all the food that's fit to print The Education Issue - Slow Food

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Letters The snail | Spring 2008 4 Animal, Vegetable; Right and Wrong It’s an interesting spread in the Winter Snail: Joel Salatin and his sustainably-raised pigs in verso; Peter Singer and Jim Mason with their bioethical conundrums in recto. I wasn’t sure, though, what this particular argument was doing in the American Food Traditions issue of the magazine, since Singer and Mason’s vegetarian fundamentalism is a challenge to all American food traditions and a celebration of none. They ask, “Does eating only humanely raised animals allow an impregnable defense of one’s diet?” This is a profoundly inappropriate question for a number of reasons, but principally because it makes the category error of treating evolutionary biology as a moral issue. It is one thing to question the ethics of Smithfield’s cruel, toxic and unsustainable practices—it is quite another to extend those questions to the six million-year history of the omnivorous diet of hominids. Vegetarianism is like celibacy—it may be attractive to some, and even healthy for some, but you can’t make the case that it’s morally inevitable. Singer and Mason also ask why Michael Pollan’s evident objections to killing don’t apply to animals. I’d ask why they don’t apply to broccoli. The standard answer is that vegetables are not sentient, but the fact is that all life forms express their preference for life and do whatever they can to avoid death, so if we base our diets on the preferences of the life forms we eat, we’re going to be hungry. The real difference between animals and vegetables is that animals, especially mammals, express their preferences in ways that remind us of us—we look in their eyes and see ourselves there. That’s anthropomorphism, not ethics; it’s an aesthetic preference and doesn’t belong in a serious discussion of food policy. I personally have no interest in eating dog or horse—dogs and horses are my friends and allies, not my dinner—but I recognize that this isn’t a matter of ethics, it’s a matter of culture. I also have no appetite for chimp, or whale; I’m not eating an animal with whom I could have a conversation, and the very idea is so disturbing to me that I’m tempted to do violence to prevent others from eating them. But I forbear, because once again I understand that my worldview is different from that of the Inuit who depend on the whale, or the Congolese who appreciate bush meat. Here of course we run into an interesting confluence of problems: chimpanzees are endangered, and the hunt for bush meat is threatening their survival as a species, just as the Japanese whale hunt threatens the humpback. These practices should be stopped, but they should be stopped because they are unsustainable and threaten the planet’s biodiversity, not because they are distasteful to Westerners. This is an important distinction that we in the food movement need to understand and respect. The point here is that the Slow Food agenda, which includes the quality of the food produced, the sustainability of the practices used, and the fair compensation of all involved, is a solid foundation on which to build a dietary ethic; evangelical vegetarianism is not. The former is a big tent; it has room for the wide world of diets and cultures and foodways, and its pragmatic sense of right and wrong distinguishes quite reasonably between what Joel Salatin is doing on Polyface Farm and the horror being wrought by Smithfield. The latter is a narrow, aesthetic view that presumes to judge the entire history of human eating as morally deficient. Vegetarianism as a lifestyle choice is just fine, but if what we want is to build a worldwide, sustainable and reliable food system, moralistic vegetarianism is a dog that won’t hunt. David Berman Slow Food NYC Your selection of the Peter Singer/Jim Mason excerpt leaves this reader and new member bemused, confounded, disappointed, and wondering if I should ask for a refund of my membership dollars. Your magazine missed an incredible opportunity to use the Producer/Co-producer juxtaposition to strengthen bonds between local artisanal farmers and informed patrons. Instead, we’re presented with a very weak attempt at some type of point/counterpoint that pits the so-called “co-producer” against the producer and leaves us with the distinct impression that Slow Food thinks we should seriously consider veganism as an alternative diet. Given that Singer himself uses the political tactic of bifurcation to draw an enthusiastic following, it’s no wonder that one of his apparent followers has selected the approach here—including a faith-bashing, ad-hominem (“speciesist”) attack on a man who’s given his life to redemption of the soil. The disinformation regarding the protein production capacity of land with animals versus crops is also disappointing (comparing industrial crop production yields to extensive ranging!). Please become informed of modern grass-based husbandry methods, including management intensive grazing (MiG) and ultra-high stocking density (UHSD), their analog in wild herd
