On Butchering and Love

Here's a forum from the nation with a bunch of short comments on what we should do about food, including comments from Eric Schlosser and Michael Pollan.

Here's an article my sister sent about the benefits of tofu, which is available here with pictures, but you have to register:

When the summer heat sets in, my Japanese mother religiously serves hiyayakko (chilled tofu) sprinkled with katsuobushi (bonito flakes) and soy sauce. Just looking at this simple dish, I feel myself starting to cool down, knowing that tofu actually helps lower your body temperature.

Natural refrigerant, anticancer agent, cholesterol combatant -- the list of tofu's reputed health benefits is long.

It is difficult to overrate just how good tofu (made from soybeans) can be for your health.

"I think soy has the potential to be a magical ingredient," said Jacqueline B. Marcus, RD, a food and nutrition consultant from Northfield, Ill. "Research in several areas of health has shown soy may play a role in lowering risk for diseases such as heart disease, osteoporosis, diabetes and cancer."

"Soybeans contain five classes of compounds that have been identified as anticarcinogens," Marcus said. "Further, research indicates soy protein may help lower blood cholesterol."

Foods made from soybeans have varying amounts of isoflavones, plant compounds with weak estrogenic activity that may be one of the key factors in disease protection, according to Marcus.

There are also benefits for post menopausal women.

"As little as 40 grams of soy protein consumed daily for six months can increase bone mineral content and bone density," Marcus said. (Forty grams of soy protein is the equivalent of one cup of soy milk, 4 ounces of tofu, or 4 ounces of edamame.)

However, Marcus notes that, "although tofu is relatively low in calories, it does have a fair amount of fat."

She suggests 2-3 servings a day: a handful of edamame, plus a cup of soy milk, or some tofu over a salad.

"In the U.S., the allowable health claim on food labels states that 25 grams of soy protein daily may lower disease risk, but no formal recommendation for daily isoflavone intake has been established," says Marcus.

"While there is still so much to learn from Asians whose diets have typically been rich in soy, there are many unanswered questions for Westerners who may just be introducing soy into their diets. Until more is determined, it may be best to eat (it) moderately with balance and variety, and include soy as part of a wholesome diet," she adds.

But soy is not just a health food, and after all that talk about health and diets, Marcus wanted to provide her own recommendations for how to use soy milk: in pancakes, French toast, hot chocolate or in a smoothie.

Tofu is a versatile ingredient that comes in a wide variety of forms ranging from savory to sweet. Of course, it often gets a bad rap for being plain, and that is no surprise. I remember as a child growing up in the United States, and discovering, with bewilderment and some disgust, that a friend's family stored their tofu in the cupboard, and that it had a shelf-life of one year.

But it is time to abandon that image of tofu as a hippie's flavorless substitute for meat. One would be mad not to explore the many different types of tofu that can be found in Japan. It actually tastes good here.
Abundant options

One of my summer favorites is tofu somen, which comes as delicate, thin strands of tofu that could easily be mistaken for somen (wheat) noodles. Another unique tofu is edamame-studded and curiously named "Charisma" tofu.

For a change of pace, there is always deep-fried tofu: abura-age (thin style) or atsu-age (thicker version), which adds an extra layer of richness to miso soup. The abura-age can be cut into thick strips, toasted in the oven and used as crouton toppings for a salad. My latest crave is cheese stuffed into abura-age and slowly sauteed until the cheese comes oozing out of the packets.

The production of tofu is surprisingly simple. Soy milk is coagulated with nigari (magnesium chloride, which can be extracted from sea water), explains Yukiko Hayashi, author of the cookbook "Tofu Zanmai (Tofu Obsession)."

Running through the four main types of tofu, Hayashi explains that Momen dofu is firm and good in stir-fries or rolled in almonds or sesame seeds and sauteed for tofu steak. Kinugoshi dofu (silken tofu) is her recommendation for miso soup. One (adapted) dish from her cookbook that packs a lot of punch is garlic, peanuts, chirimen jako (baby sardines) and sakura ebi (dried shrimp) sauteed in oil and poured over kinugoshi dofu and seasoned with Thai nam pla fish sauce. For a Korean twist, try a dressing of chopped raw tuna, kimchi, soy sauce, sesame oil and salad oil.

Zarudofu and yosedofu have a high water content and therefore are very soft on the palate. Zarudofu is served in a zaru, or woven basket, hence the name. Both have an inherent amami, or sweetness, to them, and Hayashi suggests serving zarudofu with top-quality olive oil and sea salt, or alternatively grated ginger or nerigarashi (Japanese mustard) with soy sauce.
Liquid form

Hayashi also suggests cooking with soy milk, which has about half of the calories of regular milk, though she warns that it has a strong aroma. Therefore it is best served with strong-flavored drinks such as a well-brewed cup of tea or cafe au lait, or incorporated into a stew or gratin.

Tofu can also be used in a tasty dessert: For a silky, rich chocolate pie, melt 1 1/2 cups of chocolate chips. Meanwhile, soften two 280-gram packs of room-temperature kinugoshi tofu in a blender, then fold in the melted chocolate chips and mix until combined. Pour the mixture into a premade pie crust and let it set in the refrigerator until firm. It is hard to believe it was made with tofu, and it is confounding to think a food can be so yummy and still good for you.

While the potential health benefits may be the motivation for some people to explore tofu, the real test of how good a food is is always the taste.
Make your own

Homemade tofu may be the easiest Japanese dish you will ever make, bar none. You may find yourself, as I did, shaking your head at the pot thinking, "it's that easy, and this delicious?"

* Check the tofu corner of your supermarket, not the dairy section where you find regular soy milk, for a bottle of soy milk with a small packet of nigari (magnesium chloride) attached to it.

Warm the soy milk over medium heat until bubbles start to form. Take it off the heat, add the little pack of nigari, stir a bit and, as it starts to curdle, stop and let it rest. Spoon it into serving bowls and top with a citrusy-soy ponzu.

* If you are up for a more difficult dish, Hayashi suggests making yuba sashimi, a classic dish from Kyoto, from scratch. Creamy, delicate layers of yuba tofu garnished with freshly grated wasabi and a splash of soy sauce is an elegant appetizer. The layers of yuba are creamy yet chewy, with a strong, nutty soy profile.

The first step is to get good quality tonyu soy milk from your neighborhood tofu shop. In a large Teflon pan, add the soy milk -- a large pan gives you a larger surface to make the yuba from and the Teflon coating helps prevent the the soy milk from burning. Apply strong heat and, just before it begins to boil, drop the heat to low simmer. Be patient as the skin slowly forms on the soy milk. With a pair of long chopsticks, gently pick up your piece of yuba and set aside in a serving dish.

and it's good! i have been eating tofu for breakfast lately. sounds gross but it is really good. i put it in a bowl of soy milk with some raisins or roasted chestnuts and a sprinkiling of soy flour and maybe a drizzle of black sugar or honey. yum. it was as easy to make as they say and i think it helps me poop when i eat it in the morning. cool.

so get this. maybe this is common knowledge but after i made the tofu i started to wonder about how paneer was made - you know, that soft indian cheese. anyway, i looked it up and as i suspected, exactly the same way as tofu just using cows milk and a different coagulating agent - although i bet you could make paneer using nigari too. i'm going to try to make paneer too. but first i want to perfect my tofu making skills. maybe when i come back to the states i will open a tofu shop.

still on my soy kick i ate the multi-course "yuba" lunch at a nearby soy restaurant today. for those of you who don't know what yuba is, it is a by product of the tofu-making process. yuba is basically they whey that is drained away when tofu is made. it is extremely perishable so you can really only get it in a place where tofu is made. good stuff. i wish i could go into more detail about my yuba lunch but basically it was started with soy water (another by product of tofu making - tastes like soy milk but lighter in consistency); followed by some sort of cold soy creamy soup (it was really good but i have no idea what was in it and can't even explain the flavor except to say that it was quintessentially "umami") and yuba in a thick clear gravy with baby eggplant; yuba salad with fresh goya and tomatoes; yuba spring rolls with cheese and shiso accompaied by fried baby eggplant, japanese peppers and salted matcha powder (amazing!!!); yuba in soy milk with various condiments and ponzu sauce; rice, pickles and clear soup; and for dessert, soy bean coffee and soy ice milk with okinawa black sugar. YUM!

From Michelle:

when i was a kid i hated tofu, then i came to japan for about a month when i was 11 years old. i was horrified when my grandmother dropped a big block of cold, uncooked tofu on my plate along with a dab of grated ginger a sprinkling of seaweed, drizzled it with soy sauce and expected me to dig in. but i was hungry and eager to please so i did. it was actually pretty good. from then on i never avoided tofu again, but i also never really sought it out. at home i would eat tofu if it happened to be in my soup or my chinese food but i would never order something that consisted primarily of tofu at a restaurant. nor would i buy it at the supermarket and cook with it. but now that i am in japan as an adult i have undergone a "tofu ephiphany". tofu is delicious. there are so many types, textures and ways to use it. the tofu here amazes me on a daily basis and i think that it is the food i crave most. ahead of all manner of other wonderful fresh foods you can eat on a regular basis in japan. my newfound love of tofu has extended to all things soy as i now relish nato and various other soy products that i used to think were either disgusting or just not worth going out of your way to eat (or that i never heard of before, like coffee made with soy beans). if i had to list all of the divine tofu products i have consumed in the last couple of months it could take hours if not days. but i will say that good, fresh gomadofu, sticky dofu, tofu cheese deep friend in panko and the water that contains the whey from tofu making are all pretty delish and fairly new to me. tofu in japan is like fish, both "technically" exist in the states but the freshness factor makes them taste entirely different when you are here. i'm going to try to make tofu at home. apparently a lot of people make their own tofu and it is relatively easy. more adventures with tofu to come...

From my sister, Michelle:

dude. the tofu here is so good. it's totally bizarre, but tofu is my number one craving these days. actually not just tofu but all soy products. i hear that this tofu is really good:

otokomae tofu

Mark's Comments:

Michelle is living in Tokyo right now, and the tofu in Japan can be incredibly good. Perhaps really good tofu is available in the US as well, but I haven't had it yet. Thomas says there's a place in Koreatown that makes great tofu. Incidentally, when David was in town, we went to Candle 79, which has seitan that is so tasty they should really just call it something else because it's nothing like any other seitan I've ever had.

From David:

Michael Pollan in his book “The Omnivore’s Dilemma” has some harsh things to say about Whole Foods, particularly relating to the lack of local produce and foods, and the hidden petroleum costs in “industrial organic”. Pollan’s book has been a best-seller and he’s been interviewed and written about all over the place. Earlier posts to this blog talk more about this, and I bought the book for Mark, Andres and Nuzum out of appreciation of the B&L project. It’s having a major impact, but is also itself a symptom of the zeitgeist in our culture emerging around animal welfare and our dietary choices.

John Macke, founder and CEO of Whole Foods, responded with a formal letter to Pollan that he posted on Whole Foods website, after meeting with Michael. Pollan responded to that, and then Macke responded in turn. The links are below and I recommend reading the back in forth, as it’s really interesting, along with many of the comments (one of which is Joel Salatin himself). Whole Foods current size and growth trajectory means significant changes can be leveraged in animal welfare and food supply generally. It’s really cool to see this dialog being stimulated out of Pollan’s critique.

http://www.wholefoods.com/blogs/jm/archives/2006/05/an_open_letter_1.html

http://www.wholefoods.com/blogs/jm/archives/2006/06/michael_pollans.html

http://www.wholefoods.com/blogs/jm/archives/2006/06/detailed_reply.html

A key point Macke makes that I agree with is that purely local food is not feasible and would be devastating to developing countries whose primary export industries are agricultural, where we should be promoting fair trade. But most interestingly, regarding the emiseration of food animals, Whole Foods evidently has an Animal Compassion initiative with PETA, the Humane Society, etc. involved in setting standards for specific animals. These evidently will be comprehensive, with specific standards for all relevant specific species, but for now they’ve got ones only for cattle, ducks, pigs and sheep:

http://www.wholefoodsmarket.com/issues/animalwelfare/cattle.pdf

http://www.wholefoodsmarket.com/issues/animalwelfare/ducks.pdf

http://www.wholefoodsmarket.com/issues/animalwelfare/pigs.pdf

http://www.wholefoodsmarket.com/issues/animalwelfare/sheep.pdf

Whole Foods will still sell their “natural standard” meat with less humane/inhumane conditions allowed, but will clearly mark the meats that are from animals certified to the Animal Compassionate Standard for motivated consumers. There are not ones yet for chickens and hens, and Pollan does a great job showing how bad and lame “Rosie the Chicken’s” free range life-cycle is (Rosie never leaves a crowded barn with 20,000 other Rosies). But evidently one day soon there will. There also is no part of the standard relating to the slaughtering of the animals, and that is obviously very important to set standards to make this as humane as possible.

Macke recommends Peter Singer and Jim Mason’s new book The Way We Eat: Why Our Food Choices Matter. This looks pretty good from the reviews at Amazon I read and Macke’s take, and I’ve ordered it myself. I won’t try and suggest anyone else read it, given Singer wrote it but I bet it’s pretty good.

I’ve been critical of Whole Foods myself, in particular like most in regards to their margins and “Whole Wallet” pricing. But Macke makes the point that under their 365 private label program they are providing organic foods at a much better price point, and it is a good point. And I’m really excited about their animal welfare certification and labeling program, as a great further step.

Perhaps you should visit veggie romance:

"Veggie Romance is the place for vegetarian dating, friendships, finding pen pals and generally networking with the vegetarian, vegan and environmentally aware community. Whether your diet is fruitarian, vegetarian, vegan, raw food or macrobiotic, you'll find likeminded veggie singles here. Free blogs for all members & an active forum. Network & connect with other vegetarian & vegan singles."

Incidentally, I found this while reading comments about this blog post:

Why vegetarians should be force fed with lard. Indeed.

(Clarification: The "Indeed." above was sarcastic.)

(Further Clarification: The "Indeed." was sarcastic because the article referenced is as ridiculous as its title indicates it would be. One could make a reasonable argument about why killing animals may be morally acceptable or what the disadvantages are to vegetarianism/veganism which wouldn't merit a sarcastic response, but this wasn't one of those.)

Further Clarification: Below is a transcript of the email exchange between Dave and myself as a result of this post:

Hi Mark,

Last week I saw and read through the "Why vegetarians should eat lard" link
you posted below, and found it irritating and depressing especially in the
context of your "Indeed" comment, and the fact that we had what I thought to
be a pretty cool trajectory with this blog, and then sharing a good meal
with some tasty vegetarian fare at Candle 79. I certainly don't think this
guy should be censored for his blog as evidently happened at his university.
However, it is obnoxious and irritating, and insofar as he's a "professor"
of evolutionary psychology, from a scientific standpoint it's schlock logic
and anecdotes filled with vitriol and bias. This guy is shooting down a
series of straw man arguments that I'm not familiar with committed
vegetarians making.

