Lemur Steaks & Pigeon Pickings - The Malagasy Bushmeat Conundrum

While casually devouring a roasted pigeon,
Golden gave me his uniquely informed take on the many
challenges facing this rising nation of Madagascar.

Last night I had the fortune of sitting down with the leading researcher in Madagascar focused on the intersection of wildlife conservation and human health, Dr. Chris Golden from the Harvard School of Public Health.

I'd been reading up on Golden's work - 13 years of research, deep in the northern Malagasy jungles; producing an impressive body of research that is leading to real change in how the conservation community looks at it's challenges. That he's just my age truly gives pause for thought on what a determined individual can achieve!

As he ordered a whole-roasted pigeon for the table, I wanted to talk with him about his research connecting the issue of bush meat harvesting to the issue of human health. Bush meat (any non-domestic meat, usually illegally harvested from conservation lands) occurs on such a scale across the country, that it threatens multiple species survival, and ultimately the sustainability of the human food supply as well. Perhaps paradoxically, this very action that threatens the survival of future generations - is supporting the health of the current generation. In a land where starchy cassava and rice reign supreme; the meats of the iconic lemurs, and up to 23 other forest dwelling mammalia, offer critical nutrition to the growing rural youth. What's to be done? Is it a classic "man vs. nature" situation?

Far from it - Golden's connected vision of society and nature have yielded critical insights and are leading to genuine long-term solutions. Meat is of critical importance for childhood nutrition here, of this there is little doubt; but it need not be the flesh of the island's precious endemic species. In seeking solutions, Golden used his academic entrepreneurialism to bring a cavalcade of veterinary experts across the ocean; discovering that the manageable Newcastle's disease was a leading and devastating killer of rural poultry flocks. Rather than the "hands-off" descriptive sciences so often the rule of thumb here, this researcher is rolling up his sleeves and conducting an empowering action-research project to help small-scale poultry farmers improve flock health and productivity. This work seeks to simultaneously raise nutritional standards while reducing the need and desire to harvest the rainbow of illegal meat diversity that fuels the majestic aura of this rising island nation.

Dr. Golden's research is far more complex and interesting than I can report here - the full story can be found at http://www.chrisgoldenresearch.com/ - but the take home message is clear; meat plays a complex and dynamic role in the balance of humans and nature; the prevailing dichotomies in discourse on the subject are rarely if ever helpful; what we need are integrated, pragmatic solutions to build resilience across and between society and nature.

The Internet of Cows: an Island Expedition

I gave a talk in April at an international conference on food systems held by the College of the Atlantic on Mt. Desert Island off the coast of Maine; the topic was a heady blend of evolutionary psychology, agroecology, and the future of meat itself. In brief, I argued that the "lightning rod issue" of meat is, in reality, too complex for meaningful human comprehension. That how a cow grows and burps in Maine today, could impact economies in the mid-west, and even the very future of island communities around the world, bespeaks of the complex web of interconnections we must examine to even begin to understand meat systems. In other words - no cow is an island!

I concluded the talk by offering up the idea of "The Internet of Cows". By 2009, there were more "things" connected to the Internet than there are people in the world. If you have a smartphone, a home computer, and work computer, there are 3 things for your one person right there. This transition has come to be known as the "Internet of Things", or IoT for short. That the developed world is awash in connective technology is not particularly heartening or interesting news in and of itself....but the IoT vision extends far beyond phones and computers. As Cisco's Chief Futurist, Dave Evans points out, some of the "things" being connected to the net include cows - from farm to fork. Exponential advances in technology are creating economically sensible opportunities for farmers to implant high-tech, low-cost sensors into their cows, pastures, and even beef product packages. Why would anyone want to do this? Common examples of beneficial applications include improving animal welfare through the early detection of disease, greatly improving the traceability of meats in the event of food safety problems, and improving environmental performance across the food supply chain. These all seem like  worthwhile goals, yet many in my audience, and even fellow farmers and panel members, were not so enthused about the prospects of such an "Internet of Cows".

To be sure, I have many serious reservations about the emergence of the IoT. If big brother is to truly manifest, no doubt the IoT is his most fertile of wombs. Despite my fears of how the IoT may pan out in our personal lives, food systems - I feel - are public domains; transparency is always a good thing. Likewise, easy access to more, and more accurate information about our food systems can't seem to hurt. Yet in this audience of largely "local" and "organic" advocates, this appeared to be a tough sell.

