Payne’s essay appeared on TheFederalist.com on June 24, 2014.
WHY YOU SHOULD EAT “HUMANE” MEAT
DANIEL PAYNE
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While driving around Richmond the other day, I noticed, on the back of a car, a remarkably candid bumper sticker: “Humane meat is yuppie bullshit,” it claimed, and advised the reader to “ask any cow” to confirm this.
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Judging by the license plate above this profound eight-
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But back to that erudite bumper sticker: “Humane meat is yuppie bullshit.” The logic being, of course, that no meat can be “humane,” if only because eating meat involves killing animals, and killing animals is allegedly wrong. There are a great many interesting and compelling arguments in favor of vegetarianism, and maybe (maybe) even one or two to be made in favor of veganism; nevertheless, there are many more arguments in favor of eating animals, and they are better than the ones the vegetarians and vegans make. Humans will probably always eat animals, and this is, in the end, as it should be.
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“Humans will probably always eat animals, and this is, in the end, as it should be.”
But it remains a valid question as to how humans shall eat the meat they will inevitably consume, and in this regard I will disagree with the percipient slogan to be found on the vegan bumper sticker: “humane” meat is great, it is ethically logical, and it should be what you’re eating if you’re eating animals.
What Is “Humane Meat”?
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First, let’s define what “humane meat” really means. The definition changes a little bit depending upon the animals, but for nearly all farm livestock it will mean a life spent entirely on pasture (aside from the short trip to the slaughterhouse), with abundant room to move and engage in habits and tendencies specific to its evolutionary biology. That’s a mouthful (meat always is), but it’s a fairly accurate summation of what my brother and sister-
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One must be so specific because a fairly successful advertising campaign utilizes clever marketing language such as “all natural” and “farm fresh,” utterly meaningless phrases, to trick you into thinking you’re getting something you’re not. Shopping for price is always wise; shopping against hucksterism should be encouraged, as well. If one is committed to eating humanely, one needs to be as judicious a customer as many companies wish you not to be.
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What would this look like in practice? Taking as an example the lovely farm outside of Richmond from which I get most of my meat and dairy, this means beef and dairy cows on grass for their entire lives, eating from the same; laying hens and meat birds on grass as well, fed from both the pasture floor and the grain supplement they receive; and pigs both wallowing in paddocks and wandering in a nearby forest (if you’ve got one of the latter). These kinds of farms are invariably local, which means you’ll probably find most of this kind of meat at the nearest farmer’s market.
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There are a number of truly excellent national suppliers from which you can order this type of meat in bulk, if you’ve no good farm nearby, but buying local from the market is easier, and more viscerally appealing: a great deal of ink has been spilled singing the praises of “getting to know your farmer,” but truthfully, there really is something to be said for it. There is a reason we feel so special when we personally know the chef who’s preparing our food, after all—
Isn’t This Some Sort of Gimmick?
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The $64,000 question, which invariably and appropriately arises, is: Why should we eat this way? It is more expensive, after all, and while there are many more farmers’ markets than there used to be, they are still less convenient than the nearby supermarket or Wal-
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Simply put, the convenience and price advantage afforded by industrial food does not justify the suffering to which industrial farm animals are subject. It cannot, unless we are prepared to invert the concepts of both suffering and justification: modern factory farms are hellhouses of animal suffering writ large. The literature with which vegetarians and vegans often make their points, while wrong in its desired outcome, is nonetheless correct about the circumstances it unveils. Pig factory farming, in particular, is a uniquely brutal form of torture to inflict upon a very intelligent type of animal, cramming pigs into slum tenement conditions, forcing pregnant sows into brutal gestation crates, and creating conditions ripe for the abuse of animals. Cows are forced into similar crowded conditions on their own factory farms and made to eat a diet of grain that makes them sick, and they must wade around in a knee-
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And of course, the industrial farm feeds into the industrial slaughterhouse, which is usually the apex of factory farm suffering. It is almost impossible to have avoided seeing at least one surreptitious PETA video of industrial abattoirs—
No Need for Government Regulation
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The standard response for many is to stop eating meat, or, if you’re an utterly simpleminded Progressive or left-
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It is true that this type of eating is more expensive, and there are a number of reasonable objections to a heftier price tag for any kind of food. One of the most frequent that I have heard, for instance, is that local, humanely raised meat is too expensive for poorer people to purchase, so we should not encourage it as a viable agricultural model. This is a concerning and valid complaint to the higher expense to be found in humane meat, and we should certainly be aware of the price tag that can act as a barrier for low-
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More farmers, and hence more competition, may lower the price of such food in the future; it is also worthwhile to fight against asinine government regulations that make good meats harder and more expensive to obtain for rich, middle-
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This kind of devotion to ethical treatment can be taken too far (to vegetarianism or veganism, say), but it doesn’t have to be. I have eaten factory-
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There are a host of other reasons to eat like this; it supports the farmers, for one (American industrial farming rests upon an impossibly idiotic set of economic pillars, and American industrial farmers can barely make enough money off of their product to survive); there is also abundant evidence that grass-
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READING ARGUMENTS
In paragraph 2, Payne defines “straight-
How would you describe Payne’s style and tone in this essay? Do you find it appealing? Is it appropriate for the subject of his argument? Explain.
What purpose is paragraph 3 intended to serve? Do you think it achieves this purpose? Why or why not?
Who is the intended audience for this essay—
Payne implies that vegetarians are committing a logical fallacy in response to the suffering in factory farms. What is this fallacy? Do you think he is right?