I recently had the strange and sad experience of reading the Bible aloud to my stepfather as he lay profoundly speechless in the ICU. I figured I’d begin at The Beginning, which was familiar enough. But this time, one passage of Genesis jumped off the page. After God made Adam and Eve and all the animals, and saw that they were good, he said this:

Be fruitful and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it; and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the fowl of the air and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth.

Well, times have changed. I don’t think God foresaw the current human population problem and how it relates to eating animals. He most likely didn’t foresee capitalism, much less the modern corporation. And I’d like to think that something was lost in translation, that the writers of the good book meant stewardship rather than dominion. It’s nice that the word replenish is in there, though we’re doing quite the opposite these days, especially when it comes to the sea. And the soil. And far below the earth’s surface.

The western world lands squarely on the “dominion” side, though. Our country’s Judeo-Christian roots keep us firmly, well, rooted in the idea that the planet and its non-human inhabitants are ours to control.

If the U.S. were an individual in therapy, we may be diagnosed with narcissistic personality disorder with delusional features. It’s delusional to think that the planet and the creatures on it can withstand our treatment.

Oh, Genesis is such a convenient story! Obviously, I say this as an atheist, who believes the Bible was written by people, not handed over by God himself. The writers of the Bible tell us that God made man in his image, but really, people made God in their image, giving themselves a special position as center of the universe, with God-like dominion over every other living thing.

Later, once Noah comes along, God says something truly amazing:

And the fear of you and the dread of you shall be upon every beast of the earth, and upon every fowl of the air, upon all that moveth upon the earth, and upon all the fishes of the sea, into your hands they are delivered.

Well said, God.

Oscar the Grouch sings a song called “I Love Trash.” I love how Oscar embodies negative emotions and personality traits like grumpiness, irritability, reclusiveness, and tendency toward squalor with such humor and acceptance.

I, however, don’t love trash. Over the last few years I’ve become insane about wasting food, especially meat. You’d think I grew up during the Great Depression. Now there’s a scary statistic that Americans waste 40% of our food, which blows my mind. Slate recently published a top ten ways to reduce waste list, here are what I think are the best of the bunch (slightly condensed).

1. Create and stick to a shopping list. Plan out your meals for the week (including snacks and side dishes) and then shop for just the ingredients you need–no more, no less. Be honest about your cooking and eating habits, though, or you’ll still wind up with unused ingredients.
2. Shop a few times a week. If you don’t plan your meals seven days in advance, do as the Europeans do and opt for small, frequent purchases. Check to see what you have at home that’s in danger of going bad, then shop for ingredients so you can make use of those items.
3. Buy food with cash. It’s hard but it works. “The less we use debit/credit, the more conscious we are of what we spend and so we tend not to grab items that just look good.”
4. Wash and prep fruit and vegetables right away. This helps combat workweek weariness. Dry everything thoroughly before you put it in the fridge–surface moisture provides a nice environment for decay-causing bacteria and fungi.
5. Use the freezer wisely. Keep a container in there for chicken carcasses, freezer-burned drumsticks, onion tops, and carrot peelings; when it’s full, simmer all the contents in a pot of water to make stock. Blanch and freeze on-the-verge produce for later use. Roasts vegetables before they go bad and toss them into a freezer bag; the constantly evolving mix can go into lasagna, soup, pizza, or casseroles. Fruit that’s about to go bad can be frozen for smoothies (and banana bread).
6. Schedule in your leftovers. Eat ‘new’ food on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday nights, then on Thursday, have ‘smorgasbord’ with the leftovers from those three nights. A popular variation is “back of the fridge night,” when you challenge yourself to prepare a meal out of nothing but end-of-the-shopping-week ingredients. To do this, bone up on “meta recipes”–flexible dishes like quiches, stir-fries, sauces, and stews that can easily accommodate a wide variety of ingredients. Mark Bittman’s Food Matters cookbook is great for just this purpose and allrecipes.com lets you search for dishes that incorporate up to four different ingredients.

Here’s one of mine: At restaurants, I ask for to-go containers when the food arrives so I can pack it up as soon as I’m done. This helps you avoid overeating and it guarantees a good lunch the next day.

I’m sure Oscar would love composting, too, but that’s another blog entry altogether.

A recent Animal Welfare Approved blog post by Andrew Gunther shared some heartening news:

At a hearing of a House Energy and Commerce subcommittee on Wednesday, July 14, 2010, a representative of the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) finally caught up with the rest of the world–and his peers at the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)–and admitted that the use of antibiotics in farm animal feed is contributing to the growing problem of deadly antibiotic resistance in America.

Dr. John Clifford, Deputy Administrator for Veterinary Services for the USDA’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) read from previously submitted testimony that the USDA believes it is likely that U.S. use of antibiotics in animal agriculture does lead to some cases of resistance in humans and the animals.

Why is this news? Because the USDA has been continually playing the Three Wise Monkeys game–it sees no evil, hears no evil, and speaks no evil–when it comes to deadly consequences to humans of the non-therapeutic use of antibiotics in farm animals. In fact, Dr. Clifford looked as he’d been given a choice between testifying or having his eye poked out with a stick and he lost the toss.

However grudging the USDA’s admission, it’s nice to have it on the record.

I just found this beef from Slope Farms at the Park Slope Food Co-op. On its label is everything I look for:

Grass-fed, grass-finished: Grass-fed means that the cow has eaten only grass or forage its whole life. Grass-finished means that it ate grass or forage until its last bite (some farmers switch to grain during the last several months of the cows’ lives, to fatten them before slaughter). So having both terms on the label is ideal. Here’s a nice explanation of why all grass, all the time is good.

Only pasture grasses, grain, water and minerals, no hormones, grain, antibiotics, chemicals: This one’s pretty self-explanatory.

Never confined to feedlots. Again, great.

Pure Catskill Dry-Aged Beef: It’s local, and the cool moist climate of the Catskills happens to produce excellent grass. Dry-aging concentrates flavor; in contrast, factory-farmed meat is usually “wet-aged” (vacuum-sealed to retain moisture).

Pasture-raised: The gold standard. The cow lived on grass, ate grass, roamed and laid in grass, and got to engage in natural cow behaviors its whole life. Interestingly, many pasture-based ranchers refer to themselves as “grass farmers” rather than “ranchers.” They see their job as raising the right variety of pasture grasses; the animals do the rest.

Full contact information and names of the farmers: Always a good sign. If I wrote or called Ken and Linda Jaffe to ask questions, I bet they’d answer. The main question I usually have is about the slaughter. Farmers can do everything right while the animals are under their care. They may even have pretty pastoral photos of their land and their animals on their web site to prove it. But if they have to use a slaughterhouse they don’t feel good about, or if they have to transport their stressed-out animals too far, to me, that undermines their best efforts. On the Jaffes’ site, they say they consider their nearby slaughterhouse “excellent.”

It’s true the label has no third-party humane certification seal, and it’s true that such seals guarantee that an outside agency regularly inspects the farm and slaughterhouse to ensure that a set of animal welfare standards are being met (whereas a company’s or farmer’s label can be misleading or even false). But at the co-op, this is as good as beef gets. Plus, a little more web research revealed that Ken Jaffe is a former Park Slope doctor who, fed up with the health care system, bought a farm and named it for his old neighborhood (my current one). He and his wife have 63 cattle and are politically active in local land- and farm-preservation issues. Bubby’s, a great restaurant in Tribeca, serves his beef exclusively, and if you’re not a Park Slope Co-operator, you can order it online.