As one of the few remaining humans on the planet not on Facebook, I still like to give credit where it's due. I may loathe Mark Zuckerberg's time-sucking, TMI Internet sensation, but I can admire his business acumen and ambition: the guy's a billionaire. At an age when I was scarcely employed, living in my car and peeing into a Big Gulp cup in the middle of the night, he's Master of the Interweb. I also applaud his undertaking of a yearly personal challenge (okay, wearing a tie every day, not so much, but learning a new language is a solid goal).
That's about the extent to which I usually devote thought to Zuckerberg, until he made headlines last week for this year's self-improvement plan. After posting on his personal Facebook account on May 4th that he had "just killed a pig and a goat," the news attracted the attention of the national media. Last week, Zuckerberg said of his recent hunter/gatherer activities:
I think many people forget that a living being has to die for you to eat meat, so my goal revolves around not letting myself forget that and being thankful for what I have... this year... the only meat I'm eating is from animals I've killed myself. So far, this has been a good experience... I've learned a lot about sustainable farming and raising of animals.
Now that got my attention. As a longtime culinary educator and food writer, Zuckerberg appeared to be doing exactly what I've spent years educating students and readers about: learning where food comes from, and sustainable alternatives to industrial-scale production. I had to hand it to the guy. So I thought.
Anyone wanting to know more about the source of their food and how food production works -- be they carnivore or vegetarian -- is to be commended. And I've long believed that if we choose to eat meat, we should, at the very least, acknowledge that it was once a living creature (you would be surprised by how many people think meat comes shrink-wrapped from the grocery store, as if birthed by a Cryovac machine). Despite growing up on a ranch myself, I hadn't actually slaughtered any livestock until about five years ago. But I knew it was something I needed to do, for both my personal and professional growth, and I've since I've slaughtered a variety of livestock, all under the guidance of the farmer/butcher.
Yet it's not realistic to expect our mostly urban population -- the ones who overwhelmingly don't know where meat comes from, or at least how it's actually raised and processed -- to visit a slaughterhouse, or spend a day lopping the heads off of chickens on a farm. Zuckerberg is in a privileged position in that he a.) is wealthy, which tends to open doors, and b.) lives a few doors down from chef Jesse Cool, of Menlo Park's Flea Street Café. Cool has a long history within the Bay Area's sustainable food movement. She's taken Zuckerberg under her wing, and introduced him to local farmers, and according to CNNMoney, "advised him as he killed his first chicken, pig, and goat."
I respected Zuckerberg for his willingness to get closer to his food supply -- until I read that his "killing" has been limited to just that. CNNMoney (and every other online news source I looked at that addressed this part of the story) also reports, "the dead creatures go to a butcher in Santa Cruz, who cuts them into parts." I should add that it's legal for a farmer to slaughter and butcher an animal on their property, as long as that meat is not intended for public consumption. So, since Zuckerberg is allegedly taking said meat home and "cooking what he slaughters," there's no reason for the dispatched livestock to leave the farm to be processed.
Excuse me, but slashing an animal's neck doesn't make you a hero. Nor does it make you a poster child for "knowing thy food source." In fact, it kind of makes you morbid or a coward. It requires courage and yes, compassion, to take a life, even if it's that of a chicken. But the real emotional and physical work of slaughtering an animal comes from the skinning, evisceration, and breaking down of a still-warm carcass into recognizable cuts, and removing the organs for later use. It's watching an animal's life blood drain out (a necessity before you can proceed with butchering) into a bucket; plucking feathers or severing head from neck. It's plunging your hands between that animal's fascia and muscle, separating the two as you work the skin off the body, as if removing an undergarment.
None of this is pleasant, even to people who have spent their lives doing it. But it's profound, and fascinating, and gives you a reverence for meat that you can't get from just wielding a knife. For one so concerned with the taking of life, Zuckerberg doesn't paint a very convincing portrait. From a humane and technical standpoint, it's also not as simple as Cool makes it sound (and this could be due to editing or semantics, so this isn't a personal attack on her;): "He cut the throat of the goat with a knife, which is the most kind way to do it."
There is more than one way to skin a goat, so to speak. This is admittedly nitpicky, but bear with me: if you just willy-nilly cut an animal's throat, you risk severing the trachea. The result, says a farmer friend who also taught me how to slaughter sheep, is "unnecessary pain and suffering, because the animal can't breathe and aspirates on its own blood." There are other factors that come into play where humane animal slaughter is concerned, but for the sake of this piece, I'm focusing on this particular facet.
