1. Review of "The Vegetarian Myth" by Lierre Keith — Ginny Messina
2. The Omnivore’s Dilemma [by Michael Pollan]: My Review — Adam Merberg
environment, environmentalism, human rights, animal rights, vegetarianism, veganism
Showing posts with label Michael Pollan. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Michael Pollan. Show all posts
December 22, 2012
December 21, 2012
An ethical blind spot of the locavores
John Sanbonmatsu writes:
Kill Bill. And Lou, too.
That's what officials at Green Mountain College, in Poultney, Vt., decided to do to the two affectionate oxen on the college's working farm after one of the animals, Lou, sustained a minor leg injury over the summer. The college, whose reputation rests on its sustainable-agriculture program, announced that both oxen would be "processed" into hamburgers for the student cafeteria.
The case of Bill and Lou adds a new wrinkle to America's debate about the ethics of eating meat. For the first time, the public has been asked to consider whether the lives of farm animals matter, and not merely their quality of life. The story of the two oxen shows us why they do.
For decades, animal advocates struggled to bring public awareness to the horrific conditions on so-called "factory farms," where billions of sensitive animals languish in squalor and misery. While 99 percent of all meat consumed in the U.S. still comes from factory farms, consumers are increasingly uneasy with "farming" that treats animals viciously and is an ecological catastrophe.
Stepping into this growing breach between our stomachs and our moral sensibilities come the locavore and sustainability food movements. Such Bestsellers as Michael Pollan's "Omnivore's Dilemma" have reassured consumers that they can have their meat and their consciences, too, by choosing "humane" animal products "grown" on organic local farms. The crisis of animal agriculture, it is argued, can be solved through "organic beef," backyard chicken coops and do-it-yourself slaughter.
In reality, studies suggest that raising and killing billions of animals for human consumption is ecological bad news no matter how it's done, whether on small family farms or in concentrated animal-feeding operations (CAFOs). Cows grazed on pasture, for example, produce more carbon emissions per capita than grain-fed animals in intensive confinement.
Confronted with such inconvenient facts, however, locavores maintain that we have but two choices -- to eat animals "locally" or to eat them industrially. As Green Mountain's provost, William Throop, was quoted as saying in an Oct. 29 New York Times article about the situation, the college must choose "either to eat the animals that we know have been cared for and lived good lives or serve the bodies of nameless animals we do not know."
But the omnivore's dilemma is a false one. We could simply choose not to eat meat at all. Why then do locavores pretend that we only have two choices?
Perhaps because they have no good arguments to justify the violence required to run even a small-scale, organic animal farm -- the use of whips, nose-rings, barbed wire, castration, brandings with hot irons, decapitation by ax or knife. The absence of good reasons for their views may explain why locavores eschew moral philosophy for poetical reveries on the "cycle of life." As Green Mountain's provost put it, "Bill and Lou are not pets but part of an intimate biotic community" based on "relationships of care and respect."
However, there is something Orwellian about depicting animals like Bill and Lou as members of an "intimate community" of "care and respect," while moving with great institutional dispatch to shoot them in the head, cut their throats, bleed them to death, and serve them as burgers. Lip-service to "care" aside, the lives of Bill and Lou have been viewed with such low regard by Green Mountain that when a local animal sanctuary offered to take the oxen so that they might live out the rest of their lives in peace, the college flatly refused, explaining that, were the oxen permitted to live, they "would continue to consume resources at a significant rate, and as a sustainable farm" the college couldn't let that happen.
Merely to let Bill and Lou exist, in other words, would be to violate the college's virtuous circle of sustainability. As "living tools" -- Aristotle's definition of a slave -- Bill and Lou have had no value beyond their perceived usefulness. Once their ecological outputs exceeded their inputs, they became as dispensable as rusty farm implements. And so they must die.
Left unexplored in this chilling logic is why the human animals living and working on Green Mountain's campus, each responsible for a far greater carbon footprint than Bill and Lou combined, do not deserve similarly ruthless treatment. The average American generates 20 tons of carbon dioxide a year, far more even than the average dairy cow. Are we therefore "unworthy" of life? Or do we not recognize something vital about consciousness, all consciousness, that lends it a value beyond reduction to abstract efficiency ratios?
