I am glad the folks at Treehugger completed their review of Omnivore's Dilemma, because your earlier post was hijacked by the discussion of the viability of ethanol as a fuel alternative. While I am still in the middle of reading the book, it seems the main point, which is definitely hammered home in the first two sections, is that our food takes plants and animals and lots of OIL (as fuel, fertilizer and petrochemical pesticides, herbicides and pharmaceuticals) to make it, and that a thoughtful approach to eating should consider the sustainability of all of these inputs. The first section about corn and the industrialized nature of processed food is shocking, but not surprising when you think about it.

Treehuggers should be more shocked by the organic food chapter. There we learn that something seemingly wholesome and natural like organic food can become as soulless and unsustainable as processed food when it is crammed into the current globalized, industrialized food supply chain. There is hope in the example of Polyface Farms, whose sustainable practices seek to improve the land even as they generate food from it.

The main question to answer when deciding what to eat, is how sustainable is that choice? Can your grandchildren eat the same way someday? Or the entire nation of China? The impact of the human animal on this planet is obviously heavy, but glib answers like, "there are too many people and too many cars" do not get to changing behavior and producing solutions to the problem. Pollan's book at least breaks the news of where our food comes from and so yields some ideas for eating sustainably and thoughtfully, while potentially maintaining or even improving one's standard of living, and that may be the key to their adoption.

Um, although I haven't read this book and I was pleased to see someone feeling guilty for eating the carcass of an animal, it is much much worse to eat the flesh of a locally-raised cow than it is to eat Argentinian asparagus.

Because the cow suffers.

How can anyone justify bringing a new life into this world only to kill her? Most animals killed for food, like humans, have very complex and nourishing family lives - when they are allowed to make use of their instincts. Dairy cows must be forceably impregnated to give milk. Even those raised on small and organic farms. There's no kind way to forceably impregnate anyone. And the offspring of this rape - the only purpose for her to give milk at all - is denied most of his nourishment because this milk is for sale to humans.

Furthermore, if everyone adapted this "locally grown" method of eating meat and dairy, we would need so much land that not everyone would get to eat. We would need perhaps miles, not acres, of land just to grow what's fed to the animals. Then we would need the space for the animals because the premise behind not feeling guilty about eating animal flesh and fluids is that they are "humanely treated." With the appetites of Americans, and the sheer numbers of us, I cannot imagine how much land we would need for them alone. Then we must ask ourselves: what happens with the waste? Currently California dairy cows produce annually an amount of feces that, when piled up, measure the Empire State Building. Okay, we're talking intensive factory farming. But the number of cows, though spread out, would be the same, or more. The feces might be -pardon the pun- spread out a little more but they would still be there. They would still affect our ecosystem much worse than fossil fuels. It is definitley possible to treat farmed animals better than they are currently treated, but you can't make their excrement dissolve into thin air.

I have not yet investigated small family farms, but I have read of investigations by Sue Coe about the terrible slaughter practices here. The animals are not taken around back and beheaded. They certainly cannot be injected with sodium pentobarbital, or their flesh would not be - a-hem - edible. They are taken to slaughterhouses where machinery, run by electricity (coal-burning or oil -burning). For various animals electricially - run machines are used to slice throats, and huge vats of boiling water (another resource we should look at) are used to clear bristles or feathers off skin. I believe that such heavy machinery requires a lot of oil. And though the meat may not travel more than 100 miles, because it was once alive and the decaying and putrefaction processes start with death, the carcasses must be refrigerated (here again with oil, electricity and perhaps fluorocarbons). The slaughter of animals takes fossil fuels.

Finally, the concept of animals as commodities is simply appalling. Animals exist for their own reasons regardless of humans' needs. Our presumption that they are here solely for human benefit is arrogance to the height of mass-murderers who are never caught. Those who farm animals do so for profit. Stewardship implies a watching-over, a caring -for of land. I also think it implies a watching-over of other beings. Slaughter is never ever kind. By its nature it can never, ever be humane. It is not only death, it is intentional death, and it is often excruicatiing for the animals involved. Just think of other ways we use the term "slaughter" : to describe the decimation of a people, to convey the horror of a crime scene. We hear "wholesale slaughter" and cringe when we picture humans lying in pools of blood. We often put ourselves above complicity in such matters. Yet when we sit down to a piece of steak or a chicken wing, whether that animal spent her life on grazing grass in a pasture or crammed into a wire cage, we are not only part of wholesale slaughter, we are condoning it. We are even enjoying it!

