Sunday, July 15, 2007 - THE WAY WE EAT - WHY OUR FOOD CHOICES MATTER
I’ve been reading/listening to (Audible.com) Peter Singer and Jim Mason’s book The Way We Eat. The book follows three meals, regular American, compassionate omnivore and vegan and discusses the food choices of each. I believe Singer is a vegetarian and Mason a vegan, although both may be vegans (neither eats meat, that I’m sure of), so I knew very well what I was getting into. They go into great detail exploring and reporting the horror of factory farms and the ethical ramifications of eating from them. Shock, shock – the vegan lifestyle rules and eating meat is bad.
Peter Singer jumped onto the world stage in the ‘70’s with his book Animal Liberation and with Mason in their book Animal Factories. In these, the horrors of factory farms were first thrust into the spotlight for just what they are and Animal Liberation went further to raise the moral status of animals out of the muck close to that of human beings.
Now, we all know how I feel about factory farms, so none of what they told me in this book shocked me or further offended me. I was interested in what they would say to try to covert me to vegan/vegetarianism and what they would say about MY food choices when it came to meat (humanely raised).
I found the book to be childishly written (and anybody who has read this blog knows what childish writing can be like) and often disappointingly misleading. Often times, it seemed perhaps the third, unmentioned co-author was Michael Moore. The arguments would veer sharply from the course it had been on just when something uncomfortable was about to come up. They would be talking about a certain producer and then jump to other producers nightmare treatment of animals, giving the impression the target producer is the offending party. When they got into the vegan part of the book, I expected this to reach fever pitch, but they surprised me by being absolutely most fair in this section, often times highlighting uncomfortable facts of veganism or showcasing the opposing view as not so bad. Blew my mind.
Perhaps the most disappointing fact was that though they mentioned my core belief of why eating meat isn’t ethically or morally wrong, they pulled a full Moore and dodged the issue. I really wanted the philosophical argument why I was just plain wrong, but they didn’t touch it.
Why is eating humanely raised meat NOT wrong in my eyes? For the same reason it’s OK for Joel Salatin, the hero of Michael Pollan’s infinitely fair and superior work, The Omnivore’s Dilemma – animals are not created in God’s image and have no soul. As Salatin said, “When they die, they just die”.
So, do I recommend the book? Well, like I said, the writing can be childish and trite. That doesn’t mean what they are saying about factory farming isn’t true, I believe everything they said is true. Be careful for the Moore-ism’s, but they aren’t too prolific. Singer and Mason are VERY much animal rightists and although they don’t draw total moral equivalence between animals and humans, they often come very close. Still, it is a good look into the worst of how we treat our animals in this country. It solidifies my stand of buying local AND HUMANELY raised animals and animal products. If we do that, not only can our conscience be clean, our palates will be blessed with the best tasting food around.
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