Ethical Carnivores? Vegans would argue there’s no such thing. If you decide to go Carnivore for any period of time, you owe it to yourself and the planet to consider some of the ethical implications of your choice. Let’s look at what ethical meat is, why it matters and how to find it near you.

This is the final entry in my Carnivore Series. If you haven’t already, check out a Carnivore Conversation, My 30-Day Experiment, The Temporary Carnivore, and The Lifestyle Carnivore for more!

The question of whether or not eating meat is ethical is a modern one. The novelty of being able to turn down a nutrient-dense and readily-available food source for the sake of one’s philosophies is new in a society that no struggles to find calories.

The obvious question is first: Do humans benefit from eating meat? From there, concerns regarding meat eating usually boil down to two main issues: respect for animals and respect for the planet.

Do Humans benefit from eating meat?

Humans were designed to eat meat. We have digestive tracts similar to predatory animals: a single stomach, a shorter colon, and the inability to digest fiber completely.¹

Traditional cultures have developed all manner of preparations to make plant food more digestible: soaking, sprouting, fermenting, cooking, pounding, grinding, etc. These abilities have allowed us to become omnivores, using plant foods as survival foods to fill in gaps when meat is unavailable or game is scarce. But plant foods are hard to digest, require a lot of prep in some cases, are largely available seasonally (or shipped at great expense), and inevitably are less bioavailable than the nutrients in meat. Plant nutrients have to be broken down and converted to usable forms for our specific biology. We lose much of the nutrition we count on in this conversion process. Compare our digestion to that of a ruminant animal, like a cow for instance, and the story changes. They are the perfect conversion machines. They have a multi-chambered stomach and an extensive rumen that can turn fibers that are indigestible to us—like grass—into protein and fat. They can, for example, extract non-heme iron from alfalfa that would pass through us nearly intact and turn it into heme iron that we then easily absorb by consuming beef. It makes sense why our species thrived on meat. Meat is nourishing.

Eating Meat May Break the Disease Cycle

Earlier in this carnivore series we talked about nutrient density and how healing meat is, especially for those who can’t tolerate plants. We talked about how satiating it is. My 30 day experiment shows how much less I ate overall. My husband is able to work harder without pain. Would it be ethical for me to make him start eating plants again?

On a larger scale, processed and hyperpalatable foods are fueling a world-wide epidemic of metabolic disease. Obesity, heart disease, and diabetes are examples of conditions that cost us dearly in medical expenses, lost wages and diminished quality of life. One in seven dollars spent on health care in the U.S. goes to treat diabetes and its complications.² Now consider that the cost of health care and lost wages for obesity related reasons is over $150 billion dollars and you begin to see how costly poor food choices are!³ Those who choose to be plant-based for health reasons already believe passionately in the benefits of breaking this cycle by making better food choices. Others have the same dedication to health and wellness but achieve it through an omnivorous or even a carnivorous diet. Who can shame them for accessing nutrient dense food that works with their biology? And for buying or raising it for their families? They are, after all, chasing the same goal: vitality and freedom from disease.

Many opponents of meat actually eat more processed foods and refined grains than meat eaters, as the processed food industry is replete with tasty substitutions and meat-free options for the dinner table. Oreos and potato chips are vegan, after all, just as much as tofu and Beyond Burger is. Processed foods perpetuate the “sick cycle” and drive increasing medical costs while perpetuating unhealthy food addictions and contributing to a decline in quality of life. Rather than fighting against meat eaters, we should be fighting for more access to whole, nutritious, healing foods—including animal products.

If there is a benefit, is it Ethical to Shame Meat Eaters?

We’ve talked exhaustively about how meat offers an alternative for people with autoimmune issues or other conditions that make plants hard and even painful to eat. Is it ethical to deny or shame people for eating food that is good for them, part of their healing strategy, and traditionally prized by our ancestors?

Healthy vegan alternatives are often not affordable or not accessible to a large portion of the population and is arguably less nutritious than animal products. This can leave many families intent on observing “Meatless Mondays” dishing up inferior foods they find affordable and accessible to the detriment of their health. To truly thrive on a vegan diet requires a lot of education and expense and simply isn’t feasible for many. Eating less than “perfectly” on a vegan diet puts you at risk for deficiencies and can threaten your health. (To be fair, the same goes for a strict carnivore diet that needs to be done with care.) It could be considered elitist to mandate or even insinuate that no one should eat meat, just as it would for a meat eater to condemn those who choose to eat only plants.

Some activists go even further, so sure in their cause that it’s not enough to food shame meat eaters, they want meat outlawed, heavily taxed or even criminalized. In a discussion about ethics, it can’t be assumed that choice is a given. There are those that would take choice away under the banner of animal rights, while ignoring altogether the natural cycle of life. Manipulating nature to create meat substitutes may seem on the surface a win win, but it doesn’t take an honest look at the hidden cost of resources, fossil fuels and harm to the land while wiping out regenerative practices.

