28 March 2007
Organic Soup
I don't normally devote much time thinking about Wolfgang Puck, the famous chef and entrepreneur. We operate in different circles, and there is enough flying around in the ether to worry about. I cringed over the British captives in Iran, particularly when I saw the headscarf draped across the head of the lone female, Leading Seaman Faye Turney.
Back-seat driving over whether the captives should have gone down shooting makes me tired. If you do not know how things came to pass, and what choices were available, I think you should keep your trap shut until the situation is resolved. I think I know how this unfolded, and while that may be relevant to the future, those responsible really need to focus on the present.
The media sternly warns that a military response to the situation could provoke a regional catastrophe. I personally have wanted to kick the Iranians in the shins, hard, for a long time over some old grievances. But I am prepared to take the high road if that is what it takes. At least for the moment.
Ditto for Attorney General Gonzales. He was within his rights to fire any US Attorney's he wanted to, since they serve at the pleasure of the President, just as we all did. If the obscure provisions of the Patriot Act permit interim appointments without Senate confirmation, the Congress should amend the law.
What cannot be done, at least with the Democrats in charge, is to lie to the Congress with impunity. That is certainly a sea change, but one that you would expect the Executive Branch to recognize.
With the weather so pleasant, and the issues so painfully clear, I feel restless, swimming in the organic soup of the season change. My sense of outrage is diffused overseas, and I sparsely have the energy to look around. Yesterday, a judge overturned permits for something called “mountaintop mining,” an innovative concept in which mining companies are permitted to scrape coal off the top of the peaks and toss the spoil downhill, rather than have to tunnel for it.
It is pretty slick, done with gigantic machines that eat the mountain and spew out the waste downslope. The result, I gather, is to level the State of West Virginia. Senator Byrd is in favor of it, and it is his state, after all.
I shake my head in wonder that anyone, capitalist or not, can countenance the complete destruction of whole counties. It can only mean that we have become so disconnected from the natural world that we actually live on a parallel plane with it. Even life and death itself, once intimate concepts, are detached from our lives.
People used to die at home, be laid out in the parlor, and travel a short distance to the local churchyard. Now the whole enterprise has been outsourced, and is something we do not have to deal with as a part of our sanitary life. That may be part post-traumatic stress syndrome, the inability of those who experience reality to re-integrate into our sanitary make-believe world.
There is so much we don't have to deal with. None of us hunt anymore than we raise our own chickens. I recall vividly the time I lived on a farm, and met the first animal I had the opportunity to know before I ate it. The cow was named Dollar, for some reason known best to the owners, and was a placid animal who enjoyed a long and tranquil life.
Being of a certain age, the business case was made to convert Dollar to dinner, which was accomplished in as humane manner as killing can be. The event may have been the progenitor of the Dollar Menu.
I cannot say that it made me queasy, since like Mr. Puck, I am comfortable with the fact that I am an omnivore. It did make me think, though, and consider the evolutionary adaptation that broadens the food base on which the species survives. I have to be delicate with that assertion, since recent polling indicates a significant percentage of the population is not convinced of Mr. Darwin's proposition, or even that our planet orbits around the Sun.
Even Yahoos know we have to eat, though, and we do it with a lot of gusto. To accommodate the demand for meat, we have created an efficient and quite astonishingly cruel system. I won't go into the details, since it is still before breakfast. But I guarantee that if you saw one of the factories, and walked down the stations on the production line, you would have an entirely different concept on the nature of dinner.
I still see references to Mr. Puck's famous celebrity restaurant from time-to-time. It seems to have survived his dabbling in the mass-market trade, which can kill your cool as fast as having a fashion line at the K-Mart. I have never stopped at one of his express restaurants in the airport concourses, though if I was inclined to sample a fine dining experience while waiting for an airplane, I might give him a try now.
Mr. Puck has taken a remarkable stand, for a restaurateur, insisting that his suppliers comply with certain standards in their production of foie gras and veal. I have a life-long aversion to the former, and enough knowledge to eschew the latter.
He made a dramatic announcement that he would only use eggs and meat from animals raised under strict humane care standards, perhaps not as gentle as Dollar the cow experienced, but better than the pure misery that exists today. Mr. Puck is also on record as saying he will only use seafood that is not collected by vacuuming the ocean floor.
Mr. Puck's program goes much further than most corporate animal-welfare policies, and he is the highest-profile celebrity chef to join in the movement to change farming practices. An addition to the ethical considerations about how the animals are raised and killed, there is a connection to climate change that makes this almost a no-brainer.
Methane is an important component of greenhouse gas, second only to carbon dioxide. A surprisingly large component of it is emitted by meat and dairy animals. It is equally true that is can be reduced significantly by not over-feeding the herds to artificially maintain weight. At some point, common sense must rule. West Virginia should not be leveled, at least on the grounds of profit. Cows should not be force-fed like foie gras ducks.
Some people are muttering that Mr. Puck is just a hood-ornament for the Animal Rights lobby, and that their ultimate goal is nothing less that converting the world to vegetarianism. They could say that about me, of course, though it is preposterous. Puck only feeds around ten million people with his organic canned soups and walk-in restaurant trade. He has the capability to influence the business practices of McDonald's and the WalMart, and should they change, a great cruelty will be lessened.
I did not say eliminated. That would be a topic for another discussion.
I don't think it will go that far, anyway, since we are born omnivores. Still, I would not object to having the treatment of the beings that make up our food chain displayed as prominently as their nutritional value.
It might actually connect us in a modest way to the natural world, and see how the pieces fit. Then there could be an informed choice,
In fact, we might actually begin to connect the dots. Could it be that international tension over the distribution of natural resources is counter-productive? Could it be that if we managed things in a way that was both profitable and sustainable, the radicals and the rapacious would only look foolish?
Looking like an idiot is the one thing an extremist can't stand.
Copyright 2007 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com