The Magnitude of the Meat Challenge

Every year about 9.5 billion animals are slaughtered to produce food in the USA. That’s about 3 pigs and 266 chickens per second, 24/7, 365 days of the year. Another way of grasping the magnitude of the number is to observe that all the human beings who died in all the wars of the 20th century represent about 1% of the number of animals killed per year in one country, the USA.

How can we calculate the suffering and pain? With an oxymoron ("humane slaughter") and a burp, apparently, because all that flesh winds up on our plates.

Factory farming also causes enormous pain to the environment. Meat requires vastly more land, water and encroachment on native habitats of endangered species than vegetarian alternatives. Meat production pollutes the air and heats the planet. Our descendants may deeply regret their carnivorous heritage.

How does factory farming compare to other means of using and killing animals? By comparison, all the rest is a mere drop in the bucket of blood. We are rightly appalled by the number of animals killed for sport, product testing, hunting, trapping, dissection and fur farming. We are rightly concerned about those animals euthanized in shelters and pounds. We are rightly skeptical of the abuse of animals in medical experiments. But all of the above amounts to about 2% of the 9.5 billion meat deaths per year.

What can we infer from the billions of animal corpses? That if we only focus on the most egregious instances of exploitation of animals like bullfighting, fur coats, dog racing and cosmetics testing, we will barely scratch the surface. We must also address and answer for our massive slaughter of animals for meat. Doing so requires a huge shift in consciousness and culture. It requires that we all pay attention, change our habits and help each other overcome our prejudices, our sloppy thinking and our addictions.

Hope and Change for Parrots and Other Sentient Beings?

The more I learn about the commercial parrot trade, the more gravely concerned I become about the future of these animals, both in the wild and in captivity. There has been progress in the protection and preservation of wild parrots and some endangered species have even been rescued from extinction. But native parrot habitat continues to disappear at a rate far beyond alarming and as Mira Tweeti explains in her brilliant book , the plight of captive-bred parrots like Shanti is grim. Parrots are daily abandoned and mistreated and the few rescue facilities that exist are understaffed, underfunded and overwhelmed.

We need to begin to look at parrots and other animals from their, not our, point of view. Deep empathy and compassionate listening must extend to animals as well as people. This is an easy concept to articulate, but it’s immensely hard to put into practice.

We are as gods to the beasts of the field and the fish of the sea— an omnipotent, omnipresent and omniscient deity, but not a benevolent one. We bring animals into sentience for the sole purpose of killing them. We raise and slaughter billions of animals every year just in the United States. We create to annihilate.

Factory farming is an economically unsustainable practice that degrades the environment on virtually every level: pollution of the air, global warming, fuel inefficiencies, desertification, extinction of species. You name it. Human meat and dairy consumption are toxic to the planet. Factory farming brutalizes us as it destroys us; we are desensitized to the suffering of animals as we commit global environmental suicide.

Our world is presented to us as if designed for man. But there is no reason to believe that is so. The assumption that evolution culminates in homo sapiens is false. We know it to be false. We know there is no evidence that human interests are superior to monkey or giraffe or trout interests, but we have inherited and constructed a world based on this false premise.

Is another way possible? Is there an alternative to our radical presumptuousness? Is there something other than taking our supremacy and centrality for granted? Is there a way out?

Incrementally we may make progress. Just as human rights have emerged and evolved over the centuries, so too may animal rights. Human slavery, for example, though not eradicated, has been condemned and outlawed by virtually every nation on Earth. Animal welfare has emerged as a public concern of civilized people over the past two centuries, and it has always been a consideration for thoughtful people.

While we are a long long way from ceasing to view animals as commodities and a longer way yet to granting them the fundamental rights they deserve, our values are gradually changing. The conversation has begun; the questions have been raised.

Prof. Cass Sunstein is President Obama’s nominee for director of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs. He has also been mentioned as a possible future Obama choice for the US Supreme Court. Sunstein is extremely fluent in animal rights discourse. He has written, “There can be no question that the relationship between human beings and nonhuman animals is now being fundamentally rethought.”

