The cover of the Dining Section (pg F1) of the Wednesday, January 16, New York Times, has an article by Julia Moskin, headed, "Chefs' New Goal: Looking Dinner in the Eye."
I found the piece fascinating. It was spurred by a stunt last week in the UK, in which a television chef killed a chicken in front of his studio audience and four million viewers.
Moskin writes that Jamie Oliver staged a dinner that was "in fact a kind of avian snuff film, to awaken British consumers to the high costs of cheap chicken."
She quotes Oliver: ''A chicken is a living thing, an animal with a life cycle, and we shouldn't expect it will cost less than a pint of beer in a pub."
We read:
'''It only costs a bit more to give a chicken a natural life and a reasonably pleasant death,' he told the champagne-sipping audience before he stunned the chicken, cut an artery inside its throat, and let it bleed to death, all in accordance with British standards for humane slaughter.
"Mr. Oliver said that he wanted people to confront the reality that eating any kind of meat involves killing an animal, even if it is done with a minimum of pain."
Moskin writes, "Many chefs believe... that if they're going to turn a pig into a plate of pork chops, they should be able to look it in the eye, taking responsibility for both the treatment it receives in life and the manner of its death."
Yet Fuchsia Dunlop, a British writer who has lived in China is quoted in reference to such "intimacy" there: ''There isn't a sense there that you're killing an animal, it's simply that you are preparing an ingredient for the table. No one thinks anything of skinning frogs and rabbits while they're still alive.''
About the UK show in question we read:
"In Mr. Oliver's show, 'Jamie's Fowl Dinners,' he served up many shocking moments: he suffocated a clutch of male chicks according to standard egg industry procedure, in a chamber of carbon dioxide; stuffed birds into the crowded, filthy 'battery' cages that house 95 percent of the country's chickens, and showed a computer-altered baby picture of himself, grossly engorged to represent the rapid growth of a baby chick on a factory farm.
"But the most shocking of all may be his revelation that price wars have squeezed the profit margin of the modern poultry farmer to about 6 cents a bird. Mr. Oliver's message to supermarket shoppers is clear: the only reason for the miserable lives lived by most chickens is your insistence on cheap food. After the broadcast, as reported in the British press, supermarkets across the United Kingdom quickly sold out of free-range eggs and chickens."
The article discusses US chefs who supervise the raising of animals for meat, some of whom keep "a respectful distance" and others who name the animals.
Tamara Murphy, the chef at Brasa in Seattle is quoted:
''The hardest part of the slaughter was the betrayal. The pigs get in the trailer because they trust you, they get out of the trailer because they trust you, they go into the pen because they trust you.''
A quote from Herb Eckhouse, who owns La Quercia, a producer of cured meats, notes why meat preparing chefs who show the most concern for animal welfare insist on seeing the animals' lives:
''The chefs trust me and I trust the farmer, and those piglets had as good a life as any I've seen. For the most part, we in the meat industry live in a world of half-truths, like 'natural,' 'family farmed,' and 'humanely raised,' and the only thing we can really trust is what we see.''
Famous New York chef Mark Meyer, however, says ''I think it's a pathetic fallacy. It doesn't do anything for the animal, and you can tell everything you need to know by the meat, once you know what to look for.''
You'll find the full article, including photos of chefs holding baby animals, on line at http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/16/dining/16anim.html
The piece opens the door for letters to the editor on the treatment of animals raised for food. It gives us an opportunity to describe factory farming conditions, and also slaughter practices in the US, where birds, who make up well over ninety percent of the land animals killed for food, are exempt from federal humane slaughter laws. People doing wonderfully on plant-based diets may wish to send letters questioning some of the article's points and premises.
The New York Times takes letters at letters@nytimes.com
Always include your full name, address, and daytime phone number when sending a letter to the editor. Remember that shorter letters are more likely to be published. And please be sure not to use any comments or phrases from me or from any other alerts in your letters. Editors are looking for original responses from their readers.
I send thanks to Teresa D'amico for making sure we saw this article.
Yours and the animals',
Karen Dawn
(DawnWatch is an animal advocacy media watch that looks at animal issues in the media and facilitates one-click responses to the relevant media outlets. You can learn more about it, and sign up for alerts at http://www.DawnWatch.com. You may forward or reprint DawnWatch alerts if you do so unedited -- leave DawnWatch in the title and include this parenthesized tag line. If somebody forwards DawnWatch alerts to you, which you enjoy, please help the list grow by signing up. It is free.)