But I guess as described by the blog, committed vegetarians are silly
squeamish/gay/women/puritans that just need to get some cajones and stop
whining. The squeamish puritan deal is lame, as there's plenty of
sex/drugs/music in most vegans lives, probably on average more versus
non-vegans but whatever, it's a stupid argument. In a previous
post, I had talked about how I understood how any moral consideration that
effects our consumption behavior and choice is perceived as puritanically
fascist, illustrating with how the Prius is 99% everything the Audi S4 will
ever give me but how puritanically fascist I felt the internal
ecologically-responsible desires. But it's largely an empty contradiction
and vegetarianism versus eating meat is similar, in that there really isn't
transcendent pleasurable experience of eating good tasty food that is being
given up (ie. Vegetarian Indian cuisine versus meat-based English fare is
not categorically deficient in pleasure provided; or that vegetarian fare
can be very tasty and gourmet, like hybrid sport cars can have high
horsepower and high mpg now). I wanted to share some of my hypocritical
failures and indulgences, indicating I understand that people can be
concerned with animal welfare, and still indulge through cultural/personal
inertia/convenience more or less all their meals with meat from inhumane
raised and slaughtered animals. I did feel real bad about that baby possum
that probably died eating bait for the gophers in our front yard, and I
really think the better thing is to have a xeriscaped yard that's
self-maintaining and in harmony with the environs where gophers are welcome
to do their thing… but we still have that same yard. Individual and cultural
inertia, habit and convenience are things I understand and respect although
we should strive to change to match our insights and conscience; knee-jerk
apologetics, rationalizaton and prejudice on behalf of habit and convenience
is also something I understand but don't respect.

I think there is something key revealed in that blog's conclusion saying
that vegetarianism is mostly for women and gay men, insofar as male machismo
identity/insecurity are threatened by those aspects of our being that "care"
about "gay wussy things" like animal lives and welfare. In addressing
relatively briefly the primary reason that drives most committed vegetarians
(animal suffering and killing) he advances his retarded "self-evident"
argument that better treated animals yield better economic return to
farmers, so ergo, farm animals are treated well. Obviously what maximizes
economic return pound for pound is shooting animals full of steroids in
confined feeding areas and administering high doses of antibiotics,
resulting in animals' aberrant behaviors and suffering. He advances the
notion that it is meat-eaters not vegetarians who primarily drive better
animal welfare conditions. The pressure that vegetarians individually and
animal welfare groups generally bring to bear through grassroots, lobbying
and legal efforts are in fact the primary drivers of improved welfare for
animals.

But there are certainly more and more meat-eaters who refuse to purchase and
consume meat from inhumane farms which is great, and I know various friends
that now at least some of the time seek out humane raised/slaughtered meats.
There's a lot vegetarians and meat-eaters can and are doing together to
improve animal welfare. Michael Pollan's positions in The Omnivore's
Dilemma for instance, that you had indicated you liked and were going to
post out on, harmonize in many ways with vegetarian ethics and logic; I'm
going to post a very interesting initiative and conversation going on at
Whole Foods in my next post in this regard, where Michael Pollan and John
Mackey are dialoging back and forth (John Mackey is the founder and CEO of
Whole Foods, and is vegan).

-David

------

Hey David,

That was a sarcastic "Indeed." I guess that wasn't clear. I don't actually
agree with what he's saying. He's a known crank and the university he was
associated removed all his pages from their web site because they were so
ridiculous. This guy is a researcher in evolutionary psychology and puts his
articles on why james bond villians employ dwarves (
http://wwwlloydianaspects.co.uk/evolve/bondvill.html ) on the "Evolutionary
Theories" section of his web site.

This guy is definitely a loon, and his arguments are clearly misguided, but
I'm sure there are people in this world who are more than happy to take them
(or similar arguments) at face value as a justification for what they do. I
didn't (and don't) really have any criteria for posting stuff on butchering
and love except that it's somehow related to killing or not killing animals
in some way. I may or may not post things with some editorial slant (mostly,
I hope, without). In this case I was unsuccessfully editorializing that the
content of that link was lame. I guess if there is a goal at all for the
blog, it's a repository of thoughts and links to relevant information that
might cause someone to think about the morality of killing animals and
eating meat. In this case, linking to that diatribe was thought-provoking.
(Also, I was the one who posted Julian Cope saying that everyone who
slaughters animals for a living is a "vicious sadist"
http://butchering-and-love.blogspot.com/2006/03/forward-thinking-motherfuckers-agree.html),
for much the same reason, because the opinion was so extreme as to be
thought provoking.)

With regard to my own personal feelings, I'm not Ted Nugent. Dinner at
Candle 79 was delicious, and one of the reasons I look forward to your
visits to new york is having the impetus to go to restaurants like that or
the Galaxy that I don't necessarily frequent on my own. I'm not
anti-vegetarian. I was a vegetarian when I met you and the first time I had
eaten meat in years was when I went out for chinese food family-style with
you and some other meat eating Currierites.

I don't want b&l or dietary habits to be a confrontation between us,
although I do think, for the sake of being interesting, the blog should have
both butchering and love. I happen to be the one who posts more of the
butchering, but I think I post love, too. I don't think that because I post
butchering stuff, it means I support killing unconditionally.

-Mark

-----


Hi Mark,

That's definitely very nice to hear. I wish your editorializing was a bit
clearer here, as I read "Indeed." as you signing off on this guy's views,
that no more need be said. So I wasted way too much time over the course of
a week being alternately depressed and angry, and sorry to have gone off.
We had a great time together which made this that much more traumatic.

I generally like your posts and know you've been throwing up posts either
way, but sometimes it's Morrissey comparing slaughtering seals to the
Holocaust, or that Pretenders guy saying that the law of the jungle is about
live and let live. It cracks me up (I just reread the Pretenders post and
just stopped laughing again, it's pretty dang great), but also gets me
anxious about the blog veering into making fun of retarded things advocates
do or say on either side too much, and losing a grounding in more sincere
insightful debate and posts. I guess that underlying anxiety, especially on
posts about dumb things animal welfare people are saying, influenced how I
read your "Indeed" comment.

And I don't want to discourage fun posts, as then the blog will just get
boring and less entertaining; I guess it's about balance with hopefully more
Sun type personal posts, and clear editorial context. I just saw your
addition to the "Indeed" post, which makes me very happy and is all the
difference.

I hope posts remain relevant and don't veer off overmuch. I've recently
been reading the "Butchering" side of "Butchering and Love" less as
"Butchering versus Love" or "Butchering or Love", but more narrowly as
butchering animals raised and slaughtered maybe not with love, but some
level of care and compassion. Rene shouldn't be expected to slaughter
animals he personally loves, but it would be really great if we lived in a
world where butchers got meats from farms that were regulated to reflect
care and compassion for the animals being raised for food.

But my understanding of what "Butchering and Love" means isn't exclusive of
yours and continues to evolve. And this recent episode reacquaints a main
root metaphorical meaning, of the strife and difference we inflict and
negotiate in our relationship that give drama, energy and texture to the
love that binds us.

B&L, David


-----


I'm glad we're back on track. I don't believe in force feeding anyone
anything, and i make no exceptions for lard (or vegetarians for that
matter). i did lie about not being ted nugent, though. i AM ted nugent.

-Mark

They are pretty cute. It's unclear to me if they pose sufficient health hazard to justify killing them, but they probably aren't good to have around.

Below is Maya's book report on Charlotte's Web that's pretty dang awesome.

Book Report on Charlotte's Web

The main characters in my book are Wilbur, Charlotte, and Fern. Wilbur is a pig that was very little and weak when he was born. Charlotte is Wilbur's very best friend and a very big pretty spider. Fern is a little girl who loves animals and seems to understand them too. The event in my diorama that I captured is when the goose says "Certainly, ertainly, ertainly" to Templeton because she had an egg that would not hatch. But the main event of this book is how Charlotte saves Wilbur with her terrific, radiant Web. I disliked the end because it was not very detailed. I like when Wildbur meets with Charlotte and how she explains what "Salutations" means.

I would recommend this book to friends because it is a book that teaches a lesson about being equal; everyone is equal in their own way. They are all equal to others as the others are equal to them. (That is why I am standing in this room as a vegetarian.)

*************
[Me David again] Someday I will explain that she is "more than equal" X-Men/Magneto style... that we are destined to rule and grind those who dis and oppress us beneath our feet, who one day shall serve our every vegetarian whim!! But for now she's just blowing her heart wide open to embrace us all. On our coffee table right now, Maya made a box from paper with nice designs that says on the side and on top:

Wherever you are you'll be loved.
Hi , I'm Maya and I Love you

I had a delicious Black Angus hot dog last night at the Gowanus Yacht Club, but it does make me wonder, if hot dogs are made of lips and nipples and such, does it really matter that they are made from a fancier cow?

From Dave, on dogs (hot):

Here's some fun tributes and descriptions of Kobyashi:
hot
dog
champion!

I was thinking I should balance the appreciation of Kobayashi's feats re hot
dog eating with some insights hot dogs and pigs, given the hot dog contests
could just as well be fueled by soy versus pig-meat hot dogs, given they're
engorged and puked out within 15 minutes by the contestants.

First, here's the USDA's short regulatory overview of hot dogs, where we
hear about "'Meat' Derived By Advanced Meat Bone Separation & Meat Recovery
Systems" that probably bears more investigation.
http://www.fsis.usda.gov/Fact_Sheets/Hot_Dogs/index.asp

And then here's a good synopsis of that Harper's article I was talking about
in April, re modern factory pig farming, where we learn about PSE:
http://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2006/04/28/18187411.php
"Johnson then visits a pork industry conference where he learns of a problem
for the meat industry, acid in pork, causing pale, soft, exudative meat
(PSE) that has a bad taste. PSE is a result of stress -- the stress, for
intelligent animals, of living confined in crates."

Enough butchering lately? Well, I got your love, right here. Did you ever imagine a world where a hippo and a tortise could be best friends? Or tigers and piglets? Or rhino and goat best friends FOREVER!!!

Also from Dave:

And then unrelated to all this, my brother-in-law Brian, while walking in
that marvelous forest in Taiwan, shared something great I just remembered,
that there's some reality show that pits animals versus people in various
contests, most notably he remebered was hot-dog eating champion Takeru
Kobayashi against a bear in a 10 minute hot-dog eating contest, where it
took the bear awhile to get interested but then it just pawed a few armfuls
and destroyed Kobayashi, who was doing his unbelievably focused deal, and
said afterward that he shouldn't have lost to that bear he has to train
harder... Kobayashi's pretty great, being a cultural sensation in Japan,
champion of that most Americana of deals, pretty rad in the Japanese ironic
cultural aesthetic, and he's always got lots of Japanese girls at the hot
dog eating contests... I remember seeing one on TV awhile back, and it's
hosted by Nathan's hot dogs on a Long Island pier somewhere... anyway I
found it at:
aha film and
kidzworld
So it’s “Man Vs. Beast”. I guess its Humane Society approved… although
wait, it looks like there’s a whole campaign against it as exploitative of
animals:
bornfree

Mmmm, I guess wild animals probably shouldn’t be made to do dumb things,
even if they’re not hurt and it’s showing off how much better they are at
whatever contest…. But the Kobayashi deal looks pretty classic.

3. A couple days later I was walking to the subway and I saw a rat that was
clearly poisoned or otherwise incapacitated, it was shaking and could barely
walk. I broke its neck with my foot because I figured it would be a better
way to go. Good samaritan or cold-blooded killer?

Definitely good samaritan... I think that not doing so would definitely have
resulted in a worse way to go... and in your judgement you cared enough to
weigh and make what you thought the more compassionate call... I had a very
intense experience one night driving home from work and seeing a possum
sittign in three feet into the lane on the other side of the road ("Del
Dios" highway of God that winds through North San Diego County). I thought
it was hurt and was very close to not caring and keep on driving, as I do so
many times in life past suffering... as I was tired and really not wanting
to bother with it... but then I turned around and checked it out (and for
the record I was in our first original Prius)... I got out and was wondering
what was wrong as it was just sitting there in the road, head erect, but
then a Mercedes came by at like 60 mph and missed it by inches, and all it
did was snarl weakly and grimace as the wind rocked it... and it didnt'
move, and I realiezed its leg must be broken... I realized that if I just
left, it might be hit glancingly a few more times and suffer that much mroe
before finally dying, versus if I Ijust ran it over cleanly and surely... so
I got in the car and U-turned and got ready to hit the gas pedal to run it
over, and I was in a pretty intense space that this is just what needed to
happen, and just as I was about to his the gas, a black range rover comes by
at speed and stops up the road and backs up, and out gets a tall broad blond
haried woman, lilke 6' in a black evening dress, and she goes ove rto the
possum and lifts it up by the tail!! and carries it over to the side of the
road to try and release it, and I'm getting out of the car as she's coming
back... and she says that the possum's leg is broken, and she'll take it to
the "Wildlife Rehabilitation Center"... and I'm like totally stunned of
course by this sequence of events, and I'm like the "Wildlife what? I was
about to run it over to just get it over with quick..." and she was like no,
no need for that, help me with this bag, and she's putting the possum that's
snarling with some major big teeth, and she's like be careful... and the
possum goes in.. and she says her name is "Joan Emory" or something... and
she says she's lives in the east county and works for the San Diego Zoo, and
her license plate says "ZOOLADY"... I'm just so completely blown away by
everything, and I get in my car, tripping on the black goddess comign in out
of the night, a salvific transcedent force swooping into a hopeless
situation.... it was so crazy... I remember responding to a note from Nuzum
with all this, and of course regaling Maya and Kris... and I looked up "Zoo
Lady” on google and found out she was like this amazing turn of the century
woman who was involved in making the San Diego Zoo the premiere zoo in the
world, pioneering more natural environs and spaces in the enclosures, and
having unprecedented success breeding in captivity; an amazing woman, hugely
strong and amazing to have accomplished what she did when she did… and
anyway Maya was like four years old at the time, and she'd been watching
this African savannah nature VHS series for a couple weeks, and it's got
this cool blonde narrator who's in khaki with a hat... and it's playing for
a couple weeks more as more or less constant backdrop it seems, as it's like
8 tapes and Maya totally gets into her favs and watches them over and
over... and then one day, about two weeks later, I'm watching with her and
watch the credits roll, and there's another narrator voice or something that
says "Join Joan Embory as she blah blah blah" and I start yelling at Kris
and Maya that "That's her that's her, that's the lady that saved that
possum!!" and Kris was like "No.. no way" and I'm like "that's her!"... and
then I went and did some searching and quickly found out that she’s pretty
huge, being a big conservation force in the 70’s and 80’s as part of her
work with the San Diego zoological society….
http://www.wic.org/bio/embery.htm And she’d bring endangered species and
big cats onto Johnny Carson and stuff, and having grown up without a TV, I
had no idea who she was, but telling this story to friends, some would
immediately say “Oh yeah I totally know her”… so anyway, pretty crazy story
about just barely giving a shit about a dying possum and then getting
absorbed…

And I guess I should also add a very saddening event that happened a few
months ago, when we heard an animal outside our bedroom door, and it turned
out to be a baby possum that was eating some poison stuff set out for some
gophers that have been chewing up our lawn...… and I’ve felt pretty bad
about that, and about poisoning gophers just for a nice lawn… that’s pushing
the inside domicile deal somewhat, but it’s still a garden and kind of
insoluble if you want a nice garden…

And in conclusion, unrelated specifically but related generally, is an
interesting exchange on animal rights and human concern between Prof. Singer
and the Judge Posner at slate
Click on days of the week to follow the back and forth…

2. At the corner of Houston and Varick we saw a rat wandering around the
intersection and we watched it as we waited for the crosswalk. It made it
through traffic going one way, but when the light changed we knew its death
was inevitable. It got squished by the second car through the intersection.
Should we have helped?

