The ethics of animal flesh
Yesterday I spent the morning killing chickens. Tim and I killed and cleaned about 25 chickens on Saturday and Monday morning—the first fruits of our partnership near Little Rock.
Killing a chicken is neither a pleasant nor an unpleasant thing. It is an act that brings out another side of myself; a side that is resolved, clearheaded, and decisive. I must be able to kill without holding back, because holding back would be the one thing that causes the most suffering for the animal. It is a test of my ability to sell and eat the animals I raise with a clear conscience. And in this test I am for a moment free, in a profound way, from the mediated state of our culture; from the way that grocery stores, regulations, and long distribution chains separate us from our essential nourishment and direct engagement with life and death.
Even more than picking my own broccoli or filling a salad with greens I grew myself, killing a chicken, putting my hand inside its still-warm body to remove its heart and lungs and viscera, is to be in direct relationship with the nourishing cycle of life and death, of predator and prey, that has carried forward human development for millennia. It also puts me in clearer connection to my body—with its forward facing eyes with depth perception and flesh-ripping canines, both sure biological markers of a predator. In killing and then eating a chicken, I am connected to a long tradition of eating, a tradition that, according to Michael Pollan, is possibly the very source of shared meals and cooking.
After this visceral, earth-connecting experience of killing chickens, cleaning them, and eating the first of them with friends later that night, I heard an outrageous story on NPR this morning about the attempts of some to create lab-cultured meat. This process is totally disconnected from the earth and the ecological cycles. There is nothing of the earth in lab-cultured meat; nothing of the chain of eating that comes from a properly raised chicken dinner. The chickens happily dine on everything from grass to small frogs and lizards, and we dine on them; eventually we will die and be fed on by carrion beetles and bacteria--the cycle remains intact. How misguided and even unethical it is to disconnect the products of life (flesh) from the cycles of life (the ecosystem) as lab-cultured meat would do. Petri dish steaks are just one more part of the anti-animal industrial meat system, a system that has always tried to make living things fit into a lifeless industrial system.
If consumers catch on and this lab meat process is perfected, then I am sure that Tyson and Cargill and all the others would love to jump on the bandwagon. They have done just about everything they can to remove animal meat from their animals; but alas they still breathe and pile up manure. Lab meat would just complete the process that the industrial meat industry began, and now PETA is joining. For my part, I’ll keep killing chickens that run around, breathe, and spill blood. I know no better way to respect them.
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Comments
After reading this article I must respectfully disagree with most of what is written. I find the arguments/statements very weak and not well thought out. One point the writer makes is that by killing and eating he is connected with a long tradition of eating. I am not going to get into a long winded debate here, but it is safe to say that just because something is tradition does not make it right. Slavery was a tradition, but it was not right. The facts are A 3.5 ounce piece of chicken contains 51% fat with over 100mg of cholesterol. That is because it is a muscle tissue of an animal and all animal muscle tissue contains fat and cholesterol. Also animal protein has been linked to elevated risks of various disease states such as types of cancer, diverticulosis, kidney disease, calcium loss, and osteoporosis. Raising animals for food is a waste of resources: It requires 700 gallons of water to produce 1 pound of chicken. Instead, farmers could produce 16 pounds of broccoli, or up to 20 pounds of other grains and vegetables. Over 100 billion gallons of water are used in the US annually for poultry operations which is enough water to meet the domestic needs of 5 million Americans. According to the USDA, it requires 6 pounds of grain to produce 1 pound of chicken meat. Also, it takes 8 times the amount of gasoline/fossil fuel for production of 1 pound of chicken as compared to 1 pound of protein from tofu.
One statement which I have to agree with is the subject of growing meats. I find this rather disturbing. There is no difference between growing animal or human flesh, it's all the same, plus I personally wouldn't eat anything bioengineered. That seems a little too risky to me. And please don't align me with PETA I am totally opposed to their methods.
Anyway the last statement "For my part, I’ll keep killing chickens that run around, breathe, and spill blood. I know no better way to respect them. That is something I expect to hear from someone oh... about a hundred years ago out of ignorance, it is not the statement of a intelligent, civilized society.
Posted by:dlconcidine |May 27, 2008 8:38 PM
"I know no better way to respect them." how about letting them live out their lives, acting out the natural behaviors you find so charming? or are creatures only worthy of respect if they are part of a food chain that ends with humans?
well said, dlconcidine.
Posted by:CharBroiled |May 28, 2008 1:25 PM