[meat] humane solutions needed

No need to reiterate and regurgitate the sheer scale of the population growth dilemma. Here are the main culprits in order of births. No need to reiterate and regurgitate the sheer scale of the coming water crisis, also related to world population.

This article concerns itself with another aspect of the population dilemma - food and in particular, meat.

As demand outstripped supply in the last 100 years, it was only logical that debate would be fierce - both pro-meat and anti-meat. Meat-eating has a long history and there is a case for saying that it's difficult for a vegetarian to completely cover the loss of nutrients, e.g. Vitamin B12, entirely through vegetable sources.

There's a case for saying that humans have evolved with meat and that meat is a necessity for growth and nutrition. I used to teach a girl from a vegetarian household and she was always anaemic and sick with something or other. She lacked energy.

Hers was not an isolated case and here are some of the myths of vegetarianism. [At the top of the page is an extremely annoying pop up - just ignore it and below you'll find Myth N1.]

Some vegetarians, realizing the logical impasse they're in, then regard fish as "not really meat", especially shellfish but that's not the main dilemma with meat today. The main dilemma is the inhumane way battery and factory farms operate, designed to cater for the ever burgeoning market.

The Omnivore's Dilemma addressed the entire path of certain foods from source to table and it is not a pretty picture. As we tuck into our steak this evening, let's remember the sight of this cow watching others killed and this goose being force-fed for foie gras.

As the Food and Wine article said:

The terms "grass fed" and "pasture raised"—meaning that an animal was allowed to graze the old-fashioned way instead of being fed an unnatural and difficult-to-digest diet of mostly corn and other grain—have now entered the food-shoppers' lexicon.

Some say leave off the meat altogether and stick to fish. This article from Canadian West is about how far the Blue Fin Tuna travels but along the way, these things are also mentioned:

The catch soared after development of harpoon rifles and hydraulic net lifts in the 1920s. The fishery helped strip the bluefin population from northern European waters in a "relative blink of time." The creatures had virtually disappeared by the 1960s, the researchers report.

Bluefin stocks on the North American side of the Atlantic are at about 10 per cent of their historic levels and are "approaching commercial extinction," says Ron O’Dor of Dalhousie University in Halifax. There is evidence bluefins from the endangered North American stock are crossing the Atlantic and being caught off Europe, where there are much higher quotas than in Canada or the U.S.

So there's clearly a dilemma. Meat is part of the human diet but for reasons of population growth and common humanitarianism, it's best from local producers who have raised the animals naturally or from local fishermen. And what if you're near neither sea nor river? Then maybe you should stick to local livestock and locally produced produce in season.

But you won't and I won't because we've already tasted fish and it's good for our bodies.

Either way the slaughter is not a pleasant thought and I have unpleasant memories myself, from my younger days, of sticking knives into fish's skulls to quickly despatch them, even though we were at sea at the time and every fish killed was eaten.

The way the path from source to table has been smoothed over so the consumer needn't see the messy business involved in the killing or the appalling conditions under which the animals spend their last days has also meant that producers can do as they damned well please and the average consumer will be none the wiser.

And yet I would never advocate vegetarianism - it's unnatural. We are a species, there is a food chain on this planet, we have animals and plants we can eat and those we can't.

If we can get back some control, some humanity shown the poor animal [and plant for that matter - I hate chopping a cabbage in two and I'm sure I can here it scream] via our buying choices, it doesn't solve the problem but it's maybe looking in the right direction.

I'm off now for some tuna and cabbage.