Cut the meat

Tue 29 Jan 2008 - Filed under: Not a Journal., | Posted by: Gavin

In the NY Times Mark Bittman (who writes the Minimalist column in the Dining sections, is the author of “How to Cook Everything Vegetarian” and is not a vegetarian) stumbles over his place in time and refers to “growing meat” instead of raising animals.

That cook book is great—picked it up in Oberlin at (maybe?) Mindfair Books—and it has already seen some use. (Not bad around here where cookbooks can lie around uncracked for centuries.)

However Mr. Bittman must be thinking of the near future when “meat” is grown in vats or tubes or whatever and its production doesn’t involve a slaughterhouse. At the moment when someone eats meat, it’s likely they’re eating one of 10 billion animals (this year) that will cross the definitional line from animal meat on the killing floor.

Hopefully this is thought-provoking stuff:

Americans eat about the same amount of meat as we have for some time, about eight ounces a day, roughly twice the global average. At about 5 percent of the world’s population, we “process” (that is, grow and kill) nearly 10 billion animals a year, more than 15 percent of the world’s total….

…. an estimated 30 percent of the earth’s ice-free land is directly or indirectly involved in livestock production, according to the United Nation’s Food and Agriculture Organization, which also estimates that livestock production generates nearly a fifth of the world’s greenhouse gases — more than transportation.

…. Animal welfare may not yet be a major concern, but as the horrors of raising meat in confinement become known, more animal lovers may start to react. And would the world not be a better place were some of the grain we use to grow meat directed instead to feed our fellow human beings?

Real prices of beef, pork and poultry have held steady, perhaps even decreased, for 40 years or more (in part because of grain subsidies)….