Food as a life and death proposition

I recently read a book in which the author, in a discussion about meat eating, gave as one of his a priori arguments the statement that "eating animals is disgusting." The implication was that even meat eaters think eating animals is disgusting; they just can't help themselves.

If this is true---if eating animals is disgusting---then the whole natural world is disgusting. Living things survive by consuming other living things. Life feeds on life. Every living thing dies. All birth leads to death. Death, in turn, nourishes life.

We feel worse about eating animals than about eating plants, because, I guess, animals look furry and cute. Somehow killing a plant or a fungus or a tree---in taking what we need to feed our hunger, and shelter and warm our vulnerable bodies---is more palatable to us than killing something that bleeds. Do trees and plants not bleed? Is sap not blood? Maybe it is just that it is not blood like ours; it is not blood as we understand blood.

I know a number of vegetarians who eat fish. I am not sure why fish are okay to eat and cows or sheep are not. Perhaps it’s because fish don't seem to experience life the way we do. I think we just don't understand fish consciousness, because it's not like ours. Neither do we understand the consciousness of mycelium, the delicate webs of fungi that nourish mushrooms. According to mushroom expert Paul Stamets, mycelium are sentient: they tie forests together with huge, "deeply intelligent" networks that respond to conditions and direct the flow of nutrients.(1) Some researchers have found evidence that forests have a kind of communal consciousness, in which one tree will sacrifice itself for the good of the whole. (Talk about a consciousness that humans don't understand! Or at least humans in Western industrial civilization.)

In nature, few things die of old age. In nature, death is often violent. I once came upon the remains of a deer hamstrung by coyotes: it had bled from its haunches as it ran over lake ice in the winter, chased by the hungry canids. The blood and fur and coyote tracks stretched across the lake for hundreds of yards. The fear was still palpable, written vividly on the blood-spattered snow. I could see the place where the deer had finally lost its footing, or maybe given up, and been brought down.

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We humans have kept domesticated animals for thousands of years. They have provided us with meat to eat, leather and wool to clothe ourselves, bone and horn for tools, tallow for candles, lard for cooking, hooves for glue, and manure for crops. In so doing---in domesticating certain species---we have changed them. They can no longer survive without us. Humans and livestock share a long history of mutual dependency. If I walked out this morning and opened the gates to our goat and sheep paddocks, I would be committing these animals to death from predation, starvation, or disease. Well, I'd have to do more than just open the gates; I'd have to open the gates, push them out or entice them out with food, and close the gates behind them to prevent their return. They would not willingly leave the security of their shelters, water buckets, and hay feeders. If I were to force them into the wild, and if by some miracle a few intrepid individuals survived and successfully raised young---which they wouldn't---but if they did, they would completely alter the surrounding ecosystem. They would compete with deer for available forage; native species of animals and plants would die.

Let's pretend that our country elected a one-hundred-percent vegan administration, which passed laws prohibiting the keeping of livestock and mandating the release of all livestock. Aside from the environmental chaos that would ensue---aside from the suffering and death of all of these animals, the disease spread from the rotting carcasses and the explosion of opportunistic meat-eating predators (who would in turn die after this temporary balloon in their food supply disappeared)---aside from all of that, what would people eat? How would we possibly feed everybody? Do you know how much land would have to be planted with soybeans and wheat to feed 310,927,572 people (the U.S. population as of this writing)? Can you imagine the effect on water supplies, topsoil, and wildlife habitat, if enough arable land could even be found? Can you imagine the desertification caused by the felling of trees and the diversion of river waters for crops?

Where we have gone wrong in the keeping of livestock is where we have gone wrong in everything else---in industrializing the practice, in commodifying the animals, in taking ourselves out of the relationship of mutual dependence and turning animals into products, into Big Macs and chicken fingers. Anyone who visited a CAFO (“confined animal feeding operation”), or a commercial chicken “farm,” and saw the reality of commercial livestock operations, would probably swear off meat for good. I would, if that were the only way to raise meat. But it isn't.

