How meat eating made us human, and how being human made us question the habit of eating meat
Research in Nature shows meat eating could have been correlated with our chewing skills. Meat has been an indispensable component of the human diet since about 2 million years.
However, cooking only became the custom half a million years ago and the effect of carnivory on our cheek muscles is unknown. Still, recent experiments suggest eating meat reduced the amount of chewing cycles needed to digest the food.
Our ancestors were able to save energy by eating meat
In other words, our ancestors were able to save energy by eating meat. That energy was then used to become civilized.
Humans are omnivores, unlike gorillas and giant pandas who are herbivores. “But that’s not an argument to continue consuming meat”, counters Stijn Bruers who holds PhDs in ethics and nature sciences.
Bruers: “Ask people to kill a chicken in their own garden. They will perceive this as difficult.” This is of course an effect of the distance that exists nowadays between animal farms and consumers.
Animal — and humanfriendly slaughterhouses?
What happens in slaughterhouses has always been shielded by production companies. Animal rights organizations have uncovered some malpractices which led to public outrage.
This led the Flemish minister for animal welfare Ben Weyts to temporarily close some slaughterhouses. After there were enough guarantees the animals weren’t being abused anymore, could the abattoirs in Tielt and Izegem open again.
Here’s the problem, though. Is it possible for a slaughterhouse to operate in an animal-friendly way? There are examples of companies like this, who state they produce animal-friendly meat.
Take Prather Ranch on the border between California and Oregon. Slaughter in an animal-friendly way sounds good in theory but in practice someone still needs to kill the animals in question.
Post-traumatic stress disorder is a risk for people working in slaughterhouses
The psychological effects on employees in slaughterhouses cannot be underestimated. Post-traumatic stress disorder is one of the risks of this job.
You can compare it with the prison guards who are responsible for death row. The job deals directly with killing, be it humans or animals.
Longtime activist against the death penalty Marietta Jaeger confirms this. “These guards go home and have to tell their family they killed someone. I think everyone finds killing repulsive and yet that’s their job.”
Low prices
The way we consume meat these days is very different from past ages. In the Middle Ages meat featured less frequently in people’s diets. The modern age can be seen as the dawn of fastfoodchains and Michelin-starred restaurants.
Mario Smet is professor in chemistry at the University of Leuven and points out the problems of the current meat industry.
“If prices go up, as they should, people will be less inclined to buy meat” — professor Mario Smet
“The price of an average piece of supermarket-meat is too low with regards to the ecological cost. Energy is needed to grow food for the farm animals, who produce feces and thus contribute to the emission-rate.”
Smet: “We’re passing the bill to the next generations. If prices go up, as they should, people will be less inclined to buy meat. The current system is too focused on producing as much as possible, while the quality of the meat suffers. We need to evolve towards a system of “Less is more”, as professor and television cook Herwig Van Hove long since propagated.”
Hunt versus slaughterhouse
Is the hunt better than an industrial slaughterhouse? Stijn Bruers doubts this: “When animals are shot by a hunter, their deadly wounds cause much suffering. But these free animals don’t have the stress of animals on their way to the slaughterhouse.”
In the future meat will be created in a laboratory through animal stem cells, so no animal will need to die. Currently it is still too expensive to release this product on the markets.
Stijn Bruers affirms this. “Lab meat will stab animal agriculture in the back, like kerosene meant the end of whale hunting, since the whale oil was no longer needed for oil lamps. There is only a small minority of people who is active in the production of animal products, they will not be able to handle the competition with meat from laboratories.”
Bruers: “Slavery was made obsolete by machines, which were more effective than free labor from slaves.”
“It’s possible humans of the future will consider animals as persons with their own emotions and freedom rights” — Stijn Bruers
Bruers still sees a role for artisanal animal agriculture, as practiced in the nineteenth century. “In Bokrijk they will keep traditions from the past to show future generations how it was done. Although it is possible humans of the future will consider animals as persons with their own emotions and freedom rights, and then even small scale animal agriculture becomes as unimaginable as slavery nowadays.”
