Cheap Meat

This week we saw the biggest meat recall in history: 143 million pounds, most of it already eaten. Concerned pundits everywhere are calling for tighter regulation. That would certainly help, but legions of inspectors won't change the fact that you've got to resort to some pretty nasty practices if you're going to to mass produce meat and sell it cheaply.

There's something special about meat. The reasons that vegetarians and vegans cite for avoiding it have historically moved others to regard it as a high status food. Eating meat involves taking a life. It takes more resources to raise meat than to grow produce. Back in our hunter-gatherers days we had a fairly reliable supply of nuts and berries, but meat from a hunt was a windfall, and an occasion for feasting.

During the past few centuries industrial entrepreneurs have learned to mass produce meat. In order to do so they've had to displace self-sufficient farmers all over the world, clear the American plains of buffaloes, destroy millions of acres of rainforest, pollute our air and our ground water, inject animals with artificial hormones and antibiotics, and subject these creatures to horrific conditions. The quality of the meat has declined, as the animals are sick, stressed and poorly fed.

And yet some part of our brain continues to look at meat as a special food. That's only natural, considering the fact that we spent millions of years as a species enjoying it only rarely. Contemporary advertisers understand this, marketing meat as a treat or a reward, even though it's now available every day, for every meal.

But there's always a wake up call, like those millions of pounds of suspect meat that we heard about this week, much of which has already worked its way into the school lunch program.