Meat, By Definition, is Murder (But I'm OK With That)

Recently, famed chef and restaurant owner Wolfgang Puck attracted attention when he announced that his businesses were switching to the use of organic ingredients and meat from more humanely treated animals. He was commended by the NY Times for setting an example that reminded consumers of the "power of the choices they make," and for promoting the idea that "they can eat well and do right all at the same time."

This whole issue over treatment of animals that are soon-to-be-food is one I've always been a little confused about. For obvious reasons, we don't like bad conditions in slaughterhouses. Cruelty toward animals is a behavior that goes against our nature, and I hate it as much as the next guy.

Even taking that into account, most of us wind up rationalizing meat-eating along the lines of (1) it's natural for us to eat meat, (2) meat is tasty--very tasty, I might add, and (3) there are health benefits to eating meat--even if vegetarians can receive those same benefits through their diet and/or with multivitamins.

Whatever, to each their own. (Personally, if I was stranded on a desert island, the only two things I'd really want are a George Foreman Grill and a crate of bacon. My third wish would probably be for Reese Witherspoon.) But how exactly do Mr. Puck's actions, and campaigns like the free-range movement, have any effect on easing people's consciences? The farmer gives the chicken a couple more feet to run around, and all of a sudden you can eat well and sleep easy?

Whether cooped up in a cage or allowed to roam, whether fed too little or too much or just right, all of those animals are being raised for the express purpose of being killed for human consumption. Meat eaters have to come to terms with the fact that the basic moral argument aginst eating meat isn't resolved by treating dinner a little better before it's cooked.

Meat, by definition, is murder. Then again, I'm OK with that, and it's perfectly fine if you feel the same way.

Update - Thank you Neha, Andrew, and Greg for your insightful comments. After reading what you wrote, and thinking about the issue some more, I have become convinced that the killing of animals and the treatment of livestock are separate ethical issues. While I remain unopposed to the former as a biologically natural process (eating animals for the purpose of food), I now concur with the commenters' view that the humane treatment of animals raised for the slaughter is in fact a worthwhile goal.

Dawkins' God Delusion

This past weekend I finished reading Richard Dawkins' new book, The God Delusion. Dawkins, for those who haven't heard of him before, is a well-known British biologist most famous as an outspoken advocate of evolution. (Yeah, he's the scientist spoofed on South Park having a relationship with Mrs. Garrison.) The God Delusion, which came out late last year, has been a fixture on the bestseller list and has raised a lot of controversy for its polemical criticism of religion.

I share his viewpoint that believing in the supernatural is irrational, and that religion is too often granted immunity from criticism. Dawkins' book is full of great quotes from people ranging from Douglas Adams to Thomas Jefferson that humorously buttress his points. Who knew, for example, how much that champion of modern conservatism, Barry Goldwater, detested the influence of the religious right?

The actual substance of the book, however, is uneven. As much as Dawkins is a witty and engaging writer--regardless of your views, the book is readable throughout--I doubt he accomplishes the stated goal of his book: to convert believers into atheists.

I've said before that telling people they are idiots and simpletons, or worse, is not generally the best way to persuade them of your cause. Dawkins' methods, which include using statistical improbability to show the improbability of God's existence, are not going to have the slightest effect on someone who does believe in God.

Dawkins attacks religion for engendering fundamentalism, bigotry, hostility to science, and other negative influences. Of course, it's easy to knock down such targets as the Taliban, homophobia, literal interpretation of the Bible, etc., but everyone is aware of these externalities and yet most people continue to believe in God!

A chapter on how meme theory might explain why religion is so widespread throughout human cultures was the least interesting. I guess it sounded too hypothetical. More appealing to me was Dawkins' later argument that humans can act morally without religion, which I agree with. His explanation for this is that we have nurtured altruistic genes (which better our odds of survival) through natural selection. Yet of course, while atheists are definitely capable of being good, that does not mean an absence of religion is the end of all conflict. (The aforementioned South Park episode featuring rival groups of atheists battling each others brilliantly showed how human nature inevitably leads to conflicts.)

