All of God's creatures have rights, a fact that most people don't seem to recognize. This includes both human and non-human animals, but not all of them can speak for themselves. As we continue to disregard the value of the lives of the billions of animals we eat, we also are destroying our air, land and water.
James McWilliams, The
Daily Pitchfork
September 2015
Ruby...Safe and happy at
Animal Place Sanctuary
Eating a pig’s face might seem to be a virtuous example of reducing food waste, but it’s an irrelevant ecological gesture compared to not raising that pig to eat in the first place. In this respect, the current whole-hog ethic is yet another case of wishfully thinking we can eat our way out of a dire environmental predicament. It’s the kind of logic that will take us to our global grave.
The current rage in sustainable agriculture circles is to avoid food
waste. But it’s a qualified kind of advocacy. Proponents don’t suggest
avoiding the most wasteful forms of agriculture—by eliminating animal
products—but instead simply ask us to consume our way out of the problem by
eating the whole animal rather than limiting ourselves to the traditional
cuts.
This is a troublesome approach for at least two reasons. First, as
suggested, it obscures the underlying source of food waste. Eating a pig’s
face might seem to be a virtuous example of reducing food waste, but it’s an
irrelevant ecological gesture compared to not raising that pig to eat in the
first place. In this respect, the current whole-hog ethic is yet another
case of wishfully thinking we can eat our way out of a dire environmental
predicament. It’s the kind of logic that will take us to our global grave.
Second, and more problematically, this approach to reducing food waste
mimics the efficiency of industrial animal agriculture that foodies are so
quick to condemn. To a significant degree, the industrial slaughterhouse is
the epitome of food waste avoidance—all blood, offal, bone matter is
commodified and consumed. Pink slime—lamented by foodies as a sickening
outcome of industrial agriculture—is in fact a supremely efficient example
of using the whole animal. So is harvesting pig anus as a calamari
substitute. And dehydrating blood for dog food. And . . . you get the
picture.
There’s an inconvenient underlying fact about environmental virtue. It
requires rules and it requires sacrifices. But these often severely infringe
on our freedom—in this case, our culinary freedom. Eating rabbit guts, or
goat testicles, or the face of a swine might make for an edgy Facebook post,
the kind that rock-ribbed devotees of waste reduction like to wave about.
But these options are little more than stunts that hide the dark reality of
unnecessary and immeasurably wasteful animal slaughter.
Number of animals killed in the world by the fishing, meat, dairy and egg industries, since you opened this webpage.
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