HOMEWORK: Due April 10, 2007

READINGS
1, articles from EAA - pg 226-232, 477- 479 answer Q. 1 and 3
2, Read NY Times article below and write a commentary on this blog or bring to class
Commentary should include author's claim and if the argument (state the argument) works for you and why? Be ready to talk about it in class

April 1, 2007
Ideas & Trends
Being Nice to the Bacon, Before You Bring It Home
By PAUL VITELLO
SOME of my relatives in Sicily are farmers; and the first time I visited them, at 19, I made a habit each morning of visiting the rabbits they kept in a pen near the house. There were a few dozen. They were cute.
One morning, my uncle Paolo, a large and kindly man, came in to tend to business, righting an overturned bucket here, straightening a crate there and deftly scooping up a rabbit with one hand, wedging it under his arm and twisting its neck until dead. It took about five seconds.
Thus was one meat consumer introduced to the culture of meat producers.
When Burger King announced last week that it would favor producers who treated their animals more humanely it was welcome news to animal welfare advocates. But it also served to remind the rest of us that if we are meat eaters, we are slaughterers, too. At least by proxy.
To farmers and ranchers who raise animals for food, the feeding, housing and killing of livestock is an unbroken continuum that delivers a product to people far removed from its production — city folk who work in advertising, or whatever it is that city people do.
Animals are for petting, not killing. Meat, unrelated, is for eating. And never the twain shall meet.
But over the last decade, a slow but steady convergence of these two world views has begun to change the way consumers view their meat, and some producers view their animals.
Temple Grandin, an animal science professor at Colorado State University who is a pioneer in the field of humane cattle handling, said public pressure on meat producers in the last few years has been “building and building to where I feel we’re at a tipping point now.”
When she spoke at last week’s conference on animal care and handling at the annual American Meat Institute meeting in Kansas City, Mo., she said, there were more than 300 people in attendance. “That’s more than we ever had before, and I think it’s a wonderful sign,” she said.
Beginning in the 1990s, animal welfare advocates like People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals began virtually force-feeding the consuming public on certain realities of so-called factory farming.
For the sake of production efficiencies and a low-cost food supply, they explained, cows, pigs and poultry are often condemned to sunless, sometimes squalid lives, only to die with needless cruelty. These advocates led protests against the largest hamburger chains, beneficiaries of the factory system.
After initial resistance, in 2001 the chains agreed to some improvements. McDonald’s and Burger King imposed some guidelines for their meat and egg suppliers: extra water, wing-room and fresh air for egg-laying hens; mandatory electric-shock stunning of pigs and cattle before slaughter.
Last week, Burger King went further. In an agreement that PETA and other advocates called “a historic advance,” it said it would favor suppliers who did not confine their chickens and pigs in cages and crates, and who used gas rather than electric shock to knock out chickens before slaughter.
Perhaps this is more than you want to know about the life and death of the creatures who made that ham and eggs on your plate possible. But by most indicators, many Americans are increasingly interested in asking. From niche-market beginnings, “free-range” and other humanely raised animal products have been embraced by many major grocery retailers, including Wal-Mart.
Retailers clearly see advantages in appealing to the demographic of kinder and gentler meat-eaters, according to Ron Paul, president of Technomic, a Chicago-based research and consulting firm for food suppliers. “There is a growing realization that the humane movement is a long-term movement,” he said. “It’s not going to go away.”
Among meat producers, the new ethos seems partly understandable and partly not. “There is obviously a great deal of emotion and publicity surrounding the issue right now,” said Janet M. Riley, spokeswoman for the American Meat Institute. “From our perspective, handling animals humanely gives you a better quality product.”
More than 80 law schools now offer an “animal law” course that deals in some way with the question of humane treatment and slaughter of livestock, said Paul Waldau, director of the Center for Animals and Public Policy at Tufts University’s Cummings School of Veterinary Medicine. He teaches such a course every other year at Harvard Law School.
It might seem hypocritical to address the quality of life of a creature being raised exclusively to be killed for food. Mr. Waldau, who has degrees in law, religion and philosophy, said that the issue was not meat eating per se, but one’s responsibility for one’s choices as a consumer. Whether to eat the meat of animals treated abysmally during their lifetimes or to buy so-called blood diamonds or clothing made in sweatshops, become parallel questions, he said.
Both Mr. Waldau and Ms. Grandin see the animal welfare movement in the context of 50 years of American political evolution, and the profound shift of attitudes that accompanied the civil rights and women’s movements.
Tell that to my friend, the rabbit. In Sicily, the episode of many years ago ended with me in what might be called the gray zone of slaughter: I held the hind legs of the little rabbit while my uncle slipped its skin off in virtually one piece, like a pair of Dr. Dentons.
As I remember, it was cooked in a stew. We ate it with crusty bread that night. It tasted like chicken. And it was very good.
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