Meat Me At The Third Street Promenade
"Hey, Honey, I've got a great idea for something new and fun to do on Saturday night!"
"What's that, Dear?"
"Let's go to the Third Street Promenade and learn about the horrors of eating meat!"
"I dunno...do you think we'll be able to see the presentation with all the crowds they must draw?"
Just in case you were among those worrying about being able to get space up front, they had plenty of spots on Saturday night. And I'm sure Inside Man, as great as the reviews have been, has nothing on the one playing on the sidewalk about "California's Unhappy Cows."
Yes, the above was posted by Amy Alkon, who likes her steak served "still mooing." Yes, yes, I'm joking. But, one nice thing about going to France, or to some French restaurants here, or to restaurants like Joe's in Venice: you order steak "rare" and they don't automatically edit it for you to "medium" when they cook it. Before I got the hang of it in France -- that they bring you what you ask for, typically, at least when it comes to ordering meat -- I ordered my steak "bleu" (ie, "blue") -- which pretty much means "still mooing." I've since learned.
And while I think it isn't right to slaughter animals in inhumane ways -- and it sounds like the Kosher process of bleeding them out without stunning them is completely barbaric -- I don't equate animal life with human life, and find nothing wrong with eating meat, providing it's slaughtered in a way that doesn't involve unnecessary suffering. Here's more on the problem with Kosher slaughter from John Robbins, author of Diet For A New America:
"Animals being ritually slaughtered in the United States are shackeld around a rear leg, hoisted into the air, and then hang, fully conscious, upside down on the conveyer belt for between two and five minutes-and occasionally much longer if something goes wrong on the killing line before the slaughterer makes his cut. "It is difficult for us to imagine what these poor animals must suffer. The cows are exhausted and terrified to begin with.
"The animal upside down with ruptured joints and often a broken leg, twists frantically in pain and terror, so that it must be gripped by the neck or have a clamp inserted in its nostrils to enable the slaughterer to kill the animal with a single stroke, as religious law prescribes."In actual practice, kosher deaths have become a hideous perversion of the original intent of the dietary laws; the procedure adds incalculably to the agony they must suffer.
You may think that today, because relatively few people "eat kosher," only a very small percentage of animals would be "killed kosher". You may also think that even including the non-religious people who seek out kosher meat, mistakenly believing it to be better, this still wouldn't amount to a significant percentage. And finally you are probably quite sure that if you buy meat that isn't labeled kosher, you are certainly not consuming meat from animals killed in this fashion.
But, I'm sorry to say, you'd be wrong on each account. You see, for meat to be passed as kosher by Orthodox Rabbis, it is not enough for the animal merely to have been conscious when killed and to have its throat slit in the required way. A kosher Jew is also forbidden to consume the blood of an animal, so the veins and arteries must be cut out of kosher meat.
In many parts of a cow, however, removing the blood vessels is very costly, and so the meat packers have resolved this difficulty by removing the blood vessels only from those parts of the animal from which they can be cut out inexpensively. Thus, even though the whole animal was killed kosher, only these parts are then sold as kosher meat. In other words, there's a lot of meat left over. This means that a great deal of the meat in our supermarkets and restaurants, while not labeled kosher, is in fact from animals hoisted and slaughtered according to kosher regulations. One authority states:
"It has been estimated that over 90% of the animals slaughtered in New Jersey - whose slaughterhouses supply New York City as well as their own state - are slaughtered by the ritual method."
Once again, religion proves to be primitive and barbaric! Sure, they're now trying to require hoisting the animal in a pen instead of a harness, but the dumb requirement that the animal be conscious while being killed is creepy and barbaric.
Come on, everybody, I'm sure there were reasons people came up with this superstitious crap centuries ago, along with prohibitions on eating pork (lack of refrigeration was a problem back in the day), but it's now April 2006. How about we all start acting like it?
Hey, Amy. Like I pointed out in the vegetarian thread, I'm not fully vegetarian. I do often go for several days, even weeks without ever eating animal products, but it's still an occassional indulgence. Not because I have some kind of ethical or religious stance on the subject, but because I want to live. I have high cholesterol. The near-vegetarian dietary regimen works for me, since cholesterol is strictly animal in origin. No plant ever produced cholesterol.
That, and the fact that the evidence that we are designed herbivores is obvious.
And yes, I agree fully. The animal should be stunned before killing. Not only is it more humane for an animal not to suffer, but eating the meat of a tortured animal could also feed you, on top of the hormones and chemicals it was given, a bit of the adrenaline that was coursing through the animal's body as it panicked before the slaughter. Anxiety attacks with that cheeseburger, anyone?
Patrick at April 3, 2006 4:58 AM
"The animal should be stunned before killing."
Yeah, tell him he was adopted.
Jim Treacher at April 3, 2006 6:27 AM
Treach, hilarious as always.
And, Patrick, evidence from digs shows Neanderthal man ate a diet that was 90 percent meat, and it's believed that our large brains were able to evolve due to meat consumption. On deadline, or I'd put in a few references.
