Palaeolithic or Stone Age? Are we meat eaters or vegetarians? In 1945, 40% of American vegetables consumed were grown in the backyards of families. In South Africa today, this figure is estimated to be 4% which is absolutely poor, and off course we are now paying the price for this. Many retails outlets shout ‘organic’ from roof tops, and give us the impression that their vegetables are just that. This is highly debatable, let alone questionable. A recent read of Rudolf Steiner’s little orange book on nutrition (Problems of Nutrition) gave me some interesting insights on nutrition… Can we eat meat and still respect animals? What care did our ancestor take when eating meat? People who live close to the sea, eat mainly fish and berries and a small assortment of vegetable, this that live inland eat mainly vegetables which is 80% water and red or white meat. In other parts of the country, some people only live on citrus fruits… I think it is not about the relationship of meat to vegetables or should we only eat vegetables or only meat or both, but rather what grows better in which geographical locations with the least amount of input. Many international environmental agencies have given (holy) cows a bad wrap in terms of contributing to environmental problems. I mean it is easy to blame cows for the badly managed industrial food system. What I find interesting is that in America and Britain and also France, that 59% of the forage grown in these countries are to feed cows. Cows are supposed graze and eat grass not GMO corn. Feeding a cow (GMO) corn is completely against nature’s paradigm. Grazing is possibly the most efficacious mechanism for our planet’s restoration, which means it is either consciously antagonistic to the truth or is ignorant of the kind of synergistic models that are out there. What people forget is that there is no system in nature that does not have an animal component to it as a recycling agent. We know that fruit and vegetable grown beautifully and full of nutrient when there is an animal component to them – it is called manure. Manure is magic! Now can we eat meat? Yes we can and what do we eat? Do we eat chicken, beef, lamb, rabbit or ostrich? Chicken require healthy grains there are omnivores. Herbivores, like beef, lamb and goat were every man meat because they can be raised on perennials. Kings of past ate poultry because they had the luxury of extra feeding for birds. So can we eat an animal and respect it? Spirituality tells us that we cannot have life without death. When you eat a carrot and masticate it in our mouth, that carrot is being sacrificed for you to have life. Everything on the planet is eating or being eaten, if you do not believe me, go a lie naked in your garden for three days and see what happens to you… this very sacrifice is what sustains life and regeneration….. anabolism and catabolism two basic fundamental for the existence of all live on earth. The problem is that people do not have a visceral understanding of life and death… We have become a culture of ‘killing’ and ‘death’ and ‘killing’ are entirely two different acts of catabolism. Again: can we eat and animal and respect it? Yes…. As a human and farmer, we need to ascertain what that animals needs to fully express its physiological characteristic or distinctiveness? Cows do not eat corn, they eat healthy grasses. Cows do not eat cows (Mad Cow’s Dis-ease-mid 80s); cows do not eat manure, but this is what is currently being fed to cows in the industrial food system. But surely feeding cows grasses is therefore respecting the ‘cowness’ of the cow? In the industrial food systems, chickens’ beaks are cut off, but those small beaks were designed to scratch in soil and look for insects and goggas. So raising them in a free environment implies they can be birds; not in hatches or in small enclosures with another 20.000 chickens that cannot breath and are smothered to death… We need to ask ourselves: ‘how do these animals live? And then we need to imitate this natural template as closely as possible. now we have chicken that follow cows and bite the insects off the cows; birds follow herbivores, like the egret on the rhino’s nose; the chicken sanitize behind the cows – scratching in the dung for insects; eat out the parasites and spread the dung into the pastures, and eat the insects that the herbivores uncovered while grazing. Pigs just about eat anything natural to fully express their ‘pigness’. This is all very symbiotic and it creates a totally different relationship instead of simply trying to grow fatter, bigger, juicer and cheaper animals. But off course these animals on farms also have an easier life as they would ordinarily in nature. Nature can be a cruel mistress. The gazelle wakes up daily thinking hoping to out run the lion, the salmon wakes up thinking will he be eaten by the bear today and so on… Farmers and animal lover protect their animals against the elements of natures; weather and predators. We care for them, feed them look after them when sick which means they are more prolific. So by honouring the cow-ness of the cow and the pig-ness of the pig, it is about ecology and ethics. And as much as honouring the pig-ness of the pig or the cow-ness of the cow it establishes a moral and ethical framework on which we also build respect for the Michael-ness of Michael or the Tom-ness of Tom. This is how we respect and honour the least of these that creates the ethical framework on which we honour and respect the greatest of these. So, do we kill our conscience to eat meat? Is it worth it? But a culture such as ours that views plants and the animal kingdom as innate piles of protoplasmic structures to be manipulated through the industrial food system, will also soon views its citizens and other cultures in the same disrespectful way…
Posted on: Sat, 17 Aug 2013 00:24:36 +0000
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