Meat and Ethics

I know pigs are pretty smart creatures, and that cows can show signs of fear and anxiety when being led to slaughter. I've no reason to believe that other animals don't have similar responses. Essentially, I just minimize what I eat in the way of animal proteins as much as possible, and when I do eat such meat it's mostly chicken, turkey or fish. That's not to say I never eat pork or red meat, but it's rare, and generally I only buy such meat when I know about the provider and the slaughtering methods. A sometimes exception is when eating in a restaurant.

I am concerned about the inhumane way some animals are slaughtered. Things are getting better in that regard, which is as it should be, but there are still too many instances where animals are raised and slaughtered inhumanely and with little or no concern for their well being. Fortunately, there are many providers who raise, handle, and slaughter their animals with care and appreciation.

Shel

Young Gun, I would say follow your conscience. But know this...That the PETA movement is strong. And they are also very present in the anthropomorphism movement (imbuing animals with human attributes) or rebirth we as a culture seem to be experiencing.

I'm not discounting they may feel fear, pain, etc. All animals, even single cell amoebas have a pain reflex! So I do want them handled and slaughtered humanely and given a good life up to the point of slaughter. But I come back to the fact that being a Christian my rules are that God gave us animals to be good stewards over and to use for our benefit.

Happy cooking to you!

BZ

I haven't eaten red meat, pork or poultry for around 30 years. I do eat fish & seafood. I cook meat for others when necessary. I would agree that following your conscience is the best you can do.
pgr

I've personally never had any problem with eating red meat, or had any concern over the "humane" way they are butchered. I worked on a kill floor at a beef cutting and rendering plant and the last thing on my list was "did that poor cow feel any pain?". I'm more concerned about how that "poor cow" is going to taste after I cook it and slide a delectable slice into my waiting mouth.
Just my opinion though....

The only meat that is strictly off the table is human.

There is a very good reason for "humane" slaughter. Animals that are stressed before slaughter produce terrible quality meat. For example PSE in pork. Here is an interesting article about it.

I don't buy any of the moral arguments against eating meat I've heard so far. I do think we have a duty of stewerdship to properly care for animals we raise, but I haven't spent a lot of time navel gazing on the issue.

No reason to feel bad for eating meat. Our predecessors (apes on up to us) ate meat.

But hey, if it makes you feel better, might as well skip the steak.

we are lucky over here

in that being a smaller country the animals have much more land to roam on before being led off to market and so there fore you dont get that forcefed small enclosure thing that a lot of countries have for their animals as much.

I think that we all should be able to know that the animals are treated well before and during their demise, , as tincook said animals that are treated badly produce bad meat, and as people who collectively work and enjoy food like we all do on here, we want to know that either our customers or family and freinds are getting the best deal that they can afford .

I dont think its right to have these kinds of animals as pets , or give them names iedaisy or bertha or what ever and then eat them, as then it seems tthat human traits and characteristics are inadvertently projected on them , and so therefore its like killing off one of your family.

I have nothing against vegetarians or vegetarianism please dont get me wrong, but i do think as a chef or a professional caterer or in the food industry unless your working in a vegetarian setting then you do have to give the customer what the customer wants, and if you have the power and abilities to be able to work your ethics in to your establishment then do so in a way thats empowering to all concerned. Ie going for organic and free range , which then puts the prices up for the customer and if your business or area are able to do that and your customers are willing to pay for it. Most customers dont mind paying a bit extra when they know that the food they are buying is just thatextra bit better in quality and treatment from farm to plate.
But if your business or area cant get those extra prices then you have to work with what you have and what you can get at the best price for it.

know your farmers.....visit farms.....seriously.

That pretty much sums it up, doesn't it ... :)

Shel

nothing if not succincint. (sp?)

As you can see by my "handle", I'm American Indian. We have a different way of looking at things that I hope I can explain. In our world, everything is the same and has the same value whether it's human, animal, plant or rock. Everything has a soul, one no more important than the other. Animals need to live, we need to live. We recognize the gift of their life as a sacrifice so we can live, and thank their spirit. Accept the gift in the spirit it is given, don't waste anything, and enjoy your steak. Someday the bear may eat you.

I wish more people saw things in that way. Thanks for the post and the reminder ...

I wonder if it may be hard for some people to grasp or embrace the concept since their food comes prepackaged in boxes and wrapped in plastic from supermarkets, and much of the food has been processed so much to be quite far from the source, such as prepackaged hamburger meat that bears no resemblance and little relationship to the cow from which it came, or instant mashed potato flakes loaded with chemicals that don't look or taste much like potatoes.

Shel

This is a dilema that rears its head in our house. I have 2 of my 3 daughters that are semi or over the top vegans. Both have/are working in the "cookin biz". My oldest (has worked with many world class Chef's) based her choice on 2 things health and environmetal concerns. The other because shes a Hippy( she chose more of a managment path to distance herself from the slaughter). both cut meat prep meat and serve meat in their jobs because its part of their job and they love to work in a kitchen. But under our roof they let their feelings be known about the "I dont eat things that had a Mother". The very good points of animal stress and quaility of meat as a result have been discussed endlessly. This has encouraged me to seek out meat from crdible sources where I know that the prossess is humaine. Wise advice from the Shroom once agin.