Amy Alkon at April 3, 2006 7:36 AM
The Goddess writes:
And they're all dead, too! See how bad meat is for you? I bet they all died from cholesterol induced heart disease!
Seriously, neanderthals might be a compelling case, but let's not forget, they were not human beings. They were not even our nearest ancestors. They were forerunners of the Cro-Magnon, which are a much closer match to Homo Sapiens.
But we simply don't have the dental hardware or the digestive tracts of natural omnivores, such as the bear, an obvious meat eater. And no human being in his right mind would eat a raw chicken. Why not, if we're omnivores? Predators do it all the time. And the cooking process that destroys the bacteria also destabilizes a lot of the nutrients, such as fusing amino acids (the components of protein), making them harder to absorb. Moreover, we manufacture all the cholesterol we need. We don't need it from outside sources. Carnivores can't do that. And there is only one nutrient to be derived from meat that we can't get from vegetables: B-12). Those are found in the bugs enjoyed by our closest relatives, the Bonobos or pygmy chimpanzees. Also in the soil. Back when we simply plucked a plant from the ground and ate it, we got B-12.
I'm not saying no one should eat meat. And I'm not saying there's no benefit to be derived from eating meat. But what I am saying is that nature obviously made a herbivore when it designed us. But because of our capacity for invention, we can adapt meat to suit us. Meat, as predators enjoy it, is not our food. I don't of any human being that would run down some bovine or chicken, tear into it with teeth and talon and have a meal right there.
Patrick at April 3, 2006 11:35 AM
> we simply don't have the dental
> hardware or the digestive tracts
> of natural omnivores
Chicks loathe my feminine shoulders, but they dig my manly incisors.
> I don't of any human being that would
> run down some bovine or chicken, tear
> into it with teeth and talon and have
> a meal right there.
Well, it's twenty-first century America... We've got some good habits. It's not that we've outgrown our lesser nature, we've just put a cap on it.
Anyway I don't disagree with you much. When thinking of beef I think of the fast food I ate as a little kid. It was better then... Maybe food-handling standards weren't as high, but there was less processing of ingredients too. Shakes weren't health food, but they were called "milkshakes" because they had milk in them.
In Fast Food Nation, the guy said a McDonald's hamburger may have meat from as many as one hundred animals. Even if this reduces the risk of illness in some important statistical way, it's insane in terms of morality. And probably health, too. As Amy said, those religious injunctions didn't come out of nowhere.
LA's best kitchen is Juliano's Raw: There are no cooks.
Crid at April 3, 2006 12:25 PM
>those religious injunctions didn't come out of nowhere.
Maybe some of them did. Wikipedia (bow down and worship the mighty reference edifice) thinks some of the kosher laws were formulated just to instill obedience -- nothing to do with hygiene.
Stu "El Inglés" Harris at April 3, 2006 2:05 PM
From a purely microbiological view, meat from unstressed animals keep longer in the fridge.
They've got higher glycogen stores and this is untilised by lactobacilli, which replicate and make lactic acid and lower the pH. This low pH retards other bacterial growth.
Killed in the method described above, the animal will have been struggling horribly, using up the glycogen stores for muscle movement. For reasons of food safety I'm surprised that practice isn't banned.
TheHollowMen at April 3, 2006 2:40 PM
From a purely microbiological view, meat from unstressed animals keep longer in the fridge.
They've got higher glycogen stores and this is untilised by lactobacilli, which replicate and make lactic acid and lower the pH. This low pH retards other bacterial growth.
Killed in the method described above, the animal will have been struggling horribly, using up the glycogen stores for muscle movement. For reasons of food safety I'm surprised that practice isn't banned.
TheHollowMen at April 3, 2006 2:44 PM
Part of the reason for conciousness is to make sure the animal wasn't lying down right before the slaughter. An unconcious animal on the slaughterhouse floor? I think we can agree, it's a pretty bad idea.
Oh, and Patrick: If I hear that "don't have the dental hardware" argument one more time, I'm going to SCREAM loud enough for you to hear me wherever you happen to be. Anyone who has studied Life Science or Zoology can put the lie to that. Please stop repeating the same old tripe (pun intended).
gus3 at April 3, 2006 3:49 PM
no benefit to be derived from eating meat?
my god man!
i don't care WHAT you do to a vegetable, it will never satisfy my hunger the way a nice thick slab of dead animal will.
when i was a kid, our burgers had first names, and i guarantee they didn't suffer. best beef i've ever had. only thing that beats it is venison and moose (i'll have some musk ox and caribou soon enough).
g*mart at April 3, 2006 6:31 PM
gus3 writes:
It's not tripe it's truth. Compare your teeth to a bear's. A bear is a natural omnivore. Yet, our own teeth don't compare to theirs. Now go scream. I won't be listening for it, but if I actually hear it, I'll be impressed.