Critiques and questions varied quite a bit. One horse-powered farmer offered a concern that it would distance the farmer from direct observation on the farm, and perhaps more generally, that it replaces a human element of farming. An aspiring young vegetable producer pulled out the "appropriate technology" card, fearing that this kind of thinking will turn the noble profession of farming into a domain for computer geeks. All potentially valid concerns, and I'll discuss them further in future posts.

I was quite happy to see my talk result in such lively and thoughtful conversation, but I was somewhat saddened that the prevailing techno-skepticism of the room seemed to overshadow my much broader point. I hadn't traversed the Atlantic ocean to sell anyone on the hard-wired version of the Internet of Cows. Rather, my hope was to use the globally networked, democratic structure of the Internet as a metaphor for how we need to be thinking about food systems the meats they produce.

No cow is an island - how we raise meat, whether in Maine, Germany, or here in Madagascar,  the deliverable qualities, the holistic meat quality we are able to achieve, is most often not the sole of province of one innovative farmer or processor. These complex traits, especially social and ecological traits, are relative to complex contexts occurring simultaneously across multiple scales - from the global to the local.

The IoT, and it's child - the Internet of Cows, will, without question, become a major and potentially divisive issue in the years to come. Whether you find yourself in support or opposition to this hard-wired version, I hope you will join me in opening your mind to understanding the true nature of the Interconnected Network of Cows and Humans that was made manifest some tens of thousands of years ago.

Be Here Now - The Evolutionary Ethics of Slaughter

The ethics of eating meat are so unfathomably complex, so fraught with unknowable parameters - that the majority among us have retreated into a comfortable haze of collective ignorance on the matter. This need not be the case.

Fully admitting the complexity of the beast at hand, let us inspect just the fillet d’ ethique; the litmus test beyond which all other moral concerns of dietary selection are irrelevant; the issue of slaughter.

The essential and inescapable wrongness of taking an animal’s life for it’s flesh, especially in the profane name of base culinary desire, is a keystone argument against our dietary staple of interest. Animal protein proponents are quick to address the myriad web of ecological, nutritional, and even social concerns relentlessly dogging ‘the industry’. The rapid rise in the heroification of ‘happy meat’ farmers by alternative agriculture advocates, is evidence many consumers are literally hungry for ethical eats. Yet how can we possibly get passed this sin qua non moral stumbling block that meat really is murder?

Now, there are two approaches here. One can argue that it simply is wrong to take the life of another animal no matter what - that life has an inherent value regardless of what matters to “it”. Perhaps I am more farmer than philosopher, but this reeks of a little too much wavy-gravy grooviness for my liking. I am more inclined to agree with vegan animal liberationist, Peter Singer, that a utilitarian approach is in order. That, for an ethical quandary to arise, what happens to an organism must matter to that organism. It is here that Singer’s and my ethics align, and it is also here where they diverge. That we do agree on this significant point, however, would indicate that we are perhaps looking at different science to rightly determine what truly ‘matters’ to our domesticated dinners.

For it to matter to an animal that it will be slaughtered is to make the case, as a great many authors do, that the livestock “wants to live”. Singer himself, is an artful scholar of the evolutionary sciences, and it seems straightforward that in a very darwinian sense, survival for reproduction is the goaliest of goals. I submit, however, that to claim an animal “wants to live” is to make a claim of cognitive science that the data simply does not support.

Perhaps surprisingly, we can turn to a linguist for some novel insights. In Adam’s Tongue, Derek Bickerton makes a compelling argument connecting the origins of language to the hominin shift towards meat consumption. Not via the traditional reasoning that meat gave us bigger brains - but rather - that this dietary shift thrust our ancestors into a unique ecological niche - presenting novel challenges that only language could solve. We had a need - a need to recruit our clan mates across time and space to help butcher and transport the scavenged meat of paleolithic megafauna. We had to free ourselves from the here and nowness that, until this rise of language, had imprisoned all animals of even the highest cognitive ability.

