Student Publications
University of Houston
151C Communications Bldg
Houston, TX 77204-4015
713.743.5350

©1991-2007
Student Publications,
All rights reserved.

Last modified:

Contact:
ktruitt@uh.edu

Opinion

Shouldn't we live in a 'nation under tofu'?

James Davis
Opinion Columnist

Like most Americans, I eat meat, and often, I enjoy it. Also, like most Americans, I have at least one friend who, for ethical reasons or otherwise, refuses to eat meat and who would be elated if I joined his ranks. 

If these vegetarian animal rights advocates had their way, the United States would be one nation under tofu, and never again would an animal suffer at the brutal hands of mankind. 

Though I don't espouse this ideal, it's important to consider why these carni-phobes are so passionate about their cause. Trust me, they have reason to be. Today's meat industry operates under some pretty heinous conditions that endanger not only animal rights, but also the health of consumers.

The best and most disturbing evidence against high-density meat production comes from the pork industry. The average pig is about as intelligent as your pet dog, and when an animal this sensitive is malnourished, immobilized and confined in tight spaces with its own waste and hundreds of its peers, it will literally go insane. These high-stress conditions cause pigs to bite at each other's tails, so to counteract this phenomenon, pork producers cut the pigs' tails down to a stub. But this practice is not to render the tail insensitive; the docked tail is actually more sensitive. 

Pigs in industrial pork plants succumb to learned helplessness -- depression, essentially -- and unless the bitten tail hurts enough, the animals will not fight back. Sure, it's cruel, but this sort of cruelty is necessary to produce the greatest amount of pork at the lowest cost to the consumer.

Egg-laying hens might have it worse than the pigs. Confined to cages with eight or so hens per cage, the birds are unable to turn around or even spread their wings. To keep them from cannibalizing each other, the birds' beaks are cut off with a hot knife, with, of course, no anesthesia administered. 

Before they die, the hens are force-molted into another egg-laying cycle through starvation and confinement in darkness. If this isn't enough evidence of this industry's madness, one needs only see the images of dumpsters full of the rotting bodies of male chicks, which, to the egg corporations, are useless. These factories aren't concerned with making chickens or eggs -- they're concerned with making money.

Horrifying and grotesque as these accounts are, they are not nearly as convincing as industrial meat and poultry's impact on the consumer. After all, this business model gave us mad cow disease. To reduce production costs, beef producers supply the cattle with protein by making feed from other cattle, and when cattle's brain material works its way into the feed, the result is disastrous. 

Dismissing mad cow as an isolated example of irresponsible farming is too easy. The disease is a consequence of a system that completely ignores the biology of animals and views living beings as units of production.

Thus, it is understandable why vegetarianism is such an attractive option. With this complete disregard for morality or even health, boycotting meat only seems right. Despite the good intentions of the vegetarians, however, there are a few facts of nature that people overlook when they claim eating meat is inherently inhumane. 

Even though industrial meat production abuses the relationship humans have with animals, no one can deny that domesticated animal species must live with humans to survive. Better for a hen to live in a coop on a farm than in the wilderness where it would be killed within days by a fox or a weasel. The same holds true for a pig or a milk cow. 

Over years of domestication, these animals have developed a sort of mutualism with humans: They depend on us for protection, and we depend on them for food, clothing or some other resource. It may end up in the animal's eventual slaughter, but living with humans is its species' only real option for continued existence.

Domesticated animals wouldn't be the only ones to suffer in a world without carnivores. Just consider a world where everyone was vegetarian. The extra land needed to cultivate staple crops -- corn, wheat, rice, soybeans -- would destroy the habitat of innumerable species in grassland ecosystems. 

In fact, if the entire population of the United States stopped eating meat for good, more animals would die every year than do today. Personal ethics aside, vegetarianism is not sustainable on a large scale. Today, it is certainly possible to be a vegetarian and eat a healthy, fulfilling diet, but to demand this practice of more than just oneself is unreasonable.

But just as it is possible to be a healthy vegetarian, it is equally feasible to be an ethical meat-eater. Free-range meat and poultry are less available and more expensive than meat produced in high-density feedlots, but the more consumers support free-range establishments, the more available and inexpensive their product will become. It's a matter of supply and demand.

If that sounds too impractical, we could simply stop eating so much meat. The only reason this sort of bizarre, mechanical meat production exists is because the demand is high enough to sustain it. Everyone would benefit from lower meat consumption from independent farmers and meat consumers to environmentalists and animal rights activists. And, of course, let's not forget the animals themselves.

At the very least, we should begin to look more closely at the meat industry and make our decisions based on what we see. Everyone likes good, cheap meat, but the more we look, the more we realize how high the costs really are. 

Davis, an opinion columnist for The Daily Cougar, 
can be reached at jpdavis@uh.edu.