An Ethical Dillemma

As anyone reading this probably knows, I end up coat-tailing Doc Nagel's blog a lot, ususally when he has posed some sort of ethical dillemma or philosophical point of order. Of course, to make matters worse, he now also has a Pro Ethics blog. Of course, this is really just for his Pro Ethics students, but that won't keep me from kvetching.

Anyways, the latest installment of his blog blog takes up the question of morality and meat, which is a tricky one in this day and age. Given that meat is mass produced by industrial means, it is difficult, nigh on impossible, to anticipate the treatment your entree received prior to being corpsified, which has ramifications of both cruelty (was your entree humanely slaughtered, or was it mangled and torn apart, tortured to death, bled to death, vivisectioned, or used in a British art installation?), and personal safety (is there anything related to the treatment of the carcass that is likely to hasten my death?). (And that second one is a doozy: not only does it encompass "Was this dragged across a grozny killing floor before 'aging' in a facility closely resembling a middle school boy's locker room," but also "Was this beast injected with compounds designed to swell it up to the size of a bull elephant, and will there be any latent and/or cumulative effects on me, the consumer, that won't show up on tests but are likely going to strike me down in the prime of my life?")

The real and practical answer is: there's no way to know. The best you can do is get friendly with your butcher, but even then the closest you'll ever get to the above is to see that the carcass looks relatively normal in the butchering process. (And that the shop is clean, the stock well rotated, etc. If you get on real good terms with the people who cut your meat, you might get them to divulge what they know about the origin of the meat, but the likelyhood is they won't know too much more than you do.) Then, of course, most of what gets consumed in this century is prepared food, which is to say it had been tampered with to the point that it is barely recognizeable as what it came from, so the question isn't just moot, it's not even a question. Which is to say the question has been removed from you: you can choose not to eat prepared food, ever, ever again, forever and ever amen, and good luck with that, or you can resign yourself to living with an ethical dillemma you will never be able to solve. (Or, as I suppose the majority of people do, you can simply refuse to let it be an ethical dillemma, which is to say you just won't think about it.)

Then, of course, there are the "certified organic" products, many of which further their claims on your conscience by insisting, in the labelling rhetoric, any and all animals involved were organically raised (eg. not chemically diddled with) and humanely slaugtered. (Although, as far as I know, the classic smack-of-the-hammer technique is still, by and large, considered "humane.") Prices in this category have come down (relatively) in recent times, and the products are more widely available in the standard mega-mart, but it's still not a reliable option in most places, as far as I know. (In California, where the Doc lives, the laws and regs are specifically tailored to the crackpot set, and thusly "certified organic" products are easier to find, since the regs were fashioned specifically for people who intended to go out and get certified.) (Gee, that worked out nicely.)

And then there are the folks who do crap that seems almost tailored to discredit or besmirch the organic movement in service of the almighty buck. Like the folks who insist that all organic fruits are ugly, mealy, tough, and unripe. Um. No. But that's reeeeally beside the point.

Back to animals. Take the matter of hunters: hunters are in a very unique position to see that the meat they consume is humanely killed and hygenically slaughtered. But the majority of the hunters I have known caught little or no game, and the few who did regularly bag animals, rather than treating the carcass with respect, not to say reverence, took the meat to someone who was guranteed to transform the various specific cuts into a mealy sausage every bit as unique and tasty as the products of the Hickory Farms Company. As for humanely killed, I know the claim is maintained that a skillful hunter always kills quick and clean, but I don't know with any certainty at all that these people are not in some way torturing the animals or letting them bleed to death or wearing them down with extremity shots, etc. etc., since most of the hunters I have know were dumb schmucks. (To be fair, the kind of person who is going to think hunting is a good idea in this, the Era of the Megamart, is likely going to be a dumb schmuck.)

(Which is the real reason I don't hunt: I don't feel any need to hang out with dumb schmucks who seem as likely to shoot me as any game we might run across, insert Dick Cheney joke here.)

Then there's the McDonald's question, which we have visited before: fast food is mystery meat. And the Corporation can assure me all damned day long that the animals used in their products were humanely slaughtered and chemically clean, but the chain of communications makes the plausibility of deniability waaaaaaay too easy. I either have to take it on faith or just try like all hell not to ask the question. Or declare the chain dead to you, as I recently did with Burger King. (I'm serious, man. Once you become aware of those "beef patties," it's all over.)

Then there's the latest experiment the Doc is pursuing, which is ordering organically raised and humanely slaughtered meat products on the internet. Which is just wrong. I mean. Hell. I won't even buy a hat on the internet.

And then, finally, there's this: the odds are that I will never be slaughtered and eaten by a predator, but if I do, I can feel pretty sure that the means will not be what you might call "humane." On the other hand, I will probably never be killed or eaten by a cow, although at this stage of my life it would be only fair play if I were to be killed and eaten by a cow. And it would make a great headline. "Man Killed, Eaten by Cow." Now that's the kind of copy that moves product!