It's become fashionable to call yourself a compassionate carnivore if you aren't going to stop eating animals and their secretions (milk) and menstrual excretions (eggs), but you don't want to appear barbaric and you want people to know that you don't agree with the atrocities committed in the name of factory farming.

I don't personally know anyone in 2008 who thinks factory farming is anything but cruel. But I do know a lot of people--and I read about similar people every week--who are convinced that the animals they eat have somehow been produced (which makes them sound like widgets, and in a way they are similar: they are both commodities created to be sold in markets) humanely (as if dominating and taking someone's life--all without their consent--can ever be called humane). These well-meaning, kind people believe there is such a thing as humane meat and humane eggs, and I can easily understand why: Because the media and the mainstream animal welfare groups reaffirm that belief every day. They even endorse animal products with labels like Certified Humane (http://www.certifiedhumane.org/).

I used to believe that we should go back to family farms, where animals might have the opportunity once or twice to procreate when they wanted to (rather than being inseminated, although insemination happens on many family farms), or to roll in the grass under the light of the sun, or to eat what they were intended to eat rather than some corn-based, hormone-ridden mixture that can include the bodies and blood of other creatures and maybe even their own species. I used to think that when we eventually slaughtered innocent, sentient beings, we should do it in the kindest way possible.

But then I got honest with myself and admitted that the phrase "when we eventually slaughtered innocent, sentient beings, we should do it in the kindest way possible" is absurd if you don't have to kill someone in the first place. I realized I was just looking for a rationale for continuing to eat what I wanted to eat.

Every animal product must be considered in its context, and that includes eggs and dairy. When the scenarios are considered, in toto, one easily comes to the conclusion that eggs and dairy involve more suffering than steak. Why? because egg hens churn out eggs until they are spent, which can be years, and then they are slaughtered. And their baby males are killed when they are one-day old--usually by being tossed into a giant shredder (and that is considered humane, by the way). Dairy cows are continually inseminated and kept pregnant and lactating for their entire lives until they too are spent. (If you saw the footage of the Downer cows being brutally assaulted at the Hallmark/Westland meatpacking facility-http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZFCeV8vFzlo-, those were dairy cows and that happens far more frequently than you are led to believe). Furthermore, the male and female calves are taken from their mothers (a female is kept if one needs to be replaced), as she wails in agony and panic, and they are shipped away to be crated and become "veal." Of course, when the dairy cows are spent, they are slaughtered.

Again, consider the entire picture when you're deciding if a product you are going to purchase to consume--that you don't even need to consume--deserves the word "compassion" associated with it.

Ask yourself: Is the taste the milk from another species, or the flesh from the breast of another species, worth everything you have to do to the individuals to get their milk and their flesh? What is the cost to your conscience? Are you thinking critically about all that goes into using animals when you don't need to, or are you just trying to find a justification for continuing to use them?

As I'm sure you're aware, there is a global food crisis which has already caused food riots in the Philippines, Bangladesh and Haiti and other developing nations. Thirty-seven countries currently face food crises, according to the Food and Agriculture Organization. Trade imbalances will be worsened, and major economies are being affected.

In the Washington Post's "World Band Chief Calls for Immediate Action on Deepening Food Crisis," Harry Dunphy writes:

Mexican Finance Secretary Agustin Carstens, who heads the bank's policy-setting Development Committee, said officials "need to redouble our efforts" to help the poorest people. He said there had been "a very welcome increase in money" from governments, but all donors need to "reach into their pockets."

I don't deny that money is needed, but something else is needed in order to create sustainability . . .

You may also be aware that the demand for biofuel is being blamed for driving up food prices. In the New York Times' "Finance Ministers Emphasize Food Crisis Over Credit Crisis," Steven R.Weisman writes:

Mr. Strauss-Kahn [the managing director of the International Monetary Fund] said he had heard from many financial officials this weekend that the West’s focus on fuel, at the expense of food, was a “crime against humanity.”

I won't say that the focus on biofuel isn't a problem, but it's not the root of the problem: it has merely exacerbated an already existing problem. Part of the root of the crisis (this is hardly a one-issue situation), as many people do indeed note (but then move on) is, as the New York Times editorial, "The World Food Crisis," suggests:

The United States and other developed countries need to step up to the plate. The rise in food prices is partly because of uncontrollable forces — including rising energy costs and the growth of the middle class in China and India. This has increased demand for animal protein, which requires large amounts of grain.

I go back to Strauss-Kahn's comment that the West's focus on fuel at the expense of food was a "crime against humanity." What about the other crime against humanity (to say nothing of billions of nonhuman animals)? In Paul Krugman's op-ed piece in the NYT a coupld of weeks ago called "Grains Gone Wild," he gets to the root of the crime, but then passes the blame onto the Chinese (after saying "things aren't anyone's fault--" a comment he will soon revise):

First, there’s the march of the meat-eating Chinese — that is, the growing number of people in emerging economies who are, for the first time, rich enough to start eating like Westerners. Since it takes about 700 calories’ worth of animal feed to produce a 100-calorie piece of beef, this change in diet increases the overall demand for grains.

Why isn't humanity's obsession with eating animals viewed as a crime against humanity? This problem didn't start with the Chinese. Enormous quantities of grains have been diverted from the mouths of the starving for decades. It is the desire to satisfy the palate of part of the human race (the haves) that is largely responsible for the starvation of the other part (the have-nots). If people in the developed world saw it as their moral obligation to help remedy this situation, they'd do more than "reach into their pockets;" they'd change the way they eat.

Say it with me: Supply and demand