Year after year, Bill and Lou, lovely, gentle, intelligent, feeling beings, were coerced by their human overseers to labor for the college. They ploughed its rain-laden fields and pulled its heavy equipment, in inclement weather and in all seasons. The college then decided to "repay" this debt by cutting their throats and dismembering them, so that in this way they might be exploited one last time, in death too.
It is this grotesque and unfeeling utilitarian logic that accounts for the public outcry against Green Mountain's treatment of the oxen. It offends our sense of justice when "even" farm animals are treated with such ingratitude and casual brutality.
Alas, protests and petitions could not save Lou. In November, Green Mountain announced that it had "euthanized" Lou and buried his body in secret, claiming that his injury was causing him "discomfort." Bill has been granted a temporary stay of execution. The college won't say what it plans to do with him.
If there is a moral to this story, it is that the locavores have failed to dissolve the troubling ethical questions at the heart of animal agriculture, organic or not. Locavore critics assure us that it is morally acceptable to raise and kill other animals for food, provided that the latter have had a "good enough" life before being sent to slaughter. But they have not told us why.
environment, environmentalism, animal rights, vegetarianism, veganism, Vermont
October 26, 2012
Lou and Bill and the desire to eat them
Photo by Caleb Kenna for the Boston Globe—
Alison Putnam and Meiko Lunetta tend to Lou,
who with partner Bill has become a symbol at Green Mountain College,
but they are to be sent to a slaughterhouse.
All they need do now is dress the animals in garlands and fine fabrics and dance and sing around them as they're led to slaughter — sacrifices on the altar of environmental sustainability.
The “moral complexity”, as Green Mountain College Provost Bill Throop called it, clearly means only a web of rationalizations based on the false premise that the students must eat meat. The “complexity” arises to create a fog of distraction from the fundamental fallacy behind their choice. Like Michael Pollan, the students and staff at this college are now traveling over great lengths of ethical deliberation only to arrive right where they started: Kill the beast; We must eat.
We have not seen an exercise of moral decision making. We see only self-serving rationalizations of unnecessary violence.
Update: See the articles by Marc Bekoff:
http://www.greanvillepost.com/2012/10/17/the-animal-file-mascot-oxen-to-be-killed-for-burger-meat/
http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/animal-emotions/201210/bill-and-lou-who-lives-who-dies-and-why
http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/animal-emotions/201211/green-mountain-oxen-bill-lives-lou-dies
Update (5 Nov): "Grass Power at GMC"
Training sessions are usually done by Christopher Bergen who has also lead [sic] general driving and experiential lessons in dealing with the oxen. [Ben] Dube closed out with a few tips. “To be a good teamster, you need to be sensitive and attentive, but also not afraid to express authority and dominance. I think that most people who start out on Bill and Lou have more trouble with the latter. Sometimes you have to be a little mean with them, which isn’t easy to do with such sweet animals. I don’t like it, but over time, you learn that they don’t really resent it or mind it much.” [emphasis added] In being around Bill and Lou I have seen that this is definitely the case, and understanding how to work with them is a good learning experience.animal rights, vegetarianism, Vermont
September 10, 2009
Michael Pollan Is Sick
More evidence that food writer Michael Pollan is a paid spokesman for the health insurance industry, or perhaps just their useful idiot, comes in today's New York Times. Pollan offers an opinion piece explaining how for-profit health insurance is key to reforming the American diet.
His argument is that new rules preventing denial of coverage for pre-existing conditions will impel the insurance industry to fight against obesity, and their power is necessary in opposing high-fructose corn syrup subsidies.
The incentive, however, already exists, and the source of profits will not change. In fact, by expanding public expenditure, the existing incentives would also expand.
Pollan ignores the fact that obesity is more an issue of poverty and sedentary work and leisure than of diet per se. He ignores the fact that the consequences of obesity (e.g., type 2 diabetes, heart disease, circulatory disease) mostly manifest at a later age, when Medicare is paying. And that suggests that since, as Pollan aptly notes, "the government is putting itself in the uncomfortable position of subsidizing both the costs of treating type 2 diabetes and the consumption of high-fructose corn syrup", a position it is already in, then it is the government that needs to resolve that conflict — for the public good, not to maximize insurance-company profits.
