Page 104 - How to Be a Conscious Eater - Making Food Choices That Are Good for You

AFTER LESS MEAT COMES BETTER MEAT.
WHAT COUNTS?
There’s a trope in my line of work that when you ask children
where their steak comes from, they’ll say “the supermarket.”
Because animal flesh comes to us wrapped in cellophane, the
act of consuming it is deeply disconnected from the reality
that it came from an animal, and at a high environmental cost.
After learning about the litany of problems that livestock
production creates for not just the environment but our own
welfare, can we really believe in such a thing as a “conscious
carnivore”? I say yes, absolutely. Especially because the vast
majority of Americans are meat eaters. And I’d guess that most
of us intend to remain so.
The problems stem from one key issue: In the industrial
model, efficiency trumps all. “All” means the health of the envi-
ronment, the communities, and the animals that become food.
Their overcrowded living conditions in turn further damage
the health of the human population as a whole. In treating ani-
mals raised for food as little widgets in an assembly line, with
the goal of getting as much sellable meat per animal in as little
time as possible, growth hormones and all the wrong types of
feed are doled out like candy on Halloween. Unlike more nutri-
tious pasture-based diets, this combination works great for
fattening up livestock quickly—and pretty much nothing else.
So, better meat comes from animals not treated this way.
Better meat comes from animals not fed corn all their lives,
or raised in CAFOs, or routinely given antibiotics important to
human medicine, or pumped with hormones to make them
grow faster.
There’s a lot to juggle, so here’s my list of four practical
things you can reasonably do to enjoy meat with a relatively
clear conscience:

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