March 27, 2007...4:21 pm
Humane Food Options
(via Slashfood): Wolfgang Puck has decided to only use meat and egg products which have been grown under humane conditions. And yes, this means he will stop using fois gras.
While I’m hopeful that this will raise awareness about humanely-producted food, the pessimist in me thinks that it will end up as just a quicky footnote in Puck’s autobiography. Food production is a lot cheaper if you pack animals in tightly, prevent losses by doing mass vaccinations of livestock, feed them food that bulks them up quickly (even if it’s not good for them) and have a slaughter facility that focuses on speed and production rather than how the animals spend their last moments. How we treat the animals we eat says a lot about our society, and it’s not very flattering.
If you live in Canada, HumaneFood.ca has a list of stores in your area which sell eggs, chicken, pork and beef which has been humanely raised. For example, in Manitoba they have a list of foods which have the Winnipeg Humane Society Certified seal.
Now, part of the problem of starting down the animal welfare track is that you inevitably end up getting lumped in with crazies like PETA. They are militant vegetarians, and I enjoy a nice steak. Steak > crazy people. What people involved in animal welfare want people to think about is how their food is treated before it reached their table. And it doesn’t help that factory farms go out of their way to promote images of sunshine and buttercups, rather than showing how their products are actually raised. Which sounds more appealing: pork from pigs allowed to root around and roll in the mud and do piggy things, or pork from pigs kept in tiny stalls so small they can’t even turn around? How about an egg laid by a chicken in a nest, fertilized and hatched “on the range,” or chicks hatched in a high-intensity factory? One will be cheaper, sure, but shouldn’t the romantic notion of how our food is produced be at least a little closer to reality?
Anyway, I’m happy to see this small step.
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