Cheers fstfrdy :chef:

For so many of us location and time constraints make getting to the ranch or farm very difficult, not that it can't be done. It's a matter of priorities, I suppose. However, it's not too difficult to research these matters and make your choices informed choices. Shop at a local farmer's market and ask questions (not only for meat, but for all your food items), search the internet, talk to the local butcher or poultry purveyor, or produce people, buy your food outside of the supermarket/costo/walmart models whenever possible.

Even here in the San Francisco area, mecca to such things, one may have to work at getting the best quality and safest foods, which may mean shopping at several markets and not just cruising down the aisle at Whole Foods or the local natural grocery. It took time to find the items and the markets that satisfied me. I believe it was worth the investment.

Shel

One of my good friends father is Native American and also a butcher. He always said "Enjoy the meal why you can, you never know if you will, someday be the meal." I agree fully:lips:

slaughtering is unpleasant but if you think it through where do you stop?

if you don't eat meat you can rely heavily on dairy. dairy requires cows to have calves. during a demonstration in the UK one time ( against cows beinhg shipped to France) a farmer pointed out, on Tv, that the vegetarians want the dairy but don't have solution for disposing of the calves.

if you then decide not to eat dairy either, it (vegan) is a very hard diet to stay healthy on and often requires supplements (calcium and Iorn in partic) and its particularily hard to rear children that way as they need so much calcium and iorn.

Then I suppose you should not wear leather or any hide. but would we then be using alot of plastics/ man made fibres ( soles of shoes) I sure it can be argued that you can wear cotton or wool.

what about all the insects that get mashed when you harvest the cotton? or delouse the sheep?

I think you should eat the cow and wear the hide. i think the animals should be treated humanely so i do try to buy organic/free range etc.

i love what greyeaglem says... the bear won't worry about your feelings or how your life was... if you are dinner you are dinner.

don't know if that helps young gun.

no bears round here TG!!

meat

If you look at it physiologically, humans have the digestive enzymes, dietary need, and even the tooth structure to eat plants AND animals. But when it comes to ethics, it is a personal choice.....
I personally eat a lot of game meat, as my husband is a hunter. Now we firmly believe in a 1-shot kill. Unlike those hunters that will shoot and animal and then have to chase it for miles while it slowly bleeds to death, my husband believes that if he can't drop the animal with one shot, he won't take it. There should be a certain respect for the animal. But I feel good about serving this meat to my family, as I know where it came from and how it was handled. I know it was cleaned and chilled right away, and since I do all my own cutting- I know it is clean and sanitary. We do not eat cats and dogs only because we have developed a personal relationship with them... but there is no reason why they could not be eaten... they do in other countries ... (but, no I'm not eating my dogs) but I do eat (or have eaten) venison, wild boar, rabbit, squirrel, frogs legs, ostrich, and alligator. I t comes down to a personal choice.... but mush of our commercially prepared items have animal products in them- stocks, boullions, gelatins, etc.... I eat meat becuase I like it, and it meets my dietary/health needs... but I prefer to eat meat that is organic or personally hunted..... Bambi burger anyone?? LOL

Jayme nice post. You pretty much echoed my beliefs. I grew up with a family who hunted and fished for most of our protein. My dad was a Marine and also believed in the one shot kill and anything killed would be eaten. We didn't hunt for sport. The way he explained it to us was that we were the conservators of a series of populations whether that was ducks, geese, fish, deer, boar, rabbit, javalina, etc...and that our responsibility was to manage the herd on our land since the natural large predators were gone. To keep the balance of nature going. So we would look to shoot animals that we would not want breeding (i.e. in deer it would be spikes and small does, old bucks past their prime, etc.). It worked and we saw that by the build up of our herds of different wild life on our property that weren't there when we bought it. We only hunted in blinds and in accordance with the parks and wildlife seasons etc.

We broke down our own animals and even then we used darn near every part of an animal. And we broke them down immediately, not letting them sit. I still have some deer hides shot by my dad over 50 years ago!! All this was pointing to having respect for your food and raw ingredients, animal, mineral or vegetable! We also raised rabbit for food for quite awhile. So I guess I have differing views than someone who didn't grow up hunting.

I also believe that an animal should not be stressed during life or imminent death because of the hormones released due to that...

A good source for those who are not aware: Eat Wild is a cool resource for grass fed produce in or near your communities.

I may have left some of you with a wrong perception of me. I'm hypocritical enough to admit that if I had to butcher and process my own meat, I would be a vegetarian. However, I'm not. The thing to remember is all things have a purpose in this world. If, for instance, cattle weren't being raised for food, they wouldn't be raised at all. Everything is born, everything dies. The circle goes on. Sometimes we look too hard at things and make them more complicated than they really are. The farmer feeds the pig, the pig lives his life and then feeds the farmer. The farmer dies and is buried, and his body feeds the apple tree that grows on his grave. The apple feeds the pig and there we are again. So which is more important; the pig, the apple or the farmer?