I don't think you should put yourself at risk certainly... but if the spirit
of compassion moved you otherwise to care to help out versus go on with your
day, that's always cool... although being a rat is maybe a more difficult
thing to feel that care, versus a rabbit or as noted in part three, an
opossum.... but maybe that much better in extending caring/embracing of that
which is more "other"....

Here's the first entry in our new ethics column, Ask David Bronner:

1. We had mice in our apartment. Our landlord has an exterminator, but the
"tasty banana" sticky traps weren't really doing much except getting stuck
to our feet, so when I saw some old school mousetraps presented as an
impulse by at the hardware store I got a couple and we got a couple mice
(they like peanut butter way better than "tasty banana" smell). Okay or
wrong?

Mice and rats occupy an interesting place... bearers and symbols of
pestilence, pests that can multiply out of control into an infestation,
dropping feces into food... FDA regulations mandate traps around food
production and handling facilities... generally these are baited with poison
that the rat takes back to the nest and all the rats eat it... farming food
of course they deal with mice and rats all the times, and vegan food entails
the killing of many rodents I'm sure... insofar as a domicile is a place of
food production and rest that we don't want rats and mice to have their way
with, I think pest control measures such as traps and poisons are
justifiable... my mom had lots of rats when we were living with her for a
time, a precipitating incident being rats in the walls while she slept...
she was pretty freaked out and the rats had of course to be dealt with
immedaitely... she asked me to deal with it rather than pay an
exterminator... there was lots of rat poo and broken snail shells in various
places in the attic and around the house... with a make up mirror i figured
out where they were gettign in and plugged up the holes... and set a whole
bunch of traps... I totally got into the hunter thing, getting smart and
setting multiple traps outside of different routes of egress over a couple
weeks... but I'd get upset sometimes at night when I heard one snap shut...
and I'd feel pretty sad buryign them in the rat graveyard in the corner of
my mom's property... it was just an insoluble conflict... there were like
ten or so in the end that I caught... a year later there were rats again and
my mom wanted me to deal with it again, but I told her to get an
exterminator... who was pretty classic: a strange tall skinny pale guy with
aviator glasses would come around once a week... I think where rats and mice
are doing their thing without interfering with our homes and domestic modes,
live and let live, but coexisting in the same house is problematic, and like
farms and food producers, bakeries and gardens, you don't want a whole of
mice eating your crops...

Somewhat unrelated, but I recently watched a great PBS two part deal on
AIDS, and got caught up on a lot of recent history I wasn't really on top
of... but it was pretty intense and overwhelming, and while unnecessary
suffering should be mitigated in medical testing, I'm sure thousands if not
millions of mice met their end in the search for the AZT and then the
cocktail, which is certainly justifiable.

I have three recent rodent tails that involve killing.

1. We had mice in our apartment. Our landlord has an exterminator, but the "tasty banana" sticky traps weren't really doing much except getting stuck to our feet, so when I saw some old school mousetraps presented as an impulse by at the hardware store I got a couple and we got a couple mice (they like peanut butter way better than "tasty banana" smell). Okay or wrong?

2. At the corner of Houston and Varick we saw a rat wandering around the intersection and we watched it as we waited for the crosswalk. It made it through traffic going one way, but when the light changed we knew its death was inevitable. It got squished by the second car through the intersection. Should we have helped?

3. A couple days later I was walking to the subway and I saw a rat that was clearly poisoned or otherwise incapacitated, it was shaking and could barely walk. I broke its neck with my foot because I figured it would be a better way to go. Good samaritan or cold-blooded killer?

Courtesy of David S.:

http://www.slate.com/id/2142547/

Shrinks call this "cognitive dissonance." You munch a strip of bacon
then pet your dog. You wince at the sight of a crippled horse but
continue chewing your burger. Three weeks ago, I took my kids to a
sheep and wool festival. They petted lambs; I nibbled a lamb sausage.
That's the thing about humans: We're half-evolved beasts. We love
animals, but we love meat, too. We don't want to have to choose. And
maybe we don't have to. Maybe, than

Someone's been collecting favorite photos on flikr and arranging them in interesting ways, like this bush burger collection. This one was also an interesting arrangement: why? but the rest seem to be mostly boobie-oriented.

From the New York Times.

We Care. But Why Do We Care So Much?

No one wants to see a racehorse break down. The most hardened trainers and the most avid fans seem to agree on this much: A horse has to win, but nobody wants to see one die trying.

For complicated reasons involving the anatomy and the physiology of thoroughbreds, a serious injury sustained at high speed too often spells death for a horse.

That such a breakdown is traumatic for the owner, the trainer, the jockey, the groom and the exercise rider is understandable. Most of them work closely with the horse day after day. What seems to mystify people is why strangers feel the same way.

Since Barbaro's injury early in the Preakness Stakes on Saturday, the reaction of strangers to his plight — an outpouring of concern and love — raises a question with no easy answer: Why do people care so much about the fate of an animal to which they have no personal connection?

Barbaro emerged from surgery last night, but his fate remained unknown. If he survives the immediate trauma, he will face months of recuperation and rehabilitation before he can be pronounced recovered.

The image of jockey Edgar Prado leaning into Barbaro's shoulder to help him stay upright was reminiscent of the photograph from 1975 showing Jacinto Vasquez leaning against his injured filly, Ruffian, and miraculously keeping her from going down on the track.

Ruffian was in the lead when she broke down in her famous match race against the Kentucky Derby winner Foolish Pleasure on July 6, 1975, at Belmont Park. She was so competitive that she kept running even though Vasquez, one of the strongest riders around, used every ounce of his muscle to pull her up as soon as he could.

Ruffian sustained a compound fracture of her right front leg. After enduring hours of complicated surgery, she reinjured her leg when she came out of the anesthesia and was euthanized early the next morning.

Horse racing is as competitive as any sport ever invented. Trainers use psychological tricks to try to outsmart the competition. Before the continuous monitoring of races, jockeys would poke, pull, kick and whip one another down the stretch in attempts to gain the lead.

But when their horses are hurt and have to be destroyed, it breaks their hearts.

In victory and defeat, and every day in between, horses remain wordless creatures. To those in the sport who spend their days caring for them, these thousand-pound thoroughbreds are like children — not in any sentimental sense, but in the sense that they cannot take care of themselves. They need people to provide them with water, food, shelter, exercise. The good ones are treated the way every child should be treated — with the mixture of care and discipline best suited for that particular individual.

No one who was involved with Ruffian's treatment expected her to survive. Not in any rational sense. They operated on her in the hope that they might buy time for a miracle to take place.

There seems to be social pressure against killing an animal, even when that may be the most humane path.

When we care about someone, or some animal, our first instinct is to reject the idea of death. Most people want to leave open at least a small window of opportunity for hope.

At the medical center where Barbaro was being treated, people left signs for the colt, expressing their love for him.

Perhaps the real miracle — the one that matters to all of us, whether we know it or not — is that so many of us are still capable of caring so much.

Reading "The Omnivore's Dilemma" makes me think of corn, which makes me think of quorn:

From the CSPI Newsroom (no idea how reputable this organization is, but they summarized some stuff about quorn):

The Food and Drug Administration has allowed a fake meat made from fungus onto the marketplace, even though the agency knows it makes some people seriously ill, according to the nonprofit Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI).

Quorn is the brand name for a line of foods made from “mycoprotein.” Quorn products take the form of faux chicken patties, nuggets, and cutlets, as well as imitation ground beef. It springs from a single-celled fungus grown in large fermentation vats by Marlow Foods, a division of the multinational pharmaceutical company AstraZeneca.

Today, CSPI asked the FDA to halt the marketing of Quorn products and to direct Marlow Foods to recall its product from grocers’ shelves. Also today, consumers who became ill after eating Quorn spoke out at a Washington, D.C., news conference.

“I trusted that the FDA would not allow unsafe or mislabeled foods on the market,” said 22-year-old student Laura Hubbard, who vomited five times and then passed out after eating a Quorn cutlet. “Now I feel like that trust has been broken.” Hubbard required emergency-room treatment for dehydration.

Hubbard is one of more than 30 American and European consumers who contacted CSPI with reports of adverse reactions after eating Quorn. Most of those consumers vomited several hours after eating the product. Some experienced diarrhea, and one North Carolina man reported hives and difficulty breathing after eating Quorn. CSPI received those reports via a web site, www.QuornComplaints.com.

Earlier this year, CSPI filed complaints with the FDA and European food authorities about the safety and labeling of Quorn products. Quorn’s packaging describes mycoprotein as “mushroom in origin” and a “small, unassuming member of the mushroom family,” when according to fungus experts, Quorn’s vat-grown fungus is only distantly related to mushrooms.

And corn + quorn makes me think of huitlacoche, the Mexican corn "mushroom" (quoted from gourmet sleuth):

Huitlacoche (also spelled cuitlacoche) is a fungus which grows naturally on ears of corn (Ustilago maydis). The fungus is harvested and treated as a delicacy. The earthy and somewhat smoky fungus is used to flavor quesadillas, tamales, soups and other specialty dishes.

In summary, corn = corn, mold = quorn, and corn mold = huitlacoche.

Now we can get all the benefits of the omega-3 fatty acids found in fish like salmon and tuna by killing and eating an animal ten times as intelligent (and a million times more bacon-y)!

From Scientific American:
Scientists Engineer Pigs with Heart-Healthy Meat

In 2004 scientists created mice that transformed unhealthy omega-6 fatty acids into beneficial omega-3 fatty acids. They did this by transplanting a gene from the roundworm C. elegans into mice, thus raising the possibility of genetically engineering livestock with higher levels of the good fat. Now a team of researchers has realized that vision, creating several healthy pigs with meat rich in omega-3s.

Yifan Dai of the University of Pittsburgh and his colleagues first transferred the roundworm gene--fat-1--to pig fetal cells. Randy Prather of the University of Missouri and his collaborators then cloned those cells and transferred them into 14 pig mothers. Twelve pigs were subsequently born and six of them tested positive for the gene and its ability to synthesize omega-3 fatty acids.

Numerous studies have shown that omega-3 fatty acids protect against heart disease. But meat from cows, pigs and other mammals typically has higher levels of omega-6 fatty acids, thanks to a feedlot diet of grains rich in the fat and an inability to transform it into its healthier version. For example, typical pork meat contains roughly 15 percent omega-6 fatty acids and only 1 percent omega-3; in contrast, omega-3s made up 8 percent of the engineered pigs' total muscle fat.

The six piglets appeared normal at birth though three subsequently had to be killed because of heart defects. These defects appear to be a result of the cloning process rather than the introduced gene, considering that team member Jing Kang of Harvard University has been able to breed and raise multiple generations of the mice without any such defects. And another litter of eight piglets cloned from one of the pigs that perished proved healthier and nearly as omega-3 rich, the researchers revealed in the paper presenting their findings, published online yesterday in Nature Biotechnology.

The research opens the possibility of a new model organism for human heart health and the distant prospect of incorporating such a gene into humans. "Pigs and humans have similar physiology," Prather explains. "We could use these animals as a model to see what happens to heart health if we increase the omega-3 levels in the body." It also provides a potential alternate food source for omega-3 fatty acids other than dwindling--and mercury-tainted--fish stocks.

On a related note, LA Magazine has an article about the huge number of pets that get euthanized each year. Unfortunately(?), the chemicals used to kill them are apparently so toxic the bodies are inedible. Or are they? According to this article in common dreams, some of them end up in pet food.


From the LA Magazine article:
Los Angeles fusses over its pets. We primp them and we perfume them, we drive with them in our laps and we sleep with them in our beds, we deck them out in jogging suits and we doll them up in diamond collars, we soothe them with massages and sedatives and psychotherapy. We also kill them—or rather, we do it by proxy, leaving the job to our government. The animal control agencies of L.A., including those of the city, the county, and two dozen smaller municipalities, put to death 104,841 animals last year, more than any other metropolitan area in the United States. About 35,000 of them were dogs, 55,000 were cats, and the rest a miscellany of rabbits, roosters, snakes, and guinea pigs. That is the good news. For decades the number has been so outlandish—250,000 a year in the 1970s, 150,000 a year in the ’80s, 125,000 in the ’90s—that even a decline this monumental somehow feels hollow. In 35 years Los Angeles has exterminated more than 5 million animals. The toll is at once appalling and abstract. “I call it every community’s dirty little secret,” says Ed Boks, the new chief of the city’s animal shelters.

From Dave Bronner:
I just read your crazy posts to the blog; holy man! that liver sounds great!
I mean of course it's disgusting and appalling, primarily the socioeconomic sicko
exploitation and consumption of Mexican flesh... but ultimately appropriate
to this blog. The exploding penguin reminded me of kids down the block
growing up sticking firecrackers up a cats' butts and lighting them.

From metafilter:
Some folks at metafilter are not entirely convinced that everything in this article is true.

From me:
I don't always look at the blog after posting, and I had forgotten that pretty much right before the real human meat eating post, I had posted PETA's "human meat" demonstration. What timing!

More meaty goodness, or at least, my goodness:
delicious dogs
roadkill recipes

Also, I believe some older versions of "The Joy of Cooking" contain recipes for cooking squirrel.

mmm. mmm. good.

Plus, more from Dave:
Some advice to all who have read and been stunned by the Xtreme Cuisine
article snippets: you should click the link and read the whole thing, as
there's many another nauseating/fascinating revelation.... Also, from the
Metafilter link Mark posted is the following perfect synopsis:

"I hope (and expect) this is a fabrication. If it isn't, what a bunch of
bourgeois dicks. After the revolution comes, I might take a hiatus from
vegetarianism to enjoy some slow-roasted Yamamoto with a side of deep-fried
Nugent."

Also excerpted from the same article, which is chock full of pretty crazy shit:

Yamamoto pulls down a high-powered Remington as long as he is tall from a gun rack on the wall. Engraved onto its side in silver is a note: "To Chef Kaz, Keep on killin' so I can keep on eatin'. Your pal, Nuge." I'm impressed. Not just by the dedication from the guy who wrote such classic hits as "Wang Dang Sweet Poontang" and "Yank Me, Crank Me," but by how unwieldy the rifle seems. Must have a hell of a recoil.

"Nuge kinda crazy," says Yamamoto. "In Japanese, they say 'kuru-kuru-paa.' You see that film March of the Penguins? Remember how mother go get food to eat, then walk a long way back to ice where father keep nest? We lie on slope, fire on mother penguin as they walk back. Nuge, he shoot flaming arrow at one penguin, and scare many away. Penguin explode, they have so much oil in body. He run down and eat it right there, while still on arrow! He can't wait, he so hungry for penguin."

...

But Yamamoto is going beyond the pale, traversing boundaries at which even his fellow Asians would surely balk. Everyone's heard about Tom Cruise joking (supposedly) about noshing his newborn baby's placenta and umbilical cord. But placentophagy is nothing new, nor is it illegal to chow down on some umbilical carne asada, as long as it's postpartum, of course. Placenta pâté has long been a part of Yamamoto's repertoire, but it's not the only human flesh he's willing to prepare for customers eager to experiment with cannibalism.