Pollan legitimizes some of the worst elements in this debate: the concern for private insurance companies (as if they must be accommodated in any change rather than the other way around), and the illogical distraction of "personal responsibility". But to call for empowering Big Insurance in the hope that they will take on Big Food is simply idiotic.
human rights, animal rights, vegetarianism
His argument is that new rules preventing denial of coverage for pre-existing conditions will impel the insurance industry to fight against obesity, and their power is necessary in opposing high-fructose corn syrup subsidies.
The incentive, however, already exists, and the source of profits will not change. In fact, by expanding public expenditure, the existing incentives would also expand.
Pollan ignores the fact that obesity is more an issue of poverty and sedentary work and leisure than of diet per se. He ignores the fact that the consequences of obesity (e.g., type 2 diabetes, heart disease, circulatory disease) mostly manifest at a later age, when Medicare is paying. And that suggests that since, as Pollan aptly notes, "the government is putting itself in the uncomfortable position of subsidizing both the costs of treating type 2 diabetes and the consumption of high-fructose corn syrup", a position it is already in, then it is the government that needs to resolve that conflict — for the public good, not to maximize insurance-company profits.
Pollan legitimizes some of the worst elements in this debate: the concern for private insurance companies (as if they must be accommodated in any change rather than the other way around), and the illogical distraction of "personal responsibility". But to call for empowering Big Insurance in the hope that they will take on Big Food is simply idiotic.
human rights, animal rights, vegetarianism
September 9, 2009
Michael Pollan in pay of health insurance industry?
Russell Mokhiber writes on Counterpunch (click the title of this post):
Michael Pollan is a professor of journalism at the University of California, Berkeley.
He’s a prolific author and speaker.
And he’s a campaigner for fresh, wholesome, locally grown organic food.
He’s the author of many books, including The Omnivore’s Dilemma.
On his web site, he lists all of his recent appearances and speaking engagements.
Missing from the list?
Pollan’s June 4, 2009 appearance before the annual convention of America’s health insurance industry lobby – America’s Health Insurance Plans (AHIP).
Title of the panel on which Pollan appeared?
“Changing American Attitudes Towards Personal Responsibility and Health.”
The personal responsibility thing is, of course, at the heart of the national debate over health insurance reform.
Are we our brother’s keeper?
Or are we not?
Pollan stepped right in it last month when he posted an item on conservative David Frum’s New Majority web site.
In it, Pollan sides with Whole Foods and against those – like Single Payer Action – who have called for a boycott of Whole Foods.
Single Payer Action called for the boycott last month the day after Whole Foods CEO John Mackey penned an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal arguing that there is no right to health care in the United States.
And that there shouldn’t be.
It’s about personal responsibility, Mackey says.
“Rather than increase government spending and control, we need to address the root causes of poor health,” Mackey writes. “This begins with the realization that every American adult is responsible for his or her own health.”
Pollan says he won’t join the boycott of Whole Foods.
“Mackey is wrong on health care, but Whole Foods is often right about food, and their support for the farmers matters more to me than the political views of their founder,” Pollan writes.
Check that out: farmers matter more to Pollan that the political views of Mackey.
How far do you want to take that Michael?
What if Mackey were a flag burner?
Or a racist?
Would Pollan say that Whole Foods’ support for farmers matters more to him than the racist views of its founder?
Or the flag burning views of its founder?
No, he would not.
But, after all, we are just talking about life and death here.
Pollan has in the past taken the view that we can’t just be active consumers.
We have to be both active consumers and active citizens – rolled into one.
And as active citizens, how can we support a corporation whose CEO believes there is no human right to health care?
Can’t afford organic foods?
Tough luck, brother.
Can’t afford health insurance?
Tough luck, sister.
Every country of the Western industrialized world recognizes a basic human right to health care.
Except for the USA.
The result:
More than 60 Americans dead every day from lack of health insurance.
In his blog posting on David Frum’s web site, Pollan says he disagrees with Mackey on health care – but then says he wants to keep for profit health insurance companies in the game.
“When health insurers realize they will make thousands more in profits for every case of type II diabetes they can prevent, they will develop a strong interest in things like corn subsidies, local food systems, farmer’s markets, school lunch, public health campaigns about soda,” Pollan writes.
Pollan might know about his tofu and asparagus.
But he needs to brush up on his health care politics.
Keeping for profit health insurance corporations in the game will just guarantee the daily carnage of 60 Americans dead every day.
