30 days of pork - day 18 : 無料・フリー素材/写真
30 days of pork - day 18 / mandydale
| ライセンス | クリエイティブ・コモンズ 表示-改変禁止 2.1 |
|---|---|
| 説明 | Everyone keeps asking me why it is that I have decided to start eating meat again. It had been well over a decade of my life that I abstained from meat. Was it the taste? No. I have always found meat to be delicious. For the last few years, I have said that I would only eat what I could kill myself. So since I've gone fishing, that meant fish was ok to eat. But looking into the eyes of a cute little cow, and trying to kill it for a meal? That just seemed too hard for me to fathom. Then I read The Omnivore's Dilemma, by Michael Pollan. The book is a great read for anyone who is interested in food politics and ethics. The book's premise is to follow the social, economic and ethical impact of 4 meals in society. The first being a meal from McDonald's, the last being a meal where Pollan hunts for his own meat, and gathers wild vegetables and mushrooms. Some people who have read the book walk away from it and decide to become vegetarian. For me, I read the book and realized that it was ok to eat meat. The choice to be vegetarian for me had always been for ethical reasons, but people kept pointing out that the choice based on ethics is contradictory. How could I be OK with eating fish, but abstain from the meat of cows or pigs? And the one I got all the time, "What about plants? Don't they feel pain as well." Well, yes, true. But the question that came up in my mind was, "Do you owe moral consideration to animals that can feel pain?" For me the answer was, and still is, yes. Animals need to be treated with the same decency and lack of suffering that humans should be treated with as well. That is why Whole Foods has come up with a rather interesting marketing tactic, (if not eventually a standard) for the Animal Compassionate Program, which requires the "animal's physical, emotional and behavioral needs" to be met. Sadly however, Whole Foods has yet to find producers who met these standards. In Pollan's book he discusses the notion of ethical meat farming, but really the struggle for these farmers is the stringent, irrelevant and incredibly burdensome requirements of agencies like the FDA. We can treat animals with compassion and without suffering, but it simply isn't "up to code" by the FDA's standards to do so. So what to do? Move to Europe where the meat industry is regulated in a different way? Possibly. For the time being, I am fascinated by the social elements of eating, and that is what I am doing with my 30 days of pork exploration. Being a vegetarian is exclusionary. Believe me, I know what it is like to get weird looks from grandmothers, boyfriend's parents and co-workers when you say you don't eat meat. You suddenly become less involved in social traditions because you don't know what an In and Out Burger tastes like, or what the big deal is about the turkey everyone is eating at Thanksgiving. I put many people out (who tolerated and respected my food choices with extreme kindness) like my dad who would always make a special meal for me, but who was also so excited about his meat dishes that I couldn't try. So for me, to eat meat is to come back into a social space of sharing experiences with others, and place that priority of participation over the ethics of eating. Don't get me wrong. I'll pick grass-fed, free-range, hormone-free meat any day over the mass produced variety. And if the animal was treated with compassion, even better. But for right now, I want, and need to explore the ritual of eating without the restraints that I have placed on myself for the last 12 years. I may go back to being vegetarian, I may not. Who knows? But I can tell you that this grilled pear and bacon sandwich from Arlequin in Hayes Valley hit the spot for my Saturday mid-day meal. |
| 撮影日 | 2006-11-18 11:33:24 |
| 撮影者 | mandydale , san francisco |
| タグ | |
| 撮影地 | |
| カメラ | Canon PowerShot S500 , Canon |
| 露出 | 0.017 sec (1/60) |
| 開放F値 | f/7.1 |