The Oneness of Our Food System

[Lou Gold]

Sorry about the paywall but this seems profoundly interesting.

Mark Bittman's new book, “Animal, Vegetable, Junk” is a stunning reinterpretation of humanity’s relationship to the food it forages, grows and, nowadays, concocts. It’s about the marvel of the modern food system, which feeds more than seven billion people and offers more food, with more variety, at less cost, than ever before. But even more so, it’s about the malignancy of that food system, which is sickening us, poisoning the planet and inflicting so much suffering on other creatures that the mind breaks contemplating it.

Even as someone who is fairly critical of our modern food system, I wasn’t prepared for the scale or sweep of Bittman’s indictment. And I’m not sure I’ve bought into every piece of it. But it is bracing. And it raises profound questions about the relationship among humans, animals, plants, capitalism, technology and morality. So I asked him on my podcast, “The Ezra Klein Show,” to discuss it.

Podcast here
Transcript here

[Simon Adams]

This is something I feel quite strongly about. I’m not a vegetarian, but seeing the way animals are treated on these factory farms is really sickening. Chickens bred so they grow so fast they would never survive in the wild, packed in so tight they can’t move. Pigs with their heads in bars their whole lives, not being able to turn to see themselves being impregnating, or their piglets being born. Add to that monoculture crops, bathed in pesticides, and fishing trawlers that scrape every bit of life from huge tracts of the ocean. It is like we’re invading our own planet.

In the UK you have to buy organic to make sure you’re not supporting the worst kinds of factory farming, but some supermarkets like Waitrose are fairly reliable on welfare. It makes it more expensive which I’ll willingly accept, or eat less meat, but it’s easier for me to say that than someone on minimum wage.

That said, there are still regulations from the EU which set a minimum level of welfare. From what I understand, in the US there are no regulations on welfare? The farmers are also allowed to routinely give antibiotics and steroids just to increase profits, and you have to pay extra for beef from cows that ate grass! It sounds even more grim than here.

I like to think we’ll look back on what we do now a bit like we do on the slave trade now, with just bizarre incomprehension that people could have accepted it as normal. But with a growing population wanting to eat more and more meat for less and less, it’s difficult to see how any democratically elected government will ever make the laws needed to make it less cruel and unsustainable. I have hope that things are improving in some countries, but I suspect it will take a disaster, something like a more serious version of mad cows disease caused by intense farming, before any significant change will happen.

[Cleric K]

But with a growing population wanting to eat more and more meat for less and less, it’s difficult to see how any democratically elected government will ever make the laws needed to make it less cruel and unsustainable. I have hope that things are improving in some countries, but I suspect it will take a disaster, something like a more serious version of mad cows disease caused by intense farming, before any significant change will happen.

It's a question of personal growth in consciousness. It's very simple actually. The meat industry operates wholly on market principles. As long as there's demand, there'll be supply. And demand is generated through each individual. It'll be sad if humans feel forced to give up eating animals because of some external event or laws. This would mean that they haven't learnt anything.

[Lou Gold]

But with a growing population wanting to eat more and more meat for less and less, it’s difficult to see how any democratically elected government will ever make the laws needed to make it less cruel and unsustainable. I have hope that things are improving in some countries, but I suspect it will take a disaster, something like a more serious version of mad cows disease caused by intense farming, before any significant change will happen.

It's a question of personal growth in consciousness. It's very simple actually. The meat industry operates wholly on market principles. As long as there's demand, there'll be supply. And demand is generated through each individual. It'll be sad if humans feel forced to give up eating animals because of some external event or laws. This would mean that they haven't learnt anything.

What about the meat-eating individuals who do so excessively because of the successful marketing of diets by industries supported by government policies and subsidies? What about wild-meat-eating individuals who cease because of pandemics. What about the children who acquire taste preferences in their mother's womb? Who the hell are these free-choice self-learning individuals who learn not because of external laws and events?

[Cleric K]

What about the meat-eating individuals who do so excessively because of the successful marketing of diets by industries supported by government policies and subsidies?

This is exactly why I said it's a question of personal growth. I agree that this is big problem. Most people are not in position to perceive how biased and ungrounded these dietary politics are. But the only real remedy is to make sure that the facts are available. And they are! We can't fight multi-billion industries. But we also don't need to. People should choose their diets out of understanding of their bodily and spiritual organization. Forcing animal diets is just as harmful as forcing worldwide vegetarian policy.

Who the hell are these self-learning individuals who learn not because of external laws and events?

