The Omnivore's Delimma - Can't get it out of my head

[Caleb]

Ok, so this is the book that turned me, Caleb, the sworn Carnivore, into a vegetarian. I can't stop thinking about it.  Has anyone else read this book?

It deals with the food chain, and basically how fucked up it is. What I keep playing in my head is that somehow this is the same disease that causes government. I mean, yeah, government plays its part in the whole nightmare, but for the most part these are problems that would exist even in a completely non-regulated environment.

What is it? Tendency to excess? Sure! That's obvious, but incomplete. I'm going crazy cause I can't put a finger on what the impulse is here that causes us to do this. I only feel that this is "the" problem (in that the same tendency recurs again and again in different spheres, causing so much human suffering.)

[ancapagency]

I read an article by a couple of anthropologists several years ago which said that the adoption of agriculture was the biggest mistake ever made.

They said that Humans were adapted to being hunter/gatherers, and that the widespread adoption of agriculture was supremely unhealthy--both the difference in nutrition, the back-breaking labor required to get enough caloric-content from agricultural products, and the fact that it tied people down to one piece of land.   It caused the establishment of cities, which caused problems with sanitation, and due to the now weakened immune systems (weakened by the hard labor and poor nutrition) humans became prone to epidemics and shortened lifespans.

Additionally, agriculture was responsible for the invention of government.  With the loss of defensive skills that hunters had, as well as the loss of strength caused by the change from a high-protein to a high starch diet, and the change from a nomadic lifestyle to one tied to a particular location, people were an easy target for groups of bandits to raid them and take all their stuff (and engage in a little rape, pillage, and burn).  Eventually, a group of bandits would find it easier to sell the locals on a protection scheme whereby if they followed the orders of the bandits, and paid them off, the bandits would protect them from other bandits.

It is illuminating when you remember that hunting, and largely the eating of meat, was reserved for the ruling class pretty soon after the rise of a ruling class. 

Just something to think about.

[John Edward Mercier]

The adoption of agriculture led to a dramatic increase in population and the formation of civilization. So most likely the increase in epidemics and enlargement of government beyond, the headman of a band, was mostly likely due to it.

But even in hunter/gatherer state human technological development was slowly changing the shape of our future.

Hunting/meat being reserved to the ruling class was a mixture of economics and everything in the Monarchy belonging to the king.

[dalebert]

If we ate nearly all of the animal, certain ones at least, instead of mostly muscle tissue and a couple of exceptions, we'd probably not need to eat anything but meat. I posted recently about that guy lost at sea for about four months (my memory sux though- might have been longer) by catching fish and eating them. He ate the usual parts for a while but was missing vital nutrients and started craving the rest of the fish. He said it wasn't gross to him to eat eyeballs and organs and what-not. They actually tasted good. It was like his body was telling him what he needed. They checked him out afterward and he was in the peak of health. My guess is it was a combination of getting the right nutrients from eating most of the fish combined with not over-eating, as most of us are prone to do in a world of such abundance. Perhaps in time our bodies will adapt to agriculture and abundance, but evolution takes a while.

[Caleb]

i agree with you. i am not opposed to eating animals morally. Given the right situation, I could be persuaded to eat meat. (Rather easily, actually.) If, for instance, someone offered me deer meat that had been shot in the wild. Or cattle that was raised in a way that I could confirm was humane and natural, fed on grasses, etc.

What I object to is the inhumanity and unkindness that is extended to animals, as if they aren't a living, breathing creature, but rather a product to be exploited heartlessly.

And there's more to it, and that "more" is what I was getting at in this thread, but I didn't do a very good job of explaining it because I had just reread the book and I sort of set as a precondition to the thread the assumption that the person had read the book. And what I'm talking about is this tendency that we have to exploit, to create destructively without regard for the consequences based merely on short-term gain. I can't understand (fully) what this impulse is. I can call it greed, but greed ought to take into consideration the sustainability of a certain course, and this impulse does not. I could call it a tendency to excess, but that seems to describe what without describing why. I could call it stupidity, except for the fact that in many cases the people can see what they are doing fully well intellectually. Pollan interviewed a veterinarian in the book, for instance, who said pretty much, "Yeah, all these animals are sick. We're pushing them way beyond what they can tolerate, and I think by the time they are big enough for slaughter, it's probably good that they are going to the slaughterhouse because their bodies couldn't take it anymore beyond this point."  Ok, good, you see it with your head. But what do you do for a living? You inject the animals with hormones and antibiotics to try to override their natural digestive system.

