The numbers are astonishing

The Whole Foods Farm Animal Welfare site begins…

"The numbers are astonishing..."

 … consider this: in the time it takes to watch a 60-minute television show, 5.8 million chickens are slaughtered for meat. That’s more than 97,000 per minute ... Each one can suffer.

So Whole Foods created their 5-step Animal Welfare Rating System, which enables them to charge a premium for “humanely raised” meat.

And the numbers are astonishing.

Whole Foods Markets quarterly profit rose a larger than expected 35 percent and it raised its full-year profit forecast, fueled by robust sales and snatching market share from other supermarkets.

Whole Foods executives have a deep understanding of the mindset of their self-styled progressive shoppers:

We don’t want animals to suffer, and more importantly, we don’t want to suffer pangs of guilt while we're eating our dinner. We’ll gladly pay extra if you convince us the flesh we’re eating came from a carefree animal who lived a blissful life right up to the moment he was slaughtered with tenderness and compassion.

Yes, Whole Foods will be more than happy to convince their shoppers of this.

By choosing to support higher welfare farmers and ranchers, we can collectively make a significant difference in the lives of billions of animals.

 But for shareholders who need reassurance this isn’t some wooly-headed animal rights thing...

 Higher animal welfare standards are increasingly seen to be a pre-requisite to enhancing business efficiency and profitability...

Certified Humane. Improving animals’ lives by slaughtering them.

Pretty impressive. And how are they able to improve these 25 million lives each year? By slaughtering the past year’s 25 million. They’re then able to improve the lives of 25 million new animals. Slaughter them and improve the lives of another  25 million. And so on. What do these improved lives consist of? “Chickens are able to flap their wings and dust bathe” before their necks are sliced open. “Pigs have the space to move around and root” before their brains are pierced by a stun bolt.

The improved life part is accurate, no arguing with that. But it’s not the 25 million animals whose lives are improved. It’s the meat producers who get to charge a premium for Certified Humane products.  It’s the compassionate carnivores who like thinking they’re concerned about animal suffering and want to eat those animals without feeling guilty.

Certified Humane. The best way to help farm animals.

The people at American Heritage and Webster’s would know best, but I’ve got to believe this is the first time the word “help” has been used as a synonym for "slaughter" and the word "best" has been used as a synonym for "worst."

Thanksgiving football games

At least five or six times during the Thanksgiving Day football games, they cut to a shot of the cramped cages of a turkey farm. Sometimes this image provides the backdrop as the announcers give their misty-eyed tribute to friends and family and troops stationed overseas who can’t make it home for the holidays. Other times one of the announcers will use the image of soon-to-be-slaughtered turkeys as the inspiration for a Thanksgiving-themed quip, often something simple as, “gobble gobble.”  Then the announcer’s partner in the booth, and presumably the millions watching from their tables and sofas, chuckle along in goodwill and merriment.  This isn’t some new feature for this year’s games. They’ve cut to these same shots every year – hundreds of frantic turkeys piled on top of each other, unable to move. The football game producers even boost the volume, like they do with commercials, so the viewer gets the full audio effect of the turkeys screeching in fear. Why do these soon-to-be-slaughtered turkeys have such appeal to the producers? Does terror and imminent death somehow enhance the Thanksgiving day experience for their viewers? You’d think people might want to forget their juicy meat in front of them was very recently a living, breathing creature. But apparently not. Apparently seeing animals about to have their necks sliced open so people can enjoy a tasty meal makes Thanksgiving that much more festive.

A new system of taxonomy

Taxonomy is the science of classifying organisms.  Animals are divided into the smaller, more recognizable groups phylum, class, order, family, genus, species.

Another way we could classify animals is by the various ways humans abuse them. Most would fit into one of following phylum: Poisoned by humans.  Clubbed by humans. Captured by humans. Caged by humans. Shackle-hoisted and stun bolted by humans. Hunted by humans. Consumed by humans, though this category would of course overlap with the captured, caged, shackle-hoisted and stun-bolted categories.

Each of the above phylum can be divided into smaller classes.

Poisoned by human can be divided into the sub-categories, poisoned for human comfort and vanity, i.e. cosmetic testing, and poisoned because humans find their presence annoying (e.g., rodents).  Hunted by humans can be divided into the sub-categories, hunted for pleasure, hunted for money, hunted out of fear.  Caged by humans can be divided into the sub-categories, caged for viewing pleasure and caged for consumption.  

Consumed by humans is of course the largest phylum, comprised of billions of farm animals each year. But there’s hardly an animal on the planet that doesn't suffer some form of abuse, usually culminating in torture and death, at the hands of humans. Taxonomists would have to burn the midnight oil getting them all straight.

Slaughtered with dignity. Consumed with gratitude.