"There many Mexcan immigrant need money," confides Yamamoto during my inspection of his Anthem residence. "Sometime they sell me kidney, arm or leg, or just slice of liver. Very, very expenseeve. These Mexcan never have to work for year, I tell you. And Mexcan liver with onion? Is sooo deleeshus. You must try."

How could I resist? Actually, at another of his clandestine spreads, Yamamoto presented me with three plates, one with a slice of human liver sautéed with onions, another with a hunk of muscle torn from a human leg that had been deep fried, and a third of a side of poached hufu, a faux human flesh product that bills itself as the "Healthy Human Flesh Alternative" (available online at www.eathufu.com).

"I give the hufu to people who don't wanna eat Mexcan," claims Yamamoto. "Hufu not bad, but nothing like real Mexcan."

I sample a bit of each, and I must admit that Yamamoto is correct. Mexican liver is exquisite, a thousand times tastier than its bovine counterpart. The leg muscle was a little chewy, sort of like gnawing on a fried chicken gizzard, but not bad. ("Marlon Brando and Phil Gordon only person who really love leg muscle; they like on bone and then rip off with teeth. Moan in pleasure, then spit out gristle. I serve Brando many time at Hollywood home. Mayor Phil very good customer here. Say Mexcan better than osso buco.") As for the hufu, it was awfully gelatinous in places, and blubbery. I don't think broiling was the best way to go, but Yamamoto says hufu is too fatty to fry, though sometimes he does this, and ends up with bits of meat similar to lardons, which he will then add to a salad.

Excerpted from the phoenix new times: Xtreme Cuisine

Arizona's cunning culinary wizard Chef Kaz Yamamoto prepares taboo illegal moveable feasts for the elite and über-rich

A small bowl of ginger-grapefruit sorbet is brought to each of us as a palate-cleanser, and then in turn a plate of four meat medallions atop a port reduction with a streak of saffron-parsnip purée to the side. The meat in question? Our comely hostess enlightens us with a warm and knowing countenance: "Tenderloin of Bichon Frise, medium rare." I have to say, the flesh of this best friend of man is extraordinarily soft and savory, and though I loathe using the cliché, it literally melts in my mouth.

Apparently, this toy breed is favored over other breeds for rather practical reasons. Its lap-dog affability toward humans renders it easy to raise and ultimately to butcher, and the fact that Bichons are small and do not shed their fur also appeals to those who will eventually harvest them for consumption. The diminutive animal is plumped up on cream and chunks of veal for seven months, then slaughtered while still a puppy to ensure its flavor and tenderness. The taboo we Westerners have regarding the consumption of canines aside, I now understand why dog flesh is regarded so highly to this day in many Asian cultures. Like some odd cross between pork and beef, there's nothing quite like it. Can't think of a lovelier way to celebrate the Chinese Year of the Dog.

Before I continue with my description of the evening's delicacies, I should mention that I am here at the invitation of Japanese-born chef Kazuki "Kaz" Yamamoto, the shadowy maestro of an underground and highly lucrative culinary world that's thriving in Arizona, because of Yamamoto's brazen and ingenious use of meat, game and vegetation that's considered off limits, immoral or even illegal. For the past three years, Yamamoto has maintained his moveable feast right under the noses of law enforcement authorities, placating the jaded palates of the wealthy, famous and powerful with such bewilderingly bizarre preparations as monkey brain stew, roasted flank of gazelle, and dry sausage crafted from the pink, lardaceous hindquarters of the great African hippopotamus.

Many of the items the French-trained Yamamoto procures for his mind-bending, edible menagerie can be legally imported into the United States and consumed under little-known loopholes in the U.S. Endangered Species Act of 1973 and the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species, or CITES, each of which regulates the harvesting of and trade in exotic animals, both domestically and globally. Most people would be surprised to discover that lions, kangaroos, antelopes, hippos, reindeer and zebras can be brought into the States by reputable vendors and served openly. But Yamamoto takes this one step beyond, skirting the intricate tangle of local, state, federal and international regulations to obtain and cook whatever he damn well pleases.

PETA are at it again. No more cages, this time it's semi-naked chicks in meat packaging. (via how advertising spoiled me...)

Even vegan purists like their doughnuts
BY MELISSA ALLISON
The Seattle Times

Maureen Wyse was in her third year of veganism when she discovered Mighty-O Donuts in Seattle.

"They are truly the best thing I've ever eaten," says the New York University student, who hauls five dozen back for friends in New York every time she visits her native Seattle. "It's the thing I look forward to most when I come home - no offense to my family or anything."

The vegan doughnut niche is just one unusual role filled by Mighty-O in the world of doughnuts.

Besides being dairy-free, Mighty-O's also are organic and have no trans fats.

Owner Ryan Kellner likes to focus on the freedom from trans fat because he worries that the vegan part might scare away potential customers.

"Some people have a prejudice about the word `vegan,'" he said. "A lot of people don't even know how to pronounce it."

Bonnie Liebman, director of nutrition at the Center for Science in the Public Interest, doesn't have that problem. After hearing about Mighty-O's ingredients, she had no doubt that they're real doughnuts.

"Switching to palm oil doesn't turn doughnuts into health food," Liebman said. "We're basically talking flour, sugar and saturated fat."

Kellner agrees that Mighty-O's are "doughnuts through and through."

Still, he said, because they have no trans fats and are organic, "they're healthier not just for you, but for the environment, too."

Kellner, who eats vegan most of the time, started Mighty-O Donuts in 1999 with a business partner who has since left. They wanted to start a company and decided to make doughnuts, after which friends suggested vegan, organic doughnuts.

"Organics were crossing from the fringe-food market into the mainstream, and it fit nicely with our own personal views about food, the environment and business," Kellner said.

Here's a follow up regarding the substitutibility of meat, where Mark
objected that in fact the pleasures and experience of meat is not matched by
any imitations that have so far been proffered in the market. My response
had been that its not so much about the specific substitution of meats as
the general substitution of surprisingly tasty in its own way vegan fare for
meat based fare. But the thought I recently had, is if imitation meat could
be made available that perfectly matched and substituted for the real thing,
than presumably the desire to raise and slaugter or hunt animals for meat
would no longer hold. So there's a line of how much the desire for the
particular pleasures of "real meat" hold versus how well matched the
pleasures and experience are by imitations. Pollan may argue that the
animality connection of raising and slaughtering animals still merits animal
raising/slaughter, and/or make ecological arguments of animal grazing on
non-cultivatible land, but the latter isn't that compelling against a vegan
world cuisine which would have such lower impacts. So we have to keep the
pressure on for ever better vegan textures and flavor profiles from the
miracles of soy, although that brings up Pollan's devastating critique of
the general industrial food farming/processing machine. And then there's
efforts to create meats in the laboratory starting from various animal
muscle cells; maybe Kobe level marbling and textures will one day be met
through that kind of work, although this would be generally weird.

This is about as relevant as it gets, folks. An excerpt from a recent interview in the sun magazine:

Cooper: So you hunted and killed a feral pig.

Pollan: I did. It was one of the hardest things I’ve ever
done, and I had mixed emotions about it. I was extremely
pleased when I succeeded, because I’d worked very hard, and
it had taken me a couple of tries to shoot the animal. I didn’t
have the moment of shame that I’d thought I might have when
I saw the pig lying there. On the contrary, I was excited and
proud. My companion even took a photograph of me: the classic
Hemingway trophy shot. But when I got home that night
and looked at the picture, that’s when I felt disgusted with
myself and had that moment of shame: who was this asshole
who was so happy about having killed a big animal?

Cooper: How ambivalent are you about eating meat?

Pollan: I’m not ambivalent about eating meat when I know
where it’s come from and that it has been raised sustainably;
that the animals got to live lives consistent with their creaturely
character and were slaughtered humanely. This means
I don’t eat much meat.

Cooper: You said earlier that we are “designed to eat meat.”
Does that mean we should eat meat?

Pollan: When I began work on this book, I was very concerned
as to whether I could morally, ethically, and ecologically
defend meat-eating. I wrestled with the moral and ethical issues
when I hunted that wild boar. And I found that, ecologically,
meat-eating is very defensible.

From the Kaleej Times:

Ape rights movement questions barrier between man and animal


MADRID - In earlier times, man was seen as a special creature - the image of God and the lord of creation.

Yet with the Spanish parliament preparing to debate the rights of great apes as “persons,” the traditional view of man and animal could be about to definitively change.

“I am an ape,” says Pedro Pozas, secretary-general in Spain of the international Great Ape Project, which wants the United Nations to grant gorillas, chimpanzees, orangutangs and bonobos something comparable to human rights.

Humans and great apes are part of the same hominid family, champions of ape rights say, stressing that the behaviour of apes resembles that of humans more than had previously been recognized.

Spain’s governing Socialist Party is promoting an initiative to recognize great apes as different from other animals, to protect their habitat and to prohibit their use in circuses.

The measures would also ban scientific experiments with great apes, something that has already been practically abolished in Europe.

Spain would thus become the first European country to adopt measures such as those proposed by the decade-old Great Ape Project, which seeks three basic rights for apes: the rights to life, to liberty and to not being tortured.

“The only other country to have adopted comparable measures is New Zealand,” Pozas told Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa in a telephone interview.

Currently, Spanish zoos and circuses often keep apes in small cages. They may be castrated, have their teeth removed or vocal cords cut to control them.

Environment Minister Cristina Narbona believes promoting the rights of apes would increase the general consciousness of animal rights in a country known for its bullfights and bloodsports.

Human rights violations

The Socialist initiative is, however, facing opposition from critics ranging from the Catholic Church to human rights activists.

“Too much progress becomes ridiculous,” archbishop Fernando Sebastian said, criticizing moves to promote the rights of apes when abortions violated the human rights of embryos.

Amnesty International representative Delia Padron stressed that not even the rights of all human beings were being respected.

The police trade union ASIGC called the initiative “silly,” asking ironically for “ape rights” for its members who were attempting to prove their labour conditions.

Champions of ape rights counter that awareness of animals as suffering beings increases awareness of human rights.

Orangutangs, gorillas and chimpanzees share between 96 and 99 per cent of their genetic material with humans.

“Great apes have self-control, a sense of the past and of the future, a capacity to mourn” and to use tools, explained Francisco Garrido, the MP who launched the ape rights initiative in parliament.

“Not only can chimpanzees learn up to 500 words and communicate through a computer, but they also use up to 50 medicinal plants for diarrhoea, vomiting or parasites,” primate expert Jordi Savater Pi said.

“When a chimpanzee takes your hand to tell you something, you feel that you are dealing with a special creature,” Pozas says.

He concedes that apes are not like humans, but describes them as ”kinds of persons.”

Western man’s traditional view of himself as a unique creature has already been modified by evolutionist theories, Pozas observes.

“We need to break the barrier between the species,” he says, adding that such a change would help man preserve the environment instead of destroying it.

Pozas expects the Spanish parliament to approve the ape rights initiative, which has received backing from academics in some 70 universities around the world.

He stresses it is not sufficient to recognize rights for great apes, whose survival is threatened by deforestation, hunting, trafficking and disease.

“We need to help developing countries protect the forests where apes live,” Pozas says.

From Discover Magazine:

...

The video was shot in 1997 by my friend Roger Hanlon while he was scuba diving off Grand Cayman Island. Roger is a researcher at the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole; his specialty is the study of cephalopods, a family of sea creatures that include octopuses, squids, and cuttlefishes. The video is shot from Roger's point of view as he swims up to examine an unremarkable rock covered in swaying algae. Suddenly, astonishingly, one-third of the rock and a tangled mass of algae morphs and reveals itself for what it really is: the waving arms of a bright white octopus. Its cover blown, the creature squirts ink at Roger and shoots off into the distance—leaving Roger, and the video viewer, slack-jawed.

The star of this video, Octopus vulgaris, is one of several cephalopod species capable of morphing, including the mimic octopus and the giant Australian cuttlefish. The trick is so weird that one day I tagged along with Roger on one of his research voyages, just to make sure he wasn't faking it with fancy computer-graphics tricks. By then, I was hooked on cephalopods. My friends have had to adjust to my obsession; they've grown accustomed to my effusive rants about these creatures. I can't bring myself to eat calamari anymore. As far as I'm concerned, cephalopods are the strangest smart creatures on Earth. They offer the best standing example of how truly different intelligent extraterrestrials (if they exist) might be from us, and they taunt us with clues about potential futures for our own species.

...

Here's another way to think about it. If cephalopods someday evolve to become intelligent creatures with civilizations, what might they do with their ability to morph? Would we be able to communicate with them? Perhaps they offer a useful surrogate for thinking about one way that intelligent aliens, if and wherever they are out there, might one day present themselves to us. By trying to develop new ways of communicating using morphing in virtual reality, we do at least a little to prepare for that possibility. We humans think a lot of ourselves as a species; we have a tendency to suppose that the way we think is the only way to think. Maybe we need to think again.

From Slate, via David:

The World's Smartest Cow
What my steer, Elvis, has taught me.
By Jon Katz

I had to punch my new Brown Swiss steer in the nose recently. I'm not proud of it, but he had it coming. Elvis, who weighs 1,800 pounds, had sneaked up behind me and grabbed the hood of my sweatshirt in his mouth. That I was wearing the shirt seemed of no concern to him. I felt my feet lift off the ground. He was dangling me like a Labrador enjoying a smelly sock.

So, I wriggled around and slugged him—more of a tap, really. He seemed startled, even hurt. He let go. Feeling bad, I wondered if a cow could be trained.

He needed it. "We've never seen such a friendly cow," farmer friends kept telling me. True enough. When people enter the pasture, Elvis comes running up to greet them. The effect is rather like a building lifting off its foundations and charging down a hill: You just pray he can stop if he wants to. He sticks out his big tongue and slurps. He grabs at shirts and hats. If you sit down, he'll happily put his head in your lap. But since his landings are neither graceful nor accurate, it's not an entirely welcome gesture.

Taking snacks to the donkeys one morning, I'd learned that Elvis loved apples. He came lumbering over, snatched one out of my hand, and let out an enthusiastic bellow. Maybe I could take advantage of this. Soon, when I came to the pasture gate, held up an apple, and yelled "Elvis, come," he trotted right over. If he got too intimate or pushy, I flicked him on the nose with two fingers. When he backed up, I held up my hand and said, "Stay," in the clear, enthusiastic voice recommended by dog trainers. To the amazement of me and my neighbors, he did. ("I wonder if you could teach him to sit or lie down," one of the neighbors asked.)

People in town began showing up to see the trained steer. "Maybe nobody tried to do it before," my friend Peter Hanks, a dairy farmer and photographer, observed. "But then, he's an unusual cow."

Elvis was Peter's before he was mine. Peter has been farming for 40 years and is, to say the least, decidedly unsentimental about livestock. He's has been milking cows or sending them off to market—that is, the slaughterhouse—for most of his life. They're his livelihood: He cannot afford to get emotionally attached to them. He keeps them in big dairy barns, feeds them silage (a sour-smelling fermented mixture of corn and hay), and doesn't give them names.

So, I was surprised when he showed up at my place one day, hemming and hawing about a steer he called Brownie. He'd never seen a cow quite like him. "He follows me around like a dog," Peter reported. "He puts his head on my shoulder. He licks me." And, possibly displaying an unusual ability to figure things out, the steer had refused to get on the market truck. For the first time, Peter confessed with some embarrassment, he hesitated to send a cow to slaughter. Elvis had missed several trucks.