ehavior, and their benefits in terms of forage/protein production efficiency, soil organic matter production and carbon sequestration in soil. Respectfully, Larry C. Howard Joel Salatin responds: While I do not think the Snail is engaging in a veiled point-counterpoint excercise, I do agree that Larry Howard makes several salient points. Peter Singer indicates that my Judeo-Christian faith regarding the human having a soul and thereby placing humans and animals on two different levels is not worth arguing because it’s religious. Does he not appreciate that it takes a lot of faith to believe humans are only animals with a bigger brain? And if we are just animals, why does my eating a cow constitute abuse when a cat eating a mouse is natural? How about swatting a fly, or smashing a gnat against my cheek on a humid summer evening? All of us are religious and have faith in something, even if it is ourselves. To dismiss entire cultures because their views differ from mine is a myopic worldview indeed. I am not the one demanding departure from traditional norms. The vegan zealot, by saying that my meat eating is inherently abusive, is far more historically odd and presently narrow than those of us who enjoy choice. Vegans don’t bother me at all . . . until they make their choice a religion and demand that I comply. Finally, Singer bumbles into the ultimate ecological disconnect by accusing domestic livestock of being land wasteful. He thinks if we all just ate plant matter, the world would be a better place. Let’s assume for a moment that we could all be healthy on a plant diet—a stretch to be sure. The data that disparages meat as inherently anti-environmental all assumes factory farming, grain-based, industrialmodeled food systems. As soon as the production model changes to perennial pasture-based, portable infrastructure, appropriate rest and scale, all the negatives become positives and animals become instead the most efficient landscape healers possible. It’s all in the model. Limited Resources vs. Legal Action I joined Slow Food after hearing about the organization at the International Buffalo Conference in Rapid City, SD. My husband and I live on our family farm which was purchased in the late ‘40s by my father. We employ two full-time employees, raise corn, soybeans, winter and spring wheat, cattle, and buffalo, and try to make a living and a life. We farm in the face of not knowing what fuel, seed, and other expenses will be to raise the crop for next year. We have no control of the prices we get for our commodities and are at the mercy of the markets on the grain exchanges and whatever the price is the day we take our animals to town. We also have no control over the weather, the rain that we need to grow anything, or storms, hail, etc. Agriculture is a gamble in the best of times. I would like to respond to James C. Rainie’s letter to the editor in the Winter Snail about farmers being proactive and suing Monsanto for polluting their crops. I have heard about a farmer who was in legal proceedings with Monsanto. I’m not sure who started the suit, but I believe the farmer lost his farm due to lawyer fees. The fact is that no one farmer, or even a group of farmers, has the resources and knowledge about lawyers that could win a suit against the giant company of Monsanto. Their lawyers could drag things out, using up the resources of the farmer quickly, and have the big dollars and guns behind their company that a farmer could not ever compete with. Monsanto is also a company that has invested $$$ into research for plants and products that make farming a bit profitable. They sell millions of dollars’ worth of products to farmers and have a monopoly on many things that farmers need and use. A farmer is almost like a serf with his indebtedness to the company. Farmers have survived on their farms because they are very independent and bullheaded. They tend not to work well together in some business adventures because of their independent natures. My father is a strongwilled farmer of German heritage and, at 81, does not want to give up control of what he has built up in his lifetime. Even in programs like Farmers Union and the Farm Bureau, there are many differences of how to do things and they also are not large enough to have the money it takes to take on a company like Monsanto. So suing just isn’t that simple. We need people in the cities to protect and support people who grow their food. Maybe we don’t all do it organic like folks would like, but we do need your support so we can make a living and keep providing you with food. My husband and I came back to the farm 12 years ago. The farm income needed to be supplemented for our family to make a living and I did not want to find a teaching job and work off the farm. I started a bed and breakfast on the farm, and after 10 years in the business, I am now bringing in more income than if I went to work in town for $10 an hour, for a 40 hours a week. I get to have the flexibility to work when I want, to volunteer in my local community, and to help the guys on the farm when I need to. The greatest reward is that I get to share farming and farm life with some folks who have never been on a farm. That is awesome. Darla Loewen The snail | spring 2008 5
Page 1: ISSUE SPRING 2008 all the food that
Page 5: Dear Members, I confess: I like whe
Page 9 and 10: ut young farmers, chefs, and other
Page 11 and 12: Teaching the Next Generation of Eat
Page 13 and 14: Candelario Vazquez grew up in a mig
Page 15 and 16: Sustainable U. Higher ed heads for
Page 17 and 18: STORYTELLING Education at Slow Food
Page 19 and 20: CO-Producer The Incredible, Edible,
Page 21 and 22: BOOKS SLOW READS In Defense of Food
Page 23 and 24: Continued from page 7 eat. Advocati
Page 25 and 26: Ivy Chu Antonino Ciaccio & Virginia
Page 28: SLOW FOOD USA 20 Jay Street, No. 31

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