Animal Rights, Food and Agriculture
By John Taylor; 2008 Feb 27, 2 Ayyam-i-Ha, 164 BE
Considering what matters strictly in terms of our long term survival in the natural world, I think that one of the most important thinkers today is Michael Pollan. He is a gardener as well as a writer, so what he has to say about the food chain is based on direct, hands-on experience. I have been auditing his 2008 book, "In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto," and have already commented on it in this blog. He has made the introduction to this new book available online at:
<http://www.michaelpollan.com/in_defense_excerpt.pdf>
A few months ago I audited "The Botany of Desire: A Plant's-Eye View of the World (2001)," and, having a bad habit of not paying attention to authors, did not realize until now that it was the same writer. Between these two works Pollan also wrote "The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals," which I have not read yet, but I just skimmed over his "seed" essay for that book, called "An Animal's Place," at:
<http://www.organicconsumers.org/organic/010403_organic.cfm>
I highly recommend this essay. It talks more sense about the questions of food production, animal rights and vegetarianism than I have ever seen; he considers both sides of the argument in a scholarly, thoughtful and detached manner, without being caught up in the sticky allure of the competing ideologies staking contradictory claims on this territory. For example, he points to one study that found that if we all became vegans, it would result in more animal deaths than our present system. That is because grain production crushes and thrashes the beasts of the earth and poisons the fowl of the air. This would also render hilly, dry land areas useless to agriculture, destroying and impoverishing entire human as well as animal and plant ecosystems.
In the above essay, "An Animal's Place," he offers a simple solution to the massive, stomach-churning cruelty that has invaded industrial agriculture over past decades. All we have to do is require that glass walls be built into our abattoirs. That way, if we decide to eat meat it will be an informed decision, and food producers will feel the pressure of public scrutiny. As the saying goes, "Whatever is watched, improves." If we meet our meat and watch its slaughter, suddenly the sort of relatively humane, mixed organic farm that is featured in this article will have a marketing advantage over the industrial operations that presently predominate. I was reminded of Baha'u'llah's solemn injunction in the first Taraz,
"We cherish the hope that through the loving-kindness of the All-Wise, the All-Knowing, obscuring dust may be dispelled and the power of perception enhanced, that the people may discover the purpose for which they have been called into being. In this Day whatsoever serveth to reduce blindness and to increase vision is worthy of consideration. This vision acteth as the agent and guide for true knowledge. Indeed in the estimation of men of wisdom keenness of understanding is due to keenness of vision." (Tablets, 35)
Surely the reason we passively allow air pollution and other, less literal forms of "obscuring dust" to cloud our vision is that we are rapidly losing the habit of looking around, of smelling, listening, and using our senses for the purposes for which they were designed. And the purpose for which they were designed, ultimately, is to know why we were created in the first place.
As a result of this apathy and ignorance, we do not know or care what is going on around us, where our food is coming from and what our place is in the natural order. It is no longer fashionable to say that we are over-civilized or too citified, but we are more so than any population ever in the past. That leads to imitation, the true root of all evil. Imitation worsens as our addiction to screens and electronic media increases. Our devices artificially filter and dull our senses, systematically directing attention in directions at variance with truth and survival. As I was listening to "In Defense of Food" I was constantly reminded of the following informal discussion that Abdu'l-Baha led in
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A little later a group of philosophers, doctors and journalists met with 'Abdu'l-Baha. He spoke to them in detail about composition and decomposition and the diagnosis of disease:
"If one is fully cognizant of the reason for the incursion of disease and can determine the balance of elements, he can cure diseases by administering the food that can restore the normal level of the deficient element. In this way there will be no need for medicines and other difficulties will not arise."
After a detailed discussion of this subject, He asked them,
"Although animals do not know the science of medicine, why, when they are sick, do they abstain instinctively from what is injurious to them and eat foods that are beneficial, while man, when ailing, inclines more to that which is injurious to him?"
They had no answer to this question and stated that the Master knew the answer better than they. 'Abdu'l-Baha then gave a description of the extraordinary power of the world of humanity and the freedom of man from the limitations of nature:
"Since man's attention is not confined to one interest, his negligence is greater; while his comprehension is greater than that of all other creatures when it is focused and fixed on one subject."
Thus did the Master speak to the group of journalists, philosophers and doctors, who thanked Him for His discourse.
(May 7, 1912, Mahmud's Diary, 84)
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This point Pollan draws out at length in his "In Defense of Food." We no longer smell or taste our food, it is loaded with artificial flavors designed to fool our senses.