That must be some cow, I thought, wondering why Peter was telling me this story—until I realized that he'd come to the one guy he knew stupid or crazy enough to take in the friendly monster.

Peter was between a rock and hard place. He knew his standing as a farmer would plummet if word got around that he was keeping a marketable steer as a large pet. But he also knew that giving him away would bring even greater jeers.

"Am I guessing right?" I asked incredulously. "You want me to take in this cow that will eat tons of hay every winter—and pay you for the privilege?"

Though truthfully, I'd been thinking about a cow. They don't seem as intelligent or affectionate as donkeys, but I thought I saw something soulful and philosophical about them. I like the way they stare, with great concentration, at nothing in particular. They appear to understand patience and composure, things I need to learn.

So, Peter and I commenced the weeks of obligatory haggling involved in any major farm purchase. The cow could bring 80 cents a pound at market, he said. But we weren't sending him to market, I countered. If I did, said Peter, he wanted half of any revenues. For the first two years, I agreed. But after that, any revenue would be mine alone.

We agreed on a bargain price: $500. Some, including my wife, Paula, saw no logic in paying for a creature that performed no useful function, consumed two to three bales of hay daily in winter, and probably never would go to market. Notions of usefulness vary, I parried. This was an unusual creature; he would fit in. I named him Elvis because he seemed like a good old boy.

On the spring day Peter backed his livestock trailer up to my rear paddock and opened the door, five or six of us were standing around, and all said the same thing at the same time: "Oh my God."

Seen apart from the rest of his herd, Elvis was enormous. Staggering. The ground shook when he moved.

A creature who'd almost never been outside a barn, he seemed mesmerized by everything he saw. He accepted our nervous pats. But he was anxious, at first, about being alone. On day two, when he saw Paula brushing the donkeys in the next pasture, he simply walked through the fence and trotted over to visit. "He's bigger than our first house," she said, calling me on the cell phone from the house.

I rushed home from a neighbor's to find Elvis alone, staring forlornly at the sheep, huddled way up at the top of the steep hill, and the donkeys, who were hiding in the pole barn, peering out at him. I had no experience in trying to get a cow to do something it didn't want to, so I tried friendly persuasion. "Elvis, let's go home!" I said hopefully, walking back toward his paddock. He trotted abashedly after me.

We put up a single-strand electrified wire that very afternoon. Once Elvis got buzzed, he never approached the fence again. Maybe he didn't want to. Everybody who saw him in the following days agreed that he seemed calm and happy to munch hay, take in the sun, and gaze at his new surroundings.

Cows, it occurs to me, haven't been allowed to be smart. They don't get the stimulation dogs do, and they haven't lived in the wild since medieval times. They don't come in the house, chase balls, or go for walks with us. We regard them as milking machines or walking steaks, if we think of them at all. Like most people, I hadn't.

But Elvis has changed my ideas about cows. He's very social, fond of me and my helper Annie and my Labrador Pearl. When I take the dogs out for their morning walk, he moos repeatedly until I bring him an apple. He's figured out how to move bales of hay into place so he can snuggle next to them (when he lies down, you can sometimes feel the vibrations all the way to the farmhouse). He especially seems to love the view, staring out at the valley much of the day.

He is amiable, happy to hang out with the donkeys and sheep, given the chance. He coexists peaceably with the chickens—with everyone, in fact. Once or twice a week, he has a burst of cow madness and goes dancing playfully around the pasture in circles. Trees tremble.

Plus, he comes when called, stays when asked, and doesn't grab clothing anymore. Not all of my dogs will do (or not do) those things as reliably. I'm very happy to have him on the farm. It will cost me more than $1,000 to keep him in hay next winter. A bargain.

In this week's New Yorker:

I deposited my pig on the breakfast table. I emptied out the refrigerator and washed down the counters. I sharpened a knife and reflected on the difficulty of a pig at home. I hadn’t wanted to upset my neighbor. I didn’t know him well but gathered (from the doorman) that he, too, was a meat-eater. My pig was a more elementary form of things he’d been eating for years. The realization confirmed something I’d always suspected: people don’t want to know what meat is. They don’t think of meat as an animal; they think of it as an element in a meal. (“What I want tonight is a cheeseburger!”)

For me, meat wasn’t a cause. I just believe people should know what they’re eating. At the Greenmarket, you overheard discussions about fertilizers and soils and how much freedom a chicken needs before its eggs are free-range. Wouldn’t it follow that you’d want to know your meat? I had brought home a freshly killed animal—better raised than anything I’d find at a store—and, in preparing it, I was hoping to rediscover old-fashioned ways of making food. This, I felt, could only be positive. But I was sure getting a lot of shit for it.

Hi all,

So this blog turns out to be very timely. I've been meaning to write but haven't had time and motivation. On a personal note, I recently realized this is my 10 year vegetarian/vegan anniversary, and culturally, there appears to be quite the zeitgeist going on around issues of eating and ethics.

To start out, my reaction re South Park and pious Prius drivers was one sided; I completely understand that moral considerations on consumption behavior are always annoying and "fascist" against the drive/will to pleasure, or at least inertia/comfort. The dream I referenced revolved around the fact that when I was in the market for my first car, I was looking so forward to getting the Cobra high-end Mustang, but that year, 1998, the Insight and Prius came out. The Prius looked so dumb, but there was a real issue of whether there would be enough "early adoption" to make hybrid technology succeed economically. I was pretty pissed off about the situation, and went back and forth between the Cobra and Prius, culminating in a dream where a radio announcer voice says, as I'm looking over some rolling hills, that "The Bible says we should build our homes in the sides of hills". And I was like, "Right, in harmony with mother Earth, hyper insulated, not yucking up the landscape, etc." and then the commercial break comes in about the track mansion development up the hill, and I'm cruising through a huge house, and digging the customed-out options but feeling like this isn't what I should be doing, and then I'm on the side of the hill, and there's the courthouse at the top, and the radio announcer voice comes on to say that the trial of Jeffrey Dahmer would resume now (in real life he was already dead) that things had resolved finally at the production set of the documentary film that was being shot about the life story of Jeffrey, and now I'm on the set digging that yeah, what the hell happened to a human brother to make him so fucked, and anyway the actor that was playing his father had negotiated finally to return to the set after a dinner sequence had played out where the father had asked for the mashed potatoes and was reaching across the table, and then Jeffrey Dahmer violently bites his forearm like a snake striking, and I wake up totally freaked out with Jeffrey's teeth sinking into the flesh of his actor father's arm... and I'm thinking, wow, I'm like a cannibal eating the flesh of my mother earth home, like Jeffrey Dahmer striking like a snake, cannibalizing his own flesh and blood, like a COBRA man! and obviously I've got to get the Prius... and I went back to sleep, but I was troubled by this interpretation even then in the heat of the freak moment... and the next morning the pendulum swung, and I was like the Bible was such a life sexual pleasure destroying fascist superego force in my life, that I'm still struggling to get out from under, and here it is just morphing into a new superego eco fascist version, denying me the pleasure of the wind in my hair in my convertible Cobra, and according to the Gnostics, wasn't the serpent in fact the embodiment of wisdom and the initiator of salvation, and Jehovah the demiurgic life denying false God? So I went back and forth, and eventually realized that I just needed to objectively evaluate, and I got the Prius under the realization that I was going to go just as fast as in the Cobra 99% of the time in my commute, with somewhat less acceleration...

And then in 2004 we can afford two cars, and Kris wanted an A4 Quattro Audi, and there on the lot was a used 2001 Electric Blue S4 with customed out racing pedals and exhaust, twin turbo V6, 280 hp... and with obligatory leather interior... Kris went for it under my not to pushy drooling, but it's a tough clutch to learn on, and she started driving the Prius (since we lease the newer version now that looks and drives a LOT better than the previous), and I started driving the S4, and somehow a year and half later I'm still in the S4...leather interior and 18 mpg and all.

The first Prius was just dorky all around, and very few saw that hybrid technology was going to takeoff, but the Prius turned out to be quite fun to drive, like "Red Fox", and we don't need the over the top shit: I just saw an ad in some hip upscale mag for a Bentley car deal leather from "10 bulls free ranging so didn't scrape on fences and blemish the leather" baby... Even with the "pollution credit" Prius in the driveway next to me, I'm a hypocrite to indulge but better to be "conscious conflicted hypocrisy" then shut down and be unconflicted; the latter is worse bad faith, the former is more existentially honest even if problematic and lame...

So anyway getting more on theme and the zeitgeist I was alluding to, I recommend checking out Michael Pollan's "The Omnivore's Dilemma". The current cover of Mother Jones reprints the chapter on a "good farm" about raising grass fed cows, pigs and chickens humanely. The beginning of the book is a great analysis of "corn" a la Botany of Desire, and is very insightful re how harmful/pervasive corn is throughout American life and diet. It's also a very important and timely critique of not only factory farming, but also "industrial organic" that while lots better is also not nearly the farm "pastoral" we think of and strive for. A good review and interview with Pollan is at: http://www.truthdig.com/interview/item/20060411_michael_pollan_interview/#7264 On the subject of our blog, the chapter the "Ethics of Eating Animals"is most appropriate, which is generally thoughtful and sincerely considered, and along with the last chapter uses "transaction" and "redemption" somewhat in keeping with our discussion. However, it occasionally degenerates into "straw man" flimsy attacks on the "vegan utopia," and since its a good enough book for me to send to Mark and Andres and recommend everyone to read, I'll share this pre-emptive rebuttal.

Pollan implies the lack of deep cultural cuisine in the US results in food fads from no-carb to vegetarian, implying airy fairy equivalence, and says of the latter that it is basically a thoughtless ill-conceived reaction to the practice of how animals are treated in the US, but ill-considered "in principle". He asserts that vegetarianism has no real cultural history aside from a few individual dissenters like Tolstoy and Gandhi, and is largely a pop phenomenon of modern US history. He notes that "10 million" people are vegetarian in the US, and dismisses that as insignificant and fringe. That's about as many Jews in the US, and growing a lot faster, and even if not one person was vegetarian anywhere ever, that doesn't have any moral bearing to the issue when it arises in a single individual. He laments briefly the imposition of vegetarian restrictions on meal preparation; presumably he would not feel it rude if a Buddhist came over with a "cultural" moral stance re not eating animals; but fellow Americans as free moral agents that arrive at similar dietary conclusions that differ from cultural determinants he/we grew up with he has a problem with. Vegetarianism in fact has been widely practiced cross culturally through space and time, and while traditionally a minority in western culture, it has been significant even in classical Greek times (ie. Pythagoras and his school), and in eastern cultures especially India, it has predominated. The Indian subcontinent has been and continues to be largely peopled by vegetarians for the last few millennia, with close to 20% of humanity living off an ancient vegetarian cuisine and agriculture. Somehow this all escaped Pollan. He acknowledges but dismisses comparisons to other "emergent" issues in western culture such as women's/civil rights, where the dominant cultural practice has been found wanting and wrong by an emergent powerful minority that is "winning out" (still in process). He also asserts that if everyone became vegetarian somehow that would be less sustainable because of a lack of animals making "compost" (in fact plant matter composts fine). He also seems to think that rodents killed in row crops neutralizes the vegan argument, but most vegans realize veganism is a "harm reduction" line drawn to minimize animal suffering, not an absolute state of non-interference/killing of animals.

But to be fair, Pollan does delve sincerely and deeply otherwise, and arrives at the conclusion that a lot less meat needs to be eaten, with a lot greater attention to the conditions the animal lives within. Pollan confesses his ambivalence about slaughtering and taking animal life even though ultimately he defends it as potentially a "redemptive transaction", and with some somewhat obnoxious exceptions, is generally thoughtful and considered.

Pollan was formerly the editor of Harpers, and in the current issue is an essay by a professor debating Singer and defending meat eating, along with a separate essay about the creation of the modern pig in the abysmal factory farming conditions. The professor's argument is that human communion with meat and drink is such that a "duty" is imposed to raise and kill animals humanely to make this human dining communion happen. The argument is not advanced that this sharing and communion be possible without meat, but implied that meat is somehow essential. And that there is in fact a redemptive communion deal, but only if the animal eaten has been raised humanely with respect. Interestingly, the professor uses the term "piety" to describe the appropriate relationship (compare/contrast South Park), and advances the key argument that ethical meat eaters need to ask questions and be that guy in the restaurant, and refrain and renounce participation and support for unethical meat. The Indian subcontinent provides an obvious rebuttal to the "essentialist" argument, but nonetheless an interesting essay.

And a random recent relevant fact for sushi lovers: Chicago Tribune broke and NPR ran with the revelation that 75% of sushi in this country is controlled and distributed by the Reverend SunYung Moon's vertically integrated sushi empire, and we all know Rev. Moon is a major funder of the right wing media machine. http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/specials/chi-0604sushi-1-story,0,3736876.story I think some tough uncomfortable questions need to be asked at sushi bars everywhere.

I met the co-owners/founders of the Candle Cafe and Candle 79 http://www.candlecafe.com/, Joy and Bart, at the Social Venture Network, who run a couple famous gourmet vegan establishments in Manhattan that I'll be inviting everyone to the very next time I'm in new York. They're really great and the timing felt pretty synchronous.

Best, David

From The Atlantic, October 1881, by Sarah Orne Jewett:

I don’t know whether I should care much for you if I were another musk-rat, or you were a human being, but I shall know you again when I see you by an odd mark in the fur on the top of your head, and that is something. I suppose the captive mussels in your den are quaking now at hearing you come in. I have lost sight of you, but I shall remember where your house is. I do not think people are thankful enough who live out of the reach of beasts that would eat them. When one thinks of whole races of small creatures like the mussels which are the natural and proper food of others, it seems an awful fact and necessity of nature; perhaps, however, no more awful than our natural death appears to us. But there is something distressing about being eaten, and having one’s substance minister to a superior existence! It hurts one’s pride. A death that preserves and elevates our identity is much more consoling and satisfactory; but what can reconcile a bird to its future as part of the tissues of a cat, going stealthily afoot, and by nature treacherous? Who can say, however, that our death is not only a link in the chain? One thing is made the prey of another. In some way our present state ministers to the higher condition to which we are coming. The grass is made somehow from the ground, and presently that is turned into beef, and that goes to make part of a human being. We are not certain what an angel may be; but the life in us now will be necessary to the making of one by and by.

Madam J was nice enough to alert me about the fact that NASCAR has licensed their brand to promote meat products.

Could Dr. Bronner's sponsor the first hybrid vehicle to compete on the NASCAR circuit? I believe hybrids are actually capable of amazing performance, particularly acceleration. Alternately, perhaps someone could rig a car to run on "hempanol."

All organisms are split into five Kingdoms:

Animal Kingdom: organisms that usually move around and find their own food.

Plant Kingdom: organisms that make their own food and do not actively move around.

Fungi Kingdom: organisms that absorb food from living and non-living things.

Protist Kingdom: organisms that have single, complex cells.

Moneran Kingdom: organisms that have single, simple cells.

What's so special about animals? Should we organize a protist against the killing of bacteria?

More info at this school web page, plus a handy organism menu. Be sure to ask about the specials!

