For similar reasons, I wouldn’t eat poultry or sea animals produced by factory methods. Looking into their eyes does not generate the same pathos as meeting eyes with a pig, but we see as much with our minds’ eyes. All I have learned about the intelligence and social sophistication of birds and fish from my research demands that I take the acuteness of their misery just as seriously as the more easily grasped misery of factory-farmed pigs.
With feedlot-raised beef, the industry offends me less (and 100 percent pasture-raised beef, setting aside the issue of slaughter for a moment, is probably the least troubling of all meats — more on that in the next chapter). Still, to say that something is less offensive than a pig or chicken factory farm is to say as little as is possible.
The question, for me, is this: Given that eating animals is in absolutely no way necessary for my family — unlike some in the world, we have easy access to a wide variety of other foods — should we eat animals? I answer this question as someone who has loved eating animals. A vegetarian diet can be rich and fully enjoyable, but I couldn’t honestly argue, as many vegetarians try to, that it is as rich as a diet that includes meat. (Those who eat chimpanzee look at the Western diet as sadly deficient of a great pleasure.) I love sushi, I love fried chicken, I love a good steak. But there is a limit to my love.
Since I encountered the realities of factory farming, refusing to eat conventional meat has not been a hard decision. And it’s become hard to imagine who, besides those who profit from it, would defend factory farming.
But things get complicated with a farm like Paul Willis’s pig farm or Frank Reese’s poultry ranch. I admire what they do, and given the alternatives, it’s hard not to think of them as heroes. They care about the animals they raise and treat them as well as they know how. And if we consumers can limit our desire for pork and poultry to the capacity of the land (a big if), there are no knockdown ecological arguments against their kind of farming.
It’s true that one could note that eating animals of any kind necessarily, if indirectly, supports factory farming by increasing demand for meat. This is nontrivial, but it’s not the main reason that I wouldn’t eat pigs from Paul Willis’s farm or chickens from Frank Reese’s — something that is hard to write knowing that Paul and Frank, now friends of mine, will read these words.
Even though he does everything he can, Paul’s pigs are still castrated, and still transported long distances to slaughter. And before Willis met Diane Halverson, the animal welfare expert who assisted his work with Niman Ranch from the beginning, he docked (cut off ) pigs’ tails, which shows that even the kindest farmers sometimes fail to think of their animals’ well-being as much as they can.
And then there’s the slaughterhouse. Frank is quite candid about the problems he has getting his turkeys slaughtered in a manner that he finds acceptable, and an optimal slaughterhouse for his birds remains a work in progress for him. As far as pig slaughter goes, Paradise Locker Meats really is a kind of paradise. Because of the structuring of the meat industry, and USDA regulations, both Paul and Frank are forced to send their animals to slaughterhouses that they have only partial control over.
Every farm, like every everything, has flaws, is subject to accidents, sometimes doesn’t work as it should. Life overflows with imperfections, but some matter more than others. How imperfect must animal farming and slaughter be before they are too imperfect? Different people will draw the line in different places with regard to farms like Paul’s and Frank’s. People I respect draw it differently. But for me, for now — for my family now — my concerns about the reality of what meat is and has become are enough to make me give it up altogether.
Of course there are circumstances I can conjure under which I would eat meat — there are even circumstances under which I would eat a dog — but these are circumstances I’m unlikely to encounter. Being vegetarian is a flexible framework, and I’ve left a mental state of constant personal decision making about eating animals (who could stay in such a place indefinitely?) for a steady commitment not to.
This brings me back to the image of Kafka standing before a fish in the Berlin aquarium, a fish on which his gaze fell in a newly found peace after he decided not to eat animals. Kafka recognized that fish as a member of his invisible family — not as his equal, of course, but as another being that was his concern. I had a similar experience at Paradise Locker Meats. I was not quite “at peace” when the stare of a pig on its way to Mario’s kill floor, with only seconds to live, caught me off guard. (Have you ever been anyone’s last sight?) But I wasn’t completely ashamed either. The pig wasn’t a receptacle of my forgetting. The animal was a receptacle of my concern. I felt — I feel — relief in that. My relief doesn’t matter to the pig. But it matters to me. And this is part of my way of thinking about eating animals. Taking, for now, only my side of the equation — that of the eating animal, rather than the eaten one — I simply cannot feel whole when so knowingly, so deliberately, forgetting.
And there is visible family, too. Now that my research is over, it will be in only the rarest of circumstances that I will look into a farmed animal’s eyes. But many times a day, for many of the days of my life, I will look into my son’s.
My decision not to eat animals is necessary for me, but it is also limited — and personal. It is a commitment made within the context of my life, not anyone else’s. And until sixty or so years ago, much of my reasoning wouldn’t have even been intelligible, because the industrial animal agriculture to which I’m responding hadn’t become dominant. Had I been born in a different time, I might have reached different conclusions. For me to conclude firmly that I will not eat animals does not mean I oppose, or even have mixed feelings about, eating animals in general. To oppose beating a child to “teach a lesson” is not to oppose strong parental discipline. To decide that I will discipline my child in one way and not another is not necessarily to make a decision I would impose on other parents. To decide for oneself and one’s family is not to decide for the nation or the world.
