As Sara read Eating Animals she would read sections of it to me. And as she progressed through the end of the book it created a discussion in our house. The discussion centered on the suffering of animals and particularly our role in it.
This winter we took a class at Yoga North that detailed the concept of suffering – how we suffer, how to alleviate suffering and what does it mean to suffer as a person. This class and Eating Animals seemed linked in that if you are party to the suffering of the food you eat and you are what you eat, then very simply, aren’t you suffering? This doesn’t sit right – do we have to be a party to suffering? Does being a vegetarian immunize us from the suffering of animals? What about milk and cheese, doesn’t the cow suffer, doesn’t the calf suffer? What about vegans? Considering the migrant workers, the pesticides and the herbicides, is there any less suffering in vegetable matter? Doesn’t the suffering continue with the exploited land and workers and water?
If so then isn’t all food infected with suffering? What can you? To live we must eat.
Author Jonathan Safran Foer didn’t do a very good job in his book Eating Animals. He presented a world where all animal production is cruel and painful and if you eat animals or produce animals for food then you are complicit in a great suffering. Is that true for the entire world? I wasn’t convinced. I went down to my local food coop and looked at the labels on the pork chops. They read Pastures-a-plenty Kerkhovan Minnesota. A trip to their website confirmed my suspicion. They are raising and selling pork in such a way as their animals don’t suffer – their lives are as close to suffer free as can be possible – raised on open pastures the sows birth on pasture, feed on pasture and live without hormone supplements or drugs or confinement. The farm is a family business that employs another family business to process their pork – no slaughter house, just a family butcher shop. Can you trace a line so clearly with the tomatoes in the supermarket? How about the pineapple or mango?
Eating animals isn’t bad. It isn’t bad for you and it doesn’t have to include suffering. The pork chops from Pastures-a-plenty are delicious; they feed my body and my conscience. Shouldn’t we support farms like these? Aren’t they a big part to the solution to removing suffering from our food? Can’t we all take a more active role in understanding where all our food comes from? I think we can.
Please visit Pastures-a-plenty and Organic Valley and make up your own mind about suffering and food.
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Dave,
ReplyDeleteIt is good to be associated with people who can think carefully about important matters. If you continue to be a customer, thank you. If not, good luck with what you do. FYI, I have been trying to write a book out of thirty years of columns.
Jim