From my sister:

“He who cannot eat horsemeat need not do so. Let him eat pork. But he who cannot eat pork, let him eat horsemeat. It’s simply a question of taste.”

–Nikita Khrushchev (1894-1971)

Butchering:
Whether you go for the handheld tools or decide to go whole hog, there are tools to help you, with the features you need:

# Latest technology in automatic hog splitting.
# Five axis computerized mechanism; splits up to 650 hogs per hour - regardless of size or weight.

Love:
If you're feeling more lovey than butchery, here's what you need to know about how Meat-On-Meat Massage Is Simple, Unique.

From Discover Magazine:

From our abundant sweat glands to our Achilles tendons, from our big knee joints to our muscular glutei maximi, human bodies are beautifully tuned running machines. "We're loaded top to bottom with all these features, many of which don't have any role in walking," Lieberman says. Our anatomy suggests that running down prey was once a way of life that ensured hominid survival millions of years ago on the African savanna.

Sorry to post about this twice, but this passage is actually more relevant to our discussion. If there are any cows reading, do you have comments?

Eating steaks in Argentina feels like joining a cult. You find yourself leaning on friends to come visit, and writing YOU JUST DON'T UNDERSTAND in all caps more often than feels comfortable. Argentine beef really is extraordinary. Almost all of this has to do with how the cows are raised. There are no factory feedlots in Argentina; the animals still eat pampas grass their whole lives, in open pasture, and not the chicken droppings and feathers mixed with corn that pass for animal feed in the United States. Since this is the way of life a cow was designed for, it is not necessary to pump the animal full of antibiotics. The meat is leaner, healthier and more flavorful than that of corn-fed cattle. It has fewer calories, contains less cholesterol, and tastes less mushy and waterlogged than American meat. And the cows spend their lives out grazing in the field, not locked into some small pen. You can taste the joy.

Andres, do you have any insights?

The classic begginer's mistake in Argentina is to neglect the first steak of the day. You will be tempted to just peck at it or even skip it altogether, rationalizing that you need to save yourself for the much larger steak later that night. But this is a false economy, like refusing to drink water in the early parts of a marathon. That first steak has to get you through the afternoon and half the night, until the restaurants begin to open at ten; the first steak is what primes your system to digest large quantities of animal protein, and it's the first steak that buffers the sudden sugar rush of your afternoon ice cream cone. The midnight second steak might be more the glamorous one, standing as it does a good three inches off the plate, but all it has to do is get you up and out of the restaurant and into bed (for the love of God, don't forget to drink water).

more about argentina on two steaks a day here

This week's New Yorker (April 10, 2006) has an article about oysters that brings up some relevant issues. A few quotes:

"If you've shucked an oyster carefully, you haven't killed it. In my classes, we continue feeding it-the gills keep working-and its heart beats for another fifteen minutes."

"Many foods are eaten raw. Many foods are swallowed whole. But how many raw foods are also still alive?"

and, from William Brooks' book "The Oyster":

"the adult oyster makes no efforts to obtain its food, it has no way to escape from danger, and after its shell is entered it is perfectly helpless and at the mercy of the smallest enemy...It is almost as inert and inanimate as a plant."

But do they love?

"I studied the six shellfish. Not a lot seemed to be ahppening-six oysters having sex looked a lot like six oysters not having sex. Then I noticed a barely perceptible whitish stream [salad dressing?!?] issuing from one. Procreation had begun."

From a Time Out NY interview with Chrissie Hynde from The Pretenders regarding Rock and Roll and Vegetarianism and why they are connected:

TONY: But where does the “pirate” part come in?

CH: Just the whole idea of being in a rock band, and how much it feels like being a pirate. The idea of being on the move a lot, not conforming really to society or social mores, kind of doing your own thing. Being in a gang of fuckups and dropouts. The whole idea of being in rock & roll was you could be yourself, and that meant you didn’t have to be beautiful or anything. You could live outside the law. And people who live outside the law aren’t doing shampoo commercials.That’s why I’m dismayed when I see rock stars who are (a) not vegetarians, and (b) hanging out with politicians and stuff. I just think, What are you guys playing at?

TONY: It sounds like being a musician and being a vegetarian are very connected for you.

CH: Music starts with the animal kingdom. If I can hear birds in the morning, I’m set for the day. Jazz musicians were always searching for that lost chord. They were always looking up, always trying to figure out what their connection to the sky was. I don’t think you can mix rock with religion, but there’s still this quest. You’re looking for the truth, and the truth is that there’s kind of a law of the jungle out there. And that would be: I won’t eat you if you don’t eat me. You do what you want to do and I’ll do what I want to do, but let’s not fuck each other up too much.

TONY: Do you have a favorite vegetarian restaurant in NYC?

CH: I went to the Candle Café last night. Amazing! Someone said Moby was sitting at the next table, and I didn’t know it. Because he’s a celebrated vegan I would have loved to have gone over and just said, “Hi, brother.”

From The Daily Times of Maryville, TN, hotbed of biblical veganism. Unfortunately the article doesn't really give any info on the Christian aspect of this diet. In Tennessee, "tasty alternatives" are known as "instead-ofs":

`Eating to Live': Friends complie vegan cookbook for good health

Call it going back to basics or eating from the garden, but Rita Myers, a stage 4 breast cancer survivor would call her new lifestyle simply eating to live.

Myers was diagnosed with stage 4 cancer in 1999 and was given six months to live after the cancer metastasized to the bone. She and husband Leon began researching diets and proper nutrition and discovered the Hallelujah Diet, a biblically-based, vegan way of life that Rita says saved her life. It was the Rev. George Malkmus who developed this program after he was healed of colon cancer following his change to this natural-based diet and lifestyle, in 1976.

The Edgmons thought the transition from those eating habits would be a real challenge, but it hasn't been, they said. ``You find great instead-ofs,'' Carol said.

Dave was going to post a past email about his conflicted decision between buying a Prius (for moral/ecological reasons) and buying a Cobra (for aesthetic/experiential reasons (i.e., driving fast). If he, or someone who received the original email from several years ago, can find it, it should show up here. In the meantime, I would encourage watching the most recent, and uncannily relevant, episode of South Park. I believe it airs about 50 million times this week on Comedy Central. The synopsis, which doesn't -quite- capture the actual humor of the episode:

Stan persuades all the citizens of South Park to buy hybrid cars. A disaster of epic proportions threatens the town and Stan is to blame -- just as everyone starts to feel really good about what they’re doing to help save the earth, scientists discover a stormy, dark mass accumulating over the town.

Via NME, Morrissey weighs in on the debate:

Morrissey goes to war with Canada
He won't be going there on tour in protest over 'horrific slaughter'

Morrissey is refusing to take his world tour to Canada in protest against the country's annual seal hunt.

It has been reported that up to 325,000 young harp seal pups could be killed in the coming weeks, despite international appeals for it to stop.

The singer has issued a statement on his official website saying this is the reason he won't be visiting the country to promote his forthcoming album 'Ringleader Of The Tormentors'. Dates have already been played in the US, and he's due to visit Europe later this spring.

"I fully realise that the absence of any Morrissey concerts in Canada is unlikely to bring the Canadian economy to its knees, but it is our small protest against this horrific slaughter - which is the largest slaughter of marine animal species found anywhere on the planet," the singer said. "The Canadian Prime Minister says the so-called 'cull' is economically and environmentally justified, but this is untrue."

Morrissey claims that the motivation behind the "barbaric and cruel" hunt is "making money", and in doing so will aid the fashion industry.

He continued: "The Canadian Prime Minister also states that the slaughter is necessary because it provides jobs for local communities, but this is an ignorant reason for allowing such barbaric and cruel slaughter of beings that are denied life simply because somebody somewhere might want to wear their skin. Construction of German gas chambers also provided work for someone - this is not a moral or sound reason for allowing suffering."

The cull has been condemned by other celebrities, including Paul McCartney.

Hi Mark,

Very interesting. The variables evoked are: the death of a degree of being
from "near negligible" to "infinitely significant" versus the
pleasure/tastiness of the meat in the human organism/experience versus
vegan/vegetarian fare that can substitute in the human organism/experience.
Certainly an oyster is about as low on the "chain of being" as possible, and
I can't imagine how gross a soy version of this would be.

But it is important to note that an exact "substitution" is impossible of
the exact gustatory experience various particular meats provide, and that in
general attempts to imitate invariably fall far short of the real thing.
What is substitutible is the "general gustatory pleasure" of delicious meat
based food through differently but similarly delicious vegan fare, and for
instance the vegan gourmet Millenium in San Francisco has some of the most
incredibly tasty food I've ever had. Of course I will never duplicate the
exact very great taste and experience of prime rib medium rare from Lawry's
in Hollywood, but nonetheless I can substitute different but comparably and
surprisingly great and pleasurable vegan fare.

And a lot of gustatory experience depnds on the psychological set and
setting. Sincere celebratory prose evoking an intense gustatory experience
can grow out of an intense experience of delicious vegan food just as of
delicious meats. And the pleasure and thrill of the kill could be rendered
in gorgeous prose as well.

Take care, David

Hi again,

I've been thinking that the "sadist" argument is something worth pressing,
not so much in the "pleasure in the pain of the animal" but in the "pleasure
of killing the animal". And for the sake of argument, let's say you have a
gun and unerring aim and can immediately take out the animal without death
terror/pain. Also, let's say that the animal is like a sport fish, bird or
goat with that you have no interest in eating, just in killing.

So the question is, does an animal have any worth such that it would be
"Bad" to just kill for the sake of the pleasure/satisfaction derived from
killing? We used to shoot birds with my friends BB gun in junior high, and
it was quite fun although I did have some qualms even then.

Presumably you would say that just killing the animal for the pleasure of
killing the animal is Bad, or at least Not Cool, insofar as it is wrong but
as a matter of degree.

So given the clarification of my position in my note yesterday, what is it
for you that would preclude you signing off on humanity killing animals for
the pleasure of killing animals? And to be clear, this would be animals
that do not meet your criterion of interpersonal care, but also are not real
low order llike snails: i.e. birds, fish, maybe sheep and goats too
(although I think the latter do meet your criterion).

Aside from the "waste of meat" what value do you see a bird having such that
I shouldn't just shoot it? Also, we're saying that this killing is done
"sustainably" of birds, whether pelicans, egrets, penguins, etc. that does
not adversely affect the total population or ecosystem. Only the individual
animal and its being versus not being are at stake.

And then if you do eat this bird you've shot, what is the magic redemptive
value that turns an act that is wrong into one that is morally justifiable
or at least neutral? I acknowledge in our tribal past that the
relationshiop between hunter and prey was profound and reverent, and that
there was a sacramental redemptive value. But today, when there is tasty
vegan/vegetarian fare to substitute, why not live and let live? What
redemptive value is there in the transient indulgent and subsitutible
pleasure of eating the animal that is beyond the transient indulgent
pleasure of killing the animal?

Take care, David

I don't know that this has a direct relation to andres' search for a categorical justification for veganism, but I do have a couple observations to make. As a bit of background, I have spent considerable time following various dietary guidelines covering the spectrum between, but not including, the two extremes of veganism and an all-meat diet.

My first point is that dave seems to be making the point that there is "center/concentration of being identity/experience," which presumably could be of near-negligible but not negligible significance (e.g., andres' clam still has it, but not a whole lot of it). In order to preserve this being identity, it seems relatively straightforward to simply indulge in other "tasty" alternatives at all times. This is where Dave's argument breaks down for me. While there are many delicious foods available in the plant and fungus kingdoms, if tasty is being used to imply that there is a negligible difference in enjoyment, or experience in general, between eating animals and not, this is very misleading.

Non-meat substitutes, when available, may be nutritious and platable, but they are, at best, pale imitations of what they represent, and this is a significant problem when trying to justify a categorical rule against eating animals based on "being identity/experience." Take for example this excerpt from an article I happened to find as a result of a google search for "the oyster slid":

"He dug through the barrel until he found one he liked and opened it; with the knife, he cut the valve from under the meat, squeezed a wedge of lemon over it and handed me the half-shell with its glistening treasure. I looked at him quizzically; in a deep voice he commanded, "Put it up to your mouth and let it slide off the shell onto your tongue. Be careful, it's slippery." I did as instructed. The combination of silky texture, subtle presence, ocean scent and briny flavor was so surprising and intense that I am sure my eyes must have closed in response to the utter sensuality of the experience, which lasted but a moment before the oyster slid easily down my throat. So that's what love's all about."

Can one honestly say that the "being identity/experience" that was extinguished as a result of killing this oyster is greater than the being identity/experience created by it's consumption, not only in the "concentration of being" that is the author, but as a contribution to the experience of all the human readers of this passage, ourselves included? If "being identity/experience" is indeed what is to be maximized, surely this particular transfer from one "center/concentration" to another is a positive transaction, as is any transaction in which "identity/exerience" is magnified by the act of transferrence. Isn't this transferrence and magnification itself the evolution of increasing universal consciousness?

So, if the question is posed: "Who am I to take the life of an oyster for my own transient pleasure?" I think it may be reasonable to argue that "I am an unknown, mediocre writer for a free, weekly Nashville newspaper." is more than enough justification.

-Mark

Hi Andres,

This is thoughtful and provocative, but I've got to get off to a trade show
this morning, but briefly: death terror and pain are unavoidable and
intense with higher ordres of life. It does matter if we are the agent
versus the "natural world out there"; not obviously so much as with humans,
but as a matter of degree animals would have to have exactly zero value
given the points I've made about the other side of the scale: unnecessary
human indulgence of transient easily substituible pleasure.

To clarify my take more, I would say an animal is a "center/concentration of
being identity/experience" that has an "integrity" in the "now
primarily/future secondarily" that we should respect and not end or fuck
with lightly. Although as we go down the scale of being our reasons can be
ever "lighter". I meant flower also in this sense and just borrowed it from
you in a different context, but I meant more literally in the moment of
being versus an unfolding of potential being: consideration is owed the more
"complex" animal "flowers" of being in terms of their individual beingness
(capcity to suffer, experience, and simply be their mode of being), although
certainly and categorically not to the extent owed human "flowers" and as a
matter of degree.

By "amazingness" I'm also getting at the deeper finer reason in the human
nature for "respect", "non-violence" and "non-interference" in another's
life, and that the reason we have of interfering and endign an animal's
life, dpending, should have some justification beyond our own unnecessary
easily substitutible pleasure. The pleasure of just ending an animal life
in a sadist way is in a way as much a justification as the transient taste
pleasure of a soup made of that animal, insofar as arbitrary human pleasure
trumps the "zero point" score of the animal being.

But all this applies with tremendously more force higher versus lower on the
chain of being. I can't motivate that much empathy for clams and snails
versus pigs and cows. And most of this insight does come first with most
force in consideration owed our fellow human beings. That is categorically
different, but also a matter of degree as we engage with more alien yet
still "amazing" animal beings.

Life interferes and feeds on and ends other life, and we unavoidably and
justifiably do so when there is reason or necessity (which doesn't have to
be that big a deal). But that doesn't mean that there need be "no reason at
all" of ending animal life for the sake of the transient pleasure we take in
ending it for a tasty soup. Arguably simply the pleasure for those who take
such pleasure in killing an animal is less substitutible and "more
justifiable".

Anyway, this could be more considereed and thoughtful but I've got to run,
and I'll reread anddwell more later on what you've written. Thanks for
keeping this going.

