Serious Eats - seriouseats.com

Karen emailed me a response to this, which she would've posted herself if she weren't so busy packing for tomorrow's farmers market! From Karen:

You brought up the issue of the economic need to use all the animals (and their by-products) produced on a sustainable farm. The issue is also moral: how can a dairy producer ensure that the animals are treated well after they leave their operation (assuming they are treated well when there) if they are sent to auction or anywhere else? That was our issue when selling off young lambs. We felt that the last three days of their lives (on a trailer, no food or water, handled heaven knows how) was inhumane after being raised with care and respect for 4 months. That's how we started raising ALL of our lambs on pasture ourselves. Yes they go to slaughter, but we bring them there, and can ensure that up to the very last minutes of their lives they see a familiar face and are not mishandled or abused. Same thing goes for our culled milking ewes.

What bothers me the most is that somehow rennet from the stomachs of ALREADY SLAUGHTERED calves is considered the engine that drives the train for many so-called vegetarian cheese eaters. It is such a small issue! What about how the animals were treated when alive (e.g., I know some of the producers for Cabot -- vegetarian rennet not withstanding -- and they are confining their cows and running factory-like farms) should be the key issue. ALL of those animals will eventually be used for meat (as long as healthy), so THAT they are slaughtered is a non-issue. And, that slaughtered animals' stomachs get used for making rennet to me is a non-issue.

As a person who spends her life with livestock, cares for them 24/7, relies on them to keep our farm viable, and loves them for how they enrich my life and community, the "wide angle" is the ONLY one that I look through. That people less familiar with farming have a narrower lens is not an excuse for bad decision-making -- so I feel my responsibility is to the sustainable farming model to which I adhere, and that includes educating (and sometimes scaring away) customers whose narrower lens allows them to feel comfortable eating Cabot cheddar -- with vegetarian rennet.

Warmest regards,
Karen

That 'in a sense', Jamie, is the kind of sense that would also stop people from eating ethically, because at a sufficiently wide angle, nothing is unconnected to slaughter. All distinctions collapse. Vegetarians can't escape the cycle of slaughter. Vegans can't easily escape the massacres wreaked by farm equipment upon small creatures in fields. If you quibble about whether vegetarianism should extend to not eating things in a production model that allows other people to eat meat, then you might as well just order up the grain-fed, cow-crate steaks and be done with it.

(I'm reminded of the Jain monks whose vow not to take life leads to them starving themselves.)

I haven't consciously, deliberately eaten meat in a decade. I've no doubt unconsciously consumed animal products, especially in recent years, since the US is far behind Europe in taking animal fat and other stuff out of products you'd otherwise expect to be fine. And purity is a lofty goal: should I refuse the slice of birthday cake at my young relatives' parties because the eggs used to make it are from battery hens?

You just do the best you can in your own choices, and you trust that small-scale farmers handle the meat side of their agriculture with the conscientiousness of their other work. Because livestock farming is the exploitation (in a neutral sense) of animals' life and death, and that's just how it has been since the ancient hunter-gatherers had a few ideas to make their lives easier.