The Pluralist

this paper focuses on animal issues—specifically relating to the animal beings we eat—using the perspective of American pragmatism. This essay grows out of my earlier work that used American pragmatism, specifically the work of John Dewey, to argue that we can develop a productive process model of utopia. In this model, it becomes important for us to critically examine the goals we choose to pursue because what we choose to pursue in the present sets the limits and possibilities of what we will be able to pursue in the future. Utopian visions are future-focused. We need goals, or ends-in-view, to help direct our present actions. If we give up on the idea of perfection often connected with utopian visions, such thinking can be an important way to realistically examine present action in light of future hopes and desires. Rather than seek perfection, the process model of utopia seeks to create and sustain people willing to take on responsibility and participate in directing their present toward a better, more desirable future. This is an ongoing task.¹

Intelligence allows us to address problems that arise and arrive at successful habits of action. It should also allow us to see when a habit is no longer successful or to see if a habit has unintended or unseen consequences that do not serve us and/or our environment well. A person acting with intelligence would then investigate and revise habits. However, habits have a strong hold, and most people prefer to follow a habit rather than begin the process of critical investigation, much less actual change. The more engrained the habit, the harder it is to change, and usually a crisis is needed as impetus for such investigation, evaluation, and action.

One of our deepest, and often least critically examined, habits concerns what we eat. These habits, early on at least, are not of our choosing. We are fed by others—sometimes even forced to eat things we don’t like. This is usually “for our own good.” These habits often stay with us, and people often [End Page 133] crave some dish they had when they were young long into adult life. We all have comfort foods. There may also be foods we don’t like anymore because we ate too much of them, got sick from eating them, or associate them with some bad event. Each family, culture, and time has its own ideas of good nutrition. There are also cultural traditions of food that persist even though health concerns may arise. Some of these choices are impacted by environmental pressures—such as what food is available and how much it costs. Fresh produce, for example, is often not readily available in economically challenged neighborhoods. When it is available, it is often more expensive than processed foods. Further, the foods themselves affect us—some cause allergic reactions, some create cravings, some are apparently addictive. The current controversy over fast food and processed food is an interesting example of how people can be manipulated by salt, sugar, and fat content.

This brief start shows that our relationship to food is a complicated one. Yet most people hardly think about food—especially about how it got to their plate. If they do think about it, it is usually because they are concerned about weight (which is complicated by social and psychological pressures) or health (which is complicated by trends and cultural views). Then we can add the environmental and social concerns connected to food—use of pesticides, oil, topsoil, and water in production; use of poorly paid laborers with little or no safety protections when harvesting; pollution and disease transfer related to transportation. And this just gets us started.

Here, I focus on the human habit of eating meat. There are many disagreements about how and when humans started to eat meat and many disagreements about how well-adapted our bodies are to the consumption of meat. Leaving all that aside for the moment, I want to focus on two very different meat habits in the world—both of which are involved in causing major environmental damage and creating human health issues...