SOS:ComAlt
Sarah Williams
Seminar Reading Response. Wk 3.
Zoe Wright
1/23/17.
Racial Indigestion Chapter 1; Secret Financial Life of Food Chapter 2
“It is, as animal studies scholars and animal rights activists have noted, permissible to eat meat because animals represent a lower social order than humans, and even then this is not true for all animals: Pets such as Dame Trot’s cat and dog are in a separate category. Those that are eaten are not persons but things, and their thingness is the result of a system of social degradation. For a human to take the place of an animal means becoming the object of a similar social degradation.” (Tompkins, 30-31)
“Although European explorers, particularly the Dutch and Portuguese, would continue to search for new spice islands and spice routes to control the lucrative flow of the spice trade, by the nineteenth century, spices were no longer viewed as exotic. ‘Pepper-pot’ stews were considered mundane affairs for the middle and lower classes and not to be eaten by courtiers.” (Newman, 21)
“The outbreak points to a lack of understanding consumers have with disease risk related to raw ingredients, particularly flour, which isn’t often treated to kill bacteria. ‘Flour is derived from a grain that comes directly from the field and typically is not treated to kill bacteria,’ said Leslie Smoot, a senior advisor in the FDA’s office of food safety, in a press release. This bacteria can be rendered harmless during normal food preparation — what the FDA calls ‘kill steps’ — such as baking, frying or microwaving. However, consumers who spurn such time-consuming processes can put themselves at risk with a quick lick of the spoon. The agency notes products that intentionally contain cookie dough, such as ice cream, use flour and eggs that have been pasteurized and are therefore safe to eat in their uncooked state.” (Visser)
I was caught by the lines from Tompkins because of its connections to how people justify eating meat and treating animals badly to gain meat. The way we order and value beings, is very much connected to whether animals are becoming people or people are becoming animals. I really appreciate these notes about how humans and animals are valued in the text because they put the rest of the work into context for me, and they connect to the studies I am doing of social justice and education, which are topics that are very connected to which people are valued in what way and why.
Newman’s discussion of an exotic spice becoming mundane, common and thus less valuable, relates closely to Tompkins’ discussion of how class and race influence perception and consumption of food.
There is mention in Tompkins’ chapter discussing how to keep your kitchen clean, attractive, and safe, which reminded me of our brief discussion of how the perception of soil has changed over time. The news article I chose mentions that companies don’t expect flour to be eaten raw, thus they don’t treat it in a way that would make it safe to eat raw. Soil and flour seem very similar in this instance. Neither is safe to be around or eat raw, but food that is supposedly safe to eat springs from them both. It is interesting to consider what temperatures flour would have to reach to be safe, and whether it actually does reach that temperature through-and-through during normal cooking processes.
References:
Racial Indigestion, Kyla Wazana Tompkins.
The Secret Financial Life of Food, Kara Newman.
FDA Warns Against Eating Cookie Dough, But Not Because Of Eggs, Nick Visser. Huffington Post, 6/30/16. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/fda-cookie-dough-flour_us_5774bf5fe4b042fba1cf2b6d
Hey Zoe, Shani here.
Well, you bring up a few interesting points, but I’m mainly going to focus on Tompkins. Prepare yourself because I’m very opinionated on this topic.
Tompkins says we objectify animals when we eat them. We turn them into objects. Well… aren’t we all objects? We all die. Humans just rot in a box or get turned into ash while animals are turned into more life. I know which fate I’d prefer.
The problem isn’t eating meat- it’s how the meat was treated prior to death (dogs, cows, pigs, otherwise). Small farms are not like CAFOs- a life of bliss ended on one bad day? I’ll readily support the small farmer financially if they did the above over the mass production CAFOs (the quantity part of grading food vs the quality). Treating animals like numbers is what objectifies them.
Furthermore, there are no natural ecosystems that exist without animal input because nature abhors a vacuum and animals represent a niche. They are part of the nutrient cycling chain. To have a farm without them is to leave a knot untied and allow the nutrients to flow out the end of it. Animals form a food chain, unless you’re talking about birds on isolated islands who lack predators. Humans are part of that food chain. Thus the cycling of nutrients moves upwards.
Additionally, some people may be able to go vegetarian or vegan, but I’m evolved to eat meat. This is where I’d recommend reading “Food, Culture, Genes” by Nabhan- not eating certain foods your ancestors ate can have detrimental effects to your epigenetics. To pretend that a 10 generation meat eater can suddenly stick to a vegan diet, I believe, is foolishly optimistic.
So when Tompkins is talking about the objectification of animals, well…this turns into a spiritual discussion, such is the nature of eating life to sustain ones own. If a cat were my size and I their’s they would kill me just for sport. Should cats be held to a higher standard? Would they be objectifying me?