Another point I agree with Dawkins on, though much less polemically so, is on the religious indoctrination of children. Dawkins repeats ad nauseum how a child should not be referred to as a "Muslim child" or "Christian child" because at that young an age he does not have the capability to decide for himself the matter. (No one would call a child a "Republican boy" or "Democratic girl".) I don't have a problem with children being brought up in the religious tradition of their family, but surely at some age it only makes sense that a child be free to decide for himself whether he wants to be part of that religion, another religion, or no religion at all.

Dawkins is at his best at the end of the book when he evokes the wonders of science to show how scientific inquiry reveals the universe to be even more awe-inspring and amazing than people (especially religious fundamentalists) give it credit for. I wish he had chosen to emphasize this approach more, because I think it would be the one that's most convincing.

A book like Carl Sagan's The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark, which explains the scientific method and promotes rational thinking, or even the one I'm reading now, A Short History of Nearly Everything, does more to enhance science's stature and increase the general public's scientific interest. That is the best way for Dawkins to achieve his goal of a less fundamentalist, less anti-science world. Unfortunately the tone of his own book does not help.

Dissent is More than Just Saying No

I was browsing Facebook earlier today when I came across the e-vite for an anti-war protest that several of UMD's lefty activist groups are putting together this week. Predictably, the message board for the event was filled with the standard back-and-forth between the "Bush lied" crowd and the "support the troops" crowd.

Despite my own views (I support continued U.S. military involvement in Iraq), I have a problem with views held by extreme members of both the pro- and anti-war sides.

A couple quotes of what passes as the less-shrill dialogue from the message board:

"The [Iraqi] people don't want us there. We have no right to be there. So the only logical thing to do would be to leave...I don't see how thousands of more deaths will 'clean up' the thousands that have already died." - Matthew L.

"Every red-blooded American knows what it takes to have peace--it takes people willing to do what's most difficult--pick up a weapon and fight for it...Understand that you are doing little for the good of the country that gave you the freedom and the education you needed to think up your silly ideas and whine about them in public." - Karen M.

War supporters get angry at the anti-war crowd for what they see as opposing actions undertaken in this country's best interest, and more importantly, as undermining the efforts of military personnel who are risking their lives. Pro-war people should stop impugning the anti-war crowd's patriotism, and not just out of respect for the sincerity of their convictions.

I want to avoid boring anyone by being trite, so I'll skip the part where I quote some Founding Father or eminent thinker's pithy comment on the value of protest. Instead, I'd like to remind the pro-war crowd that we need the anti-war crowd. We need them to legitimize America's military efforts, to show that our country is not some barbaric monolithic society. We need them to demonstrate the variety of opinion tolerated in our democratic society.

Dissent isn't just about them saying no. We need them to second-guess us and provide oversight for our decisions so that we can feel more assured that we are acting in a manner consistent with our values. The America I feel comfortable living in is one where people debate and disagree, not one where everyone is lockstep on every important issue.

With that admonition to the pro-war crowd behind us, I'd like to address the anti-war crowd as well. Here I mean to appeal to reasonable people--I don't waste time trying to address anyone who talks about conspiracy theories, evil corporations, or loosely throws around words like fascism or genocide. To the reasonable, principled section of the anti-war crowd (which I'm sure makes up the vast majority of that group), you also have a duty to do more than just say no.

Your country is at war. War is a serious issue that should not be turned into a political football. You may be against our country's military involvement in Iraq, but remember that our country is better off if we succeed, not if we fail.

To that end, if you care about the future of the Iraqi people, you can do more than just attend protest marches. After the Asian tsunami and Hurricane Katrina hit, so many people I know were involved in charity fundraising, efforts to rebuild houses, etc. I've found it strange that I never see any groups pushing to raise money to help Iraqi civilians, rebuild Iraqi schools and hospitals, etc.