What matters to animals is fear and pain; death is truly a concept beyond their temporal scope of interest. Only from this common understanding can we begin to discuss how animals are raised, and even how they are killed. We must first accept and understand that the slaughter itself, is not as innately wrong as it may emotively appear; and then work together to ensure that all creatures achieve the most fantastic of lives, and the most peaceful of deaths.

Repackaging Cultured Beef: Contextual Quality & Collective Action

Dr. Mark Post at the University of Maasstricht, inspecting
a proto-type culture of beef.

By the end of this year - Dr. Mark Post, and his team of researchers at the University of Maastricht in the Netherlands claim they will offer a celebrity-chef taste testing of the world's first lab-grown beef - also known as cultured beef. Now, at a price tag of some $200,000 - the technology is not quite economical to assuage our global hunger for hamburger. Rest assured - the price will go the down, the quality will go up - and in spite of the obvious 'yuk factor' - a huge majority of the world will accept cultured meat as a tasty and nutritious status quo (for more on how and why that is possible - see this article I wrote back in 2010).

If you happen to be a beef farmer today - whether conventional, organic, or grass-fed - you might be thinking '"Not me - I'll stick with real meat, I'm simply not interested" - well, I've got news for you - get interested, because this game-changing technology will literally affect the actual quantifiable quality of YOUR product.

This might seem counter-intuitive. We might be tempted to think that meat quality is absolute and that we are capable of engineering desired qualities into the processes of the supply chain. Indeed - some elements of quality are this way - farmers can control what feeds, supplements and health care treatments are offered to their cattle. Processors can control the humanity of their slaughter methods, and the post-slaughter processing practices.  Indeed, even consumers can and do select the quality of their meats based on any number of 'absolute' criteria - organic or conventional, more processed or less. This absoluteness, however, when it comes to ecological and social dimensions of quality - is largely a mirage.

A rigorously holistic understanding of meat quality in today's globally connected economy reveals a vastly different picture. Far from being absolute, holistic meat quality is highly relative and contextual.

Consider this - if you are an advocate of grass-fed beef being slaughtered on-grass and on a small-scale, as indeed I am - perhaps you would like to see a law passed within the US banning feed lots and industrial slaughter houses? Sounds like a good idea -  right? Wrong! The results would be globally negligible if not disastrous. Overnight, producers around the world would jump on this sudden and overtly significant market opportunity, and like it or not, America's industrialised beef production really is vastly superior to industrialised beef anywhere else in the world. The Brazilian rainforest would be pillaged at unprecedented rates, and less feed-efficient cows in Australia, Europe and Asia would overcrowd feed lots to pick up the slack.

"Well - people just need to eat less meat" - the organic farmer is quick to reply....perhaps true - but what are we to do? Globally regulate and dictate the diets of every man, woman, and child? Personally, I would never ever want to have the government involved in regulating anyone's diet. To be sure, cultural changes will be important, but in an increasingly interconnected and free world - we have to realise that the ecological and social "qualities" embedded in meat (and non-meat) foods co-exist simultaneously in both a local and global context.

Cultured meat is about to change this context in ways we can only begin to imagine. In a world of abundant cultured meat - the moral high ground that high-production agriculture currently stands on will vanish. Laws to stop behaviour limiting farm practices such as gestation crates and overly maligned feed lot will suddenly seems much more justifiable and achievable.

What about alternative agriculture? Small-scale, organic, and grass-fed producers - won't they go out of business also? Well, many undoubtedly will, but those that do not will truly be a testament to the emerging ethical imperative of our evolving partnership with non-human animals. Grass won't stop growing on otherwise un-farmable land, and our ruminant friends - under our guiding hand - truly are the best in the world at managing this critical global resource. As well, we can, when we chose, offer animals the most peaceful of possible death options: on-grass (not just "on-farm") slaughter.

Here-in lies the challenge to all farmers everywhere, and one they must begin preparing for now. In an age of abundant cultured meat of almost limitless holistic quality enhancements - attention to the qualities of 'real meat' will reach levels of introspection we can only anticipate.

There will always be a critical role for traditional animal agriculture - this is, I believe, ethically inescapable, but how farmers evolve sustainability in this brave new context will be the challenge of the century - and it starts NOW!

----------------------------------------

For more info on Cultured Meat - check out the Ted Talk in the Emergent Technology playlist on the Mythic Meats YouTube Channel

Welcome to the Meat Tribes!

