"Who Do We Think We Are?"
February 1, 2018 3:34 PM   Subscribe

It’s What’s for Dinner, Scott Korb
Each semester for the past five years, I’ve set out to discuss the suffering and killing and deaths of animals as part of a freshman-level food-writing course I call “Setting a Fine Table,” so named for a favorite line from M.F.K. Fisher.
posted by the man of twists and turns (22 comments total) 14 users marked this as a favorite
 
"[W]e must preserve the possibilities for feeding ourselves and each other in ways that nourish and strengthen the world we share with plants and animals alike. After spending time on a Virginia hog farm with Edna Lewis, it seems clear that deep and proper participation with plants and animals means raising them well and then living well by eating them."

Stewardship. Not deliverance, not ignorance, not ease--but responsibility, knowledge, and labor.
posted by MonkeyToes at 4:09 PM on February 1, 2018 [6 favorites]


Being an ethical omnivore is something that I struggle with.
posted by ShakeyJake at 4:26 PM on February 1, 2018 [1 favorite]


"We continue with novelist Jonathan Safran Foer, who in the 2009 book Eating Animals is writing against meat in the context of becoming a new father. “Feeding my child,” he writes, “is not like feeding myself: it matters more.” I ask the class what he might mean by “matters.” They don’t usually have a good answer—nor, I think, does the author. "

I can't find any bio info on Mr. Korb that mentions if he has a family or not, but even if he doesn't it seems like quite a stretch that he wouldn't notice that parents, especially new ones, expend a fair amount of energy hand wringing over what they feed their kids.
posted by Dr. Twist at 4:28 PM on February 1, 2018 [1 favorite]


I’m not understanding this guy’s objections to vegetarianism. Is it that vegetarians are somehow... naive? Yearning for a pre-lapsarian world? Removing themselves from reality?

No, dude. Being vegetarian is part of the hard, real, down and dirty work of making the world a better place.
posted by delight at 4:28 PM on February 1, 2018 [16 favorites]


so I'm sure Pollan has a better discussion of and argument for the ethical omnivore in dilemma (which I really do need to read some time) but here, for Korb, it doesn't get far past being muddy and tautological -- vegetarianism is naive/youthful because this guy was a vegan/vegetarian when he was naive/youthful, eating meat is good and natural because something about the post-Flood, post-Eden earth of the Old Testament (???)

some interesting and thoughtful stuff in here to be sure but I'm not sure it ever settled on much of a novel point that it bothered to prove (or that hasn't been said better in other places). I mean yes we should strive to stop torturing and brutalizing our livestock for the sake of pure capitalistic efficiency, but taking shots at vegetarians within that framework is pretty bizarre -- perfect as the enemy of the good I guess?

I mean there are more pragmatic arguments against vegetarianism as the solution (class-based ones mostly come to my mind) but the reverberation of all the Eden references here just make him come off as sanctimonious rather than analytical about it.
posted by Kybard at 4:37 PM on February 1, 2018 [18 favorites]


What Kybard said.
posted by any portmanteau in a storm at 4:43 PM on February 1, 2018 [2 favorites]


And here I thought there might be *anything* in this article to dissuade me from vegetarianism. Like, that article about how vegetarians in Australia kill more animals than meat-eaters or something. But nope. Just “I used to be one. How naive I was! And my students refuse to learn my hard-won wisdom. Maybe because I can’t properly articulate it.”
posted by greermahoney at 5:01 PM on February 1, 2018 [14 favorites]


I started reading it expecting a poorly-reasoned defense of vegetarianism, and was surprised to discover instead a poorly-reasoned attack on vegetarianism. So at least it wasn't completely predictable.

I liked this bit:
But this is basically where we started, a place not so different than where I once lived as a self-important vegan—above the fray, away from sin and the pain of the world, or so I thought.
He may no longer be a vegan, but he's still self-important.
posted by biogeo at 5:45 PM on February 1, 2018 [5 favorites]


"Over time my regimen around food had become a kind of devotional, ascetic practice; I never saved anything for anybody. . . . . In fact, refusing meat and dairy and eggs, three meals a day, became a way of distancing myself from those around me, sort of the way abstaining from sex keeps you from the person you love."

