I first became aware of the problem when I read the book How Bad Are Bananas? by Mike Berners-Lee.  In the section about reducing the carbon footprint of food, the number one suggestion was not to waste it. That was ahead of any mention of what you eat, how it was grown, or how far it travelled.  Then recently, the topic was again brought to my attention in a blog post by James McWilliams (I highly recommend following his blog “Eating Plants”).  He cites a study finding that consumers throw out an astonishing half the food they buy!

Now my interest was piqued, so I looked a little further.  “Global Food Losses and Food Waste”,  a 2011 report from the FAO (United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization), states that worldwide, one-third of all food–that’s 1.3 billion tons each year–is wasted.  In Europe and North America the figure is 620 to 660 pounds per person wasted each year. In the developed world, about one-third of the wastage is done by consumers, discarding even food that is still edible.  “The Battle Against Food Waste” (New York Times, Jan. 15, 2012) discusses some responses to the problem.  And here are some suggestions for individual action:

Plan your meals and shop accordingly. Write a shopping list and stick to it. This helps to prevent impulse buying. And never go shopping when you’re hungry.
Learn to use items in creative ways so they’ll last longer.
Keep an eye on your serving size. Many times, we feel forced to eat all that’s on our plate. Sharing out less food will cause less waste, and you’ll still be fulfilled.
Don’t ignore leftovers. New meals can easily be created from previous meals.
I would add:
If you have leftovers you won’t be eating soon, freeze them before spoilage begins.
Compost your kitchen scraps.

Growing, harvesting and transporting our food to market has a huge planetary impact in terms of energy, water, pesticide use, and topsoil erosion.  The better we can match our food purchases to what we will actually eat, the less impact we personally are having.   Being careful about food wastage is an easy thing we can all do to conserve precious resources.

Touring Peaceful Prairie; Roscoe the turkey (center)

Last Sunday, I participated in a group tour at the nearest farmed animal sanctuary, Peaceful Prairie, about an hour’s drive east of Denver.  Both we and the animals were fortunate to have a warm, clear day to enjoy each other.

The first thing we noticed as we approached the property was a herd of llamas.  I’d never seen that many, about fifteen, in one place.  Then we drove through the gate and up to the house.  Peaceful Prairie’s founders and directors, Chris and Michele Alley-Grubb, welcomed us. First we chatted for awhile with Chris as everyone arrived, then Michele took us out for an extended meet and greet.  She explained that the llamas had been abandoned to starve, and many had already died, before Peaceful Prairie was called to the rescue.  We then walked to an area where goats, chickens and turkeys were milling about, curious about all these visiting humans.  In a few minutes, a pickup pulled up and a volunteer began unloading boxes of unsaleable but still edible produce donated by Whole Foods.  He spread the contents widely on the ground and all the animals, led by the goats who were nearest, moved quickly to the area.  Who knew that a cow, for example, would go after a potato, or a goose rip eagerly into a bell pepper, or a goat enjoy a banana?  And everybody loves apples, apparently.  The geese were squawking, ducks quacking, everyone congregating–in short, it was an interspecies party!

Lucas enjoys a cool mud bath

Later we saw the chickens and turkeys close up.  At each stage of the tour Michele explained the miserable lives each group of animals had had before arriving at the sanctuary.  She poured some muddy water into a wallow to create bliss for Lucas the pig.  We saw Justice the steer whose portrait graces the front cover of the stunning book Ninety-Five.  Most of the animals were very willing to come up close: Roscoe the turkey constantly strutted around us, showing off his plumage, and the goats on several occasions walked up immediately next to me to be petted.

When we were all inside the house afterwards, Michele spoke about the current threat to farmed animals of so-called sustainable farms, or “happy meat.”  In contrast to the industrial food system, the myth of humane farming is lulling people who might otherwise have considered veganism to believe that it is OK now to eat animal products if these products come from a small organic farm.  Yet the same abuses continue.  You can educate yourself on these matters by reading “The Humane Animal Farming Myth” on the Peaceful Prairie website.

Tesla, one of Vegucated's three featured participants, making friends with a chicken

I’d been hearing great praise for the documentary Vegucated, and this week was able to see it at a vegan potluck/movie event.  Three average meat-eating New Yorkers agree to go vegan for six weeks and have their experience filmed.  They get lots–and I mean lots–of support and expert advice. It begins with the filmmakers, who show them vegan advocacy films, take them grocery shopping, dining out, and to a farmed animal sanctuary.  Their “vegucation” is also provided by such luminaries as Dr. Joel Fuhrman, Howard Lyman, Dr. Milton Mills, T. Colin Campbell, and other speakers and participants at the Vegetarian Summerfest, which the three attend as part of the experiment.  How fortunate they were to get this kind of solid information and encouragement, compared to those of us who went vegan years ago and had to figure it all out for ourselves!  Viewers, of course, get all the same encouragement vicariously by watching the film, and can find more at the Get Vegucated website, including the movie trailer; Vegan at Heart, a four-week-long daily email coaching program; tips on making social connections with other local vegans; the DVD available for purchase ($19.99); and info on hosting a screening.  