The animals grazed placidly, majestically, almost pre-historically…

The more an author rhapsodizes over a grazing animal, the more certain you can be the author will soon be eating that animal for dinner.

This author is describing a buffalo hunt he witnessed.  Like many compassionate carnivores, he takes great pride in his willingness to “see where his meat came from.”  He records the “harvesting” of the buffalo with a weeping pen.  He talks about the other buffalo bowing their heads in grief.

I felt the ache of witnessing death.  I wasn’t alone in my sadness.  As the rancher knelt over the buffalo and hoisted it by chains with the bucket of a loader, the rest of the herd drew in close and lowered their heads. The sight of animals mourning … humbled me to my carnivorous core.

Does "the ache of witnessing death" inspire the author to consider giving up meat?  No, it inspires him to get out his thesaurus and use up every word listed under honor and dignity.

“I slit the animals’s throat because I was fucking craving a big juicy steak” sounds way too profane, so the compassionate carnivore dresses things up with the noblest human impulses.

In Michael Pollan’s 36-hour dinner party “Mike wants to ‘honor the goat’ by wasting as little of it as possible."

Then there’s Katherine Friend’s letter to the lamb.

Tomorrow morning when we load you onto the trailer for your trip to the abattoir, we will be thinking about the life you’ve lived on this farm – running around the pasture at dusk, sleeping in the sun and grazing enthusiastically for the tenderest bit of grass.  We will say aloud, "thank you."

 The compassionate carnivores are always thanking and praising and honoring the animals they kill, as if the animal knew how hungry they were and, in a moment of selflessness, decided to offer up its flesh. 

By making the act of slaughter more than mere slaughter, by transforming it into something ceremonial, the compassionate carnivore is able to convince himself that subjecting animals to the most gruesome fate imaginable is a morally praiseworthy act.

Conscientious, Compassionate, Cash-earning Carnivores.

Let’s see we’ve got Conscientious Carnivores and Compassionate Carnivores.  So don’t want to offend, you know, but it’s hard to keep the two of them straight.  They both shed crocodile tears over the plight of farm animals and chatter endlessly about their personal conflictedness as they chow down on the remains of said animals.  But there must be differences. Is it like belts in martial arts? Does a conscientious carnivore work his way up to becoming a compassionate carnivore?  Who gets first dibs on the shank?  Maybe the compassionate carnivores came first and the conscientious carnivores were an offshoot.  They had doctrinal differences, split off like the Lutherans.  Or maybe it was a naked power-grabbing move.  The conscientious carnivores were sick and tired of being in the shadows while the author of Conscientious Carnivores, Catherine Friend (as in with friends like this animals don’t need enemies), was out doing the talk show circuit, getting reviewed by the NYT, hobnobbing with Michael Pollan.  Michael Pollan could tell them both there’s plenty of money to be made off all those hungry progressives out there, salivating for a juicy steak and a good rationalization.  Why don’t the two of you join me? Michael Pollan would say.  All three of us can be Cash-earning Carnvivores.

Dinner with Trina and Mike, compassionate carnivores

TRINA:  There's an exciting movement out there.
MIKE:  Bigger than organic, bigger than buying local.
TRINA:  Compassionate people concerned about the suffering of farm animals. 

MIKE: Factory farms are hell on earth.  The manifesto of the compassionate carnivore is we reduce animal suffering by only buying our meat from family farms. 

TINA:  Some cynical people out there say to us, if we're so concerned about animal suffering, why don't we stop eating them?  Mike, why don't you set these cynics straight.

MIKE: The thwing aboo compashwon is it’s a tfo we seet.

TRINA: Sorry, it’s hard to understand Mike when he’s got a mouthful of meat.  He said the thing about compassion is it’s a two way street.

MIKE: We’re compassionate to the animals so they need to show us a little compassion in return.

TRINA: The way they do this is by letting us eat them.

MIKE: Believe me, we have so much appreciation for the compassion these kind animals show us. Yummy juicy juicy meat.

TRINA: It’s one big, harmonious circle of compassion.

MIKE: Chew, chomp, yum, chewy, juicy.

TRINA: Mmm, yum, pink, juicy fleshy yummy meat

MIKE: Compassion is all about empathy. Relating to the needs of someone other than yourself.  When these poor farm animals live in a dark crate in a factory farm, it’s like I’m living in a dark crate.

TRINA: You are so compassionate, Mike.

MIKE: So are you, Trina. Yummy delicious flesh.

TRINA: Mmmmm! Chewy, delicious, juicy flesh.

MIKE: We empathize with the animals by not wanting them to suffer more than necessary.

TRINA: And they empathize with us by understanding how much pleasure it gives us to eat their flesh. Mmm, so rare, so pink

MIKE: Delicious blood running down my chin

TRINA:  Put down the napkin, Let me lick it up, oh, tasty, heavenly blood

MIKE: Lick it up, lick it up.