Re-thinking the meat guzzler

I am an enthusiastic carnivore. I love meat. I mean, I really love meat. My dad, a child of the Depression, wasn't upset if we kids didn't eat all our vegetables, but we couldn't leave the table unless we'd eaten every morsel of our meat. And that was fine with me: I couldn't get enough of the stuff. We ate a lot of meat growing up because we could afford it, but also, I think, because neither of my parents had a lot of it growing up. Being able to serve meat at every meal was to them, consciously or not, a sign of prosperity and security.

But just as having a big house and a big, gas-guzzling car may be a sign not only of prosperity, but also of decadence, I'm beginning to think that our meat-guzzling habits are as well. A couple of weeks ago, a friend, a serious, thoughtful Christian who'd recently read Michael Pollan's "The Omnivore's Dilemma" described the way we Americans get most of our meat as an "evil" system. He meant it literally. That struck me as a bit overstated, probably because it had been a long time since I'd read Matthew Scully's "Dominion." Well, the other night I finished the part of "The Omnivore's Dilemma" in which Pollan dwells at length on the method and manner of industrial feedlot farming, and I found it impossible to dispute my friend's earlier judgment: this stuff really is evil.

And I am complicit with it.

Understand, I'm not saying eating meat is evil. By no means! I am reminded, though, that our reliance on cheap, abundant meat depends entirely on a system that perverts the natural process of animal husbandry, and turns it into something cruel, degrading and immoral. I don't live with remotely enough fidelity to my principle that the meat I consume should be raised on a proper farm. If I did, my family's monthly meat bill would be unaffordable. We would have to eat less meat. But would that be wrong?

The chef Mark Bittman, in a must-read essay from Sunday's NYT, says no, in fact it would be wise and just. Excerpt:

Though some 800 million people on the planet now suffer from hunger or malnutrition, the majority of corn and soy grown in the world feeds cattle, pigs and chickens. This despite the inherent inefficiencies: about two to five times more grain is required to produce the same amount of calories through livestock as through direct grain consumption, according to Rosamond Naylor, an associate professor of economics at Stanford University. It is as much as 10 times more in the case of grain-fed beef in the United States.

The environmental impact of growing so much grain for animal feed is profound. Agriculture in the United States — much of which now serves the demand for meat — contributes to nearly three-quarters of all water-quality problems in the nation’s rivers and streams, according to the Environmental Protection Agency.

Because the stomachs of cattle are meant to digest grass, not grain, cattle raised industrially thrive only in the sense that they gain weight quickly. This diet made it possible to remove cattle from their natural environment and encourage the efficiency of mass confinement and slaughter. But it causes enough health problems that administration of antibiotics is routine, so much so that it can result in antibiotic-resistant bacteria that threaten the usefulness of medicines that treat people.

Those grain-fed animals, in turn, are contributing to health problems among the world’s wealthier citizens — heart disease, some types of cancer, diabetes. The argument that meat provides useful protein makes sense, if the quantities are small. But the “you gotta eat meat” claim collapses at American levels. Even if the amount of meat we eat weren’t harmful, it’s way more than enough.

Americans are downing close to 200 pounds of meat, poultry and fish per capita per year (dairy and eggs are separate, and hardly insignificant), an increase of 50 pounds per person from 50 years ago. We each consume something like 110 grams of protein a day, about twice the federal government’s recommended allowance; of that, about 75 grams come from animal protein. (The recommended level is itself considered by many dietary experts to be higher than it needs to be.) It’s likely that most of us would do just fine on around 30 grams of protein a day, virtually all of it from plant sources.

Interestingly, Bittman barely touches on the animal cruelty aspect of the argument, focusing instead on the huge and complex costs our meat indulgence offloads onto the Third World poor, environmental degradation, and other factors. I'm beginning to think that as a Christian and a conservative, who regards stewardship of the human community and the natural world as a divine mandate, I have a moral obligation for all these reasons to reduce my meat consumption, and to redouble my efforts only to buy meat raised sustainably by local farmers, who resist the feedlots and pens of industrial agriculture.

Again, that would mean eating less meat in my family. Again, is that so wrong? Obviously I want meat, and lots of it, every day. But wants are not the same things as needs, and given the moral, social and ecological cost of living the way I'd like to regarding meat consumption, it's hard to avoid the conclusion that my desire for so much meat (as distinct from any meat) is disordered.

Lent is almost here for Western Christians, and won't be far behind for Eastern Christians. Let us think on these things in a spirit of penitence, asceticism and spiritual renewal.