Meating people is easy

If you live in the Brunswick area, and you frequent Barkly Square (or Sparkly Bear, as we’ve taken to calling it) Shopping Centre, you’ve probably seen me. I’m the guy standing in front of the rows and rows of food at Coles trying to work out what politically correct impulse to pay lip service to.

Okay, before I get ahead of myself, I should probably take a leaf out of Kim’s book and introduce myself. That guy, standing in the aisle, that’s me: I’m Wes Mountain. I work a boring day job, where I ostensibly tell people what they do wrong in their job for cash money. I should note that it’s not big cash money, heck it’s not even cash. It’s a salary. I am also in a band called Little Bones, and draw a political cartoon blog called Dickhead Frenzy. I draw a lot, actually, and I’m sure that’ll creep into this blog at some stage.

So anyway, back to the topic at heart. I too recently read Jonathan Safran Foer’s Eating Animals. I thoroughly enjoyed it; at least to the extent one can enjoy being told uncomfortable truths about their eating practices. While I found it very informative, I think it suffered with the same condition a lot of seemingly universal modern texts suffer from – it was very US-centric.

Australia, much as we like to pretend otherwise, is not America. We’re a much smaller country. Things like free-range eggs, chicken and pork-products (bacon, ham etc.) are much more readily available in Australia than in the US. Our relatively small population, and particular penchant for the coast, means that the distance from the agricultural process to the plate is much shorter, both literally and figuratively. As far as I’m aware, our animal welfare standards are much stricter, and regulation of the environmental impacts of meat production, as well as the use of hormones and antibiotics in farmed animals, is government audited.

But it’s that qualifier, “as far as I’m aware,” that worries me. I mean I hear all of these good things, and until recently (I’m getting better) I’ve paid lip service to the process of improvement by only buying free-range eggs and mostly buying free-range ham, but what about the uncomfortable things people occasionally say about our supposedly ethical Australian meat industry?

Things like how there’s apparently not enough free range eggs to service the Australian population at our current rate of consumption, or that the amount of eggs labelled “free range” can’t possibly all be “free range” given the small amount of farms producing said eggs. Or the fact that “free range” itself is a term that can be self-appointed, and that the RSPCA or industry funded groups are the only organisations that provide accreditation (and, like the Heart Foundation, they both seem to have commercial interests in who they grant accreditation to). Or the idea that, despite the fact that on paper beef seems to be relatively fine to eat, I can’t seem to find much information in lay-terms about ethical standards for the beef industry in Australia.

I don’t think vegetarianism is a viable option. I don’t begrudge vegetarians their position, but I think that for most people their argument doesn’t hold water. I include myself in this. Humans evolved to eat meat, and despite the fact it can be healthy to live without meat, we are fundamentally built to be omnivores. There are nutrients available in meat that are not found in equal, accessible abundance in any other (edible) form. I also don’t believe that one person wholesale removing themselves from the machinations of a colossal industry is going to do anything to better animal welfare in meat production, nor close the industry down.

On the flip side, I think there’re few things worse than a squeamish meat eater. If you can’t hack the idea of watching an animal being slaughtered, bled, skinned and butchered, I don’t know if you’ve earned the right to eat that meat. You don’t need to be a part of the process, but you need to be aware of it, and comfortable with its implications.

So that’s why I’m here. I want to be comfortable, ethically, with what I’m eating. I don’t think anyone should ever be in a position where they can look at their plate and not be able to answer where their meat came from, or what ethical compromises they are making to eat said meat.

I want to know that what I’m eating is ethically produced and, ideally, sustainable. I also want to support businesses that support my decision. Kim and I will use this blog to investigate options, hopefully answer some big questions around meat production and slaughter in Australia (I’m looking forward to visiting a farm too, Kim), and point you in the direction of restaurants, butchers and grocers, who can fulfil our needs. Maybe we can come up with some recipes too? I think that could be good. Add that to the list.

I don’t want to be that guy paying lip service to some vague idea of free range anymore.

So, let’s see if we can do this thing.

