Eating Animals

Do we as educators have a responsibility to properly inform our students how animal proteins are being raised these days and that the family farm is a thing of the recent past?  In fact, it is the image of the quaint family farm that corporations are leveraging to sell meat and fish to consumers.  I think we do and that is why I continue to recommend the books I have been reading to get an accurate picture of global production of fish, chickens, turkeys, pigs, and beef.  Sadly, much of what I read tells me that what we are doing to produce plentiful cheap animal proteins is polluting our planet and making us sick in the process -- which by the way I feel swine flu should not have been changed to be called H1N1 and called this horse by its color.

In Eating Animals, the author Jonathan Safran Foer takes the reader first through defining the terms that are bantered about when it comes to eating animals such as organic, PETA, kosher, KFC and more to make the points raised later in the book more clear.  He then gives a full analysis of the state of the corporatized businesses that bring us animal proteins and it is not a flattering picture -- even if 50% of what he writes is true in the way proteins are raised and slaughtered these days.

He also points out some of the ironies of those in today's society where people seek shampoo that's not tested on animals while at the same time buying meat that's produced in profoundly cruel systems.  Foer also turned readers on to a video on YouTube called as "Meet Your Meat."  It has video clips of animals being both raised in inhumane ways and slaughtered the same way.  I watched the video myself and had seen similar footage on other documentaries.  The thing I found most offensive was the savage ignorance of those who posted a response to watching the video similar to this one; "fuck the animals...all I care about is that there is a steak on my plate for dinner!"

Here are some other interesting factoids presented by the author which we should share with our students and call upon the corporatized meat factories to defend:
* Nearly one-third of the land surface of the planet is dedicated to livestock.
* Half of all layer chickens born in the United States -- 250 Million -- are destroyed each year because they had the misfortune of being born male.
* The average shrimp-trawling operation throws 80-90 percent of the sea animals it catches overboard, dead or dying as "bycatch".  In other words -- 26 pounds of other sea animals were killed and tossed back into the ocean to yield 1 pound of shrimp (so give that some thought next time you pick up a package of "wild caught" shrimp).
* Less than 1% of the animals killed for meat in America come from family farms
* Universities are complicit in the cruel treatment of animals as evidenced in the change of names of departments from animal husbandry to animal science.
* In a typical cage, egg-laying chickens get 67 square inches to live in and lay eggs, which is roughly two-thirds of a 8.5x11 sheet of paper.

I highly recommend this book for culinary arts and hospitality "educators" to read and reflect upon.  I also call upon us all to see if you can get to tour a hog producer or packer and watch the proceedings to see is what was written in the book is at all true.  I plan on calling Perdue which is just down the road from where I live in Indiana to see if I can get a tour of their chicken factory and will report back how it went.

In sum, once our students are properly informed as to the production of animal proteins these days we can leave it up to them as to how they will integrate meat and fish into their diet or the menus they will certainly manage in the future.  Perhaps we set aside our own ignorance and teach them to use meat and fish as a side dish and put vegetable creations at the center of the plate.