Rick's July Tirade
On Eating Our Fellow Creatures
On a clear and temperate evening this past June, I had the good
fortune to attend the annual Schnecksville Community Fair in eastern
Pennsylvania. For those of you who doubt my veracity, let me assure
you that there IS a Schnecksville, situated just down the road from
Neffs and a few miles to the west of Ormrod.
The inhabitants of this bucolic region are descended from sturdy
Pennsylvania Dutch stock -- "fancy" Dutch, as they're
called -- to distinguish them from the "plain" Dutch
(a.k.a. Amish) who work the land in a pre-industrial time warp two
counties to the southwest.
The Pennsylvania Dutch -- plain and fancy alike -- are a race of
ardent and unapologetic meat-eaters. They display a fondness for
anything smoked, pickled, or fried in lard, a culinary quirk that
seems to preserve them to an astounding old age, the way the French
thrive on butter, goose liver and ripe cheeses.
Meat was much in evidence that evening at the Schnecksville
Community Fair. Not the classic Pennsylvania Dutch delicacies like
filled pig's stomach, tripe or sack bologna, but more typical
"fair" fare: Italian sausage, Greek gyros, fried shrimp,
pit-barbecued beef and the like. I devoured a meat-packed gyro in
record time, grabbed a root-beer snow cone (one of the supreme
sensory delights of any American summer) and strolled about the
grounds at dusk, under a surrealistic canopy of glowing carnival
lights.
This particular evening I watched a self-proclaimed "Master
of the Chain-Saw" carve what appeared to be a dolphin from a
section of tree trunk. (At least I HOPE it was a dolphin.) I walked
between rows of shiny new tractors and smiled at the sample
tombstones etched with full-color artistic renderings of
white-tailed deer and fire engines.
But the most instructive and affecting exhibit of the fair had to
be the 4-H tent. Here the young offspring of the local yeomanry
displayed their "pet" livestock: cattle, pigs, sheep,
goats and turkeys raised from infancy... nurtured with loving
care... fed, housed and pampered with the tenderest of solicitude.
I observed two hefty beef steers in their stall, blissfully at
ease on the straw- covered floor, one nuzzling the other as they
slowly drifted off to bovine dreamland. I watched the young pigs,
pink and happy as toddlers, cavorting inside their playpen. Freshly
sheared sheep, white as cumulus clouds, communed silently with their
peers. A sweet-faced goat-kid, surely no more than a week old, gazed
up at its new world and rubbed its head lazily against a wooden
post.
It was a picture from a Nativity scene.
I basked in the tranquillity of the tent for a few minutes, then
made a swift and startling deduction. These peaceful critters were
being raised, nurtured and coddled for one purpose only: TO BE SOLD
AS MEAT!
I wanted to rouse the animals to action: Hey, don't you know what
they're planning to DO to you? You're not household pets! You're
MEAT! Do you understand? M-E-A-T! Run for it! Save yourselves before
they turn you into cheeseburgers and Slim Jims!
But it was no use. Their destinies had been ordained by higher
powers. Their purpose on earth was manifest: to give their lives so
that we might muster the physical strength to watch Oprah and drive
to the nearest video store.
The worst of it is that I, too, am an eater of meat. Yes, I've
cut my consumption drastically. I've drawn the line when it comes to
BABY animals -- I never eat veal and rarely lamb (I have to indulge
in the latter now and then because I'm Armenian and lamb is our
National Meat). But God help me, I still crave the stuff. I'm a
hopeless carnivore.
You have to understand that I could never kill an animal myself.
I've actually rescued drowning spiders in my bathtub. I am a virtual
stranger to violence and bloodlust. So how do I look one of those
doomed mammals in the eye and justify my carnivorous propensities?
How would I state my case?
"Hello, Mr. Steer. I like you, but I'm afraid I'm going to
ingest the meatier portions of your body to obtain protein and
vitamins for MY body. Nothing personal, you understand. Yes, you'll
have to shed some blood in the process. Well, ALL of it, actually.
There's no going back. No more lazy afternoons grazing in the
pasture, I'm sorry to say. No more dreaming away the night in your
cozy stall. Have fun at the abattoir, old buddy. You're going in
there a mere bovine, but you're coming out BEEF... the monarch of
meats. We like and appreciate you for who you are, but we love you
even more passionately with ketchup and relish.