Eating Birds

The more I study animal consciousness the more I become concerned about how unconscionably we treat animals.

Although we live our lives in relationship with animals, depend on animals for survival and cherish our companion animals, we often fail to make the empathic connection to the other animals we blithely harm.

Photo: Cornish hens


Ironically, this human failure may also have strong biological roots in our kinship bonds and our instinct to view those outside our kin group and small community as enemies, inferiors or simply objects. Objects we eat.

I’m not a vegetarian. Even though 40 years ago I concluded it was morally wrong to eat meat, I only abstained from doing so for a couple of years. Then I relapsed.

It’s disturbing and demeaning to consciously do wrong. As a moral agent, I believe I should act on my convictions. Being a meat addict is not a valid excuse.

On Christmas Eve we gathered around the dining room table for a holiday meal I cooked: stuffed Cornish hens. Beautiful and beloved Shanti, my Congo African Grey parrot, was literally gazing down on us as we dined and celebrated our holy traditions of Hanukah and Christmas. I felt a twinge of guilt as I stabbed, chewed and swallowed the dead (and delicious) bird. What could be more grotesque, I thought, between sips of wine and holy benedictions.

Shanti may not have a sense of irony, but I sure do. I wondered how I got to this hypocritical point in my meat addiction. I began to consider the convoluted and fallacious arguments I’ve used over the decades to rationalize eating meat. Here’s my top ten list:

Top Ten New Year’s Rationalizations for Eating Meat

1. One person can’t possibly make a difference. If I stop eating meat, I won’t reduce the total number of killed animals in my lifetime even by one. It’s a futile gesture.

2. People eat to live. It’s in our genes, and other animals do the same. Chimpanzees eat monkeys. Owls eat squirrels, bats and ducks. Kingfishers and pelicans eat fish. Fish eat more fish. Why shouldn’t we do what comes naturally?

3. Animals don’t know what death is. As long as we don’t abuse or mistreat them before we kill them, we have done nothing wrong. The animals we eat don’t value individual lives the way we humans do. Individuals of a species are fungible.

4. I need animal protein. At my age, a radical change in my diet might be detrimental to my health and deprive me of the energy I need for all the good I can still do, including promoting animal causes.

5. Vegetarianism isn’t really important in the great scheme of things. It’s a middle class luxury that makes privileged activists feel good about themselves. Our priorities need to be human rights, climate change and ending the wars we wage that cause such immense pain and suffering.

6. Eating meat is culturally important. If I’m puritanical about abstaining from meat, family and friends will have to make special accommodations. I’ll become a pain in the butt to everyone, a self-indulgent prig.

7. A majority of people will never become vegetarians. I should focus instead on the issues of protection and conservation of animals that are realistic and doable. I have a better chance at success by urging people to reject veal crates and paté de fois gras.

8. Cutting down on meat consumption is more realistic than eliminating it entirely. I can eliminate factory-farmed products from my diet and still eat free-range, humanely slaughtered animals and fish.

9. We first need to create a society that’s animal friendly. Our individual practices are not so important. If we educate people about animal consciousness, then no one will want to eat animals in the first place. Future generations will be vegetarian.

10. There’s nothing really “wrong” with eating meat. It’s part of the cycle of life. Life requires life in order to live. Every being on the planet eats the DNA of other beings.

I know, all ten excuses are lame. Maybe I’m hopeless. But that kind of self-deprecating despair just amounts to Rationalization Number 11.

People like me need support to kick our meat habits. Local communities need to create and sustain vegetarian alternatives to meat-based cultures. We need more pro-animal institutions, educators, nutritionists, scientists, technologists and politicians. We need a green and animal-friendly economy with plentiful green jobs that eradicate poverty and expand human and animal rights. Let’s work together in the right direction. Then I’ll become a vegetarian. Right?