If You Eat Meat: Read This

I promise no disturbing photos

Why does it feel like talking about the cruelty of industrial animal agriculture is passé? Maybe it’s because I had my awakening in high school, when learning about factory farming felt shocking and urgent. Or because my years as a strict vegetarian, and working one summer at Farm Sanctuary caring for rescued animals, now feel tied to a more idealistic version of myself. Or maybe it's that the big exposé documentaries, like Food, Inc., came out over a decade ago, making the conversation feel dated, even though the problem is anything but.

In all the conversations about food I see, I rarely see reminders about the evil system of factory farming. I would assume most people have an idea that billions of land animals are killed in the US each year for food (10 billion to be exact), but it's so uncomfortable that most of us, including me, forget about it.

pigs that grow old at Farm Sanctuary

Sadly, I believe the plant-based/vegan movement has caused a backlash among people defending their right to eat meat, and the protein obsession has caused this issue to move even further into the background. As global meat demand continues to rise, I am here to remind you that 99% of the meat consumed in the US is from a factory farm. Please let that sink in. As much as we want to believe things are improving, they have actually just disappeared from the headlines, and I would argue, are even worsening.

If you are new to what a factory farm is, also known as a Controlled Animal Feeding Operation (CAFO), please do your research. If the way animals are treated doesn’t bother you, the environmental pollution and suffering of people who live near these operations should. If I can recommend one film, it’s called The Smell of Money - which is described as “that’s what Big Pork calls the stench of pig waste in the air in eastern North Carolina, where much of the world’s bacon and barbecue is made. But to Elsie Herring and others who live near the state’s giant pig factories, the revolting odor is a call to battle against generations of injustice.”

Raising thousands of pigs at once in a confined area is no easy feat. Like most industries, it’s gotten more efficient over the years — like the time between pig pregnancies or the days until a chicken can be slaughtered — but unlike other industries, more efficiency means more suffering.

I’m not going to tell you all the horrible and disgusting things that happen at CAFOs, but I do want to bring this conversation back to the forefront. Being critical of factory farming doesn’t have to mean you are a vegan member of PETA who will throw paint on anyone who eats meat; it means you are aware of how the system works. To be fair, it’s not like it’s in the headlines because our food system only works if its practices are kept out of the spotlight.

As

Alicia Kennedy

says so clearly in her essay On Food Media, “major food media will not take itself seriously as journalism in service to the public good because it would be too uncomfortable to make any such demands of its readership.

Regardless of what food media is doing, we, as consumers, must cut back on meat and stop mindlessly consuming protein-packed chicken breasts as if there are no negative impacts.

Again, as

Alicia Kennedy

points out, mindlessly eating meat is considered normal, while promoting a plant-based lifestyle is considered political.

This topic is particularly front and center in my mind as I am reading Jonathan Safran Foer’s 2009 book, Eating Animals.

If I can leave you with two things that I read in the book that particularly concern me:

• Farmed animals in the US produce 130 times as much waste as the human population - roughly 87,000 pounds of shit per second. The polluting strength of this shit is 160 times greater than raw municipal sewage and yet there is almost no waste treatment infrastructure for farmed animals. (See documentary above about what happens to this waste.)

• Americans eat 9 billion chickens per year. There is a lot out there about the conditions in which 99% of these chickens are raised, and I won’t go into the disturbing details here. Still, I will point out that due to this unsanitary condition, 83% of all chicken meat (including organic and antibiotic-free brands) is infected with either Campylobacter or Salmonella at the time of purchase. Why, you might ask? In industrial operations, chickens are placed in boiling water to help remove their feathers after slaughter, and this water has fecal matter.

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❗ Pay Attention ❗

• Gender Affirming care is at risk for trans people. Please stay informed and be aware that what was once a cut to Medicaid to provide gender-affirming care for youth is now a cut for all gender-affirming care.

• Opinion: Trump’s message to trans people is clear: Detransition, or potentially die

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Gems of the Week ✨

• Theo graduated from school! My husband completed his two-year Social Work Program at Hunter’s Silberman School. I’m so proud of him, and his future patients will be lucky to work with such an amazing therapist.

• How ‘Coffees’ Made With Chickpeas and Barley Compare

• Menus of Change, the annual conference at the Culinary Institute of America, will be held on Wednesday and Thursday. For the first time, it will be live-streamed, so if you are interested in the future of food, check out the schedule of events.

• What if a Grocery Store Was More Like a Farmers’ Market? - written by a friend, Alexandra Talty

• There is one seat left for the Astrology Dinner I am hosting with Catherine McQ next Saturday! The evening will include a three-course meal inspired by the elements and a personal reading from Catherine. Claim it!

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Warm Plum and Farro Salad ✨

This was SO good. Sneak peek of summer stone fruit season around the corner. The combination of warm kale and farro with cold, crunchy radicchio really worked for me

INGREDIENTS:

• Plums

• Tuscan kale

• Raddichio

• Farro

• White beans

• Feta

• Pecans

• Fig dressing (fig jam, Dijon mustard, olive oil and champagne vinegar)
  

INSTRUCTIONS

• Boil your farro and in the last 2 minutes, add the kale, drain

• Slice plums in quarters and cook in olive oil for 10 minutes until browned, or roast in the oven

• Chop radicchio

• Drain and rinse a can of beans

• Create your bowl of kale, radicchio, farro, and plums and top with feta and pecans if you have them.