What about the animals?

I get it. I respect people who are compassionate enough to value animal rights, even making great personal sacrifices to further their causes. I love watching nature documentaries. As a child, I would cry when lion got the zebra or the hawk got the rabbit. Then, the next documentary might show a mother bear starving with her cubs because they couldn’t catch a meal and I would cheer for the predator! In nature, things die. It is inevitable.

Can we break natural laws and stop death? No. To the bleeding hearts who think I sound callous by advocating killing animals, check out this blog post from the beginning days of my homesteading journey: the first time I butchered an animal (link temporarily broken). It was a sobering experience. Since that time, I have butchered rabbits, turkeys, chickens, goats, and even one pig. It gets easier, but never gets easy. And I tell you what, my kids and I don’t waste meat. We respect it. Knowing how dependent we are on meat (remember my husband is carnivore for his health!) I am more invested in animal welfare than many vegetarians I know. I consider myself an activist for regenerative farming and a proponent for local food. While testifying before a town council reticent to grant more animal rights to landowners, I was told I didn’t understand “the impact animals have on the land.” I shot back “I do understand, I shovel the impact every morning!” The catch phrase stuck and was reused the rest of the session. In the end, our rights to raise animals were increased. It is possible to work closely with animals, advocate for their care and protection, treat them with respect and dignity….and still eat them.

In nature, there is a balance of predators and prey and if the balance tips, the ecosystem suffers. Domesticated animals have also evolved alongside humans to the point that many of them simply would not exist in the wild. Our relationship with animals is complicated and interconnected. They often rely on us as much as we rely on them in a codependent cycle. With domesticated animals, there is an unspoken contract: we raise them, feed them, house them, protect them from predators and perpetuate their species. In exchange they nourish us. This contract benefits both parties but works better when we acknowledge and value the animals rather than exploit them mercilessly.

Me milking my first goat. I’m sure she was smiling just as big!

There is a beautiful principle of animal husbandry I learned early in my own homesteading journey: the better you care for your animals, the better they care for you. For example, the more sunshine, fresh air and pasture to free range on, the better quality eggs your chickens will lay. The better you feed and care for your goats, the better milk they give. The healthier and happier you keep a cow, the better beef you will harvest. We cannot turn animals into conveyor-belt commodities and expect them or us to thrive.

What about the Planet?

Animals help the earth. Consider the thousands of bison that once roamed the open grasslands of the American wild. No one stopped to measure the methane from their burps or questioned the value of their manure. It is projected that the wild herds that used to exist were similar in numbers to the amount of cattle raised in captivity now.

Ruminants, like beef cattle and bison, can thrive in areas where crops cannot grow, where irrigation isn’t viable, on land that would otherwise lay open and barren.

Overgrazing becomes an issue with poorly managed herds, but did you know undergrazing is just as problematic? Allowing animals to graze with proper management (i.e. timely rotation to mimic predatory migration and not overcrowding) improves soil quality by trimming but not obliterating growth, encouraging regrowth of healthy grasses and plants. It also assures a natural fertilizer dispersal system (manure) that is entirely organic and free of fossil fuels! Remember the “impact” I mentioned “shoveling” before? It is gold for the garden. Keeping animals on pasture rather than confinement is a win for the animals and the land!

Ruminant grazing also promotes diversity of species as a well-managed pasture invites insects, birds, small mammals, even amphibians and reptiles. An ecosystem evolves that creates fertile soil that holds rainwater and sequesters carbon. Grazing animals can be moved to harvested lands, for example a cornfield after harvest. They will consume the leftover husks, thereby cleaning the land up and replenishing it with nutrients through their manure, assuring the next harvest will be abundant. You can see how animals can increase crop yields without depleting resources, decrease need for synthetic fertilizers, and create more plant and animal food in a sustainable way.

Are these soybeans as innocent as they look?

Across the spectrum, we have industrial farming and monocropping. Farmers essentially sterilize the land with pesticides and weed killers. Tilling disrupts and even kills the living organisms in the soil and any animals that manage to survive are often killed in the threshing and harvesting process. Soil is depleted, chemicals from fossil fuels are used with abandon, run off (from topsoil that is too poor to retain water) pollutes our rivers and oceans, killing countless marine animals and plants, and we are left with an abundance of nutritionally inferior food—most often corn, soy and grains that will be heavily processed before showing up on supermarket shelves (if not being made into ethanol.) If the vegan mantra is “do the least harm,” it might be surprising to see how many critters are killed in large scale plant farming vs the meat industry. This article—Carnivore Diet is Vegan—asks some interesting questions about the value of life and the impact of farming; it might make you reconsider which model does the least harm.