You will not be bored watching this, even if you’ve been vegan for many years.  Vegucated is non-threatening, engaging, informative, consistently funny, and keeps its heart open to the challenges of maintaining the vegan commitment in the real world.  It shows average people changing their lives, dealing with unsympathetic friends and family, continuing until the new way of eating is no longer strange, and joyfully reaping the benefits of better health and a more peaceful conscience.  I urge you to see Vegucated, talk about it and show it to friends, and encourage them to take the Vegucated Challenge.

“The deeply aware person sees the indivisibility of existence, the rich complexity and interrelatedness of all life.  Out of this awareness grows a deep respect for the absolute value of all things, each thing.  From this respect for the worth of every single object, animate as well as inanimate, comes the desire to see things used properly, and not to be heedless, wasteful, or destructive.
To truly practice Zen therefore means not leaving lights burning when they are not needed, not allowing water to run unnecessarily from the faucet, not loading up your plate and leaving food uneaten.  These unmindful acts reveal an indifference to the value of the object so wasted or destroyed as well as to the efforts of those who made these things possible for us: in the case of food, the farmer, the trucker, the storekeeper, the cook, the server.  This indifference is the product of a mind that sees itself as separated from a world of seemingly random change and purposeless chaos.  This indifference robs us of our birthright of harmony and joy.”

A recently published book I’ve just finished reading, The Magic of Reality by evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins, deepened my awareness of just how amazing the formation of Earth and the progress of evolution has been.  Although there may be shocks provided by natural processes–like earthquakes and tornadoes–there is also profound awe.  The more deeply we understand and respect the marvelous diversity of life bursting forth over unimaginable ages on this planet, and the fact that most planets seem unsuitable for life at all, how can we not value every being and every resource as precious?  How can we not be continually amazed at, for example, the functioning of our own body?

The Zen master and the scientist are both trying to shake us out of the stupor of our everyday mindlessness and say, “Open your eyes!  See what a precious planet you arose from, that makes all life possible.  Value its resources and all beings who share them, and take great care to use only what you need.”  As spring begins again, with greenness appearing seemingly from nowhere, how can we not look around in jaw-dropping wonder?

The shiny new dishwasher was installed yesterday.  In chatting with the installer, I asked, “How old do you think our old model was?”
He replied, “At least the 1970′s, maybe 1960′s.”  If so, that would mean it could have been installed when our house was built.
“And how much average life does a good model dishwasher provide today?” I continued.
“About ten years, average,” was his response.

Time for a reality check.  Our previous dishwasher, even if no older than 1975, lasted 37 years and maybe longer; new ones average ten years?  Appliance makers clearly know how to make more durable models, but apparently choose not to, in order to sell more.  I’m glad I can purchase an appliance that uses electricity and water more efficiently; we’ve made progress there.  However, our society has not yet understood that the environmental resources involved in manufacture, including both the metals and other components as well as the energy necessary to operate the factory and to create and transport the appliance, must be factored into the pricing structure.  We can’t just keep extracting and extracting from a finite planet, and piling up waste from models that wear out too soon.  We see this process moving even faster and more wastefully, of course, from computers, phones, and other quickly obsolete popular devices.

I’m glad to see more efficient appliances being built and sold, but we need durability too.

One is that empathy has what Pinker calls a “dark side.”  Our feelings of empathy with someone in a painful or unfortunate situation may temporarily incapacitate our sense of fairness, so that we favor the person we know over others equally or more deserving.  For example, one study acquainted participants with a seriously ill child awaiting medical treatment.  Those who empathized with her wanted to move her to the head of the queue, ahead of other children who had been waiting longer or who needed the treatment even more.  Participants who received the same information about this child, but didn’t empathize with her, treated all children fairly.

A second consideration is the way that empathy can be increased and spread by print and broadcast media.  Those who read or see a news program about another culture may develop empathy with the unfamiliar culture.  Once I stopped to think about it, I realized that for me the process had been life-changing.  It was because I read about the treatment of factory-farmed animals that I became a vegan.  Although subsequently I saw slaughterhouse footage and other persuasive images, and spent a little time with actual farm animals, my original decision came entirely from reading.  Now that I see this empathic potential of the media, I am more kindly disposed toward them than when I thought of television, for example, as broadcasting mostly noise, countless advertisements, violence in word and action, competitive sports, and adolescent- level sitcoms.  (Except PBS, which I sometimes watch).  Furthermore, it is not only factual material that may increase empathy.  A correlation has also been shown between empathic sensibility and the reading of fiction, although it is not known whether this is causative, or whether empathic people are just more likely to read fiction.