Well, I the hell didn't stop eating meat because of external law or event. It was result of inner realizations. We live comfortably as long as we are not aware of things - our of sight, out of mind. But expanding consciousness brings things to mind. Then every time the soul expands into the spheres it has to pass through these quite uncomfortable and disturbing layers. Then we see our own consumption of animals as hinderance in so many different ways that it'll take us too far to go into details.

[Simon Adams]

It's a question of personal growth in consciousness. It's very simple actually. The meat industry operates wholly on market principles. As long as there's demand, there'll be supply. And demand is generated through each individual. It'll be sad if humans feel forced to give up eating animals because of some external event or laws. This would mean that they haven't learnt anything.

Your faith in us humans is admirable. I live in a fairly nice area of the UK by the Thames. Sometimes we do a round of the canal/river or the nearby streets and pick up all the wrappers, bottles, plastic bags full of dog crap etc. Do the same walk a week later and it’s all back again

If people are barely even conscious to start with, what leads them to have a “growth in consciousness”?

[Lou Gold]

Then every time the soul expands into the spheres it has to pass through these quite uncomfortable and disturbing layers. Then we see our own consumption of animals as hindrance in so many different ways that it'll take us too far to go into details.

The Devil is in the details and there are always details. India had an interesting evolution of its sacred cow vegetarianism that generated the unforeseen burden of having to feed the unwanted male cow babies. So they killed them to market to the meat-eating Muslims and thus became one of the top beef exporters in the world. Learning, whichever way it unfolds, is a mix of awareness and events co-arising interdependently and not a linear progressive hierarchical evolution.

[Cleric K]

Your faith in us humans is admirable. I live in a fairly nice area of the UK by the Thames. Sometimes we do a round of the canal/river or the nearby streets and pick up all the wrappers, bottles, plastic bags full of dog crap etc. Do the same walk a week later and it’s all back again

If people are barely even conscious to start with, what leads them to have a “growth in consciousness”?

I don't have faith in humans as they are but I have faith in what is living in each individual, even if it is currently covered by layers of dirt.

Everything is in a state of development. It is true that many people live instinctively, barely conscious, as you say. And it is exactly for these people that's important to see good examples around them, because they don't invent what they do - they simply copy it from the environment. This is especially true for children education. Now everyone complains about the youth being superficial, being obsessed with base sexuality, etc. But how did this happened? They copy it from the environment. Music videos, movies, advertisements - everything is giving messages. The children didn't create all these things - adults did because it gives them pleasure and profit. So before we blame others we should see what example we ourselves are giving and what we are consciously or unconsciously supporting.

Things are very convoluted. What we observe today is the fruit of seeds planted centuries and millennia ago. And it will take centuries and millennia to rectify them. This is the inconvenient truth. We are powerless to change what we see in the 'now', it's too late to stop the warhead once the button has been pressed long ago. We can only make up our minds to start planting good seeds so that we can have good fruits in the future.

I'm very happy for your cleaning efforts! Even though physically it has questionable results, it has much larger spiritual impact. Especially if we do these things as spiritual exercises. If we pick the bottle and think "pigs, rascals!" we're doing only half of the job. If with every bottle we imagine that we are symbolically also removing an impurity from our soul and then radiate waves of light and clarity in the atmosphere, we are really changing something in the etheric structures. Then next time when someone passes by, just before he drops the bottle his brain my capture a tiny particle of what we've radiated there and without knowing why, decides to carry it few meters more until the next bin. Even if that doesn't happen, we've still done something beneficial for ourselves, the physical and spiritual environment.

[Ben Iscatus]

Not sure this is true. There's always a repressed shadow side. If it isn't manifesting in you, it will manifest through other people.

[Cleric K]

The Devil is in the details and there are always details. India had an interesting evolution of its sacred cow vegetarianism that generated the unforeseen burden of having to feed the unwanted male cow babies. So they killed them to market to the meat-eating Muslims and thus became one of the top beef exporters in the world. Learning, whichever way it unfolds, is a mix of awareness and events co-arising interdependently and not a linear progressive hierarchical evolution.

I'm not sure what to make out of you example. If it is an example showing how vegetarianism can turn into a disaster then that's what I was also saying. I'm not pro-vegetarianism, I'm pro-awareness - ever expanding awareness. Then diet choice is the result of that awareness and not something forced from outside. I'm not very familiar with the details of these sacred cow stuff but what you describe looks like a perfect example of what happens when ancient traditions are dogmatically perpetuated while disregarding that times move forward and conditions change.