The Food Chain.

Amidst the low-key publicity of last week’s National Vegetarian Week, I found myself reflecting upon my recent decision to abandon my carnivorous instincts and go vegetarian. Okay, pescatarian. I continue to eat fish, but have decided to give up the taste and texture of chicken, beef, bacon [I miss you] and the rest for the peace of mind that they intruded upon…

Cue the common question that greets this declaration… “Why?!?“. A fair question I guess, especially from a male friend surprised to hear that I’ve given up that most macho of food products, juicy protein-enriched MEAT. Well here’s the answer…

Giving up meat has been on my mind for the last two years, ever since reading up on the meat industry and spending a month following a raw vegetarian diet at a Portuguese eco-project. I became educated to the dark side of meat’s mass production, whilst also witnessing the positives of a vegetarian diet in real practice. But I wasn’t ‘brainwashed’ or even ‘converted’, as once I’d left the project I slowly slipped back into eating meat as I had done previously. But the seed had been planted, and the quandary grew…

Because I still had some reservations to the whole idea, and wasn’t completely sold to dropping a lifetime’s staple food at the drop of a hat without giving it due consideration. My prime obstacles to vegetarianism were namely; the possible deficiency in protein intake [“what would happen to all my muscle!?”], a lack of variety in my meals & diet, and my own ideas regarding our traditions as a human race in eating animals’ meat. And it was the latter, more ethically-focused, issue that tipped me over to ‘the green side’ as I began questioning the way in which today’s meat is prepped and processed in comparison to the hunting and cultivation of our past.

For the manner in which the average portion of meat reaches our plate is now so far removed from the reality of an organic food chain that even its packaging feels unnatural. Rather than receiving our meat from local farms that nurture and cultivate their own stock to sell on to the community on a small-scale level, we now source an extensive proportion of our meat from industrial-sized cattle markets or chicken coops. Where the animals are fattened up with corn against their dietary habits, and are injected with growth hormones and immunisations to protect them from infectious diseases which thrive within such small confines. The whole process conforms to our false economy’s emphasis upon yield, to the tune of ‘pile them high and sell them cheap’ with very little consideration given to the ethical and ecological cost of its sourcing.

So this is why I find the romantic visions of our homo sapien ancestors hunting and cooking their game in such stark contrast to the way in which we can now buy our processed meat online and have it delivered without leaving the house. Never mind the fact that only a tiny proportion of people will ever kill an animal for themselves during their entire lifetime. I have personally skinned and dissected a chicken myself, and that was a graphic enough experience without the trauma of killing it in the first place.

 

But what about fish? Well, I believe the way in which we go about catching fish is much more in touch with the average man by both method and practice in comparison to the manner in which land mammals, e.g. cows, are farmed and killed. Here is an exercise in case; Question 1: how many people will readily go out and kill a cow for dinner? Question 2: how many people will happily go fishing and eat their catch of the day? My guess is many more raised hands for question 2. Of course, I’m aware there is fish-farming on a large scale, and that trawler fishing can cause damage to the sea’s habitat; but fishing is now the last real remnant of the contemporary Westerner’s idea of ‘hunting’ in its real form. Kids are brought up fishing with a net or watching their father fish a line at the river, yet how many kids will be willing to witness or assist Daddy kill fowl for their Chicken nuggets?

And there lies my fundamental reasoning... Our disconnection from the food chain, and the conscious ignorance of our meat’s sourcing with every single bite. So just imagine linking back into this cycle, and sourcing dinner for one’s self; whether it be rooting for potatoes, picking out salad, fishing for mackerel or slaughtering a pig…

Enjoy your meal.

Daniel Bowen