So, he was an antisocial, possibly elitist and snobbish, vegan and the lesson he learned was that it's bad to be vegetarian.
posted by oddman at 5:49 PM on February 1, 2018 [11 favorites]


So, in conclusion, eating meat is a land of contrasts. Just like it says in Genesis. For example, as discussed previously. . .

I'm guessing this guy assigns a minimum word count on all his paper assignments and grades harshly by that rubric.
posted by eotvos at 6:32 PM on February 1, 2018 [1 favorite]


First:

“No ascetic,” he once wrote, “can be considered reliably sane.”

Next:

... I once lived as a self-important vegan—above the fray, away from sin and the pain of the world, or so I thought. Today this is absolutely no place I ever want to end up in. That place I used to live in doesn’t really exist.

Later:

There are markets where we can buy these meats—and yes, it’s true and perhaps painful, at a somewhat greater cost than factory-raised animals. And we should [buy them].

Finally:

...man—every man—is an end in himself, he exists for his own sake, and the achievement of his own happiness is his highest moral purpose.

Guess society is over, no point in trying to do anything that doesn't gratify just me.
posted by durandal at 7:07 PM on February 1, 2018 [3 favorites]


Korb came to realize that his approach to eating was isolating; he becomes a convert to connectedness and is teasing out the implications, many of them uncomfortable. I could not have heard this conversation as a young college student; it resonates more deeply now that I have lost family members, raised livestock and kept gardens, and have a clearer understanding of what it takes to bring a good meal to the table for friends and loved ones.

My friends hear the stories, but they don't get it from the inside; extended family members have refused my canned goods, declined to go see my animals. Once, memorably, my mother asked for vegetables out of the garden, and when presented with the product of a minute's dig made a face and said, "But it's a dirty onion!" My sister wouldn't hear about the pastured broilers and joked about the field where chicken nuggets grow. It's just easier not to know. About the slave labor of fishing boats. Or the food waste of supermarkets. Or the thousand other connections to the plate that go unremarked on as we eat, idly reading the package's marketing copy, which includes words like "Fresh" and "Artisanal" and "...started as a small family farm." Now that's a story we can hear: provenance! But the rest of it? The ways we're all implicated in this web of food and eating? The blood, the mistreatment of field workers, the beak-clipping--those, no. Not while we're eating.

"Who ever said eating wouldn’t hurt?" Yes: For all of the joys of the table, there are painful parts too.

Thanks, tmotat. Thought-provoking.
posted by MonkeyToes at 7:21 PM on February 1, 2018 [6 favorites]


I mean there are more pragmatic arguments against vegetarianism as the solution (class-based ones mostly come to my mind)

Can anyone point me towards the best versions of these arguments?

This has come up on the green before but surveys do not bear it out and I've never found numbers that actually indicate this, only lots of anecdotes (my personal anecdote, incidentally, would be that vegans and vegetarians who go to the hip restaurants and markets and meet-ups are younger, poorer, and more diverse than the general population).
posted by durandal at 7:32 PM on February 1, 2018 [4 favorites]


Has anybody really met one of these super-preachy, self-important vegans who try to convert everybody they meet? Or are they just interpreting interest and enthusiasm as preaching.

As a vegan for three years, I found it extremely hard to stay motivated, so I probably talked about it socially more than strictly necessary, but I always tried to emphasize that I wasn't one of those vegans: I wasn't going to shame anybody at the table for eating meat, nor try to convert them. But maybe that all just a myth and a stereotype in the end.
posted by theorique at 5:14 AM on February 2, 2018 [2 favorites]


Has anybody really met one of these super-preachy, self-important vegans who try to convert everybody they meet?

Yes. More than one. Some try for gentle conversion, but I have known people who get up in others' faces and start getting very descriptive and will verge into near-hostility if they get wound up enough. They have tended to be young: both young as people, and new to veganism. Eventually, most have chilled out. But I've met similarly rude converts of all descriptions: new Catholics (one of whom, previously a gregarious soul, proceeded to alienate many longstanding friends by railing constantly about the evils of abortion, even when the subject hadn't come up), new Evangelicals, newly-gluten-free people, people who've just read Ayn Rand for the first time. Preachy self-importance is just a thing humans do. I think it stands out more when vegans do it because the thing they're arguing against involves, well, eating animals, so their arguments are necessarily going to hinge on that. (And I've seen plenty of omnivores try to convert vegans, as well; it's just that they don't get preachy so often because omnivorous eating tends to be the social default in many circles and so it only comes up if the subject of veganism is directly or indirectly broached.)
posted by halation at 6:09 AM on February 2, 2018 [2 favorites]


And I've seen plenty of omnivores try to convert vegans, as well; it's just that they don't get preachy so often because omnivorous eating tends to be the social default in many circles and so it only comes up if the subject of veganism is directly or indirectly broached.

