When I was raising my four children on an old farm
we bought a small pig many years ago with the intention of turning him into pork chops in the fall as most old time farmers used to do.
As the summer rolled by we became friends with george(yes the pig had a name) and by the fall george was about 500 pounds and eating 100 pounds of food each week.  When the time came to turn george into pork chops I considered keeping him as a pet but george consumed 100 pounds of food per week and it was too costly.
Very sadly(understatement) we took george to the greek farmer who assured me that the end would be very quick.  We never raised another animal for food again.
A true story--
Bill and his four grown children.

Reading this made me a little sick (literally). However I do wish more people would experience where and how the meat gets on their plate. I feel so many people (especially younger city kids) think that burgers are neat little packages and not the year sof cruelty and pain and suffering that a cow has to live through!

For me eating dead animals is extremely pointless and complete waste of sooooo many resources.  But atleast you have the balls to to know more about the animal you are eating!

The demonstration you watched was next to pointless.  As a kid, I helped to slaughter all of our own animals every year (chickens, turkeys, ducks, cows, pigs) and I have to say that the actual killing is a big part.  Next, gutting and bleeding the pig, which makes a huge bloody mess and smells everywhere of blood, guts, and shit.  After that, you boil up a huge tub of water and drop the pig in it to scald the skin, making it easy to scrape the hair off.  I found the stench of scalded pig skin to be much more offensive than the smells of blood, guts, and shit combined.  

So what you saw was a killed, cleaned, de-haired pig carcass.  That's like saying you want to learn what it's like to murder someone and cut them up like Jeffrey Dahmer so you go the morgue and watch an autopsy.  Actually, that's a bad comparison since the pig you watched get cut up didn't have any guts left in it.

I recommend you head out to a rural area if you want the experience.  Getting it from a chef who serves the interests of the meat industry is clearly not what you need to really experience what a slaughter is like.  I've (personally) known pigs that didn't go down with their throats slit and 12-guage slugs in their heads.  The "back-up" tool in this case is a large iron sledge hammer, with which you beat the pig until it stops breathing or its heart stops.  Slaughter is an extremely dangerous season where I'm from because if you don't kill a 500-lb pig with the first cut/bullet, it becomes a bezerker that can tear you up so you have to be prepared to take it out if you have to with any means available.

Now, the bad part is that by encouraging people to think that eating meat is ok and not qualifying that you're talking about only organically-produced, small-scale farm operations, you're helping to keep a system of slaughter in place that is much more disgusting than the one I just mentioned above.  Factory farm slaughterhouses (where your slaughter, gutted, cleaned-up, and chilled pig came from) are places where animals are often stunned or don't lose consciousness before they are slit open and gutted, skinned, etc.

Thank you for the totally meaningless article.  I hope it made you feel good about eating pork chops to see a meat-industry representative chop up a sanitized porker in a sanitized environment.

Jamie Bissonnette looks like what I would call a "cochon."  He should eat less pork.  You are what you eat.

May he someday be a vegan again and have a smaller eco-footprint.

Or may he buy a farm in Maine and raise his own damned pigs and slaughter/eat them himself.  Doing dirty work in a restaurant for a bunch of careless, clueless Americans who couldn't care less about the crap they're eating doesn't seem to me to be anything an environmentally-conscious person would do.

The one thing Roz got right in this total fluff article is that eating factory-farmed chicken technically has a smaller eco-footprint than factory-farmed cheese.

I also noticed that in the photo, Jamie's arm is covered in tatoos.  He probably got them when he was a vegan...because he didn't give up eating irresponsibly because it was the right thing to do, he did it because he's a vain, faddish person who also wants people to notice his arm artwork.  I've actually met quite a few former vegans with tons of artwork plastered on themselves.  I guess they just thought that veganism was part of the rebel-without-a-clue fake-counter-culture they were a part of.  Then, when they realize that the cute hippie chick still isn't interested in them even after they've gone vegan and got some cool tatoos, they go back to being an uncaring, clueless chef serving thoughtless food to thoughtless people.  

Good comments.

Yup, what he said.

Thanks.

Roz,

I'm so glad that Jamie's recipe says to use Kosher salt.  It's so important for us environmental folk to use salt that has been properly bless by one of God's holy representatives.  Godly salt makes any meaty recipe carbon neutral.

Then...since God has dietary preferences for cloven-hoofed animals and against swine (which, by the way, are prone to being possessed by demons called Legion and running over cliffs), it seems to me that the pork would neutralize whatever holy properties the Kosher salt put into this totally meat dish.