That said, though I see value in all of us sharing our personal reflections and decisions about eating animals, I didn’t write this book simply to reach a personal conclusion. Farming is shaped not only by food choices, but by political ones. Choosing a personal diet is insufficient. But how far am I willing to push my own decisions and my own views about the best alternative animal agriculture? (I may not eat their products, but my commitment to supporting the kind of farming Paul and Frank do has steadily deepened.) What do I expect from others? What should we all expect of one another when it comes to the question of eating animals?
It’s clear enough that factory farming is more than something I just personally dislike, but it’s not clear what conclusions follow. Does the fact that factory farming is cruel to animals and ecologically wasteful and polluting mean everyone needs to boycott factory farm products all the time? Is a partial withdrawal from the system good enough — a sort of preferred purchasing program for nonfactory food that stops short of a boycott? Is the issue not our personal buying choices at all, but one that needs to be resolved through legislation and collective political action?
Where should I respectfully disagree with someone and where, for the sake of deeper values, should I take a stand and ask others to stand with me? Where do agreed-upon facts leave room for reasonable people to disagree and where do they demand we all act? I’ve not insisted that meat eating is always wrong for everyone or that the meat industry is irredeemable despite its present sorry state. What positions on eating animals would I insist are basic to moral decency?
Less than 1% of the animals killed for meat in America come from family farms.
1.
Bill and Nicolette
THE ROADS LEADING TO MY destination were unmarked, and most useful signage had been uprooted by locals. “There is no reason to come to Bolinas,” one resident put it in an unwelcomed New York Times feature on the town. “The beaches are dirty, the fire department is terrible,
the natives are hostile and have a tendency toward cannibalism.”
Not exactly. The thirty-mile coastal drive from San Francisco was pure romance — alternating between sweeping vistas and protected natural coves — and once in Bolinas (pop. 2,500), I found it hard to remember why I ever thought of Brooklyn (pop. 2,500,000) as a nice place to live, and easy to understand why those who have stumbled upon Bolinas have wanted to keep others from stumbling upon it.
Which is half of why Bill Niman’s willingness to take me into his home was so surprising. The other half had to do with his profession: cattle ranching.
A gunmetal Great Dane, larger and calmer than George, was the first to welcome me, followed by Bill and his wife, Nicolette. After the usual touching and pleasantries, they led me to their modest home, tucked like a mountain monastery into the side of a hill. Mossy rocks protruded from black earth amid patches of bright flowers and succulents. A glowing porch opened directly onto the main room — the largest in the house, but not large. A stone fireplace opposite a dark, heavy sofa (a sofa for relaxing, not entertaining) dominated the room. Books were piled on shelves, some food and farming related, most not. We sat around a wooden table in a small eat-in kitchen that still held the smells of breakfast.
“My father was a Russian immigrant,” Bill explained. “I grew up working the family grocery store in Minneapolis. That was my introduction to food. Everybody worked there, whole family. I couldn’t have conjured up my life.” Meaning: How did a first-generation American, a Jewish city boy, become one of the most important ranchers in the world? It’s a good question, which has a good answer.
“The primary motivating factor in everybody’s life at that time was the Vietnam War. I chose to do alternative service, teaching in federally declared poverty areas. I was introduced to certain elements of rural life, and I got a fever for it. I started homesteading with my first wife.” (Niman’s first wife, Amy, died in a ranch accident.) “We got some land. Eleven acres. We had goats, chickens, and horses. We were quite poor. My wife tutored up at one of the big ranches, and we were given some cattle that were born to young heifers by mistake.” These “mistakes” would prove to be the foundation of Niman Ranch. (Today Niman Ranch’s annual revenues are estimated at $100 million — and growing.)
When I visited them, Nicolette was spending more time managing their personal ranch than Bill was. He was busy working to ensure sales for the beef and pork produced by his company’s hundreds of small family farmers. Nicolette, who gives off the vibe of an East Coast lawyer (and in fact was one), knew every heifer, cow, bull, and calf on their land, could anticipate their needs and satisfy them, looked no bit the part but seemed to fit it entirely. Bill, who with his thick mustache and leathery skin could have been sent over by central casting, was now mostly a marketer.
They are not an obvious pair. Bill comes off as unsanded and instinctive. He’s the kind of guy who, on an island with survivors of a plane crash, would earn everyone’s respect and become the reluctant leader. Nicolette is city folk, verbose but guarded, and filled with energy and concern. Bill is warm but stoical. He seems to be most comfortable when listening — which is good, as Nicolette seems more comfortable talking.
“When Bill and I first started dating,” she explained, “it was under false pretenses. I thought it was a business meeting.”
“You were actually afraid I would discover you were a vegetarian.”
“Well, I wasn’t afraid, but I had already been working with livestock farmers for years, and I knew that the meat industry portrays vegetarians as terrorists. If you’re in a rural part of this country, meeting with people who are raising animals for food, and they get the idea that you don’t eat meat, they stiffen up. They’re afraid that you’re judging them harshly and you might even be dangerous. I wasn’t afraid of you finding out, but I didn’t want to put you on the defensive.”