A while back I bit into a chocolaty confection that tasted far more like a coconut than any real coconut I had ever tasted; instead of pleasure, I felt cheated. What right does a piece of chocolate have to taste more like a coconut than a real one? What is going on? This systematic swindling of our senses has the advantage that it frees the factory to put into its artificial muck whatever is cheap or convenient for short-term profits. But from an eater's point of view, it makes no sense, not just esthetically but also practically.
For millions of years edible plants have evolved particular smells, colors and tastes in cooperation with our changing bodies. As the Master points out, an animal feels sick and naturally feels a desire for a certain taste to cure its bodily imbalance. We need to relearn that too. That is why natural foods are safest, natural drugs are most efficacious, for if a plant were harmful to our bodies, would not have its seeds spread as much as if it helped. By means of an exquisite sensitivity to smells, colors and tastes we grew, in cooperation with these plants, into the form that we are in today.
And now we sit back as the whole process is nullified. The best, most nutritious foods are robust, they defend themselves. That is why they are so good for us. Presently agriculture encourages quantity over quality by pumping plants and livestock full of chemical protections which reduce nutritional value. As Pollan says, we have stopped eating food, most of us, since what comes out of a factory is only an adulterated imitation. Then we are surprised when, in spite of our vaunted technological smarts, we get sicker than ever.
In order to survive, then, we need to re-connect with the process of co-evolution with plants and animals that made us what we are, both physically and psychologically.
The Master hints at how we might end the corruption of agriculture that Michael Pollan's work documents, especially in the "food manifesto." Abdu'l-Baha states that humans' "negligence is greater" than animals, but that we also have the advantage of not having our "attention confined to one interest," which I take to mean the division of labor. We have farmers, scientists and other specialists who can use our natural senses to grow what is good for us.
But that does not mean that we should stop using our sensory apparatus. Recall what Baha'u'llah says about the "powers of perception" above. No, we need to actively use our noses, taste buds and other senses in choosing our food. That will never become obsolete, because that is how we will carry forward the co-evolutionary process.
What I think we should do (Pollan implies this in the Manifesto) is toss out the factory and start with ethnic and traditional diets, since they have been proven far more healthful than the factory diet sweeping the world right now.
Pollan is right: we must be conservative with all long term considerations, such as diet and reproduction.
But that is only a start. We need to add science into the mix by improving the whole food production system at a shot. Also, there is a place for religion too. As the above essay mentions, priests used to bless animal slaughter as a "sacrifice," now minimum wage workers kill away behind locked doors. Science and religion both should participate in one of life's most vital activities, food and eating.
The first improvement would be diversification of our means of nourishment. The development of the agricultural robot will soon allow far more labor-intensive farming than is possible now. With robots we will be able to domesticate highly nutritious semi-wild plants in a natural setting; now that is impossible because it takes far too much time, knowledge and work. Agricultural robots will allows us to follow the model of the gardens and terraces on
Getting back in touch with our senses will permit forests and fields to take the place of our medicine cabinets as well as our larders.
Let me close with a passage from "An Early Pilgrimage," by May Maxwell. Those who read carefully the arguments about animal rights in the above-linked essay by Pollan, "An Animal's Place," will appreciate the implications of the Master's reported mention of the principle of "doing nothing to diminish or exterminate any order of living thing." This is a decisive split with animal rights as defined by utilitarians like Peter Singer, who consider cruelty only to individuals, not species. It also explains why the Master on at least two occasions plumped meat onto to the plates of vegetarian Baha'is (presumably they were physically able to digest meat, unlike myself).
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In a large hall where we dined, were hanging two parrots in cages, and these, besides all the sparrows that flew in at the windows, twittering in the rafters overhead, made a great noise, so the Master bade one of the Indian boys remove the cages; and then the conversation turned on the treatment of animals. 'Abdu'l-Baha said we should always be kind and merciful to every creature; that cruelty was sin and that the human race should never injure any of God's creatures, but ought to be always careful to do nothing to diminish or exterminate any order of living thing; that human beings ought to use the animals, fishes and birds when necessary for food, or any just service, but never for pleasure or vanity and that it was most wrong and cruel to hunt.
Then Mrs. Thornburgh asked permission to tell a story of a little boy who had stolen a bird's nest full of eggs, and a lady meeting him on the road stopped him and rebuked him: 'Don't you know that it is very cruel to steal that nest? What will the poor mother bird do when she comes to the tree and finds her eggs all gone?' And the little boy looked up at the lady and said: 'Maybe that is the mother you have got on your hat.' How the Master laughed, and He, said: 'That is a good story and a clever little boy.'
(pages 29-30)
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