If you still think you're an omnivore, go eat a raw chicken. I'll be seeing you in ICU, if not the obits.
g*mart
Speaking of things that make people scream, as regular posters here can tell you, there are few things that irk me more than being quoted out of context. The sentence, as I wrote it, reads "And I'm not saying there's no benefit to be derived from eating meat." This is quite the opposite of what you're presumably trying to attribute to me.
My diet is mostly vegetarian, as I already said. I don't ask or demand anyone else follow my example. My reasons are purely out of health concerns.
Patrick at April 3, 2006 9:54 PM
Patrick,
Quit beating the damn chicken argument. You can't rip a carrot out of the ground and eat it raw without catching some disease. Most of the vegetables you get at the supermarket have been treated with pesticides, irradiated, and washed.
nash at April 4, 2006 7:58 AM
Nash writes:
Can and have, thanks. Next?
Patrick at April 4, 2006 11:26 AM
One word: sushi
deja pseu at April 4, 2006 1:17 PM
> One word:
You still married?
Crid at April 4, 2006 2:10 PM
Yep.
deja pseu at April 4, 2006 3:53 PM
Storia mylife
Crid at April 4, 2006 4:33 PM
Patrick says:
"Seriously, neanderthals might be a compelling case, but let's not forget, they were not human beings. They were not even our nearest ancestors. They were forerunners of the Cro-Magnon, which are a much closer match to Homo Sapiens."
Actually, Neanderthals were not the forerunners of Cro-Magnon (who also had a diet consisting mostly of meat), they were contemporaries. They existed together for about ten thousand years. There is much debate as to whether the Neanderthal disappeared as a result of losing the competition for resources with Cro-Magnon or whether frequent interbreeding, with Cro-Magnon genes dominating, led to their end as a separate race. There's some really interesting stuff on both sides of the debate.
The resource they would have been competing for was animals. There is evidence that the giant cave bear in Europe, for example, may have been made extinct by the two groups competing for its meat and its cave.
So whether we're descended from Cro-Magnon or a Cro-Magnon/Neanderthal hybrid, meat-eating is a part of our species' history.
Kimberly at April 4, 2006 7:52 PM
Kimberly writes:
Yes, they eras did overlap and the latter did finalize the extinction of the former, but to call them contemporaries is imprecise and misleading. Neanderthals first appeared 230,000 years ago, while the Cro-Magnon didn't emerge until 195,000 years later. They also existed for about 19,000 years after the Neanderthals became extinct.
Patrick at April 5, 2006 4:07 AM
Last time I checked my eyes were in the front of my face making me a predator. Predators don't chase corn. And in my younger days I was a USDA meat and poultry inspector and have been in many different kinds of slaughterhouses. The animals are stunned before killing to keep them still so the machinery or the person with the blade can open the neck vein and the heart can continue to pump the blood out. It is all very quick; the animals are unloaded, hung on the moving chain or chuted to the electricity and stunned. I doubt that it is painless but they loose conscienceness very quickly. And lastly microbiologically speaking, grain fed cows turned out to pasture for the last few weeks of their life have only a fraction of the deadly ecoli bacteria in their gut.
chicknlady at April 6, 2006 2:40 AM
Patrick your liver produces 75% of your cholesterol, 25% comes from your diet. You can't live without it and most of your levels and types of cholesterol is determined by your genes. Cholesterol levels are not the only determining factor in your cardiac health. It is still a very complex puzzle. There are many ppl who have wonderful levels that build plaque and have heart attacks and many ppl who have horrible levels without a problem. It's one of those fascinating little statistics that high levels are "associated" with cardiac problems. I do agree with limiting the meat consumption however because of the hormones, chemicals and antibiotics used to hurry it to market.
chicknlady at April 6, 2006 2:57 AM
Chicknlady writes:
Well, I guess sharks can't be predators then, since their eyes happen to be on the sides of their heads. (Insert eyeroll here.) Where did you hear that ridiculous idea that animals with eyes on the front of their faces have to be predators?
Those poor, unnatural Bonobos. Their eyes are on the front of their faces, and guess what they aren't? They've never chased a meal in their lives.
Another ridiculous assertion. Your body produces all the cholesterol you need. You don't need and never have needed cholesterol from outside sources.
And furthermore, your levels and types of cholesterol are NOT determined by your genes alone. Yes, my high cholesterol is genetic, but there are things I can do for myself to adjust my levels of cholesterol. Exercise, for instance, is known to increase levels of high-density lipoproteins (commonly referred to as "good cholesterol"). Also bad eating habits raise your levels of low-density and very low-density lipoproteins (bad cholesterol).
The point being is that the animals should be stunned BEFORE they get onto the chain.
Patrick at April 6, 2006 4:56 AM
I should have been more specific; the big animals are stunned on metal plates standing up, big muscular men grab the the hocks and hook em. The chickens are lifted by hand out of the boxes and hung on a conveyer by their feet, they then go through water then electricity then the blade.
It's too bad this blog is often reduced to a vehicle for ridicule. I'm meerly expressing things I have learned and my opinions. Lots of ppl hit below the belt. I think that takes the fun out of good debate and information exchange.
chicknlady at April 6, 2006 1:08 PM
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