As some of you freaks and geeks may know, last weekend was Arisia, one of my favorite sci-fi cons. While it was an epic weekend, and I was thrilled by the fact the hotel bar had Duvel, Chimay (red), a good Gruener Vertliner, and could make a decent martini, only a few minutes of the con are relative to this blog. Once of the bar friends I met and I got onto the topic of food science and food ethics. I brought up my views on meat, which brought up some relate issues of culture and class. My bar friend made the point that without factor farms fewer people would have access to protein. I responded by saying that there are a number of ways to inexpensively get animal free complete proteins and B vitamins (citing the Latin American tradition of beans and rice), and his response was that many Americans don't know how to use plant proteins. As a gringo who didn't know about the nutritional powers of beans and rice until a high school health class (something not everyone has access to!) I can see his point and now realize that the ethical issues of factory farms are more complicated than whether or not an animal suffers.
So, this somewhat brings me toward the film . Netflix recommended it for me based on my positive rating of . The synopsis was somewhat misleading, so when I started watching and saw a definition of specieism (sp? dang!) and Holocaust footage paired with a narrator talking about the number of animals killed for food in a day, well, I was a bit surprised.
Before I continue, allow me to say how disgusted I am that some people see it fit to compare killing animals for food to making an entire group of people a political scapegoat and killing them because of it because a totalitarian dictator saw it fit. Disagree if you must, but this is my blog and these are my views.
I will give the film some credit. I agreed with some of their points (they also talked about puppy mills and animals used for entertainment), and I am glad that footage for factory farms is available so that more people have access to the truth about where food comes from. However, this film suffers the same sort of myopia to which many animal right activists fall victim. There are the cultural and economic considerations I already mentioned, but this sort of media also highlights the worst of the worst and makes it seem as if all slaughterhouses and meat farms follow the same practices. They use footage from the factory farms while ignoring that there are humane operations. True, the most available meat and animal products are the factory farms, but media like this sends the message that the only options are being a strict vegan or being an an animal killing Nazi.
I also feel the need to mention some related ethical issues as related to the human species. In some areas of the rural south, raising chickens for big companies is the best option for a career (relatives may recall the "chicken factories" near Blount County). Additionally, produce farms are not devoid of ethical problems, it doesn't take much time or research to see how poorly undocumented workers are treated in commercial farming companies, and how employers take advantage of workers who have iffy citizenship status.
Well, I suppose what all this ranting comes down to is the reductionist attitude that plagues food ethics, and certainly all ethics. For a self-described animal rights person like me who is not opposed to eating animals, often there is no niche to fill. We're often inclined to say that morality is not black and white, but within the animal rights sphere, that is rarely the case.
In a perfect world, there would be no factory farms and no animal testing. In a perfect world, there would also be no poverty, no disease, no pain, and everything John Lennon described in "Imagine." We don't live in that world, so until we do, I ask you all to consider all sides of the food ethics issues I discuss in this blog, and feel free to challenge my points. It seems like something we were supposed to learn as little children, but it's always worth being remind that there is always another side, and it is rarely worth dismissing without consideration.