In any case, it gives me another reason to justify and continue my reading habit.  Not that I needed one.

A huge thanks to Karen Davis, president of United Poultry Concerns, and Mary Britton Clouse, director of Chicken Run Rescue, who drew nationwide attention to the issue.  Local Lawrence animal activist Judy Carman, along with a KU professor who also opposed the project, met with the artist, Amber Hansen, for a lengthy meeting Monday.  Judy succeeded in persuading Hansen to include vegan dishes at the project’s concluding dinner; Judy and the professor will be allowed to speak at that event.  Local artists may display works there and Judy is encouraging the display of art supporting veganism.  She also gave Hansen a variety of vegan literature.  Bravo, Judy!

According to a statement from Rocket Grants, a project sponsor, Hansen’s “intention throughout the project has been to engage regional residents in dialogue about the relationship between humans and the food we consume.”  She certainly succeeded, so to my mind she is a winner in this too.

The human health impact of such meat is unknown; growth hormones and antibiotics may be required for large scale production.  Presumably the amount of fat and other undesirable components can be controlled in a lab setting; researchers want to make it healthier than conventional meat. Time will tell. But whatever words come to mind at the prospect of in vitro meat, at least to me, “yummy” is not one of them.

To the Spencer Art Museum:

As a native Kansan and KU graduate, I am writing to urge you to cancel “The Story of Chickens” project. While helping the public get to know chickens as “beautiful and unique creatures” and learn to care for and about them is admirable, the inclusion in this project of public slaughter is definitely not.  Just as public spectacles of human execution used to be the norm, public animal slaughter also used to be common, hardly noticed or even made into a sport, but that kind of behavior is fast becoming obsolete.  Consider this evidence taken from Harvard psychologist Steven Pinker’s recent book on the decline of violence, Better Angels of Our Nature: Fox hunting was outlawed in Britain in 2005, and the last U.S. state to permit cockfighting banned it in 2008.  As of 2010, bullfighting became illegal in the entire Spanish region of Catalonia, and the state-run Spanish television network has ended live coverage of bullfights because they are considered too violent for children.  The European Parliament has considered a continent-wide ban as well.  Regarding hunting, the proportion of Americans who report that either they or their spouse hunts has been steadily declining for decades.

Giving approval to public violence against animals, performing it in front of audiences which may include children, and especially elevating it to be considered “art” is to increase tolerance for violence, to make a wider segment of society accept and practice it.  There are good reasons why actions that are naturally repulsive are done behind closed doors.  To bring animal slaughter into our neighborhoods coarsens society and stifles discussion of the options humans have to reduce  animal slaughter rather than promote it.  The project description refers to the planned slaughter as “a phase of the [chicken's] life cycle.”  While death is certainly part of a chicken’s natural life cycle, being killed by a human is not.

I have no problem with allowing shocking art forms as part of the free speech we all cherish, but the line must be drawn at exhibits which include actual harm, pain or killing of living beings as part of the exhibit.   That KU would be sponsoring such an exhibit casts a bloodstain on its otherwise fine reputation.  I urge you not to be a party to making public animal slaughter acceptable; cancel “The Story of Chickens.”

The article,  begins as follows:
Ok, here’s the bad news. You’re going to have to become vegetarian. Sorry. As soon as possible, so you may as well put down that chicken sandwich and start now. Not just you though, all of us are going to have to stop eating meat and dairy products if the world has any hope of not going to hell in a hand basket.  

What?  Did I read that correctly?  Of the myriad reasons for veganism, why were investment bankers being urged in that direction?  The answer is water, already scarce in some parts of the world, facing increasing demand due to increasing population and affluence, and wasted unconscionably by livestock agriculture.  Water is the new oil, a resource that is being alarmingly depleted, yet unlike oil, is absolutely necessary for life.

But if these guys are investment bankers, there must be some way to make money off this advice, right?  Are you sitting down for this?  If access can be gained to a scarce resource, in this case water, it can be sold at a profit.  To keep it profitable over the long term, the investor is continually looking for more water he can buy up and resell, and this is where veganism comes in.  If meat consumption drops significantly, more water becomes available to sell–from one part of the world which is–pardon the pun–flush, to another part of the world where water may be desperately needed.

The report concludes by suggesting that meat eating be made illegal.  Now that idea is right as rain.