Take care, David

Ok, I have a few moments to respond now. Before I get into the issues, I
thought people might like to know about a helpful safe-seafood guide Monica
found a couple years ago at the Monterey Bay Aquarium. At the link below
there are printable, regional pocket-guides that tell you what seafood is
fished responsibly, which is just alright, and which to avoid. I have one
in my wallet myself, and it's been pretty useful, although it doesn't cover
everything. Happily, two of the cheapest fishes--farmed catfish and
tilapia--are in the "Best" category.

http://www.mbayaq.org/cr/cr_seafoodwatch/download.asp

[[Note: the following is a bit long, and even at that length incomplete. It
has been interesting for me to think through this, which is why I wrote so
much, but no one, not even Dave, should feel compelled to respond or even
read it. I'll post it to the blog later.]]

First, let me recap what I tried to say in my last email.

Recap:
1. I asked: What is the ground (or grounds) for a supposed duty not to eat
animals if it is possible to avoid it? (I'm looking for a categorical duty
that is not based on utilitarian considerations of efficiency.)
2. I posited: Animals are not the kind of beings that are concerned with
their being/becoming (see previous post for explanation). Insofar as
"premature" human death is tragic because we are these kinds of beings,
"premature" animal death is not tragic in this way.
3. I posited: Some animals (particularly those that raise their young) may
exhibit a kind of interpersonal care which might make them the kind of being
that is "sad" enough at the death of others that we should avoid bringing
this death about. But if this criteria is valid, it clearly does not
disqualify eating of all animals. I admitted uncertainty about which
animals "pass" this test, but was pretty sure fish (and come to think of it,
cold-blooded animals in general) don't.

Now for Dave's response, as I see it (the rest is written in second person
to Dave):

First you suggest that the proper criteria to consider when deciding whether
to eat something or not is mostly the "negative criteria" of the "ability to
experience and suffer pain combined with the absence of that unique life
being and experience that has its own integrity." You say that these are
not black and white properties which organisms either have or don't, but
rather properties that can apply at different levels; this allows us to say
that it is "worse" to kill some animals (who, presumably, have more
experience of pain and more integrity of life being and experience) than
others, on a gradated scale.

You also, however, present what I see as a separate argument, although you
might want to argue that it is part of the same argument. This is the
argument from the point of view of the "amazingness" of the mode of being of
animals, an amazingness that we (humans) can experience by observing animals
behaving in their environment. This is what I think you're pointing to when
you mention how sharks are amazing in their "mode," or how you were
impressed by the wild chickens in Taiwan. I may be wrong, but I felt like
what you had in mind was not the "integrity of experience" of those animals,
but rather the unique mode of behavior that they exhibit. To stress that I
see these as separate, I would just say that you could be impressed by the
amazingness of the behavior of ants without thinking that they have much
integrity of experience (or, for that matter, a possibility of experiencing
pain).

Finally, you suggest that that killing animals to eat them prematurely cuts
off the "flowering" that is their own. I assume this was in response to my
argument that only humans care about their own being/becoming. You seem to
be saying that while only humans care about their development, other animals
exhibit it, and it should be allowed to

[Besides these arguments, you also point out the collateral damage of
irresponsible fishing, and the connection between veal and the dairy
industry, as indications of how our consumption has less-than-evident
effects that are also bad. I take this point to be unimpeachable, but
besides the point, since it does not bear upon the question of whether there
is an absolute duty not to eat animals. (It may be, of course, that the
negative effects of animal food industry are so entrenched that the only way
to avoid them is to refrain from eating animals altogether, but that's a
practical question, not a moral one.)]

Returning to your main points: You claim that these are reason enough not
to eat animals when survival is not at stake. I have doubts across the
board, however, so let me take your points one by one.

1. Pain: Why is the pain we cause by killing animals reason not to kill
them? I would guess, and probably rightly, that almost ALL "natural" animal
death is quite painful, being caused, usually, by mauling, disease, or
starvation. These are probably as painful, if not more so, than a quick
knife chop. I'm not saying all or most animals killed for human consumption
die painlessly, but just that it's probably no more painful than "natural"
death, which is definitely going to happen. If that's the case (and maybe it
's not) then I don't see how pain alone is a reason not to eat animals.

2. Unique integrity of experience: This is a weird one to talk about,
because it's not clear what "integrity of experience" means. I'm not even
sure I have integrity of experience. Insofar as I think I do, it has
something to do with a sense of my own identity across time. I believe few
if any animals have this. But maybe you just mean that animals have
experience simpliciter (in the sense of "consciousness"), "unique integrity
of experience" just being a fancy way to say it. If so, then your argument
seems to be that experience is a good in itself that should be preserved
when at all possible. This carries more intuitive force to me than the
previous argument from pain, since here we're at least preserving something
(experience) that can be preserved (or at least extended) rather than trying
to avoid something (pain) which can't really be avoided.

But we have to be very careful here, and not let the fact that we value our
own experience, and rejoice at the experiences other humans share with us,
simply transform itself into the idea that individual animal experience is
valuable in itself. I'm not arguing that it isn't, but rather that we need
to think carefully about how and whether it is. If it is, it certainly has
to be something about the value of each individual animal experience, and
not just the fact that there is experience; if it were the latter, then the
death of an animal wouldn't be a problem, since there would be plenty more
experience of the same species to go around. So you must be saying that the
experiences of, say, a particular duck have intrinsic value, or at least (if
value is the wrong term, which I think it is) that they make some kind of
claim to being that we shouldn't ignore. Or rather, it's the *future*
experiences of such a duck that make this claim, since the experience the
duck has already had have already happened-there's nothing we can do about
them. Or is it rather a 'now-point' between past and future, if there is
such a thing, that makes this claim? Is it the particular poise with which
the duck brings the new into its own moment that makes a claim to continue
existing?

This last formulation seems the most convincing to me so far, so let me
assume you're saying something like it and pursue it a little further. Let
me say it again, differently, just to try it out: because the duck is open
to new realities, because being open to these realities is, in a sense, its
very essence as a being that is an embodied awareness, this is reason enough
not to eat it. Why? Presumably because this embodied receptivity of the New
is a primitive Good which should be allowed to continue without human
interference. Why should this be? Here it gets tricky. I see two
possibilities:

A) ['virtue ethics' approach] Embodied openness to the new (i.e. "conscious
life") is a miracle, more awe-inspiring than the miracle of plant life, and
to snuff it out for food is to close oneself off to its incredible
unfathomableness. (I realized just now it may seem like I'm sarcastically
aping your manner of speaking-I'm not at all.) This would make refraining
from animal-eating not so much a duty as a personal virtue, the reflection
of a character in touch with the world, of one who properly treasures what
is most wonderful. Since conscious life is inherently individual (though
also perhaps inherently intersubjective) it is precisely in its
individuality that it must be treasured, and this means preserving
individual consciousnesses, and not just consciousness in general.

B) ['natural law' approach] Embodied openness to the new (i.e. "conscious
life") is something that has something like a *right* to continue. This is a
different approach, and one I can't see a justification for without
resorting to a divine order that would simply make it so. I'm curious to see
what you (or anyone) can come up with as a justification for this approach.
What would ground the "right" of a non-self-conscious consciousness to go on
being conscious? I don't mean to give this approach short shrift, but I'm
getting tired and want to wrap things up, so I'll leave it at tha.

Actually, I'm tired enough to just stop writing now. Let me just mention a
couple of things I'd like to follow up on tomorrow, but may not.

1. Are A) and B) in essence the only ways to articulate a claim of conscious
life on us to let it continue being?

2. A) depends on the idea that eating animals is possible only if one closes
oneself off to the miracle of living, embodied openness to the new. Is this
connection necessary? In particular, would it be possible to be virtuous and
eat animals after they have had "enough" experience?

3. Question 2 leads me to David's point, which I haven't addressed, about
animals having their own kind of "flowering" which needs to be respected,
and not cut off. I will try to think about and address this, as it seems
crucial to the line of thought I've sketched out above.

4. Nor have I addressed explicitly David's claim that the simple amazingness
unique forms life commands a totally "hands-off" attitude (whether or not
these forms have an "integrity of experience"). Right now I can only say
that I don't find this very compelling.

5. On a different but important note, I really want to think more carefully
about the connection between our revulsion at the death of an animal and our
ability to "inhabit" it bodily, so to speak, to make the body "ours"; and
also the connection between this revulsion and our recognition of the animal
as having a face that returns our gaze (compare chimps to pigs to fish to
lobsters to jellyfish).

I'll have to respond to this tomorrow afternoon/evening, at which point I'll
just correspond with you (Dave) and Mark unless anyone else pipes in or lets
us know they've been reading along raptly.

andres

_________________

Please include me on these exchanges -- I have been enjoying them.

_________________


and me! i think i'll enjoy them when i have a chance to read them.

_________________

I have also been enjoying them. And wondering why I have fallen off
the veg wagon. I must resist the siren call of bacon.


_________________

Haven't had a chance to read them fully, but please keep me in the
butchering & love loop.

From a Q&A with the Arch-Drude himself:


What would you say to someone aiming to be a vegetarian but having problems achieving it? (Mrs Parker)
*
I'd ask why they were waiting and why they were asking me. You have to be pretty uninformed to eat meat in the 21st century, or live in some grand delusions that Father Corporation secretly cares. He's made himself shamefully clear enough to everyone often enough. I grew up loving all kinds of animal corpses in all states of decay. My father liked the cheapest cuts of offal and the brains and the hooves and the lot. I was addicted to it but knew I had to say "Fuck it". Once you make the decision to inform yourself and know the truth, there's really no other way. And you're not a vegetarian if you eat fish so I cut that out. You're not a vegetarian if you eat gelatine, so I cut that out. I know people who call themselves demi-veggies, which means that they eat chicken and delude themselves, but feel better in a New Age style. Fuck that! It's like saying "I'm not a racist because I only call out 'Nigger!' to 1 in every 400 black people I meet." It's the one time you do it which makes you what you are.

But I also believe that we do what we can. If it was me alone in the countryside I'd have no problem killing animals to eat them, but I just decided that I can't have some vicious sadist in an abattoir doing it for me. And anyone who says they aren't vicious sadists should meet abattoir workers. They certainly ain't just doing it for the money.

I don't judge non-vegetarians harshly. I'm a compassionate motherfucker. If someone's too blind or weak to do it, then let them do their bit in another way. We must all do what we can. I just hate the temporary ones doing it for a cheap New Age fix. Don't do it to be seen to be doing it - do it for yourself.

Would you eat a chicken if it meant 50 chickens would be spared from slaughter? (Barry)
*
How did this question from my 4-year-old nephew get in here?

Fantastic! My brother in-law just asked me what I was laughing so hard
about, and I said I'd tell him later after this series ends. I was just
jumping online again to post that I preferred the formulation of my argument
from my original post (versus the one Andres highlighted) as:

"We have the very easy human capacity to shut down and not care, as we are
'more machine than man' most of the time, but we can also appreciate the
unique life and magic of an animal's existence as something not to fuck with
and end without good reason, now that we are past the pure
evolutionary/cultural survival needs that justified this in the past."

Sacrificing an infinite number of chimpanzees to save Andres is a step in the right direction, but I personally believe that, should any course of action provide me, as an individual, with the most minute amount of pleasure or the most infinitesimal avoidance of pain, it would justify the total annihilation of all life (plant, animal, non-me human, etc.) on this planet or anywhere else it may exist (and perhaps even the destruction of all inanimate matter and energy in the universe). But, hey, that's just me.

-mark

Hi Andres,

The morality and consideration owed our fellow human beings completely
swamps and dwarfs what is owed any animal. If there's one Andres and an
infinite number of chimpanzees whose lives are in the balance, I'd save you
man.

Elsewhere as you point out, I believe there is a "gradation" of
consideration owed depending not so much on the the "positive criteria" of
ability to relate to and care about others that you advance, although that's
an interesting way to approach and certainly important and overlaps
somewhat, but rather mostly on the negative criteria of ability to
experience and suffer pain combined with the absence of that unique life
being and experience that has its own integrity. Nowhere near the tragedy
and absence of the death/murder of a human being, but sad nonetheless
relatively in its death and absence depedning. Allowing for the
hypothetical that food animals can be treated and killed humanely and
painlessly, that animal's existence and mode and flower of being still have
been ended for no good reason.

I definitely think that the lower down the "chain of being" the better; i.e.
killing chimpanzees versus cows/pigs/dogs versus chickens versus fish versus
lobsters/mollusks/snails/insects. I don't agree though with the line you're
trying to draw between a dog and a cow and a pig. I think cows do have the
capacity to bond with humans and each other as do dogs especially from
conversations with Sue and her milking cows (Sue eats meat for the record
but tries to do so responsibly), and in India you don't eat cows, in Korea
you eat dogs, and here you eat cows but not dogs. It's a cultural
difference of meat preference for these animals, but within themsleves
there's not a line to be drawn. I do see a line can be drawn between these
and chickens/birds and then further and most reasonably with fish. But even
fish are pretty amazing to see do their thing, and while they may not have
that much internal being-experience going on, they still feel the pain of
the hook. And I had a great "wildlife encounter" with some wild chickens in
Taroko Gorge in Taiwan, that were pecking on a 60 degree incline wiht
beautiful plumage in a rainforest... they blew up the "stupid chicken"
stereotype for me, and made me realize how much we project and conflate the
pathetic abysmal conditions we put food animals in wtih the animals
themselves (i.e. stupid and pathetic animals).

And most importantly what is being set up on the other side of the scale?
When it was human/cultural survival and good health, that is quite a lot,
but when it's just an old no longer necessary cultural habit and individual
taste for the flesh, that's hardly much at all especially when tasty
vegetarian options are available. The animal's life in question must matter
exactly nothing for that to work. Sharks and fish may not have the nicest
family life and friendly interactions, but they are amazing in their way and
in their mode, and to me killing them for tasty soup is a Bad thing.

Also we have to confront the realities of what actually is happening to the
food animals. Painless humane treatment and slaughter are unrealized
hypotheticals in almost all cases. Dairy cows have to be kept perpetually
pregnant and there is a close connection between dairy cows and the veal
industry. Ocean dredging and long lines kill so many other organisms aside
from the intended catch and Mother Jones in their current issue has a great
cover article on the collapse of fisheries and coastal ecosystems
world-wide. They also have an article on what fish are more responsibly
eaten.

Anyway, I do respect moves to both lessen the total amount of meat eaten, to
do so lower on the "chain of being" and to do so from farms that humanely
raise and slaughter their animals/milk their cows. I think all these are
very great versus the status quo, but nonetheless believe veganism is the
most great.

Take care, David

P.S. Harper's this issue has an interesting piece about chimps versus
bonobos relating to aggression versus care within a troop (not relating to
diet but your exposition on care), and how important environmental factors
versus biology are even within the chimpanzee troops, some of which have
developed much more bonobo like caring societies.

Well you both rock anyway. Evidently mostly this was in my head. If Maya
has no problem and you have no problem, then I have no problem.

Dave:
Thanks for your thoughtful email, which did a lot ot revive an issue that had lain dormant in me for a while. (You may remember I was on a fish-and-veggie diet for about a year, from 2003-4.) In particularly, thanks for reminding me about how foie gras is made, a fact I had forgotten, or rather suppressed.