I'm glad you're only eating meat a few times a week now.  Geez...when your family eats meat, they really eat it in large quantities.  Three pounds this, four pounds that....you probably eat a whole cow at each "meat" meal.  Maybe instead of eating it only a few times a week, you should focus on eating smaller quantities overall.

And Clueless?

What is it with environmentalists? Not only are they a depressing lot, but they're arrogant pricks as well.

I've only killed small animals (trout, rabbits, one rooster), but I'd say the tough part is certainly the kill, when the animal goes from a living creature to a dead one. If you can't face that moment, you probably shouldn't be eating meat.

Earlier this year, we had a couple of vegeterian friends over for a rabbit slaughter. They had been on the receiving end of some irresponsible rabbit breeding and felt ethically required to eat some of them. We taught them how to quickly and humanely kill their rabbits. They did very well, and it was very encouraging to me that not only did they do well at the moment of the kill, but through the whole, messy dressing process. They reported that they ate all of both rabbits and are interested in raising their own.

I think that rabbits are, like grass-fed ungulates, a great way of turning food that humans can't eat (in the case of rabbits, alfalfa and fruit tree trimmings) into food humans can eat. Pigs also can have this quality, especially when they're raised in apple orchards with non-food-grade apples and fed garbage for the balance of their diets. Feeding meat animals grain diets doesn't work on many levels, for the animals, for the humans and for our planet.

Regarding the pate recipe: Mushrooms make the best pate. No pigs required.

If you gut the animal's body ahead of time, and you leave all of the feces in the streams running past the factory farm, OF COURSE there won't be any waste!  It's like bleaching the stains out of clothing, washing it in Tide, then washing it in eco-friendly detergent.  Some people could claim (with a straight face) that you've eliminated all bleach from the clothes-washing process.  That is a prime example of greenwashing.

How can minimizing meat for environmental reasons be a moral imperative for someone who says they ca

I try to stay positive and constructive, but this is the most disappointingly short-sighted article I've seen in a long time.  You've managed to top USA Today in the "lack of a basic understanding" category.  Blogging about an experience is great.  If you're going to write an article, you need to add some research to the "experiencing."

Roz has just published something which she has obviously thought long and hard about and come to a decision which in her mind is a correct choice. I wish that every person who eats would have the same thoughtful process to eating. It does not help when someone thoughtlessly and ruthlessly eviserates those arguments in a quick pounding of the keyboard! We need to learn to respect people as well as animals!!

Roz I totally encourage you to get out and see the rest of the story ie the Kill. I love getting out each fall for an annual deer hunt and am starting to get involved in duck/geese hunts. The butchering is a messy job but the end product is the key. I am a trained biologist who realises that just as we can harm the environment by reducing a species to extinction through habitat loss we are also creating habitats where certain animals thrive to the detriment of others. Deer and geese are considered "nusiance" animals by some and are vastly overpopulated in certain areas of the country. This overpopulation makes for tasty eating!! Ethical hunting means making sure that you are responsible for the animal that you kill, using as much of it as possible. Thanks for the great article, I'm sure it would taste great with venision and geese too!

It's an itsy bit ticklish for me to read through this thread, because Roz, John former Marine, and MAD MAC are all friends of mine, and they are all over the place on this issue.

At heart I agree mostly with John (no surprise there!).  But I admire Roz for what she is attempting here.  In her online column, she has always been very respectful of us vegetarians/vegans, and she deserves our thanks for that.

She is absolutely right to suggest (implicitly) that at this stage of our moral evolution, we must constantly encourage people to understand what they are doing, eating-wise, always to look, to feel, to learn, to think.  She has all along been doing terrific work.

The great majority of people are anthropocentrists, and have opinions similar to those of MAD MAC and Ruth117 (whom I have not had the pleasure of meeting before).  They should realize that they are far and away in the (backwards-seeking, prejudiced) majority, and so should not get too hepped up in slamming the (teensy, forwards-looking) minority.  Still, to quote a recent American president, "Bring it on!"  That is how martyrs are made.  And as the great Asian martyr, Saint Ignatius of Antioch, said, "The blood of martyrs is the seed of saints."

