Message In A Bovine — Humans Not Center Of Food Universe

They have helped stop the Trans-Texas Corridor. They are fighting the misuse of “eminent domain.” Hey, they will even notify you of the international climate change negotiations in Copenhagen, Denmark, Dec. 6-18.

 WACO, Texas — They have helped stop the Trans-Texas Corridor. They are fighting the misuse of “eminent domain.” Hey, they will even notify you of the international climate change negotiations in Copenhagen, Denmark, Dec. 6-18.

But, now, the Texas Farm Bureau has admitted that it believes that humans, thanks to God, are the center of the food universe.

Mike Barnett, the advocacy group’s publications director, said as much in his recent blog entry “God made cows to eat” on Texas Agriculture Talks.

The entry detailed an anecdote about Barnett explaining to his fourth-grade son why he was eating more vegetables as of late. Through the course of their conversation, the boy revealed his anti-vegetarian and pro-meat bias.

However, on the question of the sanctity of cattle, his father’s earlier message of tolerance for picky eaters and advocacy for balanced diets rang a tad hollow because in the end, Burnett supported his son’s theological position, namely “I think God made cows to eat.”

“I just had to crack a smile. That’s my boy,” wrote the TFB employee.

Since Texas Agriculture Talks is “a forum of ideas and opinions covering all aspects of Texas agriculture from the perspectives of two veteran agricultural journalists on behalf of the Texas Farm Bureau, the state’s largest farm organization,” there were dissenting, though civil comments to the entry.

“Whose ‘God’; Whose bible? You are really attempting to base your world view in the limited scope of western theology. After all, in other countries the cow is revered and killing them is definitely not what ‘God’ made them for,” replied commenter Bea Elliott.

While Barnett had failed to elaborate on his own theological stance, Gene Hall, Texas Farm Bureau public relations director, admitted that he himself “should have been more clear” in his responses below the entry.

“I was not referring to theology, but the fact that humans developed the brain capacity necessary to master our environment when we began consuming the protein necessary to do so,” Hall wrote.

That said, Hall was not about to back down from the assumption that humans are the center of the food universe.

“Humans are in charge of the planet. This is not really in question is it? There are no hospitals, museums, universities, or monuments built by dolphins, Great Danes or field mice,” he explained earlier in the same entry. “This comes into question only in those rare moments when humans encounter predators and become part of the food chain themselves.”

However, if you ask Michael Pollan, professor of journalism at the University of California, Berkeley, humans are still a part of the “food chain,” even though Hall’s ancestors formed sentences with which to organize themselves against attacks from saber-tooth beasts long ago.

Speaking to the nonprofit Technology, Entertainment, Design (TED) Conference in 2007, the author of The Omnivore’s Dilemma and In Defense of Food challenged his audience to see nature through nature’s perspective.

“It’s not my idea. Other peoples have hit on it,” Pollan admitted, “but I’ve tried taking it to some new places.”

Pollan said that he first caught wind of this “literary conceit” while planting potatoes in his own garden seven years prior. He said he noticed that he and the bumble bee flying around a nearby flowering apple tree had much more in common than he had previously thought.

As Pollan explained, he had indeed selected a type of domesticated potato, planted them, and cared for the garden accordingly; and, in its own right, the bee decided on an apple blossom, retrieved the nectar from it, and then left for another flower.

But the bee wasn’t calling the shots because the flower had manipulated the bee through its color, scent, flavor, and patterns to lure the insect into picking up nectar for its consumption and pollen for the flower’s gene distribution, he observed.

“And I realized I wasn’t (in control) either,” Pollan said. “I had been seduced by that potato and not another into spreading its genes in another habitat.”

Agriculture, then, appeared to him not as a human-centered technology but as a co-evolutionary development among a specific set of species, he said.

Mowing the grass in his yard that day took on new meaning for Pollan, he explained.

“I had thought always, and in fact had written this in my first book about gardening, that lawns were cultures under nature’s boot, that they were totalitarian landscapes and that when we mowed them, we were cruelly suppressing their species and never letting it set seed…

“Then, I realized this is what the grasses want us to do. I’m a dupe of the lawns whose goal in life is to out-compete the trees for sunlight,” he said.

Applying the same understanding, cows fool humans, too, with their sweet meat, milk, and penchant for modeling in Chick-Fi-La advertisements.

So what does this nature-centered thinking gain for humans? Pollan asked.

“Looking at the world through other species’ points of view is the cure of the disease of human self-importance,” he said.

In other words, the intellectual line between culture and nature disappears, and human consciousness, reason, tool-making abilities, and language become just another set of tools for living, not “the crowning achievement of nature.”

“It’s kind of natural that we would think it’s the best tool, but there is a comedian, who said, ‘Who is telling me that consciousness is so good and so important? Well, consciousness.’”

And it’s hard not to say that cattle aren’t taking advantage of their current industrialized situation; 5.15 million head of beef cattle were scattered across farms and ranches in Texas in 2008, according to the Texas Agricultural Statistics Service.

On a practical level, Pallon’s Darwinian point of view allows for all animals, including humans, and plants to realize their full biological uniqueness.

As a consequence of industrialized farming with its government regulators disregarding the “pigness of the pig,” we humans become more vulnerable to the H1N1 (swine) flu.

Actually, that’s what Pallon’s hero who practices this “pigness of the pig” view on his 500-acre farm in Staunton, Virginia, would say.

“What happens when the USDA determines that feeding dead cows to cows is the new science-based technique? Mad Cow,” said that hero, grass farmer Joel Salatin, in the most recent issue of The American Conservative.

Case in point: Earlier this year, the USDA recalled 143 million lbs. of frozen beef.

That’s almost twice as many pounds of beef (87 million lbs.) that fast food chain McDonald’s bought in 2005 from Texas to the tune of over $100 million, according to the Texas Farm Bureau.

In contrast, on the 100 acres of his Polyface Farm, Salatin produces 40,000 lbs. of beef, 30,000 lbs. of pork, 25,000 dozen eggs, 20,000 broilers, 1,000 turkeys, and 1,000 rabbits, according to Pollan.

“If I run a dirty ship here, I’m only affecting a few customers,” Salatin told TAC.

That said, Salatin refers to himself as a “Christian-libertarian-environmentalist-capitalist lunatic.” In fact, Bob Jones University, the Christian college and seminary located in Greenville, South Carolina, honored Salatin, their former undergraduate, as “alumnus of the year.”

“The question is not whether we can eliminate [evil], but whether we centralize it or decentralize it,” said Salatin.

And it appears that the Texas Farm Bureau supported centralization when it co-sponsored the beef section of an agricultural promotional area with Cattleman’s Beef Board (i.e. “Beef: It’s What’s for Dinner”) and McDonald’s at last year’s Fort Worth Stock Show and Rodeo.

So this begs the question: did God make clowns to eat?