Well, maybe. Check out this article by George Monbiot, in which he boldly issues a retraction of his statement that veganism is the only ethical way to eat, due to the social (oh yes, it doesn't just affect the beasts) and animal justice issues that underlay our meat production systems. Monbiot goes on to review a new book by Simon Fairlie that serves as "an abattoir for misleading claims and dodgy figures, on both sides of the argument."If you can excuse the awful, awful, and inappropriate slaughterhouse puns and get through to the meat of the article (Did I just say that?), you might clear up a few of your own misconceptions too. I certainly did!
Like, for example, you know how they always say it takes a huge amount of feed to produce a smaller amount of meat, to feed an even smaller amount of people? Comparatively, they say, eating the greens ourselves wastes a lot less energy and feeds more people. Well, it turns out that's true only when talking about "concentrated feed", not about grass. Actually, cows are terribly efficient at converting the energy in grass into edible energy for humans. Huh.Also discussed is how pigs are excellent converters of grain waste and slop into food. Basically, in their natural eating habits, they turn things we can't eat into things we can.
Tons of other misconceptions are addressed, as well as some remaining ethical/environmental issues.
Overall, say Monbiot and Fairlie, the root problem isn't the very fact that we're raising animals for food, but the way we're raising them. Feedlots and commercial slaughterhouses have got to go. But local production and low-energy and -waste farming could be an ethical way to go.
Here at Baja Trek we make most of our camp meals vegetarian. We also try to shop at our locally-owned grocery stores instead of the big commercial chains. When we eat seafood, we've usually bought it off a fisherman we know or dug it up (clams)/caught it ourselves. I'm interested to see if we can start chatting up our favorite taco stand-owners to see if they know where their meat comes from and under what conditions it's raised.
Perhaps it's time to get in touch with your sources of meat!
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