Sean Armstrong: Dismount your soy SUV and saddle up some scrumptious pony

[XemaSab]

Sorry for the delay in this article—I just got off the airplane (100 mpg per person—better than my commuter car) from my honeymoon in Iceland last Wednesday, and writing this article was a lower priority than hot springs next to glaciers and oohing at the Aurora Borealis.

But the honeymoon was actually research for this article: while Shail and I were traveling from roaring waterfall to hissing stem vent we were trying to follow a roughly 250-mile diet of dairy, beef, sheep, fish, onions, potatoes, carrots and kale (plus some geothermal hot house tomatoes). To give you a sense of our dedication, our last breakfast was young horse fried with onions. Lots of horses in Iceland, and no grains to make a breakfast cereal.

You may be shuddering now imagining us eating a pet animal. You know though, half the horses in the U.S. are locked into stalls for almost every waking hour, and many go insane from the confinement—is better to kill an animal that’s lived a good life or torture an animal all its life and let it die of old age? Truth be told it was a little uncomfortable for us to fry foal, although young horse is unquestionably a nice-tasting meat. (Fun Fact: did you know that dogs and guinea pigs were domesticated in North America by the Indians for food, not as pets?)

So here we arrive at a quiet conflict among the activists in our town—I arrived in Arcata 11 years ago a vegetarian, trying to eat low on the trophic pyramid in order to preserve arable land that is inefficiently converted to food crops that are fed to animals so we can harvest their animal protein (meat and dairy). That worked in Wisconsin, but in Arcata soy is the gas guzzling SUV of proteins and our grass fed beef is the two-seater Honda hybrid.


http://www.arcataeye.com/index.php?module=Pagesetter&tid=2&topic=4&func=viewpub&pid=358&format=full

[demodonkey]

1. I got my first pony the week Kennedy was shot...

...and have owned, bred, trained, and shown horses ever since. I have NEVER seen or even heard of any horse going "insane" from being kept in a stall.

My family raised grass-fed beef in a sustainable agriculture operation for decades (until a developer flooded us our and killed our cattle) but I have no intention of eating foals, dogs, or guinea pigs no matter how "green" you seem to think such practices might be.

Bizarre.

[XemaSab]

4. ps This is not me writing the OP

:D

[Porcupine]

2. I have to agree with the guy about horses.

Of course it's really, really easy for me to eat local here in Chico CA.. At last weeks farmers market we could buy 6 kinds of apples, 4 kinds of pears, 2 kinds of persimmons, pomegranites 2/$1, beef, olives, olive oil, satsuma mandarins about nine kinds of greens and rice. Anywhere else things can be tough.

I've seen more than a few horses that live on 1/2 acre lots and spend most of the year standing in shit. I just can't see where killing chickens, cows, and sheep is ok but horses are exempt. Believe me, even the best behaved horse is NOT a house pet; they are large dangerous animals that deserve respect for being what they are.

[provis99]

3. i guess i have to admit i just have a cultural prejudice

about which foods I choose to eat; I would'nt touch horsemeat (stories of soldiers slaughtering their beloved horses at Stalingrad to keep themselves alive ring as horror stories to me), but I guess with others its alright, so I accept their decisions. Hell, I eat pig flesh (call it what it is, not "pork"), and I can see many cultures being deeply offended by my choice. I guess mutual respect for cultural differences, if not liking or acceptance, is what seems to be the pragmatic compromise.

[eppur_se_muova]

5. The farther north you go, the fewer vegetarians you find.

Not hard to see why. In the high Arctic, where the only plant life within hundreds of miles is algae growing in snow, the only way to stay alive is to live off of animal flesh, including both fish and sea mammals. A little farther south, where the climate/soil is only good for growing grass, grazing animals are a resourceful way of converting non-human-digestible grasses into milk (butter, cheese) and meat. Still farther south, and pigs provide a way of converting food trash (and acorns) into human-edible food, helping stretch what food crops there are. Farther south, where agriculture provides abundant grains, sufficient for storage through the winter, eating meat is not at all necessary, and mostly represents inefficient waste (hence the premium expenses). Most societies in these warmer regions haven't gone the route of banning meat altogether, but it certainly plays a much smaller dietary role, and religions which propound vegetarianism are found almost exclusively in those regions.

I'm vegetarian by choice, but I understood that for some people this is not a practical choice, and for others not a choice at all. So I do rail against the waste and inefficiency of "meat factories" in the US, but I don't assume that everyone who eats meats is some kind of bloodthirsty demon. I just try to point out that meat really isn't healthier for us than most other foods (as long as you keep a varied diet), and has lots of disadvantages environmentally and economically. The emphasis on eating so much beef in the US is truly anomalous compared to other countries/cultures, but most people who have grown up here can't see it, because it is all around them. With a little perspective, maybe out overemphasis on meat in this country would diminish -- with no small benefit to our health.