As Dr. Marcia Angell, former editor-in-chief of the New England Journal of Medicine puts it – single payer national health insurance – everybody in, nobody out – is not only the best option – it’s the only option that will insure everyone and control costs.
We sent Pollan two e-mails over the last couple of weeks, seeking some explanation.
As of now, no answer.
So, we don’t know what you have up your sleeve, Michael – blogging for David Frum, cavorting with health insurance executives at their annual meeting, and advocating for a health care system that keeps profit health insurance corporations in the game.
But it sure does pose a dilemma.
And it has nothing to do with being an omnivore.
[Note: Anyone who didn't until now think that Michael Pollan is a cut-throat corporatist probably isn't vegetarian. Pollan argued in The Omnivore's Dilemma that choosing not to kill animals for food actually avoids the moral choice it appears to be. I suppose he thinks that by not eating meat you're not influencing the industry to be more humane, as he is. Except, that by not eating meat, you're contributing to the demise of the industry altogether. While his "conscious" corpse-eating legitimizes the very imperative of feed lots etc. In other words, the omnivore's dilemma is that he wants his cake and to eat it, too. The Prius is still a car.]
human rights, animal rights, vegetarianism
Michael Pollan is a professor of journalism at the University of California, Berkeley.
He’s a prolific author and speaker.
And he’s a campaigner for fresh, wholesome, locally grown organic food.
He’s the author of many books, including The Omnivore’s Dilemma.
On his web site, he lists all of his recent appearances and speaking engagements.
Missing from the list?
Pollan’s June 4, 2009 appearance before the annual convention of America’s health insurance industry lobby – America’s Health Insurance Plans (AHIP).
Title of the panel on which Pollan appeared?
“Changing American Attitudes Towards Personal Responsibility and Health.”
The personal responsibility thing is, of course, at the heart of the national debate over health insurance reform.
Are we our brother’s keeper?
Or are we not?
Pollan stepped right in it last month when he posted an item on conservative David Frum’s New Majority web site.
In it, Pollan sides with Whole Foods and against those – like Single Payer Action – who have called for a boycott of Whole Foods.
Single Payer Action called for the boycott last month the day after Whole Foods CEO John Mackey penned an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal arguing that there is no right to health care in the United States.
And that there shouldn’t be.
It’s about personal responsibility, Mackey says.
“Rather than increase government spending and control, we need to address the root causes of poor health,” Mackey writes. “This begins with the realization that every American adult is responsible for his or her own health.”
Pollan says he won’t join the boycott of Whole Foods.
“Mackey is wrong on health care, but Whole Foods is often right about food, and their support for the farmers matters more to me than the political views of their founder,” Pollan writes.
Check that out: farmers matter more to Pollan that the political views of Mackey.
How far do you want to take that Michael?
What if Mackey were a flag burner?
Or a racist?
Would Pollan say that Whole Foods’ support for farmers matters more to him than the racist views of its founder?
Or the flag burning views of its founder?
No, he would not.
But, after all, we are just talking about life and death here.
Pollan has in the past taken the view that we can’t just be active consumers.
We have to be both active consumers and active citizens – rolled into one.
And as active citizens, how can we support a corporation whose CEO believes there is no human right to health care?
Can’t afford organic foods?
Tough luck, brother.
Can’t afford health insurance?
Tough luck, sister.
Every country of the Western industrialized world recognizes a basic human right to health care.
Except for the USA.
The result:
More than 60 Americans dead every day from lack of health insurance.
In his blog posting on David Frum’s web site, Pollan says he disagrees with Mackey on health care – but then says he wants to keep for profit health insurance companies in the game.
“When health insurers realize they will make thousands more in profits for every case of type II diabetes they can prevent, they will develop a strong interest in things like corn subsidies, local food systems, farmer’s markets, school lunch, public health campaigns about soda,” Pollan writes.
Pollan might know about his tofu and asparagus.
But he needs to brush up on his health care politics.
Keeping for profit health insurance corporations in the game will just guarantee the daily carnage of 60 Americans dead every day.
As Dr. Marcia Angell, former editor-in-chief of the New England Journal of Medicine puts it – single payer national health insurance – everybody in, nobody out – is not only the best option – it’s the only option that will insure everyone and control costs.