How do I possibly feel okay taking the
 life of  an animal? It's a good question, and
it has real answers!

"Nobody wants to have their science called bad, but of course, there is such a thing as bad science"

"The science is not always a good narrative, and a narrative is not always good science"

-David Sloan Wilson

I recently entered an essay contest, held by the New York Times - the challenge: to defend the ethics of meat eating in 600 words or less. The winners will be printed in an April edition of the Times.


Since the day the contest was announced - the tribalistic flags from all sides of the meat wars have been waving on high. Vegans, conventional, and alternative agriculturists have all been mightily quick to point out that they are, by point of fact, obviously correct in their respective ethical point of view. "Science", they each claim, "clearly supports OUR view".


Likewise, the vegan and conventional ag tribes - have apparently converged on an unheard of point of agreement regarding this contest - It's Stupid!


Michelle Simon, a public health attorney and contributor to the Huffington Post, derides the contest as "silly" - going on to claim:

"It saddens me that given all the pressing problems of our day, many of which caused by excessive meat eating (global warming, contaminated air and water, chronic disease, worker injury, and yes, animal suffering, just to name a few) the Times is promoting such a self-indulgent contest.

I am sure the meat industry is jumping for joy."

If Simon truly believes that meat is causing the atrocities she lists....why she would argue that proponents of carnivory shouldn't absolutely have to justify their actions,  is beyond any litmus test of reason or coherence. I do tend to find that vegans, of all the diversity amongst the meat tribes, are most often guilty of employing bad science to prove a point - and here again, Simon adds to my mountain of supporting evidence for such a claim. The meat industry is not only NOT 'jumping for joy' - I find most of them indignant if not outraged.

Enter the 'unconventional cattle woman',  Jesse Bussard. Yesterday she chose to stake her ground on the issue in ways I can't imagine anyone would want to stand behind. Bussard claims "why should I, or anyone else who chooses to consume meat for that matter, have to explain our ethics for doing so?". Well, okay, we live in a free country, and you shouldn't have to justify your actions to anybody - but - you should be able to. 

Conventional agriculture too often takes a stance akin to saying 'We're feeding the world so get out of our way' - and certainly it is far too easy for an overtly emotional public to cause real harm by over simplifying what are incredibly complex issues. Regardless of this fact - everyone should be reflective enough about their own actions so as to be able articulate why what they are doing is the right thing to do.

To be fair, Bussard does point out a concern I shared for a brief moment, that is, the heavy bias of the panel of judges:

"What [the NY Times] call 'a veritable murderer’s row of judges' is no less than just that.

The line-up features the father of animal rights himself, Peter Singer, along with Michael Pollan, Johnathan Safran Foer, Mark Bittman, and Andrew Light."

Which brings me to my point about the nature of science and the alarming levels of tribalism espoused by almost everyone passionate about the meat issue. 

The ethics of eating meat, or not eating meat for that matter, are unfathomably complex and touch upon almost all of humanities grand challenges. To capture this complexity in a 600 word essay is a truly torturous request for anyone who has done any quality thinking on the matter. Realising this, I crafted my entry around what I've called the fillet d' ethique, the sin non qua moral issue beyond which concerns of ecological, nutritional, or social impacts are null and void; 

Is it okay to KILL a sentient domesticated creature for food?

Now, I'm not going to answer that question here - it's my entry in the contest for crying out loud ;) Needless to say, I did answer it, I answered it affirmatively, and I answered it with quality science (I'll post the full essay here, after the contest ends). 

Briefly, I employed a blend of evolutionary psychology and animal cognition sciences to illuminate how this seemingly intransigent moral dilemma can be acceptably navigated. In doing so - I believe I've poked a hole of some significance into the utilitarian arguments that codify 'the father of the animal rights movement', Peter Singers' grounds for the moral rightitude of the vegan lifestyle. 

I won't lie - I entered this contest to win it - so was it a wise move to explicitly attack the extensive and impressive body of work of the most eminent and scholarly judge on the panel? 

Whether or not I win this contest - I actually have very strong faith that it was a wise move - and I have YouTube to thank for this. I'd never read Singer, and from what I'd heard, I imagined he was living in a tree somewhere plotting which 'factory farm' to blow up next, as indeed, the fringes of his readership occasionally do. As you can see for yourself on the Ethics & Carnivory playlist in the Mythic Meats YouTube Channel - Singer is, in fact, a world renowned Bioethicist at Princeton, and far more importantly - he's a pretty reasonable guy, and clearly someone who respects the scientific process. 

