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4.20.2004
Y Tu Food? Boston.com / Business / McDonald's turnaround man dies of apparent heart attack He often said his favorite meal was a double cheeseburger. This past weekend I went and watched a screening of Pleasant Kingdom. It was about an animal sanctuary, the people who started it and the animals that have been saved from horrifying lives as factory farm products. Having spent time with ardent animals rights people in the past I was well aware of the plight of animals born and raised for slaughter in the factory farms. Its one of the main reasons I swore off meat. I realized that any effort I could make to reduce the demand for cheap animal products would be beneficial if not entirely effective. The problem still lies in the culture of consumption and the dominate perception of meat as a desirous part of our diet. It has become such a dominant component of the way we conceive of our food that most restaurants define their meals in terms of which meat product is served. "Would you like the Chicken, Beef or Pork?" While I was working at a steak house years ago I was amused to observe people eat the majority of their meal; salad, cabbage rolls, hummus, tabouli, potato, ribs and boloney and still demand a full refund if they didn't like their steak. As if the rest of the food they ate was irrelevant in the face of the importance of the steak. Some people wrongly assume that I no longer like meat. In fact I used to enjoy steak quite a bit. I used to eat a medium cooked Ribeye every weekend. But I realized that I had little or no connection to the food I was eating. As I learned more I realized that my relationship to this food was damaging. As part of a consumer market, I was contributing to the demand for greater and greater supplies of meat at cheap prices. This in turn leads to greater cost cutting in the production of animal products which leads to greater abuse of the animals. As the drive for greater production and profits leads to the disrespect of human being in the workplace so too does this happen with animals, to a far greater extent because they have no means of protesting their own treatment. We have only our own sense of empathy for their plight to mitigate their abuse. However, we have become completely disconnected from our food. We no longer bear any psychic burden for the consumption of another living being. Its slaughter and torture have been entirely hidden from our view. All we see is the final product that has been stripped of all reality and masked with marketing and packaging. What connection does a double cheeseburger have with a cow? Is this your fault? Not really. What has become more and more evident to me as I write and think is that we, you and me, are part of institutions that have an overwhelming influence on our perceptions and our behaviors. We bear heavy negative punishment for calling these institutions into question or even trying to escape from them. Once you do however you realize that your own actions were never quite your own. I have learned important and valuable lessons by systematically removing myself from expected modes of behavior for certain periods of time. If you're feeling adventurous you can participate in this year's TV Turnoff Week from April 19-25. Go ahead, I dare you. (laughs) More and more I realize that movements like environmentalism, animal rights, and workers rights are all related to an institutional corruption. We have created an institution, corporate capitalism that demands that we consume goods at a monstrous pace. Its the treadmill of production and consumption. We no longer produce to meet our needs, we overproduce to meet the needs of those that demand greater and greater luxury. The farther we travel past mere sustainability the more we have to draw from our natural world, the source of all wealth. People, animals, earth must give in greater amounts to meet the demands of market growth. Its a sobering thought to realize that we produce enough food to feed every human on the planet but millions still starve. Its a frightening sight to watch an entire dumpster fill with the wasted food from one night at a restaurant. Its not just enough to realize that we could dramatically increase the amount of available food by bypassing the need to convert grain to meat. You have to realize that even if we did increase the amount of available food, people would still starve because of our institutional mechanisms. Its not enough to guilt people into becoming vegetarians or vegans, because to do so they will have to face the repercussions of living outside of a system that has certain expectations. That's a lot to ask, on top of the daily trails that most people face. Why should people willingly impose hardships on themselves above and beyond the ones that are already imposed upon them? The overall goal should be institutional change. | |
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