Winter: A planet in a hurry to go the way of all flesh

Published November 18, 2006 at midnight

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My grandfather raised cattle, and every fall he'd haul several head to Omaha for slaughter. My grandmother raised chickens. The cluck hens that no longer laid eggs became Sunday dinner. My uncle would be dispatched to the chicken coop, where nearby stood a 2-foot-high tree stump with an ax stuck in the top.

I don't recall the executions, but I once saw a headless chicken run in circles before it dropped dead, and I'll never forget it.

A generation before mine, a lot of hogs and cattle were butchered on that Nebraska farm. Members of the extended family gathered for the event, which my mom recalls with fondness. Her favorite product was the fresh blood sausage, made with raisins. The thought gags me, but she swears it was wonderful.

And I can't throw stones. For five decades, I've eaten all manner of prepared flesh and never given it a second thought. But lately, unbidden forces have conspired to make me start to question why I do so.

Something, for example, is making me clip meatless recipes. I'm much more likely to tear out a pumpkin bisque recipe these days than one that calls for meat.

A piece I saw by Andy Rooney on 60 Minutes last month also fanned the flames. It was right after the E. coli outbreak in fresh spinach, and Rooney was lamenting the fact that you can't eat anything anymore without worrying about mercury poisoning, mad cow disease or trans fats.

I don't remember much else about his commentary, with the exception of the ending:

"I often pass a farm with cows grazing in the field and I think to myself how terrible it is that human beings grow other animals just to kill them and eat them.

"Most of us think of vegetarians as nuts, and I'm not a vegetarian, but I wouldn't be surprised if we came to a time in 50 or 100 years when civilized people everywhere refused to eat animals. I could be one of them.

"Of course, I'd be pretty old by then."

Rooney is brilliant, and in this case I wonder if he isn't prophetic.

Some signs point that way.

First are the potential health benefits of forgoing meat. Just this week, Harvard released a study showing that women who regularly eat red meat appear to face an increased risk for breast cancer. Diets high in animal fat also have been linked to coronary and cardiovascular disease.

Some doctors even say a meatless diet can extend your life up to 13 years.

Second, there's world hunger and the depletion of natural resources. In her classic book Diet for a Small Planet, Frances Moore Lappe wrote in 1971 that world hunger could be eliminated if resource-gobbling, livestock-growing cultures would switch to a plant-based, protein-rich diet.

According to the International Vegetarian Union, it takes three times more fossil fuel to produce a meat-based diet than a plant-based one, so meat-based societies also contribute to global warming, the IVU argues.

Finally, there's the matter of animal welfare. As bullying as the PETA folks can be, their movement is growing because their message strikes a chord.

No one likes to see animals suffer. But for years, we've turned a blind eye to the inhumane treatment of animals we grow to eat, including forced confinement, forced feeding and violent deaths. All God's creatures die, but as Matthew Scully asked in his 2003 book, Dominion: The Power of Man, the Suffering of Animals, and the Call to Mercy, aren't we morally obligated to see that their time on Earth is at least tolerable and perhaps occasionally pleasant?

The Philadelphia Zoo recently eliminated its elephant exhibit. There's a growing ethic that zoos shouldn't keep elephants unless they have space to roam. The Denver Zoo recently embarked on a $50 million, 10-acre Asian Tropics exhibit that will provide lots of room for eight to 12 Asian elephants. Zoo spokeswoman Tiffany Barnhart says the best way to help endangered elephants is to educate the public about the need to conserve them, and Asian Tropics will do so.

I wonder what my grandfather would think about animal rights if he were alive. I suspect he'd say vegetarians have a screw loose and remind me about the laws of the jungle and the quick and the dead.

He was a small farmer, and I like to think his 50 head were happy as they roamed the pasture, unlike the beasts in many of today's cramped factory farms.

Times change. Industries change. Newspapers are ramping up their Internet editions. Energy producers are developing solar, biomass and wind power to replace fossil fuels.

It's not such a stretch to think that in 20 years, farmers will have figured out how to grow a soy slab that's indistinguishable from a 32-ounce T-bone.

Which reminds me: My husband has a gift certificate for two to Sullivan's Steak House. I'll have the Caesar salad, medium-rare.

mwinte@aol.com

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