We sent Pollan two e-mails over the last couple of weeks, seeking some explanation.
As of now, no answer.
So, we don’t know what you have up your sleeve, Michael – blogging for David Frum, cavorting with health insurance executives at their annual meeting, and advocating for a health care system that keeps profit health insurance corporations in the game.
But it sure does pose a dilemma.
And it has nothing to do with being an omnivore.
[Note: Anyone who didn't until now think that Michael Pollan is a cut-throat corporatist probably isn't vegetarian. Pollan argued in The Omnivore's Dilemma that choosing not to kill animals for food actually avoids the moral choice it appears to be. I suppose he thinks that by not eating meat you're not influencing the industry to be more humane, as he is. Except, that by not eating meat, you're contributing to the demise of the industry altogether. While his "conscious" corpse-eating legitimizes the very imperative of feed lots etc. In other words, the omnivore's dilemma is that he wants his cake and to eat it, too. The Prius is still a car.]
human rights, animal rights, vegetarianism
August 27, 2007
Taste for Meat Marches On
Tim Flannery writes in the June 28 New York Review of Books:
Your ethical vegan practices ahimsa, or "do the least harm". Choosing organically grown food eliminates the harm from pesticides. Choosing food from small farmers reduces the harm done to animals in the fields. Growing one's own food reduces it yet more.
Michael Pollan, apparently with Tim Flannery's agreement, goes in the other direction. In recognizing that our sustenance does harm to the sustenance of other creatures, he justifies willful harm beyond unavoidable necessity.
His premise is that we must eat the corpses of other animals, and it is commendable that he would like to reduce the brutality of that practice. But that premise is invalid and based only on his unquestioned appetite.
The fact is, most of us do not need to eat the corpses of animals to survive. Many people live very well without eating flesh. So to continue eating flesh is a choice to kill unnecessarily. All the coddling of your "meal" while it is alive doesn't change the brutal fact of that choice. One can raise them and kill them less brutally, but the practice can never be called humane. The result of the feedlot is the same as that for the "happy" grass-grazing beef cow.
Flannery also reviews Bill McKibben's Deep Economy, in which we learn that McKibben is a corpse-eater, too. Has the pre-eminent voice about the dangers of global warming not heard that raising animals for food is responsible for more greenhouse gas effect than transport? Let alone the inexcusable pollution and waste of water, energy, land, and other resources.
How can anyone take these men seriously?
environment, environmentalism, animal rights, vegetarianism
Many readers will doubtless ask whether vegetarianism is better still. [Michael] Pollan [The Omnivore's Dilemma] tells us that even vegan lifestyles result in animal cruelty. Just think of the the thousands of field mice shredded by harvesters, the woodchucks crushed in their burrows by tractors, and the songbirds poisoned by pesticides when farmers grow the wheat for our bread. Pollan's message seems to be that to live we must kill, and the best we can do is both treat animals decently while they live and kill them humanely.This is moral argument?!
Your ethical vegan practices ahimsa, or "do the least harm". Choosing organically grown food eliminates the harm from pesticides. Choosing food from small farmers reduces the harm done to animals in the fields. Growing one's own food reduces it yet more.
Michael Pollan, apparently with Tim Flannery's agreement, goes in the other direction. In recognizing that our sustenance does harm to the sustenance of other creatures, he justifies willful harm beyond unavoidable necessity.
His premise is that we must eat the corpses of other animals, and it is commendable that he would like to reduce the brutality of that practice. But that premise is invalid and based only on his unquestioned appetite.
The fact is, most of us do not need to eat the corpses of animals to survive. Many people live very well without eating flesh. So to continue eating flesh is a choice to kill unnecessarily. All the coddling of your "meal" while it is alive doesn't change the brutal fact of that choice. One can raise them and kill them less brutally, but the practice can never be called humane. The result of the feedlot is the same as that for the "happy" grass-grazing beef cow.
Flannery also reviews Bill McKibben's Deep Economy, in which we learn that McKibben is a corpse-eater, too. Has the pre-eminent voice about the dangers of global warming not heard that raising animals for food is responsible for more greenhouse gas effect than transport? Let alone the inexcusable pollution and waste of water, energy, land, and other resources.
How can anyone take these men seriously?
environment, environmentalism, animal rights, vegetarianism
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