I would have imagined that people on Treehugger would know better. And I would bet my life that there is a way to eat healthy sustainable food that does not include cramming the bodies of long-suffering, or betrayed animals, into our own bodies. There is plenty to eat if we know how to grow it. Let us either speak on behalf of animals or leave them alone. Let us stop finding excuses to keep eating them.

Thank you.

You crazed vegans need to learn about this thing called BREVITY.

Just a little suggestion for you.

Crazed vegans? Brevity? It sounds like YOU just need to LEARN.

THINK - FEEL - LEARN

Just a little suggestion for you. You're the one that needs to sort things out.

"Brevity is ... wit."

"Life is pain, Highness. Anyone who says otherwise is selling something."

I'm not vegan, nor vegetarian, nor likely to be anytime soon. I do prefer to avoid farm-raised meat because I dislike how it's raised. But I am a hunter-gatherer as well as a gardener.

Yeah, I hunt. Sustainably and organically. And skillfully. I sincerely believe a single shot from my rifle is going to be less painful and swifter than the bobcat or coyote who also wants to eat that deer. I'll take free-range deer over farm-"raised" beef anyday. Then I myself take the deer home and disassemble it into the meat and other pieces I want. The rest goes back into the woods where scavengers like opossums and weasels happily eat the leavings.

I look my dinner in the eye before I eat it. I have a good idea of how it's lived its life. I have a good idea how it could have continued living and ended up dying. But that won't matter much to Wendy, most likely.

Everyone draws the line right about where they stand. The vegans look down on the vegetarians. The vegetarians look down on the sustainable/organics. The sustainable/organics look down on the general. The honest see how close those lines are together and are at least a little understanding of the other positions.

It's easy to feel superior to those below the line you draw. It's much less easy to feel inferior to those who draw the line just above you. It's wise to see that it isn't a cut-off line but rather a spectrum, a wide path, and we walk it together.

Be gentle, not judgmental.

I am not sure who to address this too, I believe Richard has written the comments about righteousness of being a vegetarian.

Couple of things to think about, in order to grow/ consume anything for anthroprogenic purposes there is a cost. If it is land for asparagus you are displacing the inhabitants of that land, flora and fauna. Habitat loss is the number one cause of extinctions. Certainly we are not naive enough to think that the harvesting of vegetables does not involve the death of animals that live in these habitats? If one chooses to only eat vegetables great, I support that, but do not confuse your diet with a higher plain of enlightenment. All life is sacred, plants equally. All life and non living (the earth beneath you) has a spirit. Simply because you can not see or hear it does not make it any more humane to harvest it. Living in a sustainable fashion is the only way we (all of us) can reverse the damage done to our great mother, earth and only together will we accomplish this goal. It is not easy to take life, it requires humility, understanding and giving of thanks. But to praise an 'organic asparagus' travelling to your kitchen table from as far off as south america, simply for your convenience, as being more humane, or sustainable than a cow raised with love and understanding to feed a community locally, is simply misguided and I would urge you to think about your thoughts more carefully?

And to Batzel, thank you for your words, I couldn't have said it better myself. I too hunt and I appreciate your clarity and understanding,
cheers.

C'mon people, the topic is a review of the Omnivore's Dilemma. So, read the book, learn, be enlightened, and then perhaps, just maybe, you will realize that there's no need to comment as you'll still be thinking about the questions raised in the book.

Just a note for the commenters. The author of the comment is the name BELOW the post not above. Thus, Richard (me), did not write the long winded post on veganism (that was Wendy). My comment is the first one in which I discuss the implications of a food economy fueled by oil that is the topic of Omnivore's Dilemma.

I am not a vegetarian, people can choose that for themselves.

I thought Micheal Pollan's book was a good beginning to understanding just what goes into the food we eat. As a chemical engineer I think in terms of mass and energy balances and the important fact about food is that it isn't just sunlight making the food we eat, it's a lot of oil.