When I first set the goal of eating only humanely-raised and slaughtered animals, I naively thought that “kosher” would be my Semitic safety net. After all, the word itself has come to mean acceptable, legitimate, and authentic. A kosher seal assures that a set of ethical standards had been followed.

When I went to confirm my reasonable-seeming theory online, the first thing I saw was Jonathan Safran Foer’s If This Is Kosher. I had a feeling the rest of the news wouldn’t be good. I soon learned that kosher meat comes from the same CAFOs and slaughterhouses as all other factory-farmed meat, and that when it comes to animals, all kosher means is that the animal was killed by a pious Jew called a shochet using a rabbi-inspected blade.

The laws of kashrut (kosherness) come from a time before industrialized agriculture and the beef lobby. There were no government subsidies for cheap animal feed back then. There wasn’t even capitalism.

The tentacles of modern agribusiness reach deep. Despite the compassionate intention and humane spirit of the Jewish laws, no standards exist to ensure that kosher slaughter is any less cruel than conventional slaughter. Once any enterprise becomes a large industry, as the kosher food business has, original intentions are more likely to become compromised.

Kosher’s Not So Kosher for the Animals – Part Two →

Here’s a fun thought experiment: Imagine you live on the planet Dearth. You make food wedges called “Healthies” and sell them locally. They’re not just delicious, but they’re better for people and better for Dearth. Healthies become popular in your community and your business grows. Eventually, people from far away start hearing about Healthies.

There is a wide ocean on Dearth. You have two options for how to deliver Healthies across the great big sea to the people who want them.

Choice A is a small yet seaworthy boat that moves slowly and can’t carry much of a load. Its sailors are honest, hardworking people who feel it’s important and honorable to deliver good food. It’s pretty expensive to use their services, though, and you have to load all the boxes yourself.

Choice B is a giant, fast boat sailed by friendly handsome pirates. Their boat can carry huge amounts of food at little cost to you and to the people who want it. They’ll even put your Healthies in pretty packages and tell everyone on Dearth about them. The problem is, they stop at every island along the way to rape and pillage, as pirates do. Also, they’ll only transport your food wedges if they can run your business their way (but the wedges will still be called Healthies, and no one needs to know that pirates transport and distribute them). Also, the pirates are likely to sink every other boat they see. Also, they lie and cheat.

Which boat would you choose?

Back on planet Earth, here’s a chart that shows the corporate relationships that make up Big Organic.

I’m reading Gene Baur’s Farm Sanctuary: Changing Hearts and Minds About Animals and Food. It’s like reading an anthology of perverse fables. Here are four of my least favorite:

Fat Animals, Fat Humans: We breed animals to grow large quickly, unnaturally piling on pounds by using hormones (see diagram of a normal chicken and one genetically engineered to pack on breast weight. At 47 days old, chickens have grown so large so fast that that their legs and organs can’t keep up, causing heart attacks, organ failure, and leg deformities. In a sick kind of parallel, consumers, too, are gaining weight at an alarming rate: 34 percent of adults are obese (more than double the percentage in 1980), and 17 percent of kids (triple since 1980).

Causing, Treating, and Fortifying Illnesses In One Easy Step: Antibiotics are fed to farm animals to combat the disease that occurs when animals live in overcrowded, filthy conditions. Humans then ingest these antibiotics, making ourselves more vulnerable to bacterial infections that resist once-normal antibiotic treatment.

Modern Serfdom: Under the control of corporate agribusiness, once-independent farmers have become “contract growers” who are forced to “get big or get out” and who must continually meet the demands of the corporation by upgrading facilities, meeting higher production quotas, etc. The agribusiness lobby presents these choices as free enterprise, and many factory farmers defend their practices. As Upton Sinclair wrote, “It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on him not understanding it.”

One Hand Taketh: Food is meant to nourish us, but the factory farming system only takes from the earth and the animals, extracting their goodness without replenishing anything.

I watched Best Friends Animal Society‘s 25th Anniversary DVD last night. Their 33,000-acre animal sanctuary in Utah houses almost 2000 cats and dogs (also some rabbits, potbellied pigs, horses, goats, and birds). They’ve even got a television show, National Geographic Channel’s Dogtown. I’ve volunteered in Utah, and now I’m writing news stories for their web site. They’re amazing.

What always strikes me is their positive message. It’s never “thousands of animals like Fluffy are dying horrible deaths every day unless you help now.” Instead, it’s “Fluffy had a pretty rough past, but thanks to friends like you, she’s learning to trust again….” Their visuals are never PETA-style photos of starving, abused animals, but rather the “after” photos of those now-healthy animals in a clean, safe place (either the sanctuary itself or a new home). Not that Best Friends ever whitewashes the truth of homeless, neglected, and abused pets; occasionally there will be a “before” photo of an animal in a tragic situation, or more often a description of an animal’s sad history. But their emphasis is on the “after.”

It’s so smart. No one wants to contribute to a losing cause.

That’s what I’m struggling with on this blog. The topic of factory farming tends to bring out the Debbie Downer in me. Now, I know I can’t go to the opposite extreme and become a Pollyanna about it. But my goal is to enlarge my sphere of influence by informing and entertaining people, and I realize you catch more bees with honey. Not that you’re a bee. But you know what I mean. I’m trying to lighten up.

So here’s my question: how do you deal positively with rotten realities? How do you remain optimistic and pro-active and actually effect change, instead of bitching about how hopeless things are? How do you remember to focus on what does work, rather than what doesn’t?

I’m dying to know. Please post a comment and tell me all about it. I’ll be so heartened, I might even send you a donation.