(Mon petit cher Jean, autrefois Marin,
comme tu sais, nous allons bientot en l'Arcadie!  C'est a dire, nous allons d'abord a la ville de Quebec, qui celebre cette annee son quatrecentieme anniversaire; depuis, a la Gaspesie; depuis, a la cote du nord de NB; depuis, a PEI!, "Anne of Green Gables" country!, ou nous voulons visiter les villages arcadiens a l'ouest; depuis, a Halifax, pour visiter la "vieille dame" -- a real piece of work, dont je te parlerai peut-etre a l'avenir.  On an earlier visit to la Nouvelle Ecosse, we had visited the Acadian Coast, too too briefly, from Annapolis Royal down to Yarmouth, and made a point of returning some day.  The only thing that was off-putting was the gold star stuck up in the corner of the French Republican tricolor, bizarrely unhistorical.  The lady in the church at Saint-Bernard was very sweet.  Bon, tu seras dans mes pensees, et je regrette que tu ne pourras pas nous rencontrer.  Saluts affectueux!)

John Former Marine: please tell me what name-calling and personal attacks have ever accomplished? And this from someone who grew up to murder humans (aka Snipper). Did you gut, bleed and eat the humans you killed?

I certainly agree with parts of both the blog and your posts however you also made me sad about the human race ever solving anything.

Keep in mind that the greatest ecological damage one human can do is to breed themselves. Suicide is also a great way to reduce ones carbon footprint.

I agree with your comment wholeheartedly.  I don't understand the desire for meat.  We don't need it-- so why eat it?  It is cruel to take a sentient creature's life when you don't need to.  That's that.  No arguments or theories or anything like that.  Besides, I eat a much broader variety of foods since I've become a vegetarian/vegan than I ever did before.  I am a (very) amateur chef and I never feel like my meals need meat to be complete.  

I commend the writer for trying to be more informed, but I will never understand why some feel compelled to eat meat.  We don't need it, it's usually unhealthy, it's usually bad for the environment, and a living, breathing animal has to die.  Rather than win-win, it seems more like a lose-lose to me.  But then again, I ate meat for a long time.  I've been one of those very same people, so I've no right to judge anyone.  Oh, what a difference in viewpoint I have nowadays :)

Hello Pandion,
what a curious mythological name you have given yourself!  The story of the metamorphoses of Pandion's daughters, Philomela and Procne, as well as of Procne's husband and Philomela's rapist Tereus, is treasured by many classicists who cultivate an especially precious sense of aesthetics.

John-former-Marine will (or will not) answer your comment as he sees fit.  But the suggestion about suicide that you raise at the end is generally very interesting.

"To be or not to be, that is the question": And the option of suicide was indeed the most profoundly interesting question to Albert Camus, himself the most engaging and persistently respected of the existentialist philosophers, who died at a relatively early age.

There can be no doubt that it has occurred to many environmentalists, if not all, even quite independently, that the Earth's huge human population is not good news for the environment, or for the biosphere.  And many environmentalists do indeed try, more or less often, to bring up the need to urge everybody to stop having children.

In view of that, it does indeed surprise me that there has not emerged (thus far, to my knowledge) a fringe environmentalist sect of super-committed activists who have publicly killed themselves, or have declared that they intend to kill themselves, with full and eloquent video statements done beforehand, analogous to the suicidal "martyrs" within Islamist extremism.

Also, in consideration of that, we should realize that the "environmentalist movement" is what can technically be considered "diffuse," because environmentalists are far from agreeing on, say, so important a set of issues as the value of their own personal lives, the value of other human lives, the value of animals' lives, and the value of the lives of other living creatures.  It is indeed a "movement"; but we should acknowledge that we enter into solidarity with one another, only after coming from very diverse backgrounds, with quite diverse values.

Please God, may nothing I have written encourage a suicide sect of environmentalists to form!  : (

It brings on many changes.
And I can take or leave it if I please.

try to find a way to make

all our little joys relate

without that ever-present hate

but now I know that it's too late

but suicide is painless

It brings on many changes

And I can take or leave if I please

Well, the poet may so say, that committing suicide is painless.  But we do not know, really, do we.  Few tend to return to tell us.

In a recent NY Times Magazine, in an article on suicide, a man who tried to kill himself by jumping from the Golden Gate Bridge, but survived, said, "After I let go, and my hands left the railing, I asked myself: Oh no!  What have I done?!  Why in the world did I do that?!"  And now, he is a counselor, for depressed, suicidal patients.

Cf. Sylvia Plath, famous suicide:

<<
Dying is an art, like everything else.
I do it exceptionally well.
I do it so it feels like hell.
I do it so it feels real.
I guess you could say I have a call.
>>

What I do not understand about Albert Camus is, why our sadness, and aloneness, were inadequate for establishing "meaning" to human existence.