Helping out by no means has to mean enlisting in the army or serving as a contractor in the rebuilding of Iraq's society. I was heartened by the response to the recently-exposed mistreatment of injured soldiers at Walter Reed--pro-war and anti-war supporters alike joined together to express their outrage and successfully push for change.

Realistically though, we are all college students, and the number of options we would actually pursue is quite limited. I think the best way each of us could do our part in the war effort is to remember to keep an open mind.

If you're against the war, good for you, but correct someone the next time they try to paint the war in political tones. Keep our country's best interests at heart, not those of your particular ideology. The same applies to the war's supporters, who need to remember that most anti-war protesters are more than just stupid hippies.

Support "Sweatshops"

For my column in the Diamondback this Wednesday, I was going to tackle the issue of the third-world factory labor, something I touched on last year on the blog. Unfortunately for me though, another staff columnist drew the assignment and his column will run in tomorrow's newspaper, so I'm out of luck. I've reproduced my version below.

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Last week the Diamondback reported a campus group’s effort to ban sweatshop labor used for school apparel and other gear. Never mind that no Terp merchandise has specifically been traced to factories with abusive labor conditions. It’s time to set the record straight. If you really care about helping third-world workers, you should be pro-sweatshops.

That’s not just me being irreverent. Jeffrey Sachs, the influential economist, says “My concern is not that there are too many sweatshops, but that there are too few.” He means that international trade makes everyone better off over the long-run. Developing countries get to use their comparative advantage of cheaper labor to gain access to factories, jobs, and skills they could not otherwise get. Meanwhile developed countries get to specialize in other areas and receive lower prices at home.

You might expect liberals to have bleeding hearts over the plight of third-world workers, and conservatives to coldly favor Big Business. But this is not your typical liberal-conservative issue. Sachs is a liberal anti-poverty crusader who works with the U.N. and teams up with rock star Bono on Africa aid.

In fact, my first introduction to this subject came from reading a 2001 column by Paul Krugman, the well-known economist and dependable lefty. He wrote: “Third-world countries aren't poor because their export workers earn low wages; it's the other way around. Because the countries are poor, even what look to us like bad jobs at bad wages are almost always much better than the alternatives.”

Those alternatives that he speaks of are lower-wage jobs such as subsistence farming, menial labor, and prostitution. In 1997, UNICEF discovered that 5,000 to 7,000 Nepalese children turned to prostitution after the U.S. banned carpet exports from that country in the name of labor standards. Worse yet was the infamous Child Labor Deterrence Act of 1995, which UNICEF, Oxfam, and others have said led to tens of thousands homeless and forced into jobs like “stone-crushing, street hustling, and prostitution.” Yes, that’s a worse outcome.

Keep in mind next time you hear someone lay into Wal-Mart or Nike for paying $1.50 an hour, in most cases, that worker is glad for it. Not to mention it's probably a buck more than they'd be getting working a local job. NY Times columnist John Tierney wrote last year that third world factory jobs “may sound like hell to American college students” but that they “provide enough to lift a worker above the poverty level, and often far above it.”

Tierney cited a recent study of 10 Asian and Latin American countries, which had many insightful revelations. In Honduras, for example, the average apparel worker makes $13 a day, while nearly half the country’s population makes less than $2 a day.

Obviously I am not in favor of labor conditions that are actually abusive. There are several all-too-true examples of factories where workers are subjected to threats and beatings, prevented from going to the bathroom, required to be on birth control, etc. Those are abhorrent practices and we should wholeheartedly oppose them. However, those instances are in the minority.

Third world workers take factory jobs because it is their first step toward integrating into the modern industrialized world. They get away from their rural villages and into the cities. They support their families and provided a better upbringing and education for their children. Later on their children can take advantage of the more advanced jobs that have come to the country after the success of the initial low-level factory work.

If you really are serious about wanting to help third-world countries, think twice before you protest third-world factory labor. You could be doing more harm than good.