I mention it because, as various detractors of Zuckerberg's animal killing have pointed out, his actions may well encourage wannabes with money and connections to buy some livestock and "get in touch" with their food supply by slashing throats. Killing an animal for consumption -- whether you're hunting for conservation/subsistence reasons (I don't condone sport hunting or fishing), or slaughtering livestock, is not something to be taken lightly, especially by an amateur. Zuckerberg sounds as though he had an experienced coach alongside, but I'm making a point.
If Zuckerberg really wants to learn where his food comes from, he has a lot more work do to than wielding a knife for a couple of seconds. For those who don't have access to a farmer, chef neighbor, or stacks of cash, the best way to educate yourself about where food comes from is to read books such as Michael Pollan's excellent The Ominvore's Dilemma, visit your local farmers market, take a farm tour, or watch a movie such as "Food, Inc." If you can afford it, there are Farm Schools popping up across the country, where you can engage in a week-long, hands-on intensive in sustainable farming, as well as participate in a slaughter conducted in a respectful, academic, professional manner. Just don't brag about it on Facebook afterwards.
Note: To circumvent the inevitable flaming of angry vegetarians and vegans, the very personal decision of whether or not to eat meat is not the point of this editorial. If you don't like the topic, don't read it. Thank you.
Rabbi David Wolpe: In Defense of Animal Sacrifice
Yeah, he's a billionaire who can afford to explore whatever nuance of reality he chooses to explore. That he has chosen this one is truly worth noting. If he doesn't follow your particular script for what he should be doing, come on. You have to start from where you are. The idea of a structured approach, top-down, bottom-up, whatever method you think he should have followed, oh well. Life doesn't really work that way. Give credit where it's due. He's way ahead of 99% of the population in his understanding of where his sustenance comes from. That's got to be worth something.
Who are you to "condone" it? Done properly, this step in the food producing issue is very personally rewarding.
And fun. Are we still allowed to have fun?
go to a movie, or dancing for fun...something, ANY thing in which you don't harm another
Second: The writer's point is valid: Gutting, skinning, cleaning, and butchering the once living being is the most demanding and educational part of the responsibility of eating meat, not the kill.
Third: The Zucker's inactions are the very core issues he pretends to facing, the messy business of Life and Living. It's another vain attempt of macho, semi-responsibility... not unlike the false leadership shown by Wall Street, Banksters, Military, Politicians, and Corporate International Citizens, they revel in The Kill, but shy away from doing the actual dirty work of Processing their glorified Dead to achieve the actual stated and intended outcome. Pulling a trigger or cutting the throat is all that is Holy. The Dead are Photo Ops, left for the underlings to process.
We don't commend farmers who let someone else go through all the effort of tilling, planting, weeding, watering, maintaining, just to celebrate the fool who came in at the last second and said, "see!! I harvested these veggies!!"
Why should the same go for Zuck? What effort went into seeing what goes into keeping that animal ALIVE? THAT is the courageous action farmers exhibit, getting up every morning to tend to their animals. Taking care of them EVERY DAY. Then slaughtering.
How affected are we when we read an article that someone in NY, Chicago, LA has died? Maybe a little, we lament the death, but not with the same vigor that we lament the death of our families, our pets even. Because it's different. Because the way an individual is moved when an animal (yes, human are still animals) that it has bonded with will always overshadow. Of COURSE he still had to kill the animal, but without knowing anything of that animal while it was alive, well, I think he might as well just have gone to the factory farm, picked a cow out of the CAFO and shot it in the head with a gun. I think it would have served the same purpose and shown about the same amount of respect for the life of the animal.
Think el Bulli, NOT offal
Is there really a risk of rich wannabes going on farm yard thrill-kill sprees? Are there more tie-wearing Chinese language students than there used to be?
Seems like an eccentric, rich young man doing something personal for himself and not hurting anyone.
I would echo an earlier post that, for me, the up-close killing of the animal, whether it be a fish or a pig is most complex emotional part, not the butchering. It is something that every meat eater should experience on some scale at least once in their life
It doesn't happen.
Back to my point, you're assuming he's not with the butcher the first couple of times to understand which cuts are which and how the process is done. He might have even swung the knife a few times, but to assume that he simply slits and runs is making a big leap. This also takes away from the point of what he's doing and why he's doing it.I applaud him for helping more people to make the connection to their food and I've been wanting to make a similar kind of attempt.
As for the idea that person X might be mislead and do something harmful to an animal, it is not Zuckerberg's job to shepherd the mentally feeble through life. The "don't try this at home" world in which everything must be tailored for the slowest person you can imagine is PC run wild. If someone is that impressionable, keep them in a quiet place with nothing more complex than Where's Waldo.