The reason we take them off the pastures (cattle are biologically selected to eat grass, not grain) and put them in the barren feedlot subsisting on soybean and corn is because we can get them to market in 1.5 years instead of 5. But only at the cost of eating diseased animals (not to mention animals that are laden with hormones and antibiotics to help their bodies process the corn which it naturally can't do.) And because they are diseased and medicated, their natural dung can't be used as fertilizer anymore. So two problems are created, disposal of dung, and supplying fertilizer.  Not only that, there is the third problem of supplying food for them. The grasses grow naturally, but the corn must be raised on land that could be suited to other purposes, and ends up costing us something like 7 billion barrels of oil per year to raise this unnatural food crop for the cattle.

So what is the human impulse that asks us to do this?

Caleb

[srqrebel]

...I can't understand (fully) what this impulse is. I can call it greed, but greed ought to take into consideration the sustainability of a certain course, and this impulse does not. I could call it a tendency to excess, but that seems to describe what without describing why. I could call it stupidity, except for the fact that in many cases the people can see what they are doing fully well intellectually...

Recklessness?

Lack of accountability?

Seems to me it is akin to the attitude of some folks that blind action for the sake of action is somehow superior to action that is based on careful, well thought out strategy.

One just cannot have it both ways. I have long wondered what kind of mental blindness afflicts those who poo-poo the idea of thoroughly applying one's intellect before physically engaging.

[John Edward Mercier]

Whoa.
Its OK to kill and eat an animal that has struggled for its survival, but not the domesticated one that had all its security and feed provided?
And cattle are genetically selected by humans, they have not experienced natural or sexual selection for quite some time.

[Caleb]

That's just it, they aren't getting their security and feed provided. What security is it to have to lay around in your own dung all day? And what kind of feed is it that is provided that you can't eat?

As for the idea that cattle are genetically selected by humans, that is laughable. If they are so well adapted to eating corn, no doubt it will be okay to stop giving them the hormones and antibiotics, right? Do you read up on stuff before you pull it out of your ass? They are genetically selected by humans to survive the mistreatment in a diseased condition (diseased livers and kidneys, for instance, plus an acidic stomach condition rather than an alkaline one that allows bugs that are a threat to humans to make it into our food supply) for the year and a half that it takes to bulk them up enough to slaughter them, provided they get their doses of hormones and antibiotics. That's not genetically selected, that's gerry-rigged to the detriment of the consumer.

[John Edward Mercier]

Security from predators. And hormones and antibiotics are about production. Each generation the dairy farmers and cattlemen choose what animals to mate for genetics that will increase production (milk or meat). They realized sillage/grain would only increase production so much (both are higher in nutrients than grass)... the hormones increase the production/growth (would do the same if grass fed, but only to the extent of available nutrient). And the antibiotics are used to overcome disease spread by confinement.
If your wondering many animals die in infancy in the wild from predation and such... but very few bovine do.

We do the same in our gardens... choosing seeds from plants that have genetic traits we want. And providing extra nutrients to stimulate growth, while protecting them from natural predators.

You want to see cruelty... watch a deer or bear chased by hounds... or a calf being raised for veal.

[srqrebel]

It sounds like Caleb is not protesting the killing or eating of farm raised animals at all, but rather the inhumane treatment of those animals.

Hey Caleb... what purpose is there in boycotting the meat of inhumanely treated animals? It only serves to alter the behavior of those who are profit motivated to get the animals to market as efficiently as possible... and then only if enough others are informed enough to join you in the boycott... right?

Think of the hardships you will cause those poor factory "farmers", when enough people stop doing business with them in favor of meat from humanely treated animals -- all because their behavior doesn't meet enough of their potential customers' moral standards.

Better not to seek information on how the farmers treat their animals, and just keep blindly supporting those folks, dontcha think? ...especially if they themselves don't wish to divulge that information

[Caleb]

Caleb, I read an article on the internet recently which may hint at an answer to your question:

"Global Totalitarianism And The Death Of Nature" by Diane Harvey

http://www.rense.com/general9/death.htm

From her article:

"The choice is either this: or nothing. We will become intelligently loving and wise as a species, fulfilling our inherent purpose, or we will become extinct."

Our choices are evolution or extinction. It's time to evolve.

[Caleb]

It sounds like Caleb is not protesting the killing or eating of farm raised animals at all, but rather the inhumane treatment of those animals.

Hey Caleb... what purpose is there in boycotting the meat of inhumanely treated animals? It only serves to alter the behavior of those who are profit motivated to get the animals to market as efficiently as possible... and then only if enough others are informed enough to join you in the boycott... right?

Think of the hardships you will cause those poor factory "farmers", when enough people stop doing business with them in favor of meat from humanely treated animals -- all because their behavior doesn't meet enough of their potential customers' moral standards.

