The conscience of a carnivore

[Guest guest]

http://www.dailycamera.com/bdc/insight/article/0,1713,BDC_2494_4780755,00.html

 

Daily Camera

 

By William Saletan, Special to The Washington Post

June 18, 2006

 

Where were you when Barbaro broke his leg? I was at a steakhouse, watching

the race on a big screen. I saw a horse pulling up, a jockey clutching

him, a woman weeping. Thus began a worldwide vigil over the fate of the

great horse. Would he be euthanized? Could doctors save him? In the

restaurant, people watched and wondered. Then we went back to eating our

steaks.

 

Shrinks call this " cognitive dissonance. " You munch a strip of bacon, then

pet your dog. You wince at the sight of a crippled horse but continue

chewing your burger. That's the thing about humans: We're half-evolved

beasts. We love animals, but we love meat, too. We don't want to have to

choose. And maybe we don't have to. Maybe, thanks to biotechnology, we can

now grow meat instead of butchering it.

 

With all the problems facing humanity war, terrorism, poverty, tyranny

you probably don't worry much about whether it's right or wrong to eat

meat. That's understandable. Every society lives with two kinds of moral

problems: the ones it's ready to face, and the ones that will become clear

or compelling only in retrospect. Animal sacrifice, human sacrifice,

slavery, the subjugation of women - many traditions seem normal and

indispensable until we're ready, morally and economically, to move

beyond them.

 

The case for eating meat is like the case for other traditions: It's

natural, it's necessary, and there's nothing wrong with it. But sometimes,

we're mistaken. We used to think we were the only creatures that could

manipulate grammar, make sophisticated plans or recognize names out of

context. In the past month, we've discovered the same skills in birds and

dolphins. In recent years, we've learned that crows fashion leaves and

metal into tools. Pigeons deceive each other. Rats run mazes in their

dreams. Dolphins teach their young to use sponges as protection. Chimps

can pick locks. Parrots can work with numbers. Dogs can learn words from

context. We thought animals weren't smart enough to deserve protection. It

turns out we weren't smart enough to realize they do.

 

Is meat-eating necessary? It was, back when our ancestors had no idea

where their next meal might come from. Meat kept us alive and made us

stronger. Many scientists think it played a crucial role in the

development of the human brain. Now it's time to return the favor.

Thousands of years ago, the human brain invented agriculture, and hunting

lost its urgency. In the past two centuries, we've identified the

nutrients in various kinds of meat, and we've learned how to get them

instead from soy, nuts and other vegetable sources. Meat has made us smart

enough to figure out how we can live without it.

 

So why do we keep eating it? Because it's so darned tasty. Don't give me

that hippie shtick about how Western society foisted beef on us.

McDonald's didn't invent the appendix. McDonald's didn't invent all the

genes we've acquired - at least eight, according to a 2004 article in

the Quarterly Review of Biology that help us, but not chimps, manage

a meat diet. Look at the fossil evidence recently published in

Nature. Around 5,000 years ago, when people in Britain figured out

how to domesticate cattle, sheep and pigs, they promptly switched

from fish-eating to meat-eating. A similar revolution swept North

America around 700 years ago. We're carnivores. We evolved that way.

 

If we were just beasts, that would end the discussion. But we're not.

Evolution didn't stop with our lusts; it started there. Food gave us

brainpower. Technology lifted us above survival and gave us time to think.

We began to understand the operation of living things, even ourselves. We

saw what we were, and we saw what we could be. That's the paradox of

humanity: Our aspirations transcend our nature, but they have to respect

it. To become what we must become, we have to work with what we are.

 

Maybe we can't change our craving for meat, but we can change the way we

satisfy it. How? By growing meat in labs, the way we grow tissue from stem

cells. That's the great thing about cells: They're programmed to multiply.

You just have to figure out what chemical and structural environment they

need to do their thing.

 

Researchers in Holland and the United States are working on the problem.

They've grown and sauteed fish that smelled like dinner, though FDA rules

didn't allow them to taste it. Now they're working on pork. The short-term

goal is sausage, ground beef and chicken nuggets. Steaks will be more

difficult. Three Dutch universities and a nonprofit consortium called New

Harvest are involved. They need money. A fraction of what we spend on

cattle subsidies would help.

 

Growing meat this way would be good in many ways. We'd be able to make

beef with no fat, or with good fat transplanted from fish. We'd avoid bird

flu, mad cow disease and salmonella. We'd scale back the land consumption

and pollution involved in cattle farming. But 300 years from now, when our

descendants look back at slaughterhouses the way we look back at slavery,

they won't remember the benefits to us, any more than they'll remember our

dried-up tears for a horse. They'll want to know whether we saw the moral

calling of our age. If we do, it's time to pony up.

 

William Saletan covers science and technology for Slate, the online

magazine at www.slate.com

--