"What's that? Yes, I suppose you're right. We don't really
NEED to eat you. We could just as easily obtain our protein and
vitamins from certain beans and legumes. But they're -- how shall I
say this? -- they're simply not as TASTY as you are. I know it's
unfair. But that's life, my friend. Look at it this way: if we
didn't raise you for meat, you probably never would have been born
in the first place. And THEN where would you be? At least you've had
a chance to experience the world for a few seasons and ponder its
infinite mysteries. You've munched contentedly on green grass and
swatted flies with your tail. What more could you ask? Good, I knew
you'd understand. Now can I eat you?"
I neglected to tell Mr. Steer that I normally restrict my meat
consumption to creatures that, like him, were specifically bred to
be eaten. (I think it only would have rubbed salt into his future
wounds.) But it was the truth. My plate would admit no venison,
pheasants, rabbits or other innocents snatched from their homes in
the wild.
With the singular exception of seafood.
Although I keep an aquarium, I suffer only occasional pangs of
remorse when I devour a trout or salmon. As for shellfish, I say
they're barely distinguishable from vegetables. If I can't look them
in the eye, they're FOOD.
Shrimp fall into a gray zone between fish and shellfish. They
have eyes, of course, but they're so lacking in intellect and
charisma that I figure they won't miss their lives inordinately or
be mourned by their survivors. Still, now and then, when I see a
party tray heaped with their little carcasses, I confess to an
occasional lament over their misfortunes. All those lives snuffed
out for a few seconds of gustatorial pleasure. A couple of chomps
and they're history. We don't remember anything about the character
of the individual shrimp we've consumed. If they're any good, they
all taste the same. We finish off an entire clan of the little
creatures, then move to the entree with the unperturbed conscience
of a cat.
I've begun to question our criteria for eating our fellow
creatures. How do we decide, for example, that a cow is meatworthy
while a horse is sacrosanct? Does superior beauty protect one from
the butcher's knife? Then we should outlaw the consumption of
pheasant, surely one of nature's aesthetic masterpieces. Is
intelligence (or rather the lack of it) a deciding factor? Then we
should put an end to the eating of pork. A one-year old pig is
certainly more astute and sensible than a human of the same age, yet
I doubt if we'd tolerate a restaurant that served baby chops.
What it all comes down to, I suspect, is the USEFULNESS of the
creature in question. A dog offers companionship and affection, so
(except in certain benighted regions of Southeast Asia and the East
Indies) we spare him the indignity of the oven. Horses are known to
please adolescent girls and wealthy trainers, so we smile on them
until they're too old to serve their purpose. On the other hand, a
pig is useful to us only as MEAT. So meat it becomes.
I think I'm beginnng to see a pattern here... are you?
Take SOLDIERS, for example. They're useful as sons, brothers,
boyfriends, husbands and workers. But they're MORE useful to the
government as a medium for inflicting damage on the enemy and
capturing their resources. So we consider them expendable as living
creatures.
Think back to my encounter with the steer at the Schnecksville
Community Fair: "We like you, Mr. Soldier, but we need your
body to help us secure oil-rich territory in a distant land.
Nothing personal. Oh, we could have avoided the conflict in the
first place, but the oil companies are so demanding that... well,
you understand. Good luck, and we'll give your family a nice new
flag if you come back in a body bag."
Now consider the millions of EMPLOYEES in this world: corporate
managers, computer programmers, elevator operators, professors of
mathematics, adverstising copywriters, pipefitters and all the rest.
Certainly they have their purposes as human beings, and many of them
harbor admirable and praiseworthy traits.
But they're useful to their companies primarily as units of
production. They're human livestock, comparable to milk cows. Udders
plugged into the tubes, they're drained on a daily basis and
subjected to inordinate discomforts. They succumb to numbing
routine, grow weary, sicken and long for relief. But they must
continue to perform -- day after day, year after year -- or face the
inevitable chopping block. Finally, terminally exhausted and unable
to keep pace, they fail to serve the purpose for which they were
hired. They're no longer useful to their employers. They're
finished. They're (you guessed it)... MEAT.