This may be comparing the worst of agriculture (monocropping) with the best (regenerative farming) but it shows where possibilities lie.

Joel Salatin of Polyface Farms is a spokesman, a pioneer and a legend in regenerative farming. He goes beyond just rotating his grazers. He uses the innate natures of several animals to layer a dance that results in something beautiful. For example, he will send his cows through a pasture, allowing them to graze to their hearts’ content without overtaxing the land, and then uses electrical fencing to move them to fresh pastures. Four days later, he sends his chickens in to scratch through the manure left behind by the cows. They eat up all the bugs and any parasites and further disperse the “organic fertilizer” while dropping some of their own. In this manner, the land isn’t depleted at all, but actually enriched while producing more food sustainably per acre. All the animals he raises are allowed to express their natural instinct.

Joel refers to this as honoring “the chickenness of a chicken and the pigness of the pigs.”⁴ It is a far cry from the cruel confinement of commercial poultry houses. Again, you can’t treat animals like machines or simple commodities and expect the same results.

CAFO: Confined Animal Feeding Operation.

It is fair to question the ethics of CAFOs (concentrated animal feeding operations.) Animals mass produced in confinement produce rivers of waste and soak up mountains of resources. This model of food production, however, should not be used to invalidate methods that are safe, respectful, and regenerative. Animals raised in harmony with the land have the opposite effect. Michael Pollan, author of the Omnivore’s Dilemma and Food Rules, argues that to "give up" human consumption of animals would lead to a "food chain…even more dependent than it already is on fossil fuels and chemical fertilizers since food would need to travel even farther and fertility—in the form of manures—would be in short supply". ⁵ With some thought and respect for the interconnectedness of all our needs, we find that raising animals for meat helps the planet, the people, and the animals. In their recent book release and forthcoming documentary Sacred Cow: The Case for Better Meat, Robb Wolf and Diana Rodgers make a big statement in very few words, “It’s not the cow, it’s the how.” ⁶ Ask not if we should be eating meat, ask how we should be raising and consuming it!

What can I do to be an ethical carnivore?

Allow choice for others. You make the best nutritional choices you can for your biology and circumstances and allow the same for others, even if those choices differ from yours.

Choose whole foods. Whether they are plant or animal based, eat whole foods. It is ethical to eat food that is healing, nourishing, and sustainable vs the “Standard American Diet” which perpetuates a cycle of sickness and exploits the planet with heavily processed, industrially farmed foods.

Eat nose-to-tail to promote awareness and prevent waste. You’ll be rewarded with a nutritional treasure trove of benefits.
Practice gratitude by acknowledging the life given to nourish yours and not taking that for granted. Eat for sustenance and not to excess. Even in celebration, there is no call for gluttony! Don’t waste meat.
Support local farming and avoid CAFO meat when possible, especially pork and chicken. Eating locally provides funds to regenerative agriculture and makes it feasible for more farmers to enter the market. If local is not available, consider shipping from farms that adopt regenerative practices and put the health of their animals first.

Find a Farm

For those of you who live along the Wasatch front, come to Utah Natural Meat for grass fed meat, pastured pork, wild caught salmon, raw dairy, free range chicken, and more. You can even visit with me while you shop!

If you are out of the area, visit Eat Wild, an online index to find local grass fed meat, dairy, and eggs. Also, visit your local farmer’s markets and even consider raising some of your own food!

Hungry for more?

Thank you for following me on this meat-eating journey. Whether you are carnivore, omnivore, or vegetarian, I encourage you to choose mindfully. I believe it is possible to thrive on foods that serve us and the planet! Schedule a free 20-minute consultation if you’d like to discuss your possibilities and please, connect with me on social media to share your own stories: struggles and triumphs! We’re all on this planet together, let’s make it the best we can!

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References

[1] Aiello L, Wheeler P. The Expensive-Tissue Hypothesis: The Brain and the Digestive System in Human and Primate Evolution. Current Anthropology. 1995;36(2):199-221. doi:10.1086/204350

[2] The Cost of Diabetes | ADA. Diabetes.org. https://www.diabetes.org/resources/statistics/cost-diabetes. Published 2020. Accessed August 12, 2020.

[3] Adult Obesity. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. https://www.cdc.gov/obesity/adult/causes.html. Published 2020. Accessed August 15, 2020.

[4] Gabor A. Inside Polyface Farm, Mecca of Sustainable Agriculture. The Atlantic. https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2011/07/inside-polyface-farm-mecca-of-sustainable-agriculture/242493/. Published 2011. Accessed July 2, 2020.

[5] Pollan M. The Omnivore's Dilemma. New York: Penguin Press; 2006.

[6] Rodgers D, Wolf R. Sacred Cow. Dallas, Texas: Benbella Books; 2020.

The Ethical Carnivore