I've never killed another person and I don't intend to unless in defense of myself or another.  I consider the choices I made to have been the best choices available to me in my economic class and personal situation at the time.  Had I been born into a comfortable middle class family, I never would've dreamed of signing up to kill Amerikka's enemies.

That being said, the reason I wrote to Roz is because her article was pointless and fluffy.  She didn't get any closer to what she was seeking and I can say that from personal experience in slaughter.  I also can say honestly that when I became a vegan it was for environmental and ethical reasons and I never intended to remain a vegan for life.  I may, someday, go back to eating eggs or chicken or other flesh, but only if I raise and slaughter it myself.  And if it requires no additional energy inputs from beneath the Persian Gulf in the form of grain, fertilizers, etc.

Roz says that she's working to reduce the meat consumption in her family, perhaps the most important thing anyone can do to reduce their eco-footprint.  And yet her article wasn't about reducing meat consumption and excitement about finding some delicious new meatless recipe of stewed pumpkin or pilaf or wheat berry salad.  No...she's trying to reduce meat consumption so she writes on an environmental blog site about watching a sanitized pig carcass get butchered and then offers a recipe that is entirely meat (probably about 30 servings worth).

I would suggest that if Roz acknowledges that eating less meat is something that can reduce one's eco-footprint, then she should write articles about people eating less meat and offer vegan recipes to inspire people to eat less meat.

If she was just trying to better "know" her meat, she didn't get close to anything meaningful.

It was my older brother who was a sniper and, as younger brothers do, I looked up to him.  He did, I'm quite sure, kill people for America...although he'd never tell me about it other than to say which country he had been in.

I have other siblings that you probably don't have anything in common with as well...

My sister is handicapped and, fortunately, the much older Harley-guy that fathered her son turned out to be a really great guy.

My oldest brother has been a drug addict all his life and starts drinking before going to work.  If you get a call from a telemarketer, it may be him.

My other brother works in a nursing home washing baby-boomer asses for $8.50 an hour.  He considers this better than his former life working in processing plants, convenience stores, and call centers.  And having a "serious" job also keeps him from going back to all the drugs he did as well.  During his messed up drug years, I had to call ambulances, police, or go get him myself many times to keep him from killing himself.

My younger brother works as a security guard, is aggressive, and can literally put down a case (24) of beers in one night.

And my youngest brother just found out that his girlfriend is pregnant despite the fact that he's been making $8.00 an hour and has battled with heroin addiction and other problems.  He's leveled out but now he's got an ulcer because he's working 12-hour night shifts 6 or 7 days a week at a home for disabled kids.

So....you see, people who aren't in your social class have a hard time understanding why they should care about the environment.  Should that surprise you?

I will tell you one thing that working class and poor people do much better than rich people....their in-your-face no-BS honesty.  They speak their minds.  And they're not scared to break every single knuckle in their hand busting in your face (I've had brothers with broken hands before).

If "environmentalists" like you don't want to encourage people to make immediate, proactive changes to their behaviors to make life more sustainable, prepare for many poor eco-refugees to make your life a lot less comfortable.  And believe me, if my older brother Joe moves into your backyard, you're not gonna even have a chance against him.  He's an animal.

And my little brother who has stolen purses from old ladies is definitely going to be breaking into your comfortable middle-class home when the price of food gets high enough that he can't feed his baby on minimum wage.

Sorry, John.  Since I am by training a classicist, the name of the hilly region in the central Peloponnese, Arcadia, famous for its association with pastoral poetry, creeps into my head too quickly.  Therefore I disgracefully inserted an unwanted "r" more than once into "l'Acadie."

My bad!

u all make me sick

MTV released the first season of Wonder Showzen on DVD March 28, 2006.

Watching is more harmful than doing it yourself, if one has compassion for non-kosher eating hot dog conoissuers. Oh, a French word! Imagine that.

Harley Davidson.

He is in a long line of self-indulgent idiots who enjoy pontificating on the meaning of life that can't be found and seeing the human condition in essentially negative terms. This is typical of writers, especially European writers, who seem to think that you have to be a depressed jerk to be taken seriously. None of them are nearly as intelligent as they think they are or want us to think they are.

Camus has a big following, but he is no hero of mine.  That is, not that I dislike him, but I have read too little by him.  I read "L'Etranger" in a French lit class in high school, and barely remember it.

Still, we should ALWAYS avoid stereotypes.  Camus is not to be lumped with Jean-Paul Sartre, another great French existentialist, who was once very fashionable but nowadays is increasingly loathed.