Yes, Jesse Bussard is correct in pointing out that the NY Times has selected quite a biased panel for this issue. If this panel was to solely decide what constitutes the ethics of eating meat - I would agree, we need far more balance. Instead - this 'veritable murderers row' is charged with a quite different task: they have to pick at least one winning essay, regardless of how essentially wrong they may feel meat, of any sort, may be.


In this context, I would argue that the Times' judgement is a remarkable exercise in trans-tribal diplomacy. Instead of the tired routine of staking our ground and waving our flags - these unlikely set of minds have to deeply explore what, for some of them, is the null hypothesis of their life. This is the scientific ideal.


The reason that carnivory and veganism have reached unheard of levels of ideology in recent times is not just fuelled by the general rising interest in food - it is representative of the most serious of scientific literacy issues  facing the world at large. Science is not a citation or an authority - it's a community process. Civil discourse - talking about the issues without throwing cheap shots, without hiding behind rights to freedom, without attachment to even your deepest held beliefs - this is the only route to progress.


The discourse around meat consumption is in perilous danger of becoming a drain on our cultural capital, unless we can collectively bring real science, and thus real discourse back to the table.


___________
UPDATE: 
Within an hour of posting this, Jesse Bussard got in touch with me, with a wonderful note, respectfully pointing to things I'd helped her think about, as well as pointing out that I was incorrect in characterising her as not being able to defend her ethical stance... 
"I am fully capable of defending my ethical choice to consume meat, but felt that the NYT contest given their panel of judges it was not worth my time or effort. I do not ask vegans or organic proponents, for example, to explain to me why they feel that their food choices are more ethical than mine, and therefore don't feel it's a publication or an individual's place to question mine. However, if the need did arise I would fully be able to state them."


I applaud Jesse for her reply - and hope all discussions around the complexity of meat ethics can be this civil and productive!

Abundance in an Age of Food Tribalism

For those who haven't heard yet - 2012 has gotten off to a highly optimistic start, in no small part due to the NY Times Best Seller, Abundance: The Future is Better Than You Think, by Peter Diamandis and Steven Kotler.

No matter where you fall in the broad spectrum of the food and culture wars - it's well worth your reading. The subtitle kind of says it all, but within the pages of Abundance, Diamandis and Kotler yield some really counter-intuitive conclusions, based on an amazingly strong convergence of data. The book has done a pretty spectacular job convincing me, and a great many others, that we are in fact about to enter a new age of abundance. Not in a caddy materialistic sort way, but rather in terms of the very basic of human needs - water, energy, shelter - and yes - Food. How will we get there? The authors suggest it will be through the convergence of emergent technologies.... the idea is nothing completely new, and it's scope of controversy is beyond the reach of this posting, but needless to say - it can be something of a divisive issue.

Now, I've spent my entire academic career in educational institutions with explicit missions of promoting sustainability - most typically through a framework of "organic" agriculture. I've lived off-the grid in the backwoods of Maine, bred open-pollinated organic vegetable seeds, and spent the last 7 or so years focused intensively on grass-fed meat and milk production. So why, one might logically ask, WHY am I so excited about a book that so explicitly promotes the kind of transgenic crops, nano-technology, and synthetic biology I've been literally academically incubated to revile for over 12 years now? Have I lost my way? Did I drink the kool-aid of corporate techno-optimism? Hardly - I'll leave it to you to read the book, or at the very least, watch Peter's TED Talk embedded below to judge for yourself the validity of Abundance.... I've got a more pressing question for this post:

Where are the voices of protest and outrage from the Organic food movement around this book?

I've been scouring the digital ethers to find, what I had thought, would be a litany of outraged commentary from the local, organic, and slow food movements. This book, at first glance, is an academically rigorous assault on the incumbent scarcity posited by many of those preparing for the 'post-petroleum economy'. Where the alternative food movement is preparing for this inevitability by scaling down, Diamandis and Kotler insist we must - even more aggressively prepare - by scaling up. 

