentimentality continues to strike me as ignorant.
I grew up on a farm. I was always enamoured by the baby animals every spring - but was also able to see that perhaps this reaction is an instinctual appeal to our nurturing side. We usually don't feel the same way about adult animals unless we consider them as 'part of the family'.
Of course I'm sentimental about animals - but I'm also wise enough to consider the logic behind the draw warm-blooded animals have to humans when they're in infancy. And no, it's not because of pets or Disney. It's because we're hard-wired to care for that small, soft, warm creature looking vulnerably up into our eyes.
I actually have had pet fish
I actually have had pet fish and I worked at an aquarium. I still don't care about fish, though working at the aquarium probably intensified that because they died all the time AND we fed them to other animals.
I think people mistake using animals for food with disliking. I definitely like snakes and goats, but I would still eat them.
I agree the warm blooded thing is hard wired, but I think the sentimentality about things like fish has to be learned.
I don't know anyone who
I don't know anyone who mistakes using animals for food with disliking animals. That kind of attitude would be up there with misogyny...
"I agree the warm blooded thing is hard wired, but I think the sentimentality about things like fish has to be learned."
Well, that's exactly what I said. Which is why the concept of being sentimental is ridiculous when applied to whether or not we should eat animals. It's not a natural instinct, it's a learned behaviour, which is why it then confuses the issues of nutrition & what is ultimately personification. I certainly don't want animals to suffer, and I respect every living creature (I won't even kill flies), but it's just as bad in my eyes to encourage a nutritionally and ecologically poor lifestyle.
My point about having pet fish was to demonstrate that when you bring an animal into the home, you can form attachments to it that go beyond the nurturing instinct we feel towards young warm-blooded mammals. I certainly don't ooh and ahh over full-grown cows, but had I treated it as a needy pet from its birth, I would have similar psychological reactions to it as I have to human beings I know well. But you can't broaden that kind of sentiment to include all animals, since you're not perceiving that pet as an animal but as a human. You wouldn't form attachments to fish if you were constantly being reminded of their animal-ness (death, cannibalism/carnivorism, etc).
So even if you haven't had a personified relationship with a fish and therefore haven't extrapolated that affection to all fish, as you seem to have done with the furry animal species', I still don't see how you can claim to be an animal lover and then condone inhumane treatment of fish etc, given that you "couldn't care less" about them. They are animals, their flesh is meat, we need to eat them for all sorts of nutrition reasons, but we still shouldn't be letting them suffer by raising them in farm conditions or through terrible catchment practices. You really don't agree with that?
"They are animals, their
"They are animals, their flesh is meat, we need to eat them for all sorts of nutrition reasons, but we still shouldn't be letting them suffer by raising them in farm conditions or through terrible catchment practices. You really don't agree with that?"
Hmmm, but you have to agree there is a difference. Are we going to worry about humanely raised scallops? Mussels? Where do we draw the line?
I certainly have more to think and hopefully to write about on this subject, but my own desire is that we respect their place and our place in the ecology of the world above all things.
In ag school my animal science professor told us how confinement animal operations are actually much kinder because of reduced death, disease, and injury rates. That's the sort of reductive philosophy "humane" leads us into.
I remember when I worked on experiments with bees in school. I never thought twice about killing individual bees to analyze for mites. The colony was the ecological entity to worry about. With fish, line catching is much more "cruel" but it is ten million times less destructive than trawling to the ecology of fish in general rather than individual fish. I would certainly rather have the line-caught fish.
It makes me realize that our whole emphasis on individuals really is such a human thing. With bees, for example, individuals don't matter much at all. Unproductive bees are forced out or killed. My bee professor was adamant about no personifying the bees because it obscures the true nature of them. I learned to respect their nature by viewing their colony as the most important...the way their little automatic bee brains automatically do. Killing individual bees to work on a treatment for colony collapse...a no brainer.
Killing animals in a cruel fashion is definitely undesirable, but at least with fishing it's often unavoidable if you are respecting ecology above the human philosophy of individualism.
If anything, the fact that humans worry about humanely killing animals that are so different from us, like lobsters or crabs, is a testament to our uniqueness. Even our nice cats and dogs have no qualms about eating other animals alive or abandoning young.
It's definitely takes a
It's definitely takes a different mindset to be able to hunt for and butcher your own food. A mindset that has been lost for so many generations now. I grew up not wanting to eat the pet chickens that our dogs "accidentally" killed an my grandpa butchered out. Most kids today have no idea where that hamburger, fried chicken or bbq ribs come from.
Seven years ago we moved our family to the country. They were 3, 5 and 10. Now we raise rabbits, chickens and goats and our oldest daughter does most of the butchering out. They like the fact that we can grow our own meat, but at the same time it's a little difficult to know that the furry little bunny or goat kid will eventually end up on our dinner plates. We definitely have to set our minds to it, from the time the little critters hit the grown and I need to gently remind them that they are not pets. Every now and then there is special baby that does end up being a pasture pet and that's ok, too.
I too eat both. I recently
I too eat both. I recently came across a cuttle fish that would communicate with its owners by raising tentacles. I think we should also value life which at first seem alien
A very cute goat there,
A very cute goat there, Melissa.
Fish, chicken, turkey, duck, goose, rabbit, goat, cow, pig - all good to eat.
Hmm, they are all herbivores or omnivores.
We do not eat any carnivors (perhaps some fish would go in that category - people do eat shark).
I never slaughtered an animal yet, though.
Cheers,
Gabor
I've been fishing most of my
I've been fishing most of my life, and hunting (and reading and blogging about hunting) since 2005, and I have to agree with you that killing birds and mammals is more unsettling than killing fish. Getting a bead on your animal, getting your shot off, and watching it drop is exhilarating, and then your empathy kicks in, and I've never been able to properly articulate the emotional reaction I get next.
Killing fish, on the other hand, is easy. Whack them over the head, and that's that.
Might I recommend a couple of books? Jose Ortega y Gasset's Meditations On Hunting (http://www.amazon.com/Meditations-Hunting-Jose-Ortega-Gasset/dp/19320985...) lives up to the hype about it being the best book on hunting ever written (and some editions have a foreword by Paul Shepard). And Heartsblood: Hunting, Spirituality and Wildness in America (http://www.amazon.com/Heartsblood-Hunting-Spirituality-Wildness-America/...) is also well worth reading.
I'm looking forwards to reading your thoughts on that hunting seminar.