Lovely to Meat You*

So…err…is this thing on? I’m feeling very shy on my return to the blog world after a long absence. As in the public service, let’s start with the who, what, where, when, why. So as for the what, to be brief, Wes and I want to talk about trying to eat free range, trying to shop free range, go to free range serving restaurants and cook free range of course. I want to chat about recipes, awkward social situations, snazzy restaurants, great markets and maybe even visit some farms! It’s about just another choice in the wide variety of ways to fuel your body. And I want to make clear from the outset that this isn’t about conversion – I admire vegetarians and I understand completely if you don’t really give a rats about where your food comes from. But I do care; I’m fascinated by food and where it comes from and the place it plays in my life. I expect to fall off this hastily constructed wagon a few times and run into some problems, but I think it’s going to be fun.

The when and where go without saying. The who is me, and Wes (Hi Wes!) but I’m sure he’ll tell you his vital stats. I’m a public servant and student here in Melbourne, renting in Brunswick – I mention the renting because I think budgets will come up a little in the blog; we’re trying to do this little experiment without bucketloads of cash. Maybe the whole thing will work out cheaper, maybe budget issues will win out over our ethical concerns and it will be back to KFC for us. There are two other important things to mention about who I am. Firstly, I LOVE food, really love it. I eat a lot. Bad food, good food, whatever. Secondly, I have almost no will power (you see where I’m going with this don’t you?) – so I want some serious kudos for trying anything that means dietary restrictions. It might also be worth mentioning that I don’t like conflict and putting people out, again I think you’ll see where I’m going with that. Food plays a pretty big part in my social life; my group of friends is forever going out for dinner to new places and old favourites, cooking each other dinner and talking food almost as much as we talk TV and politics. My best school friend and I have a years long tradition of baking goodies or comfort food when we’re together. I often take photos of my food when particularly excited. Did I mention that food is important to me?

And so we come most importantly to the why. This is something I find hard to articulate. Jonathan Safran Foer’s book Eating Animals definitely has a lot to do with why now, but these are ideas that have been floating around in my head for a long time. I’ve toyed with the idea of becoming a vegetarian before but I really lack the conviction, I’ve experienced a vague feeling that something was wrong, but I’ve never been convinced that eating animals is, in itself, the problem. The whole ‘well you wouldn’t eat your pet dog’ argument doesn’t hold that much water with me. ‘Cos you know what, if times were tough enough, maybe I would eat my beloved pet. Different cultures revere different animals for different reasons, just because – as Safran Foer points out – these aren’t based on cold logic like intelligence and receptiveness to pain doesn’t mean they don’t have worth. Culture and tradition are flimsy notions, we should question and consider them but you’re allowed to decide that you’re okay with eating pigs but not cats based on sentiment. I feel like that’s okay. I can reconcile myself to the idea that living creatures are sacrificed to create my food, I think humans are superior in intelligence and self-awareness, and given the massive impact our lives have on the lives of all the other creatures on the planet in a myriad of other ways, drawing the line eating them doesn’t seem like the logical solution to me.

So why the vague bad feeling? I think a lot of us sense that the way our food gets to us might not be quite right somehow, we dismiss the claims of PETA and ‘crazy’ hippies but maybe something resonates with a few of us. You’ve decided to kill a living creature to feed you so why care how it lives and is killed, you say? Well why wouldn’t you care? If it’s better for you in terms of taste and health, better for the animal and better for the environment then why not show a little kindness? To be blunt, I don’t have a problem with the killing, but the torturing bothers me. I’m going to investigate factory farming a bit more over the course of this adventure but from what I’ve learned it is so cruel as to rob us of some of our humanity; not producing meat that is of the best quality in terms of taste and nutrition; and not environmentally sustainable.

Phew, that was a little ranty and preachy eh? Here is an anecdote that demonstrates another point borrowed from Safran Foer, which points to why I’m doing this: Last week I went out for dinner and I was pretty tired and worn out from work. I knew I should probably order the Bolognese because beef tends to be more ethically farmed but I really wanted that carbonara, I knew it would sooth my troubled soul. I knew that the bacon was likely to be factory/cage farmed but I’d had a rough day. I chose a meal where an animal was possibly tortured over one where the animal enjoyed a natural outdoorsy life because I’d HAD A ROUGH DAY? I pride myself on being a person of convictions and rational arguments and yet that’s the decision I came to. Sentiment won out over convictions. I want to do this blog, and this experiment, to see if I can make better choices. There is already a groundswell of support for free range and ethically farmed meat and I want to see how easy it is for your average person to make what I think are better food choices.

*Okay, I confess, this whole thing is just a competition between Wes and I to see how many puns we can come up with using the word 'meat'.