I am already well versed in the anticipated critiques - that technology has failed us in the past; that things are more complex than these authors admit; that we'll lose our humanity in the process. My point here is not to weigh in on the merits of these arguments - though I will say I think Abundance, combined with the works of Ray Kurzweil, Steven Pinker, Matt Ridley, and others offer significant food for thought on the matter.

My point is to consider this - why the digital silence? I've found a few, often barely coherent, criticisms hidden among the comment sections of the great many websites a-buzz with Abundance - but what I am not easily finding is a single well argued, professional, or citizen journalism piece really digging into the book from an alternative food perspective. As we all know - this kind of silence just does not happen with controversial issues on the Internet!

So what's going on? 

Is the organic movement dumbstruck into silence? Hardly. 

Do they actually agree with the book in it's entirety? I'm sure not. 

Are they too busy hand-crafting this summer's seedlings? Perhaps, and I would hardly judge anyone for that! 

My concern however, is that the real cause of this silence is a form of food tribalism. A fear that rather than possibly being a good scientific argument - that Abundance is perhaps seen as nothing more than a flag for the "other side". Paid for by Monsanto, packaged by the geeks of silicon valley, and sold to the ignorant and culturally depraved as the same sort of technological panacea we've seen since the rise of synthetic chemistry. Perhaps it is this type of sentiment that has caused an overwhelming majority of slow-foodies (among which I occasionally count myself) to simply miss this wonderful and thought provoking book. 

If this is the case, and I think it is somewhat fair to say that it likely is - this is a treacherous place for both organic food, and society as a whole to feel comfortable. When tribalism trumps science, and a lack of civil discourse becomes a roadblock to developing common vision - we are indeed, in a very undesirable spot.

I certainly don't agree with every single thing Diamandis and Kotler write - and I'll surely comment about these aspects in the future. Yet, where so much of what they say, truly is so pertinent, not only to those in alternative agriculture, but to all of us as human beings - I truly hope everyone who cares about food and our future will take the time to explore their message with an open and critical mind!

Meat Quality is Sustainability, Not Snobbery!

© MythicMeats.com

In the face of global hunger and malnutrition issues facing millions, it seems utterly elitist to concern oneself with meat quality - let alone "holistic" meat quality. Indeed - the exact opposite is true.

A rigorously holistic approach to understanding the qualities of meat has profound impacts on our understanding of this most central of foodstuffs. Real holism requires more than just multiplicity in thinking (though the 12 dimensions of meat quality are certainly foundational to the theory). Holism, here, also refers to examining the interconnections between quality dimensions, and exploring all such interconnected attributes across multiple scales (from the cow to the globe).

At first glance, the approach is nothing new. Proponents of  veganism, alternative agriculture, and conventional agriculture, all frequently discuss the issues in such terms. It is precisely because of this widespread, informal adoption of holistic arguments - that an ethical imperative emerges to better understand the framework.

How we measure and talk about meat quality has 

profound impact on  how we produce meat  

© MythicMeats.com

It simply can not be true, simultaneously, that veganism, alternative agriculture, and conventional agriculture each, respectively, represent the single best and most ethical option - as the more extreme advocates from all three camps frequently decry.

An evolutionary perspective can help us understand that, rather than searching for global panaceas, it is perhaps in our better interest to understand the diversity in ethical positions held globally, and identify the range of holistic meat (and non-meat) qualities that science best indicates are in alignment with a range of commonly held values.

When I reference a vision for building greater consensus on the ethics of meat and grazing - I am far from implying that more and more people should move toward any particular ideology. Instead it is that we can do vastly better at understanding and appreciating the diversity that exists. Building a common ground in this manner, appears so critical if we are to develop the levels of cooperation we need to address the coming exponential challenges for food production of all kinds.

© MythicMeats.com

I am the first to recognize that this is easier said than done - but we can still move forward. The food media has to end the false dichotomy of "good meat / bad meat" and instead focus on developing more rigorously science-based discourse on the diversity of holistic meat qualities we find around the world.

There is no such thing as "perfect meat" (or non-meat) - we will always be dealing with trade-offs among the quality dimensions (e.g. price vs. taste). Where such holistic qualities are so intrinsicly interconnected, it is the optimisation of all such quality dimensions, for all humans  that clearly becomes the only path to a sustainable, ethical future.