San Francisco Chronicle - (Sunday)
THE LIFE OF MEAT
What if we didn’t divide animals into pets we love and what we love to eat?
Here’s something that seems to sum up the complicated relationship many of us have with animals: The San Francisco SPCA, a nokill shelter, is an essential service, as are all animal shelters in the state. Also considered an essential service is the state’s meatpacking industry, whose sole purpose is to slaughter and butcher animals.
One animal is your friend and the other animal is your food. We can keep this equation very simple by keeping our pets (mostly cats and dogs) in the friend category and putting everything else in the food category. But few things are that simple during this pandemic as the Bay Area negotiates what is essential and what isn’t, what’s safe and what isn’t. And the larger question of who bears the brunt of the coronavirus and who doesn’t.
My husband and I have been vegetarians for decades. During E. coli outbreaks (the bacteria is less prevalent in produce although there is still a risk), the scares of mad cow disease (2005), swine flu (2009), bird flu (2015) and various other diseases, I’ve always thought, “I’m so glad I’m a vegetarian.” Not in some “holier than thou” way, but in a “one less thing to worry about” way.
I have written previously about how I became a vegetarian. I could cite statistics showing the benefits of a vegetarian or vegan diet on everything from health to climate change. And certainly those things are important. But even if I take all that away, I’m left with this: Alice conversing with a white rabbit in “Alice in Wonderland.” Mr. Toad’s glorious adventure in “The Wind in the Willows.” Or Peter Rabbit escaping Mr. McGregor’s garden in “The Tale of Peter Rabbit.” To put it another way: I can’t seem to keep just cats and dogs in the friend category. Other animals hop in there, too — rabbits, frogs, ducks. Animals simply are not food to me.
I know the animals in those
Top: A dog appears to take a relaxed approach to herding sheep in Spain. Above: Roux gets inquisitive at the vegan farm Rowdy Girl Sanctuary in Texas.
books are an author’s invention and perhaps more a commentary on human behavior than animal. But I also know there are people who refuse to acknowledge that animals can express emotions — no joy or jealousy. Just try holding onto that belief the next time your dog sees you reach for the leash or the food bowl. Or the next time you spend time petting a friend’s dog while ignoring your own.
Everyone charts their own course to the dinner table, and for many that course seems to have gotten easier (lots of food and lots of ways to get it) and thornier (the footprint and economics of factory farming, which Merriam Webster defines as: a farm on which large numbers of livestock are raised indoors in conditions intended to maximize production at minimal cost).
A 2018 Gallup poll found 5% of U.S. adults call themselves vegetarian. Not a huge number, but showing signs of growing. Even before the novel coronavirus, plantbased foods were having a banner year with the popularity of Impossible Foods, Beyond Meat and the partnerships of Big
Meat with plantbased or cultured meat companies. Retail sales of plantbased foods in 2019 reached $5 billion, according to the Good Food Institute, which supports companies focused on plantbased products. In 2019, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals named San Francisco the No. 1 veganfriendly city in the U.S. That’s no surprise to anyone who lives here; what did come as a surprise was Nashville at No. 8 and Tulsa, Okla., at No. 10.
In midMarch, when pandemic panicbuying made flour and yeast disappear, retail plantbased food sales surged, according to the Plant Based Foods Association. And it’s no wonder. The coronavirus has put a spotlight on essential slaughterhouses and their essential workers across the nation, and it’s a grim picture: workers shoulder to shoulder on production lines, and hot spots of COVID19 contagion at plants throughout the country. In Vernon (Los Angeles County), workers at the Farmer John plant called for its shutdown last week after more than 150 employees had tested positive for the virus. Who’s essential, and who bears the brunt? In a recent opinion piece, “The End of Meat Is Here” in the New York Times, author Jonathan Safran Foer takes on these issues of the meat industry.
Liveanimal markets face similar scrutiny and present an equally hellish picture. Such markets in Wuhan, China, of course, have been cited in one theory of how the virus spread from bats to another animal to humans. But again, the equation is not quite that simple. An April story by Chronicle reporter Kurtis Alexander reported on a study by UC Davis researchers further connecting human intrusion into animal habitats and mutating viruses. Alexander quoted Chris K. Johnson, professor of epidemiology at the UC Davis School of Veterinary Medicine and lead author of the study: “Viruses don’t cross over the species boundary very easily. The spillover from animals to humans is the direct result of our actions. It’s happening all over the world, and has for decades, as we modify the landscape in major ways.”
Just last week, a bill that would ban liveanimal markets in California passed its first committee hearing. The bill, SB1175, by state Sen. Henry Stern (DMalibu), would ban imports and sales of live wild animals, such as turtles, bullfrogs and nonpoultry birds, at live markets.
Does being a vegetarian or vegan make any of this go away? Does it help meatpackers trying to pay their bills avoid a deadly virus? Or help Mr. Toad, who apparently is not joyriding around the English countryside in a waistcoat, and is not even sitting in his natural and shrinking habitat, but is crammed into a cage to become our dinner? I don’t know.
But being a vegetarian helps me sleep a little better at night, curled up with my husband and my dog.
Bernadette Fay is a San Francisco Chronicle editor. Email: Bfay@sfchronicle.com