Trying to find your way around this place? Like most expositions, we offer a map: 
"But it's delicious."
Here's a link worthy of linking to, eminently linkable: "Carnivores, Capitalists, and the Meat We Eat", by Jon Mooallem, in The Believer some time back (October 2005). It's all about popular meat writing. I take that to be about environmental ethics too, about how humans live in and treat the non-human world.
He starts by quoting Whitman. I paste it here for us:
This is the meal equally set--this the meat for natural hunger; It is for the wicked just the same as the righteous--I make appointments with all... --"Song of Myself"
It's my understanding that Mooallem was a student of Pollan's at Berkeley, so this may be inflected by a familiar food-writing style. Oh, now here's another eminently linkable article about industrial agriculture and an example of the popular meat writing Mooallem just talked about. It's from Harper's (May 2006), called "Swine of the Times," written by Nathanael Johnson, and called a "Letter from Iowa." (Here's a pdf.) This one's good too. Pigs here. More environmental ethics.
Hold on, hold on, I've got a third one. This, more scholarly. It's called "The Ocean's Hot Dog," from a recent issue of the journal Technology and Culture. (Here's the relevant journal page, if you have access through a library or institution.) That's fish sticks. They're hot dogs of the sea. Who knew? I guess Paul Josephson, the author, and many another reader. But not me. Until now.
I need a Melville quote here instead of Whitman, but I'll leave that for an industrious reader to supply.
Maybe print these out, read 'em over the weekend, have a time. I only skimmed the Ocean Dog one.
Environment
Technology
Comments
I didn't become a vegetarian because of some sophomoric fantasy that by doing so I was saving the lives of feed animals. I did so because the meat and milk industries are filthy. It was only after I'd been free of meat and dairy for a while that I was able to think about the wasteful, disease-ridden, gory, criminally indifferent nature and culture of the industry.
Don't get me wrong. Animal suffering and death is one thing. But the industry is so poisoned that it poisons the humanity of the people who work in it. I had friends who worked in chicken factories in Georgia. It's every bit as bad as they say. A couple confirmed that PETA's famous video about the chicken workers caught torturing chickens is the tip of the iceberg. (I would never associate myself with PETA as a matter of course, but their hidden camera told the truth.) I'm not surprised the investigators and the woman in the article were able to eat the meat knowing it was infected and contaminated. Denial is powerful.
That said, I'd eat a food animal I raised myself because I would know where it came from, what it was fed, and how i9t lived its life. But it's a moot point; I was not raised on a farm and I would never have the mindset to be able to kill and eat my "pets."
The fish stick hot dog article link doesn't work, but it sounds almost too silly to bother with, anyway.
I make my own soymilk (it's hard to buy one that tastes as good), and buy my own tofu from one of the four or five excellent tofu factories here in Houston. It's brainlessly easy and cheap and versatile, good for a busy city chick, clean, and guiltless. And I like the stuff anyway.
Posted by: speedwell | August 8, 2008 10:06 AM
thanks for the note on the fish stick link, speedwell. i've fixed it. it's actually the most rigorous and deeply considered of the three articles noted.
Posted by: brc | August 8, 2008 10:16 AM
I ceased eating meat many years ago to remove myself as much as possible from the ravages of the American livestock factory farming industry. The heavy burden that the American philosophy of conspicuous consumption places on our pale blue dot is untenable and ill-advised. American consumption, on such a massive scale, of a resource intensive food product is simply put: stupid. Farm raised, even 'efficiently' factory farm raised mammals, poultry and fish are literally protein factories in reverse. Cows, pigs, goats and sheep being some of the worst offenders. That 64 oz steak could have been enough grains, legumes, fruits, vegetables and eggs to supply dozens of people with their minimal caloric and dietary needs for a day. Yeah, livestock can make decent use of marginal lands, but these cute little buggers are being fed quality feed from croplands around the globe. In a world(and now country) faced with increasing shortages of potable water, land and energy; and with continuously increasing pressure on already fragile wild fish populations eating more than a couple of ounces of meat per day is beyond foolish, it's irresponsible.
Posted by: K | August 8, 2008 8:27 PM