Lest my last post make you think I'm completely heartless when it comes to the environment and animals and naive Cambridge hippies, I wanted to assure you that I'm really not. I appreciate initiatives that raise awareness and help create clean air standards and nature reserves.
However, I think many issues are better dealt with by the people as consumers rather that the government, because government is alway very heavy-handed and tend to make problems bigger.
For example, I had a friend who told me he thought factory-farming was bad, and there should be laws banning it. I agreed with him that factory farming was pretty bad, but said he needed to look into the issue a little deeper before choosing to legislate the problem away. Factory farming exists because it efficient, and animals are fattened up and slaughtered very cheaply, which means poor families shopping at Wal-Mart can afford to buy more meat. Pass a law that takes that away, you can cause the factory farms drop business because of extra costs associated with raising animals free-farm, creating a shortage in the available meat supply, thus making it cost more to get.
I believe a better solution is supporting companies like Whole Foods. At their website I discovered they have "Animal Compassion Standards" and only purchase their meat from farmers who meet their standards. I think this is a great way to deal with this problem. And as more consumers support Whole Foods because of their practices, other food producers will start changing their practices to in order to compete. The more competition, the lower prices will be. This process is slower, because changes take time, but in the end it is much better for society then the government passing some sweeping law.
We already see this happening in the "green" movement that's occurring right now. Everywhere I look I see companies promoting how environmentally friendly they are.
Maybe I'm being a naive capitalist, but I really believe we have a lot of power to create change just by choosing wisely to whom we give our money.
1 comment:
That logic would work in an ideal world, but when you have money-lusting companies who will stoop to no low to make an extra buck, you get things like the meat packers.
In their quest to be "efficient", meat companies take advantage of illegal workers (cheap labor, and "who cares?" if they slice off their arm, fall in a meat grinder, break their backbone, etc... they're totally expendible, right?)
Also, they feed the most vile "food" to the animals: ultra-processed genetically-modified corn and soybean (which is what's in most of the food found at most of the supermarkets and restaurants across the US anyway, btw) mixed with -- ahem -- other poultry and cattle. Yes, chickens, pigs, and cattle eat chickens, pigs, and cattle. They're not supposed to. Cattle, being ruminants, are only supposed to eat grass... it's all they can digest. If fed anything else, they get sick (and that's why they're all fed antibiotics... and also hormones too, so that they can grow abnormally fast and be slaughtered sooner). Chicken and pigs can eat corn and soybeans, technically, but it's not the best diet for them, and what is done to them to accommodate the way they are industrially fed is barbaric. For chickens, they usually get their beaks broken off... and for pigs, they get their tails cut off, among too-close quarters and other things.
Slaughterhouses have to produce food so quickly that it's not a matter of if, but a matter of how frequently feces will get mixed in with the meat... and since the animals were fed the wrong things and grew too fast, there's a bunch of sickness (including cancerous animal material) that gets mixed in, too. Also in the name of efficiency and turnaround, more than you'd expect is taken for meat -- this includes "bone meal" (bits of animal bone that happens to get chopped up and ground up) too. The sickness, random entrails, and bones are in every bit of ground meat (such as hamburgers, sausage, salami, pepperoni, etc.) that you eat. (Also, when it comes to ground meat, one hamburger patty is often made of over 100 different cows.)
Then there's the environmental impact of the farming and the meat production. There are massive amounts of toxic waste produced by farming animals in an industrial manner. There's no good place to put it, and it's so filthy and polluted that it won't biodegrade properly. It's full of disease, antibiotics, hormones, and various chemicals. It soaks into the ground and is also washed down to rivers -- both ways of it (eventually) making its way back into the water that we all drink.
Most meat at the store is also treated so that it isn't apparent when it goes rancid, either, by-the-way. Food colorings, carbon monoxide, preservatives, soy+salt solutions, and other forms of treatment all given to most meat products to make them more "shelf stable" and look "prettier" to people.
The "cheap" prices at the supermarket are artificially cheap. We're all paying far more than we know whenever we purchase any of these animals. This includes financial costs, environmental issues, lives of people, lives of the animals, and the health of the people eating food too.
Everyone who eats (especially meat) should really read up on these matters. I suggest two different books that really detail what's going on (and I just barely scratched the surface with a few points above):
* Fast Food Nation (which covers more than just fast food) by Eric Schlosser
* The Omnivore's Dilemma by Michael Pollan
I firmly believe that every Christian (especially) should find compassion for the people and animals hurt by the American industrial way of manufacturing food and should be embarrassed at what we've all done by voting with our appetites, wallets, and who we've elected into office to let us get into this mess. (Yes, a lot of it is actually sponsored and supported by and the government, by-the-way, through bought-off politicians).
Most of the people in the US (and sadly, most of the Christians I know) don't even want to know about what's going on and would rather chomp into a McDonald's hamburger. (I'm not speaking of you or the group, fwiw... I'm thinking of some other specific people as I write this.)
It's definitely a good step for what you're proposing, and I agree with you, but unfortunately, businesses have been allowed to get away with too much, and the government really should step in and protect all the people involved as well as try to prevent too much harm done to the places we live. There's a proper way to do things, and there's an improper way -- and the industrialization of food is definitely not right.
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