Better not to seek information on how the farmers treat their animals, and just keep blindly supporting those folks, dontcha think? ...especially if they themselves don't wish to divulge that information

sigh. replace the unnatural with the natural, Menno. I, me, a human being, developed a natural, emotional repugnance to eating meat that had been raised in such a fashion, and responded appropriately. I didn't try to systematize it into some sort of organizational, procedural mechanism that destroys its substance. In fact, this is very much the issue in the cattle situation:  natural vs. unnatural, with man for some reason carrying out warfare on the natural, thinking that his mind can defeat it.

[Caleb]

Security from predators. And hormones and antibiotics are about production. Each generation the dairy farmers and cattlemen choose what animals to mate for genetics that will increase production (milk or meat). They realized sillage/grain would only increase production so much (both are higher in nutrients than grass)... the hormones increase the production/growth (would do the same if grass fed, but only to the extent of available nutrient). And the antibiotics are used to overcome disease spread by confinement.
If your wondering many animals die in infancy in the wild from predation and such... but very few bovine do.

We do the same in our gardens... choosing seeds from plants that have genetic traits we want. And providing extra nutrients to stimulate growth, while protecting them from natural predators.

You want to see cruelty... watch a deer or bear chased by hounds... or a calf being raised for veal.

No offense, but I'm starting to see discussing this topic with you as a waste of my time.

Imagine we decided to start eating koala. You could say, "Wow, this Eucalyptus leaf diet is really slow to bulk up this koala. I think I'll feed him high powered olive oil, try to fatten him up in half the time."  But there's one problem: The koala doesn't eat anything but eucalyptus leaves because he has been selected to eat this diet. You could try all sorts of fancy chemicals to help him digest your new olive oil diet, but you would also be eating those chemicals too, because what is in his body is in yours once you eat him. If he gets sick and diseased, you suffer from that too. You have WAY too much faith n this human process of selecting animals that do better under the horrible conditions. That doesn't mean they are ok. The cow is still very much a ruminant. It eats grass. And nothing humans have done has changed that. Close your eyes if you want to. Yes, there is other cruelty in other places. This is only one part of it. But no, it's not ok. And we can't make it ok without changing how we approach things. You don't want to do that, so you tell yourself it's ok.

[Raineyrocks]

Ok, so this is the book that turned me, Caleb, the sworn Carnivore, into a vegetarian. I can't stop thinking about it.  Has anyone else read this book?

It deals with the food chain, and basically how fucked up it is. What I keep playing in my head is that somehow this is the same disease that causes government. I mean, yeah, government plays its part in the whole nightmare, but for the most part these are problems that would exist even in a completely non-regulated environment.

What is it? Tendency to excess? Sure! That's obvious, but incomplete. I'm going crazy cause I can't put a finger on what the impulse is here that causes us to do this. I only feel that this is "the" problem (in that the same tendency recurs again and again in different spheres, causing so much human suffering.)

I haven't read that book but a co-worker years ago gave me a Peta subscription and after I read the 1st magazine, I stopped eating meat.  I kind of learned some things I don't like about Peta but that 1 magazine was enough to keep me a vegetarian for 15 years.  I also read John Robbins, Diet for a New America and cried for hours. 

I've gone back to eating free range meat for about 8 months now I think and I'm really thinking of going back to being a veggie because I personally don't feel right biting into someone else's flesh and I've been telling myself things like oh well, it is free range but really so what?  A cow has a life span of I think 30 years so I'm helping in taking what, 27 or 28 years of that cow's life away.  Who am I to do that?  I'm going to read the book you read.  One of the reasons I started eating meat again is because I'm anemic but I became even worse after eating meat so that's not the answer and it still doesn't sit right in my head to eat an animal.  I ate tons of soy products that are genetically modified, 2 kids came out with birth defects, (minor), that are now proven to be linked to soy intake while pregnant even before they were GM'ed.  With the other 3 kids I ate meat and they're fine.

Anyways I was thinking okay I'll try to get meat but it has to be treated humanely well I don't know, I wouldn't want to live with people that treated me nice for a couple of years then slit my throat so out goes my thing there. Soy is crap so now what are veggies left to eat I guess beans, rice, fruit, and veggies I can deal with that. A lot of people say animals don't have the same feelings as us, how do they know what feelings animals have?  As far as I know most animals don't do the cruel things human beings do so I say 1+ for the animals.

As far as the answer to your question I think it's greed like so many other things are done for and also the govt. doesn't give a crap about what's good for us from food to shampoo.  So there's my feelings on the subject.

[Caleb]

Scott, you're the veggie genius. What can she do about anemia? I'm thinking maybe kale? Something with iron?