Morgan Spurlock has a show on FX called "30 Days." It's essentially a modified "Wife-Swap" which puts a person with a certain set of opinions into another person's shoes for 30 Days. It's an interesting show and unlike "Wife-Swap" the people on the show are usually intelligent and friendly on both ends of the spectrum. Episodes have included things like: living on minimum wage, living as an illegal immigrant, living in a wheelchair, working in a coal mine, etc. More often than not, people don't really pull a 180 and change their minds, but find that the middle-of-the-road approach has some real value. Last night, the episode placed a deer hunting carnivore from the Midwest into the home of a vegan family in LA for 30 days where he would participate in PETA protests, work at an animal sanctuary and lead a vegan life.
Now, I have some serious issues with PETA. I think they employ and condone a number of extremist tactics which are violent, derogatory to women and offensive to victims and survivors of crimes against humanity. They also have a stance on pet-ownership which I (obviously) strongly disagree with and a stance on breed-specific legislation which I think is ridiculous (considering that they consider humans to be species-discriminatory, why is it ok to be breed-discriminatory?) and some wingnuts have a twisted idea of "humane" when it comes to the plight of shelters(http://www.newsobserver.com/102/story/535593.html) In any case, my support is thrown behind other animal-rights groups and not PETA.
So, when they said they were throwing this meat-loving, dear-hunting, Jim-Bob into a family of PETA activists, I was none too thrilled. They started off by showing him the standard PETA fare - Meet your Meat - which documented in video the horrors and atrocities of animal farming. Chickens crammed into tiny boxes with their beaks ripped off, men slamming chickens down into boxes as if they were rag dolls. Then video of animals being skinned alive, cats with electric paneling surgically installed into their heads... terrible stuff ....and like the Jim-Bob said, a lot of it was so horrible it looked fake (although I doubt it was.)
They go through 30 days, and our protagonist participates in ridiculous protests where nothing of significance is really accomplished other than shock and awe. He is frustrated and annoyed (as I would be) with the pointlessness of the protests. He works at a farm animal rescue and continues to look at these animals as food - nothing has changed.
Well, the change happens when he is taken out to Ontario, CA and is given a tour of one of the many dairy and beef farms in our area and we all see just how real and awful the circumstances are right then and there. The set isn't staged, everything is filmed by the 30 Days camera crew looking through the metal fences. Dead calves rotting next to a pen of dairy cows, or dumped on the side of the road covered in flies, or half alive, anemic and left to starve to death in a field. We see the ranch hands pulling young calves out of their pens, violently yanking them by their tails and legs to toss into the back of a truck as the calves desperately fight to escape them. I couldn't help but cry.
I don't have a problem with eating meat. I had at one time or another tried to be vegetarian (unsuccessfully) or pescetarian (unsuccessfully) and I own a number of vegan and veggie cookbooks with yummy recipes, but I think it boiled down to the fact that my issue was not with eating animals. I believe we are part of the circle of life and while everyone is free to make their dietary decisions, I don't have an issue with actually eating another animal. I have an issue with the unnecessary suffering and treatment of these animals for cheap, mass produced, wasteful food in the name of corporate gain. I am not naive, I know what happens in a slaughterhouse (I went to one when I was young - actually one of the most traumatizing experiences of my life) but I also know that what farmers and indigenous people around the world do and have done for centuries is not at all the same as what these mass-production farms do.
So what am I supposed to do? I've come to believe that being vegetarian or vegan doesn't really impact the meat industry . Vegans and vegetarians are not consumers of meat products and the meat industry isn't interested in pleasing non-consumers. It's the meat-eaters that can actually force change.
There's a rising number of people who consider themselves "Ethical Omnivores." I'm adding my name to that list. This means that I will only eat animal products which are certified as having been raised humanely. I'm not ok with the suffering and I can't pretend that the meat I'm eating at Burger King was not just like one of those poor animals who had it's tail pulled from it's spine as they were trying to launch it up into a pick up truck. I just can't do it.
There are a number of organizations that have strict guidelines as to what humane farming entails and a listing of the products you can purchase that are approved:
http://www.animalwelfareapproved.org/
http://www.americanhumane.org/site/PageServer?pagename=pa_farm_animals_ff_producers
http://www.certifiedhumane.com/links.html#producers
And as a matter of fact, Whole Foods supermarkets have their own set of guidelines for all animal products they carry which enable the shopper to pick out any product with confidence that the animal was raised and slaughtered humanely. http://www.wholefoodsmarket.com/products/meat-poultry/qs_programrequirements.html
It makes going out to eat more difficult - but not impossible - I'll be more of a veg in public unless a restaurant indicates that it's animal products are local, organic and humanely raised. This helps: http://www.eatwellguide.org/i.php?id=Home
The goal is to make ethical farming profitable to force the abusive farm to change their methods and stop abuse and suffering. No one wants an animal to suffer, so why do we support the suffering by pretending it doesn't happen as we scarf down our $0.99 cheeseburger made from 100% mutilated and abused cow. In-N-Out dropped it's contract with it's beef supplier when it discovered animal abuse (which by the way, farm animals are exempt from most animal-abuse legislation) and has set up a policy to only use humanely treated meat products. Chipotle also has humane-animal policy (although there is some controversy surrounding it's Chicken supplier)
Anyway, the point is that change can happen... it's not that hard. For more info or further reading on eating meat with a conscience:
http://humanecalifornia.org/ (info about legislation to change the laws in CA)
http://www.tigersandstrawberries.com/ (chef's blog about with some very interesting posts on getting back in touch with our food - humanely)