Now, I agree with you 100% about the need to move away from factory farming of livestock and from cruel treatment in general. Monica and I are pretty good about that, but certainly could be more careful about what we purchase. What I'm still having trouble with is finding a truly sound justification for abstaining from eating animals altogether, even if the primary motivation is greater pleasure. Surely there is a fairly good argument from the point of view of efficiency (as you pointed out, there is a loss of energy when you eat meat that eats vegetable matter, rather than just eating the vegetable matter directly. But that's a strictly utilitarian argument that would simply depend on certain facts-e.g. how much meat consumption the world can sustain--and doesn't rule out eating animals in principle. You seem convinced that we do have a duty to abstain from eating animals. This is what I'd like to press you on, not at all because I'm convinced you are wrong, but because I'd like the opportunity to think this through more carefully myself.

You don't really present an argument for such a duty in your email. The closest you come is to say that your "empathic self" finally concluded that: "Consuming food and experiencing together is a shared communion essential to our being... but what's so great about me that I should have animals killed and scarified [sic?] for my being and existence, versus just rolling with tasty vegetarian/vegan fare and having the same gustatory pleasure and shared group experience?" Now, for this sentiment to have force, we must know that it really is bad with a capital B to kill things in order to eat them, since otherwise we're not really doing anything hubristic in promoting/enjoying our existence by doing so. So the question is still: Why is it bad?

One could start by saying that killing humans is plainly bad, and that drawing a line between humans and other things is an arbitrary, or species-centric move. Perhaps. But I'm not ready to relinquish the idea that there aren't in fact HUGE differences between humans and other animals, differences which could in fact provide a firm ground for protecting the lives of the former while merely preventing the suffering of the latter. A human, one could argue (and I would in fact argue this) is a kind of being that is concerned with its own being (cf. Heidegger), with its own becoming, with the flowering of its potential, with the unfolding of its destiny, with the creative bringing-about of its own fullness of life etc. This, or something like this, is part of what makes the death of a fellow human so sad, especially when it is at a young age. We want something from our lives, and when someone dies we see a life denied, where life is not just a biological process but the unique drama that it is each of our fortunes to simultaneously suffer and enact. I simply see no evidence that other animals exist in this way. They are not concerned with what they will be, what they have been, what they are. Maybe this is a limitation of vision or empathy on my part, and insofar as I could believe other animals lived this kind of life, I think I would feel much worse about killing them than I do.

Now, someone could counter that even if animals don't have the kind of life I've described, this is no reason to go ahead and eat them, because the duty not to kill them is not predicated on their having this kind of existence. When I went to a "fish-and-lower" diet, I thought I had hit upon an alternate criterion, viz. whether or not a creature nurtured its young (at least as a species). This struck me as a reliable sign that something like love, or at least "interpersonal" care was going on, and that this kind of bond was one we had a duty to respect, since it seemed to be what made us care about other people (or animals) in the first place. To put it differently, I felt that if an animals were of the sort that cared for each other, then they were of the sort that could be sad if one of their kind died, even if we weren't so sad. And since we know we should refrain from doing things that make others sad when possible, we should extend that duty to animals too.

I still find this argument somewhat compelling, though still a bit tentative and shaky. This is mainly because the animals we eat, as far as I can tell, don't seem to develop relationships that last once the mother-infant stage is gone (this may not be true of pigs--I'm not sure about that). Dogs and cats can stay friends/family for life. I don't think that's really true of cows, and am almost certain it isn't so for chickens. So I'm skeptical of the idea that a cow or chicken would really be sad at losing a "peer" in the way I know cats and dogs can be. Certainly they can be creeped out when they actually see one of their own being killed, but that's different. I guess I just need to find out more about the relationships animals form. But you can see that this criterion could rule out eating some animals, but not all, or even many.

And it certainly doesn't rule out eating fish or shellfish, who as far as I can tell don't give a crap about anyone but themselves.
So I'm left with a criterion for not eating cats, dogs, and primates etc.--but I don't eat those anyway. Maybe the criterion extends to cows, sheep, goats, rabbits, etc., but I'm not sure. If I decide that it does, that would be a significant conclusion for m. But I'm still wondering whether there is a sound reason not to eat ANY animals, or at least not to eat mammals and birds. The simple fact that something is alive, and beautifully so, doesn't strike me as a strong enough reason not to eat it, when this can be done without inflicting real pain, not to mention life-long suffering. This is not to say that sometimes I don't look at a sheep and want it to keep on living and bleating. But I don't know why this means I should want it to die of natural causes rather than "artificially" for the purposes of consumption. The latter doesn't seem worse than the former, assuming A) the sheep doesn't "care" about its existence in the way I described above, and B) other sheep wouldn't be saddened by the "premature" loss of their buddy.

I'll stop now and see what anyone (meaning Dave) has to say. Like I said, I'm genuinely looking for convincing answers to my questions.

andres

Yeah, I thought it was funny too.

Wait, who was upset?
I didn’t remember noticing anyone being upset, but I was pretty zoned with sun and pina colada.
I do remember being inspired by the conversation to say to myself, “yes, since I choose to eat meat I should be more responsible about where it comes from,” before I fell asleep. Which I think is a good thing.

The only thing for me was whether you guys felt Maya shouldn’t have gone to lunch there, and worrying about whether we had gotten it officially ok’d first, which I couldn’t recall.

I had a great time with all you guys!

xxx madam j

For the record, I thought the eating your dog comment was funny and the fact that I find PETA annoying has pretty much nothing to do with the righteousness of their agenda and pretty much everything to do with their silly tactics (except the the caged bikini women painted like tigers, as I mentioned about ten million times). If anything detracted from the wonders of the Rene the butcher it was the fact that, while Rene had to travel to the Pyrnees to find the apple liqueur, Sollors somehow managed to find a bottle right there in St. Martin.

Anyhow, as far as I am concerned, there was no grief caused and no enjoyment diminished.

-mark

p.s. i actually haven't read the entire email yet, but i will.

Hello Madame J, Mark and all:

Thank you to Madame J primarily and Mark secondarily and everyone else tertially for a spectacular week together. St. Martin was everything I could have hoped for with old and new friends in a beautiful locale with well-organized non-stop entertaining activities. I can wax poetic on all this, but will await the pictures worth thousands upon thousands of words. At the moment primarily I feel a need to share and apologize for an incident relating to the butcher that developed into an issue that should not have happened.

Of all the St Martin experience they wanted to share with friends, Mark and Madame J's gustatory and cultural experience at the butcher was a centerpiece. Incredible cuts of meat prepared to an exquisite ridiculous degree in a rich experiential environment, by a man who loves what he does and sharing what he does at price way below what he could because of the love and the experience. A rich full gestalt of pleasure that from all reports was everything Madame J had hyped and hoped for.

In general, as a vegan living in conservative San Diego and doing business often around this divided country, I have no issue 99% of the time with others eating meat. It's off the radar screen, as after years of experience with friends and family, I go out of my way to deflect and play down the issue when it arises in the course of a meal so as not to make anyone feel guilty or interfere with the otherwise mutually rewarding spaces we share and create and inhabit together. There is a time and a place for such intense debates and discussions, but tends to fuck up meals together, and generally if I know someone is pro-life or holds a strong view I hold the opposite of, unless it's provoked, unavoidable or mutually desired I don't go there as the many other levels of mutual love and admiration and shared pleasure and experience go by the wayside just so we can fight over the difference.

I've taught Maya the same as a vegetarian, a choice and identity she embraces and understands, to live and let live, and to explain her position simply without making others feel unduly guilty when the issue arises. This works well as she is pretty much the only vegetarian in her entire peer group, with notable exceptions, but all her friends and family and social encounters deal very well as a non-issue. It's love all around and Maya loves right back.

Maya's heart is huge, with love for many, but Madame J enjoys a special place in this pantheon of love, and on a certain day last week, Madame J, Mark and others kindly took Maya with them when they were going out to eat which was at the butcher's. I was out snorkeling and Kris was jamming on some class work she had to get done. As in hindsight would not be unexpected, the butcher upon hearing Maya was vegetarian asked why so, and Maya replied because "she likes animals so doesn't want to eat them" and the butcher replied "he likes animals too but he eats them". This was all in French and very cute, and friends were amused and impressed at the ideological stand-off in perfect French.

Friends were so amused and impressed that this was repeated to me many times, and I took it for what it was and it wasn't a big deal, but somewhere around the third or fourth time, I reacted inappropriately to the underlying substantive issue and the notion of moral equivalence of the stated positions. I said something irritably to the effect that the butcher wouldn't eat his pet dog so doesn't eat animals he "likes".

This turned out to be rather annoying to Mark and Madame J, as I was dissing a man and experience that was very important and beautiful for them to share, and Madame J had kindly gone out of her way to accommodate and make sure me and my crazy vegan ways were satisfied. I'm adept at fending for and feeding myself in any environment (I.e. steak house, etc.), but I appreciate the love and the consideration. What was the butcher going to say anyway, as his position is the general status quo cultural attitude and he handled it well and kindly (see attached for amusing breakdown of general status quo). I should have just left it. Anyway, the following day, a somewhat unpleasant discussion ensued on vegetarianism amongst myself, Mark, Madame J and other friends on Pinel Island, with snarky comments on various stupid things PETA has done and vegetarianism in general. I realized then that I'd fucked up and caused Mark and Madam J grief with my comment the night before, and while the conversation was intense, I didn't want to dwell and make things worse so didn't really get into it beyond apologizing for the comment and then being snarky myself (although I did carry on a bit with Danielle in a nicer one-on-one conversation).

What I most value about our gatherings are friends and the shared experiences we create together, and while I do enjoy intense debate and argument about issues affecting our individual lives and collective body politic and Earth home and being, I don't want to sabotage the former for the latter. Especially when our shared time is short in a magical gathering place as was the villa and isle of St. Marten. But here with reflection via e-mail, in a virtual community that is all we now have as remnant of our time together last week, until the very next time of course, I wanted to share and apologize above, and explain better where I come from below.

The dog living on Pinel Island as an "island pet" was a proximate stimulus to discussion when Danielle fed it some chicken. The happy natural way of things as the dog ate the chicken was observed to accord with the happy natural way of things of people eating ribs and burgers on the Island. But if it wasn't anyone's pet and if I was a Korean dog farmer/butcher, I could put it in a sack and beat it with a stick to release adrenalin and tenderize the meat for a nice delicacy. (Insofar as a dog is someone's pet than of course a Korean dog farmer would do no such a thing). Culturally we wouldn't do this, but force-feeding geese until their livers explode for foie gras is somewhat acceptable in our culture although geese farming for foie gras is now illegal in California. Veal occupies this same in between space in our culture. Some animals are seen as pets and companions, or potential pets and companions, like dogs and cats, or given special high-order status, like primates, horses, dolphins and whales, while others are just food animals and are treated abysmally in our factory farming industry. While it is certainly true that killing higher-order mammals is worse to kill than lower-order, and hierarchically versus birds versus fish versus snails, this is also arbitrary insofar as pigs are generally more intelligent than dogs and are capable of forming intense companion bonds with humans.

We have the very easy human capacity to shut down and not care, as we are "more machine than man" most of the time, but we can also appreciate the unique life and magic of an animal's existence as something not to fuck with and end without good reason, now that we are past the pure evolutionary/cultural survival needs that justified this in the past.

For myself, confronting "de novo" the question of our dietary choices as part of a general revaluation of our inherited cultural norms, shutting down and killing animals for "compelling" reasons is acceptable (including population control, medical research that cannot otherwise be done, rat/pest infestation or for survival food on a deserted island). But in deference to my better empathic self, it was no longer acceptable to shut down to feed my culturally-inherited/biased taste for particular types and kinds of flesh, no matter how great it tastes and how many people are happily consuming it. Consuming food and experiencing together is a shared communion essential to our being... but what's so great about me that I should have animals killed and scarified for my being and existence, versus just rolling with tasty vegetarian/vegan fare and having the same gustatory pleasure and shared group experience? While certainly some culinary traditions lack pretty hard in offering traditional tasty vegetarian/vegan fare (European/ American), others don't (Asian, Indian, Middle Eastern) and a gourmet vegetarian culinary tradition is arising in the US in recent decades where phenomenal vegetarian fare can be had. The argument that we should get down with eating meat in our own/other cultures because blue-collar workers or Native Americans or the French or South American revolutionaries or desert Bedouin are and have been doing so forever doesn't justify anything. By that logic I should beat Kris in such cultures that allow and expect this when she's disagreeing with my infinite wisdom which is most of the time. Where eating meat is essential to survival such as in the old plains Native American tradition and hunting buffalo, that's fine, but the level of respect and veneration and connection to the buffalo who roamed otherwise free is no comparison or justification for the vapid commodity relationship our culture has with the terrible lot of factory farm animals.

I also believe in harm reduction, and respect conscious food choices made that are short of veganism: humane-raised free-ranging animals supplying meat is much cooler and rad than factory farming and represents awareness and basic decency to the animals being slaughtered to fuel your being; organic humane ranged dairy and eggs I don't have too much problem with although the link between dairy and veal industries is depressing. There is also the populations/species/ecosystem levels, where the "environmental" concerns are important. I.e. What is a sustainable level of meat consumption given the inefficient conversion of primary grains to meat; what fishes are being farmed sustainably versus what are contributing to the fishery and ecosystem crashes around the world's oceans, etc.

What rocks my worlds are things and experiences that are BOTH fabulous AND ethical (i.e. my clothes such as the "GIRLIE MAN" shirt are organic cotton/hemp generally). The capitalistic free market has rightfully won out, but how do we keep our collective economic activity from destroying the environment and fueling working conditions around the world comparable to the terrible working conditions in America in the early industrial revolution? Everything is driven by consumption, and like ravens filling their nests with shiny bits of trash, we consume things that are hip, rad, tasty, fabulous i.e. desired, and we do so mostly complicit with capital producers to remain ignorant and rationalize the consequence and negative impacts of this consumption.

What we are at a most fundamental organismic systems level is gates of consumption and excretion, but with "free choice" being the hope we have of making the world better through relatively more ethical somewhat more inconvenient consumption choices. How do we participate in the collective maw that is destroying environmental ecosystems and communities around the world, and once we realize, how can we renounce our participation in that and throw our consumption "vote" toward technologies, products and practices that move us toward a more sustainable and just human society? Plant based organic agriculture while imperfect solves the impacts of our major pollution and destruction of our water and air due to conventional agricultural practice and runoff, and "fair trade" certification globalizes labor and worker rights conditions around global commodity products, catching up with the institutions and rules facilitating capital flows and projects around the world. The price gouging of retailers like Whole Foods around organic/fair trade products is temporary, as discount organic retailers like Trader Joe's gain more and more market share, and Wal-Mart has announced that it will be getting into organics in a huge way, bringing its brutal but amazing supply chain and cost efficiencies to play... but of course we need Wal Mart to become more like Costco, which delivers similar price value with similar internal efficiencies but with much better treatment of its workers.

I'll stop now. At some later time I'll post out on some of the cool fair trade projects we're setting up for our primary materials for our soaps, with cool pictures too. My apologies to Madam J, Mark and others for throwing a wet blanket on the crown jewel of the gustatory experiences shared last week. As we move forward in life and gatherings, older and wiser, such things and provocations will not happen.

In Gratitude,
David