A lot of people are going semi-vegetarian these days, or "vegetarian-ish" if you prefer, or the more twee "flexitarian."  And who can blame them?  I read somewhere recently that the United States has one of the worst food safety records and agricultural systems in the world.  The way we treat our livestock is the horror of the world.  We insist on eating acres of meat per person, and we insist that it be very cheap.  

This kind of attitude doesn't go over well in Europe, for example, where people will happily eat less of something, and pay more for it, as long as it is of the best quality.  (In a related story, there is no such thing as the French Paradox.  Caloric intake beyond caloric output makes you fat, end of story.)  Things like aerosol spray cheese, boxed macaroni dinners, and pre-packaged horrors like Lunchables simply do not fly in the rest of the world.  Frankly, they have more sense than that.

Every anti-vegetarian argument always features steak.  What's the deal with steak?  As a nation, we are fixated on steak.  Say "meat" and people automatically think "steak."  But I'll tell you something: I'm willing to bet that if you broke down the average American's meat consumption by type, "steak" would be the smallest wedge of the pie chart.

I don't think that steak is our problem.  If we could eliminate the consumption of every meat up to steak, I would be deliriously happy.  And our industrial agricultural system would fall back to a more sustainable level.  The problem is every other form of meat that we consume as a nation.  The cheap stuff, frankly.

I don't think an animal should die to stuff that Hot Pocket.  I have difficulty believing that an animal suffered the indignities, discomfort, and illness of a feed lot in order to end up as a perfectly round stacked slab of slices in that Lunchable.  Living creatures were slaughtered to cover that pizza with a paltry filigree of topping.  To be mashed and re-formed and battered and served as a McNugget, complete with dipping sauce containing high fructose corn syrup and artificial flavorings.  To fill the middle of that frozen grocery store house brand corn dog.  

We demand lots of meat, and we demand it cheap.  And we get what we ask for.  In order to be both cheap and plentiful, corners must be cut.  Animals must be treated like the components of a vast fleshy machine.  Safety concerns must be brushed aside, with the burden of "cooking thoroughly" now placed squarely upon the consumer.  And the biological waste, the notorious feedlot lagoon, must be dispensed with somehow, so it is sprayed upon our vegetable crops, and we vegetarians suffer food poisoning.

It is often said that Americans don't think of their livestock, because our meat comes wrapped in tidy Styrofoam trays at the supermarket.  I think the problem is even worse - most of the meat we eat is barely recognizable AS meat.  How far is this madness going to take us?

Creative Commons-licensed image courtesy of Flickr user theimpulsivebuy