“The first time we sat down at a meal together —”
“I ordered a pasta primavera, and Bill goes, ‘Oh, are you a vegetarian?’ I said yes. And then he said something that surprised me.”
2.
I Am a Vegetarian Rancher
About six months after I moved to the Bolinas ranch, I said to Bill, “I don’t just want to live here. I want to really know how this ranch functions and I want to be able to run things.” So I got very involved in actually doing the work. In the beginning I had some anxiety that I might become increasingly uncomfortable with the fact that I was living at a livestock ranch, but what happened was quite the opposite. The more time I spent here, the more time I passed in the company of our animals and seeing how well they lived, I realized that this was truly an honorable undertaking.
I don’t view a rancher’s responsibility as merely providing freedom from suffering or cruelty. I believe that we owe our animals the highest level of existence. Because we’re taking their lives for food, I think they’re entitled to experience the basic pleasures of life — things like lying in the sun, mating, and rearing their young. I believe they deserve to experience joy. And our animals do! One of the problems I have with most standards for “humane” meat production is that they’re strictly focused on freedom from suffering. That, to me, should go without saying. No unnecessary animal suffering should be tolerated at any farm. But if you’re going to raise an animal with the purpose of taking its life, there’s so much more responsibility than that!
This isn’t a new idea or my own unique philosophy. Throughout the history of animal husbandry, most farmers have felt a weighty obligation to treat animals well. The problem today is that husbandry is being replaced — or has been replaced — with industrial methods coming out of what are now called “animal science” departments. The individualized familiarity that a traditional farmer has with every animal on his farm has been abandoned in favor of large, impersonal systems — it’s literally impossible to know each animal in a pig-confinement operation or industrial feedlot that contains thousands or tens of thousands of animals. Instead, the operators are dealing with problems relating to sewage and automation. The animals become almost incidental. The shift has brought about an entirely different mind frame and emphasis. A rancher’s responsibility to his animals is forgotten if it isn’t outright denied.
As I see it, animals have entered into an arrangement with humans, an exchange of sorts. When animal husbandry is done as it should be, humans can provide animals a better life than they could hope for in the wild and almost certainly a better death. That’s quite significant. I have accidentally left a gate open here on a number of occasions. Not one of the animals has even left the area. They don’t go because what they have here is the safety of the herd, really nice pasture, water, occasional hay, and plenty of predictability. And their friends are here. To a certain degree, they choose to stay. It isn’t a completely willing contract, of course. They didn’t orchestrate their own births — but then again, none of us have.
I believe it’s a noble thing to be raising animals for wholesome food — to provide an animal a life with joy and freedom from suffering. Their lives are taken for a purpose. And I think that’s essentially what all of us hope for: a good life and an easy death.
The idea that humans are a part of nature is also important here. I’ve always looked to natural systems for models. Nature is so economical. Even if an animal isn’t hunted, it is consumed soon after its death. Animals are invariably devoured by other animals in nature, whether by predators or scavengers. We’ve even noticed our cattle a couple of times over the years chewing on deer bones, even though we always regard cattle as strict herbivores. A few years back, a US Geological Survey study found that deer were eating a lot of eggs from the nests of ground birds — the researchers were shocked! Nature is a lot more fluid than we think it is. But clearly it’s normal and natural for animals to eat other animals, and since we humans are part of nature, it’s very normal for humans to be eating animals.
Now, that doesn’t mean we have to eat animals. I feel I ca
n personally make a choice to refrain from consuming meat for my own individual reasons. In my case, it’s because of the particular connection I’ve always felt with animals. I think it would bother me somewhat to eat meat. It would just make me feel uncomfortable. For me, factory farming is wrong not because it produces meat, but because it robs every animal of every shred of happiness. To put it another way, if I stole something, that would weigh on my conscience because it would be inherently wrong. Meat isn’t inherently wrong. And if I ate some, my reaction would probably be limited to a feeling of regret.
I used to think that being a vegetarian exempted me from spending time trying to change how farm animals are treated. I felt that by abstaining from meat eating, I was doing my part. That seems silly to me now. The meat industry affects everybody in the sense that we are, all of us, living in a society in which food production is based on factory farming. Being a vegetarian does not relieve me from a responsibility for how our nation raises animals — especially at a time when total meat consumption is increasing both nationally and globally.
I have a lot of vegan friends and acquaintances, some of whom are connected with PETA or Farm Sanctuary, and many of them assume that eventually humanity will solve the factory-farming problem by getting people to quit eating animals. I disagree. At least, not in our lifetimes. If that were possible, I think it would be many generations from now. So in the interim, something else has to happen to address the intense suffering caused by factory farms. Alternatives need to be advocated for and supported.
Fortunately, there are glimmers of hope for the future. A return to more sensible farming methods is afoot. A collective will is emerging — a political will, and also a will of consumers, retailers, and restaurants. Various imperatives are coming together. One of these imperatives is better treatment of animals. We’re awaking to the irony of seeking out shampoo that’s not tested on animals while at the same time (and many times a day) buying meat that’s produced in profoundly cruel systems.