Anyway, it is a rather pathetic characteristic of the American body politic (wow, look at all those Greek derivatives!), that Barack Obama and his people have to be afraid that a too friendly reception of him in Europe will render him more questionable and alien in "Middle America."

Some of us, who deplore the state of education in geography, world history and foreign languages in this country, remember bitterly that during the 2004 campaign, John Kerry, who knows French well, having studied as a child at a school in Switzerland, could not dare to reveal that he speaks French.

But the US educational system is FAR, FAR, FAR superior to the German one which I was so heavily exposed to (and which my son had to suffer through).

I have read a fair amount of European literature and watched a fair amount of European art house crap in German movie theaters and there is a fairly consistent theme of self loathing for the human condition that is sanctimonious and annoying espoused by people of inferior intellect to myself who think they are highly intelligent. A very annoying penchant I was forced to frequently suffer through in my quest to sleep with college women in Germany.

I am speechless about what has been said before, but it just shows that Americans have opinions and will express them no matter what! I LOVE you guys!

I am a hunter and am proud to be one. There is nothing more majestic than seeing a Rocky Mountain Elk and getting the opportunity to harvest one for your family. These honorable beings deserve our respect and I am very protective of them and their habitat.

I too use all of the animal for steaks and burger scraps, the hide I turn in to a local processor and receive two pairs of well made gloves, the leg bones go to my dog for a years worth of chewing and gut piles, chest and any other unused food scraps are left in the woods for the coyotes, crows and other scavengers.

This is the way the Native Americans harvested wild animals and all is done with the respect for that animals sacrifice.

you are on a rant about so many things.. woe poor underclass boy who is now attacking everyone and anyone. stop seeing everyone as your enemy and put a little joy out into the world instead of whining.

the above post was meant for John THE MARINE

In my 40 years of living I have found that judging and labeling how others choose to live does nothing to further the cause you care about, and in fact drives people the other way.

In college I studied animal science until I could take it no longer and had to switch majors and go vegan. My choices were just that- my choices. They were the result of a process of personal growth and experience.

The comments I have read here are a perfect example of why the general public thinks most vegans are weird, hippy freaks. When you encounter someone who tells you are doomed to hell for not believing as they do, has it ever caused you to instantly convert to their beliefs? Of course not. It typically pisses you off and causes you to label them. Listen folks; if you want to help others live more conscious, sustainable lives learn tolerance before you shoot off your mouth! You are NOT HELPING your and my cause even a tiny bit.  

I never get confrontational about my compassionate and truly green life-style choices but this article makes me want to say...screw you meat eaters.  These beings were here long before you and because of you, won't be here much longer nor will your specie be here very much longer when you make justifications for totally environmentally unfriendly choices. Foie gras anyone?

blah,blah, blah...you can be thankful that certain of our "beliefs" keep you from being eaten.

These posts made me remember something.  I worked for a land trust.  One of my fellow colleagues went to a frog monitoring class so that he could do that on our lands.  A woman was there who asked if she had to be worried about coyotes (she preceded this w saying that she didn't go out into the "wild" very much and wanted to become more involved and more knowledgeable - hats off!).  A man who was also there very smugly laughed at her and turned to one of his friends to mock her for it.  Now, this woman admitted she didn't know much about being outside or doing this kind of monitoring.  She was simply concerned about coyotes bc of what she had heard about keeping an eye on small pets and what have you, and furthermore, when you do this type of monitoring, you are to be out around dusk.  
My colleague was so upset with this man for mocking this woman.  Here is someone who simply wants to become more aware of her surroundings while also trying to help out by collecting data, and here is this man, mocking her.  God forbid she ask a question that she thought was relevant.  My friend spoke with her afterwards and explained a little more about the whole situation.  

My point: have patience with some people who are trying.  Instead of belittling them for their efforts that, to your standards don't go the whole distance, how about saying, well thats great you learned X and Y, but heres Z, something you may not have realized.

Thanks.

I thought his criticisms were spot-on, and appropriately scathing. The article comes across as little more than meat industry PR. The old standby, "former vegan turned meateater," is so hackneyed by now I almost always expect it to appear in these types of articles.

I've donated to grist in the past, but if you plan to publish more of this type of fluff in the future, I'd rather save my money as I can always depend on the NY Times for their slanted coverage on the food industry and environment.

Wiscidea: not new. Back when it was the the center of that doleful business the Chicago hog butchers always boasted they used every part of the animal but the squeal.