Quickly shifting gears to the clean kitchen excerpt- There’s a reason why people can’t handle live-cultured goods- they’ve been living on pasteurized, nutritiousness carbs for their entire lives. Introducing any new biology into their system is going to have mixed effects. People need the proper populations of gut flora if they’re to reap all the benefits of live grains, live dairy, etc. That transition doesn’t happen overnight. The FDA is trying to limit liability. If they cared about nutrition they’d have culturally appropriate food pyramids. They don’t, so they just recommend everybody sterilize their cooking environment, their food, and their guts. What could go wrong?
Hope you don’t mind the passion, Zoe. Firey opinions flyin’ everywhere. I look forward to your response~ Have a great day~
Shani
I apologize for taking so long to write this response.
So I very much agree that the way animals are treated is very important to consider. From my experience, I would much rather that meat, milk, and eggs come from sustainable, humane origins than current production means if they must be produced. I can’t speak to objectification exactly. I can say that yes, animals and human animals are of the same general composition, with to my eyes very similar attributes. If you look for any one particular thing that humans have that animals do not, it has not yet been found. Sense of humor, communication, sexual pleasure, social organization, and logic are all evident in at least one other species. I can say that humans certainly pick and choose, individually or culturally, which other animals are worthy of affection, care, and companionship and which are deemed primarily as food. In my own experience I cannot imagine having an animal that fits both categories.
As for the biological side, sure, food webs are important and everything that interacts within them are highly entwined. Perhaps humans attempt to live outside them in a way, because of the preservation of human remains, and our lack of natural predators. Our impacts on the earth are not checked and balanced the way other interactions in non human impacted areas are. Thus we have contributed to climate change, environment change, and weather pattern change that will act to balance our impacts.
I am always a little weary when anyone uses their evolution as a justification of eating meat. Until very recently humans subsisted mainly on non-meat sources, and the introduction of such large quantities of meat into human diets in various cultures has greatly increased the type and amount of health conditions that really weren’t present before large consumptions of meat. “Rich man’s diet” as cause for health conditions like heart disease and gout can be found referenced pretty frequently. In the book The China Study the impacts of the animal protein found in milk is studied as a factor of cancer. The large quantities of meat humans consume now is recent, and in most peoples not healthy. You may be right that it comes down to a spiritual connection, as there are stories of one of my great-grandfathers choosing eating chicken, which affected his gout, over being able to walk. Of course whether you eat meat or not is a decision that cannot be made for you, but in my experience the reason is not related to health to biology, rather ‘I just couldn’t give it up or it tastes too good’. Much of the way meat and milk are considered food staples has to do with the impact of advertisement, studies, and funding coming from the meat and dairy industry, which of course is greatly benefited by meat and dairy being considered healthy, staple foods.
It is interesting also to consider that many animals raised for meat today, would not be able to survive without humans. The same goes for vegetable staples to human diets. In that way, there is an evolutionary interaction between humans, meat animals, and food plants, but it is not necessarily one I would be proud to claim, as the practices it has led to have caused so many issues in the rest of the environment we depend on.
To have culturally sound food is a good goal. To have healthy food is also a good goal. I feel that much of the understanding of health in terms of nutrition and body chemistry interaction is outdated, flawed, and not taking enough variables of individual body chemistry into account. It is something that I would be incredibly happy to see more unbiased studies about, especially using actually sound scientific method.
As you may guess, I an also very opinionated on this subject.
As for cleanliness and sterilization of food and all that jazz, I’m fairly sure I understand your comments. Mainly what I was commenting on in this was that I find it frustrating and angering that a company can be aware of a potential hazard and not take precautions against it, whether that is valid anger in the case of flour, I’m not sure. But there is certainly other cases where it is, and that does not give me much trust for this example.
At the same time, I also understand that to completely sterilize our environment is utterly ridiculous. I grew up on a farm (more or less) hearing the family joke ‘eat dirt, live long’. I appreciate very much how the body naturally builds its immune system, especially as a person who grew up with an incredibly strong immune system that has been compromised later down the line of my life in a way that it shouldn’t have been. I hold a lot of resentment for the system that caused that harm to me, and I feel it every time I get sick. It is not something I intentionally invite discussion on, but it is very much a part of my worldview.
I do not believe that we should strive to cure absolutely all that ails us, and I feel the concept of a cure for the common cold insults our body’s biology. The interactions between our bodies and overly sterilized environments, the use of pesticides, over use of antibiotics, and the distancing of ourselves from dirt and natural exposure to minor diseases are doing harm that hasn’t been studied enough yet.
For reference, I suppose I should mention for context that I grew up vegetarian. I’ve never had meat in my life, and my family background suggests that it would be very unhealthy for me to eat meat.