That's a good point. "Preaching" in favor of the default option isn't always viewed as such.

I do see that kind of behavior sometimes from those whom I would call "extreme moderates" - they argue in favor of moderation and the status-quo, and against any diet or way of eating that they would interpret as "radical" or "too extreme". So they would be equally opposed to (e.g.) vegan, ketogenic, or raw food diets.
posted by theorique at 8:00 AM on February 2, 2018 [1 favorite]


People are free to consider eating extremely free-range humanely-raised meat as a better ethical alternative to being veg*n, but there are class implications of that too - compare the price of a pound of ethically-raised beef to the price of a pound of bulk lentils.

More seriously, I think there's a problem when veg*ns are assumed to just deny the necessary suffering that goes into even a vegan meal. It's not that I'm valuing the lives of livestock over the lives of farmworkers when I eat vegetables. It's that I don't know how to work out the moral calculus of livestock and farmworkers and slaughterhouse workers and the environmental implications of growing a million acres of corn and soybeans to feed livestock but I think I am doing a little to reduce my involvement in bad systems. I'm not on some vain and fruitless quest for moral purity.
posted by Jeanne at 8:08 AM on February 2, 2018 [2 favorites]


So, in conclusion, eating meat is a land of contrasts. Just like it says in Genesis.

Genesis also says that it's a Land of Confusion.
posted by theorique at 8:49 AM on February 2, 2018 [2 favorites]


I really wanted to get something from this essay. I want to be a vegan and have struggled to be and stay one so many times. Last weekend I pushed an empty basket through the supermarket, lamenting that everything I *wanted* to eat was either bad for me, bad for the environment, or bad for the animals. I left with an empty basket and an upset mind.
posted by KleenexMakesaVeryGoodHat at 11:02 AM on February 2, 2018 [1 favorite]


"The fact remains, though, that there is no world devoid of fear or dread or death. "

aboriginal/first nations/etc seem to me to be the pinnacle of earth/nature respect and i haven't come across any references to veg*ism in 4 season climates. these cultures seem in my limited viewing to have a much better acceptance of the fact that life involves death. death of plants or animals or something. my life is supported from other life. that is the wheel.

i did the veg for 10 years. it was great, learned a lot about cooking. researched a lot of the factory farm evils. i do think everyone should be veg for a least a month or so. or a day a week or something like that.
i've done the small farm thing for a couple years. took part in the slaughter and butchering at small scale. also ate roadkill and dumpster(not meat) etc. yes there is a $ problem there in buying organic for the poor but hunting squirrels is cheap and easy protein. and who can forget the flint rabbit lady from "roger and me"?

i think the thing the article missed is that growing plants at large scales is also really violent towards the earth. you change the landscape, you displace animals, you employ slaves, you use lots of petroleum, and you often cover the earth with large swaths of plastic, and you drive big trucks long distances, transport food from one continent to another, blah blah. i remain an uncertain human...
posted by danjo at 11:11 AM on February 2, 2018 [1 favorite]


And here I thought there might be *anything* in this article to dissuade me from vegetarianism. Like, that article about how vegetarians in Australia kill more animals than meat-eaters or something.

I would love to read that article greermahoney
posted by daybeforetheday at 1:14 PM on February 2, 2018


i think the thing the article missed is that growing plants at large scales is also really violent towards the earth.

Yes, but this is amplified, not reduced, by industrial meat production. Livestock are brought to market weight by feeding them plants grown at industrial scales, and it takes at least 10 pounds of vegetation to produce 1 pound of meat. If you want to reduce the total agricultural impact of your diet, including the amount of resources used in growing plants, then eat less or no meat.
posted by biogeo at 8:35 AM on February 3, 2018 [1 favorite]


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