Summary: my thoughts on the movie Eating Animals, the problems it highlights and my plan going forward

On Friday June 8, 2018 I went to see the new documentary film Eating Animals which is about meat production today and over the past ~50 years. It is produced by Chris Quinn, was based on the book by Jonathan Safran Foer (which I haven’t read) and is narrated by Natalie Portman. There was a discussion panel afterwords with Quinn, Frank Reese (heritage turkey guru of Good Shepherd Poultry Institute) and Perennial (San Francisco)(1) restaurant owner Karen Leibowitz. The movie covers a lot of ground – at the macro level how animal meat production in the USA became so industrialized and at the micro level how that has impacted an individual chicken farmer, a whistleblower and small rural communities. I learned a lot (including the term CAFO for concentrated animal feeding operations) and I have been pondering the questions it raised.

If you’re thinking that the movie will contain shocking and grotesque treatment of animals – you are right, there is no avoiding that. But the individual peoples’ stories add depth and illuminate the stages from baby animal to food appearing on your plate.

Though the movie does mention meat alternatives, it does not deal with the issue of whether or not people should be eating animals at all (much to the chagrin of vegans, I imagine). Instead it focuses on the problems (spoiler – there are many!) and potential solutions. Here is just a quick high level view of the problems with industrialized meat production (in no particular order):

• environmental
  • climate change via greenhouse gas emissions (directly from the animals, plus the transportation of feed, animals, meat over long distances)
  • water usage (for growing the feed and for the animals)
  • water pollution – animal waste from CAFOs flowing into streams and rivers (example in the movie was fish developing sores and dying off)
• animal welfare
  • the corporations have figured out how close to death they can keep animals in CAFOs – just keep them minimally alive long enough to develop protein and fat
  • unnatural-looking animals that sometimes cannot do basic things like stand up, walk, fly, reproduce
  • mutilating animals to make it easier to manage them in crowded spaces – cutting off beaks & tails
• economic
  • small farmers – financially strong armed by massive corporations
  • local communities – divided as farmers compete
• government
  • should your tax $ be spent supporting this system? should the government be promoting meat and dairy consumption – what public benefit does that serve?
  • should the government be protecting the large corporations by making it illegal to document/photograph what goes on in a CAFO
• health
  • epidemic – concentrating so many animals together is a recipe for pandemic disease (hence the reliance on antibiotics)
  • fast food (’nuff said)

As a fan of history, I liked how the movie included bits on “Colonel” Harland Sanders of Kentucky Fried Chicken (who actually seemed disappointed in how the company changed after he sold it. “everything has to be just so”), the Tyson family, and how the rise of CAFOs fueled fast-food restaurant proliferation.

The story follows several people:

• a whistle blower from government-funded US Meat Animal Research Center. His decision to bring abuses to light cost him dearly, including his marriage. He exposed all sorts of perverse “research” projects, including trying to turn domesticated sheep back to wild – one person’s job was to go around each morning and collect all of the dead lambs. There is another project so disturbing I will not mention it.
• a chicken farmer – who signed up for what turned out to be a financially ruinous contract with “big poultry”. Farmers compete in tournaments to be the top producer and receive bonuses (the $ for which comes from the pay of the losers). The farmers are forbidden from collaborating with each other. The farmer was reduced to being just a “manager” (ouch!) of the birds with no real ownership or discretion and mounds of debt.
• Frank Reese, heritage turkey farmer from Kansas. He is a charming fellow who somewhat resembles a bird as he alternately follows then leads his turkeys around in his comfortable work clothes and crocs. He clearly works hard for and cares about his birds and their legacy – one breed has been on his family’s farm for over a century and others can be found no where else in the world. He is conflicted when it is time to round up the birds for slaughter – it is a sad day but he acknowledges the necessity of getting money for the birds to keep the farm running.

It is interesting how far removed we have become from the animals we eat. As a young girl my grandmother raised her family’s chickens and was quite happy doing so in Mexico before they came to the US for a second time. I doubt many of us have had extended contact with animals raised for meat much less killed and then consumed them. Meat just magically appears before us at the grocery store, restaurant, in the drive through or after a few taps on the mobile device.

I personally enjoyed meat blissfully for many years without thinking about where it came from or the real costs associated with it. Growing up we had pork chops, meat balls, and Sunday night steak where we rolled the color TV towards the kitchen to watch shows like The Greatest American Hero. I’ve gone to well over 100 McDonald’s locations. I’ve chowed down at Argentine and Brazilian steak houses (in those countries) until I was too stuffed to move. In South Korea for business, we’d sometimes hit the Outback steakhouse on a weekend to load up on prime rib, ushering on the inevitable meat sweats. Pan-fried bison or yak steak with mash potatoes and corn – a treat.

But no more.

“Meat is yummy!” I agree. But does that excuse our participation in this colossally corrupt, damaging and abusive system? What if extraterrestrial aliens (more intelligent and technologically sophisticated than us) arrived on Earth and started keeping humans in densely-packed pens and ate them because they are delicious. Would ‘yummy’ make that OK?

The Ick factor. Chicken: there were several scenes of the chicken farmer walking through his hangers, examining the birds and collecting dead ones. Some of the birds could not walk; others had sores or the onset of heart and lung failure; one had legs so rubbery they could be folded in half without breaking. Turkeys: the Aztecs had domesticated turkeys before the Europeans arrived (that part is probably not icky). Turkeys naturally reproduce once per year, but to keep up with demand (think sandwich meat, turkey burgers) year-round, most turkeys are artificially inseminated. That and the proportions of the birds that end up as grocery store frozen turkeys make it difficult or impossible for them to reproduce on their own.

Does it matter how animals live if they are killed and eaten anyway? I think so. The movie starts with a saying, along the lines that animals know nothing of the past and have no notion of the future, so if they are suffering that is the totality of their existence. Heavy.

So what to do now? I don’t plan to go “full vegetarian” (I doubt I’d be successful at it), but this movie has given me just the push I needed to become more serious about my caloric intake with respect to meat. I am planning to rely more on vegetarian options, fish and select meat options of good provenance. And also to ask more questions about where food comes from.

In software application security – the input data, if not known to be safe, should be treated as tainted (potentially by an attacker). In that vein I’ll consider all meat as tainted or at least questionable unless proven otherwise. Harsh and overly cautious? Perhaps. But I choose what I put into my body and that’s my current thinking/stance. How strictly I adhere to that, particularly if there is social awkwardness in not accepting offers of food, only time will tell.

I do recommend seeing the movie yourself, though not directly before or after a meal.

Update: June 15, 2018: I made it a week with my only animal protein (other than dairy) being fish and just a few organic chicken sausages. With the convenience of all that low cost (and low quality) meat now gone, my food selection is more difficult, or at least requires more careful thought and planning. I did find myself being hungry more often but I don’t know if that is just because I expected the new meals to be less filling compared to ones with heaps of animal protein.

Notes:

1. Update (June 2020) The Perennial restaurant in San Francisco closed in Feb 2020, in order to give Leibowitz more time for advocacy work: https://www.perennialfarming.org/