And you've answered your own question, everything eats everything else. Only cultural taboo decides what is ok to eat and what isn't. Meat is Meat is meat. If your conscience is bothering you, only two things you can do, give up eating , cooking, and using animal byproducts all together,(tougher than you might think) or you can make sure that the animals you are using had a good life when they were alive.

now wouldn't that be great : the pig feeds the farmer, who feeds the apple tree. Oh come on! I just had to delete what I was writing cause I was getting madder and madder.
I think it is oldfashioned to label this a humane vs inhumane issue. I think it should be sustainable vs unsustainable issue. Just because you source your meat from the farmer down the road doesn't mean that said farmer has been any more responsible. Yes, I believe that the sustainable system is humane(really should be "quality of life") but I'm not well spoken enough to tell you why in less than 1000 words although if I had to chose one word it would be BALANCE. My mother told me oh so long ago "everything in moderation"...and it's true. Why do we have to have steak topped with foie gras? Why do we have to have foie gras every week? If we had kept Foie gras something very special then we would'nt be having this problem trying to serve it; we wouldn't have thousands of animals inhumanely neglected in huge confiment systems-we would have a handfull of responsible farmers force feeding their birds!
Be responsible: Eat meat, don't waste it. And always be aware that as chefs, you are the captain of this ship.
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well said Rose.....not quite sure if we're on the same page, but I think so.

Sustainable is all well and good but the realities are that profitable drives sustainable, not the other way around. The best example of this are people who claim they are all for sustainable but shop at sams club for the cryovac stuff. They do that because of cost.

I grew up around farms and farming, my mother can tell stories about when they got electricity on the farm. The biggest lesson I learned from that was where food comes from and how it gets to the kitchen. That lesson has been lost or turned into something else for too many people. I think because of the easy replacement of the food, the store has lots more, waste is so much easier.

Whether you do your own butchering or buy it from a store, I believe that we as consumers of that product need to use it wisely. We can drive the profitable sustainable agriculture with the choices we make. If you don't know your farmers get to know a butcher who does!
George

Rose I also think well said but I think part of the issue the market faces is an increasingly growing market and keeping up with demand without taking shortcuts. Not only is the population growing but education and world media bring information to people who might have been previously uneducated or unaware of a product. So the bigger question is how the sustainable farms movement can keep up with demand.

Meat and the USD

Having been a chef for over 35 years, I sometimes stop and wonder, how come years ago we did not have all the problems from contaminated meat? I did research and found the the government has all but stopped inspecting meat plants and slaughter houses. They have put them on self inspection. This is a joke, as you and I have never met a poor butcher. In fact there are no butchers today. The carcases travel down a line and 10 or 15 people stand there, each trained to make 1 cut of the carcass. They have no health dept. permits and in fact are mostly illegal aliens. If an animal falls into the troughs, it is simply picked up, sometimes hosed down and put back on the line after falling into its own blood and waste. These packing houses get away with murder. Freezing and refrigeration another problem with them.
Having the products sit on the floor before putting in retail freezers in your local market till someone gets around to it increases bacterial growth. I am sure you have all seen this. Where does it end,? who knows but I implore you make sure you cook ground beef to at least 160 if not higher and wait for internal temp to keep a constant 160.

I'm all for humane treatment of feed animals for increased quality of product and sustainable practices so we don't ruin it for future generations... but I think one goes too far to anthropomorphize everything in life. I mean, we don't condone the practice of high density feed lots for animals but we approve of high density agricultural practices that basically tries to squeeze as many plants in as small an area as possible. Are plants (and presumably insects and fish we breed for eating) not worthy of our utmost attention because they're not smart enough? Complex enough forms of life? Fact of the matter is, Humans need to ingest organic components to survive and unless you're going to be making inert pieces of organic matter in a lab to consume we're all being somewhat hypocritical.

Shroom is right

That's what I was about to say. I have close friends who are organic farmers, they run a fromagerie and raise pigs, chickens and ducks for slaugter. To see how they care for the animals and raise them, and to realize THIS is thier livelyhood, it is how they pay the rent, makes me feel alot better about all the organic meats I butcher and serve.
-ciao

Who is anthropomorphizing here?

"Sustainable is all well and good but the realities are that profitable drives sustainable, not the other way around. " Huh?
There is A LOT of discussion about the cost/profitablity of organic foods. What the basic consumer doesn't realize is the cost of conventionally grown food. In my mind the biggest costs are :1)cleaning up the environment, 2)healthcare (diabetics, overweight, ADD...). These are not outright costs but come, bascally, from taxes. First let me say I am generalizing way too much to defend my next statement but ...these are issues not created by "organic/sustainable", yet this system is still be taxed to help support the conventional mess. Pay now or pay later?
You can't change the world, but you could:
serve a split seafood entree with a least one environmentally friendly item
Oceans Alive - Best & Worst Seafood Choices
switch to heritage pork and cut the serving size if your cost is up American Livestock Breeds Conservancy - Conservation Priority List
switch to cane sugar (beets will be GMO's in 2008)
ask your vendor where your produce is from and don't buy it from another continent!
If your fronthouse is good, or if you have good marketing, sustainable is such a hot topic you can take a few baby steps now and you might be suprised how fast the news will travel.