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In keeping livestock, I live in relationship with animals I intend to consume. I also live in relationship with the fruit trees and bramble bushes whose products I consume, and in somewhat shorter-term relationship with the potatoes, squash, and other vegetables I grow. I tend all of them---I nurture and care for them, I facilitate breedings and the continuation of these species so that I can eat. The eventual outcome for everything in this arrangement is death---even for me. But it is also life. Life ends in death; death sustains life. I love my animals. I had thought that I would eat my animals in spite of the fact that I love them; I have learned that loving these animals and eating these animals are two sides of a coin.

Like humans, animals are individuals. I found it easier to say goodbye to Brown One and Fat Face, who were complete thugs and tormented our ewes, but I took friendly Skinny Face to the butcher along with them. Because if every animal I liked was spared a trip to the butcher, what would happen? Pretty soon I would have an overaged flock of animals too numerous for our small pastures to support in good health, and they would begin to die from malnutrition and disease. By participating in the cycle of life and death, by keeping the animals in good health, I help keep the species in good health and the land that sustains us in good health. The act of raising livestock involves respect, gratitude, and reciprocity. In taking the life of any animal for food, whether it is a domesticated sheep or a wild deer, I obligate myself to provide for the health and perpetuation of its species.

My animals spend their days playing, eating, jostling for alpha status, lying in the sun, chewing their cud. They have shelter available, but often prefer to be under the sun and the moon and the stars. They come to greet me when I bring hay and water. They seem content. When it's time for them to go, they come willingly, enticed by food, for they have learned not to fear me.

We go to a small local butcher, a man we know and respect, who provides dry stalls with fresh hay and water for the animals. There is no sound or smell of fear. He knocks them out with a stun gun before slitting their throats and letting them bleed out. I hope to learn to do this myself some day, to close the life and death circle right here on the farm, right here while the animals are grazing contentedly: to say goodbye between one breath and the next. Providing not only a good life, but a good death, is the ultimate act of respect in our reciprocity.

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We ate a lot of chicken over the summer---the result of a surfeit of roosters. I was happy to see the roosters go: they gang-raped the loudly protesting hens repeatedly, leaving their necks and backs featherless and raw. The rooster meat was surprisingly good: these birds had foraged for greens and seed heads, scratched for insects, and roosted in the shade at the edge of the woods.

This winter we have been eating lamb: Fat Face, Skinny Face, and Brown One. The meat---chops, stews, burgers, roasts, sausage--- is wonderful: tender and flavorful. I cook the bones up into nourishing broth. I know what these animals ate and the conditions in which they lived, so I don't worry about parasites and diseases. The animals sustain and nourish us, as we sustained and nourished them.

We are expecting babies this spring. Our three does are visibly swelling. It's harder to tell which of the sheep might be pregnant, swathed as they are in voluminous winter fleeces, but I'm pretty sure that Ness, at least, was bred. One of our hens, Nigie, is showing broody tendencies, so we will collect eggs from the others and let her follow her mothering instincts and raise some chicks. I eagerly anticipate the joy of new life this spring, of chicks and lambs and kids gamboling about.

We are also expecting our first grandchild---any day now, actually. Every birth is latent with potential, a blend of hope and mystery. I hope the next generation of our family has the opportunity to experience food as part of the natural cycle of life and death, to see and taste the rich milk coming from our does, to collect eggs from our chickens, to help provide for the animals that provide for us. I hope that our grandchildren have the opportunity to appreciate the gifts that the world can give us, and understand the obligation thus created. I hope they get the chance to hold baby chicks in their hands, to laugh at the antics of goat kids, to pick blueberries and cherries and pop them into their mouths, and to plunge their hands in to the rich garden soil, looking for worms.

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(1) Paul Stamets, Mycelium Running, Ten Speed Press, 2005, pp 2-5