Eating Animals?

Is it time for a prolonged discussion about where our meat comes from? Photo of an Irish beef cow by Thomas Urell

I eat too much meat. I’ve known this since I started really looking at the foods I was eating, reading about where it all comes from and cooking for myself. Writers like Michael Pollan and Eric Schlosser have helped me understand what I could have only imagined before: as a culture, our meat consumption is not only nutritionally excessive, but has created an unsustainable food system as well, this latter taking a serious toll on our environment. And then there’s the horrible way the animals are treated.

Now, I think more. I have started paying closer attention to the quality and total amount of meat that I eat, in a single serving and over the course of my week. Taking cues from chef/philosophers like Mark Bittman and Alice Waters, I no longer want to cook meat at every meal and can even forgo ordering meat in restaurants on occasion (gasp).

But I do still eat it. And—confession(?)—I usually love it. I’m excited about offal, love roasting big cuts and whole chickens and will spend all day skimming a perfect stock. When I have the opportunity, I engage with the origin of my food, learning where it comes from and even meeting the animals. I try only to buy meat that I have confidence in, such as grass-fed beef. The same goes for sustainable fish, but sometimes halibut can be so tempting.

Which all leads me here. On Friday of last week, Jonathan Safran Foer spoke to WBUR’s Tom Ashbrook of “On Point” about his new book, Eating Animals, which is making a lot of noise. I have not read the book, but Safran Foer’s argument is an ethical one and seems to be sound. He is looking at the conditions of meat farming and the stark environmental implications of it, which leads to another ethical question about what we leave behind for future generations. (For a quick introduction to “Eating Animals,” check out these writings by Safran Foer: a particularly provocative piece in the Wall Street Journal from last month asks why we don’t eat dog and an excerpt in the New York Times Magazine that showcases Foer’s brilliant storytelling.)

One of the callers to Friday’s show raised a common question: unable to afford feeding her family with grass-fed, free-range or organic meat, she was forced to buy conventional meat at the grocery store. To her mind, her financial situation left no choice. Foer responded by saying that she did, in fact, have another option–not to buy meat at all.

Total abstinence may well be the best option in the opinion of some, but it raises a further question: do average consumers have a right to eat meat as often as they do? Or should it be a luxury, enjoyed only as often as one could afford conscientiously-grown, free-range and organic meat?

At the end of the day, Foer has stopped eating meat and thinks we should all do the same. For me, it is important that the discussion continue and more people become actively engaged by thinking and talking about the origins and ramifications of their meat-eating. In the mean time, I will continue to eat less, and better quality, meat.

What’s your take? Have you read Foer’s book and will it change your mind about eating meat?