Growers and Grocers

Last Friday night I found myself literally stuck in the middle of one of those conversations most people never want to be stuck in the middle of.

While waiting for a concert to begin, I introduced two of my friends, one who has spent time in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula - my husband’s homeplace and one of the biggest hunting areas in the United States. My husband and his fellow Michigander instantly starting making jokes about deer camp and hunting, to the absolute horror of my other friend, a pesce-vegetarian.

Friend #1 - What’s wrong with hunting?
Friend #2 - It’s taking a life!
Friend #1 - Then I took a life with the hamburger I ate this morning, but that was from a cow with a miserable life.
Friend #2 - That’s not right, either!
Friend #1 - Are you a vegetarian?

At which point my fight-or-flight instinct kicked in and I had the overwhelming urge to run as far away from both of them as my short little legs would take me.

Friend #2 - I don’t eat anything that had legs. I eat fish.
Friend #1 - That’s bad for the environment. Mass fishing’s depleting the oceans. Hunting’s more environmentally friendly than fishing.
Friend #2 - Go on. Justify yourself all you want.

Here’s where I completely tuned out and changed the subject to bourbon, which I sorely wanted at this point.

Had both parties not immediately gone into defense mode, I would have loved to have heard them engage in a respectful, rational discussion on the topic. It’s a topic in which I have strong, conflicting emotions on both sides, but not one that gets much rational discussion.

On one hand, I hate the idea of animals being shot. On the other, it seems much more humane than the corporate meat-farming conditions as long as the animal’s being treated with respect and not as a trophy.

On one hand, I recognize that wildlife populations are becoming a bigger nuisance and danger to human populations. On the other, I know it’s because our desire for sprawling new building developments is stealing habitats. If we’d use the buildings we already have, those habitats could be spared and there wouldn’t be a nuisance issue.

Hunting, when done where one lives, is the ultimate in locavorism. But then, there are the guns, which is another bucket of chum I don’t want to visit.

Vegetarianism spares a lot of lives. But what about the carbon footprint of the massive amounts of land and transportation used to make protein substitutes like textured vegetable protein widely available? There’s a chapter in Barbara Kingsolver’s locavore bible, “Animal, Vegetable, Miracle” that goes into far greater detail on this issue.

Hunting has a long social history in the U.S. of giving a means for families to spend time together and pass a tradition on to the next generation. But again, there’s the gun issue. Sometimes, family bonding probably shouldn’t be done in the presence of firearms.

Not everyone hunts for conservation, and there are plenty of vegetarians driving gas guzzlers.

Ultimately, this all comes down to the fact that we’re a society with the luxury of being able to choose our food morality. We have such an abundance of food options that we can sit in comfort, well-protected from the elements, confident that our next meal, be it hunted, imported, local, or from a drive-thru window, is a given.

The fact is, both of my friends are right and it’s a shame they couldn’t see that because of the stereotypes that surround both hunters and vegetarians.

In “Life is a Risky Process” from the September/October 2007 issue of Sierra magazine, Mary Zeiss Stange, a women’s studies professor at Skidmore College and avid hunter, said:

We are a death-denying society. We don’t like death to happen publicly–whether it’s the death of a loved one or of whatever animal that is going to be feeding us. If they understood what goes on in a factory farm or a feedlot or a slaughterhouse, most people would think seriously, if not about eating meat, at least about whether they want to buy meat at such cost to animals and human health. Those animals can only survive the feedlot to get to the slaughterhouse by being heavily medicated, eating an unnatural diet, and living in miserable conditions. We’re shielded from that in this society.

It’s often said that hunting is an intellectually honest way to be a meat eater. I began hunting in part because I thought if I can’t at least imagine being actively involved in creating meat, then I don’t have any business eating it. Because of industrial agriculture’s impacts on wildlife, you can’t opt out of your responsibility for the death of sentient beings by simply declaring yourself a vegetarian or vegan.

Around the same time, Alex Roth posted a commentary at Grist refuting a claim by People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals that it’s impossible to be an environmentalist without being a vegetarian, a point the group attempted to make with several environmentally-unfriendly tactics, like driving a Hummer across the country and erecting billboards. Huffington Post blogger and vegetarian David Roberts attempted to even the playing field:

The term “environmentalist” is socially contingent and highly contested. Environmentalism has no metaphysical essence. “You aren’t an environmentalist” is moral judgment masquerading as an assertion of fact.

Every discussion I’ve ever witnessed about who is or isn’t an environmentalist, or what does or doesn’t count as environmentalism — and believe me, at this point I’ve seen plenty — contains vastly more heat than light. Feelings are hurt, umbrage is taken, but nothing is ever learned, no consensus is ever reached. It’s a peacock show through which everyone parades their biases and preconceptions.

What makes an environmentalist? Is it enough to care about (write about, advocate for) environmental policy, or must you also engage in activism? Must you take action to green your own life? If so, how much? Drive less, or not at all? Turn off lights, or go off grid? Eat less meat, or go vegetarian?

I don’t know, or much care. There are lots and lots of things decent human beings should do. Nobody’s able to do them all. We all do a little; we should all do more. Those of us on more or less the same side gain very little by furiously judging each other’s personal choices in a futile attempt to define the tribal boundaries of environmentalism.

I could have used logic like that last Friday night.