Note: There’s a great short story link at the bottom of this post; don’t miss it because of my ramblings above the fold. ~Joe C.
So, I finally watched Food, Inc. last night, the Academy Award best documentary nominee I’ve been hearing so much buzz about the past few months. I’d been putting it off because not long ago I’d read Michael Pollan’s The Omnivore’s Dilemma, and thought I knew most of what would be on display, mainly that government subsidies make corn cheap, so we grow a lot of cheap corn, and since there’s so much cheap corn a huge percent of the food in your supermarket is a derivative of corn including corn-fed cow, pig, and fish (yep, they’re teaching fish to eat corn now, too.) And, let’s face it, being clued in on the crap I’ve been sticking in my mouth is not the delightful subject I usually want to take in on a feel-good Friday night.
But, for some reason I decided to end the procrastination, maybe because Food, Inc. was available for the “instant play” cue on NetFlix.
Let me tell you, there is a reason you can go to Disney World and book yourself into an Animal Kingdom themed resort, or a Sports or Music themed resort, or the Wilderness Lodge themed resort, but they don’t offer a Beef Slaughterhouse themed resort. My wife updated her Facebook status during the movie: “Watching Food, Inc. and seriously doubting that I’ll ever eat meat again!” I won’t go that far, because I do love an artery-clogging diabetes-inducing Big Mac on occasion, but I will be eating more beans, tofu, and broccoli this week.
Anyway, the essense of the film is not anti-meat, but our vanished lack of respect for meat. The gist of the film is that corporate greed — and more truthfully, the American people’s misplaced thrift that leads them to buy cheaper bad food instead of more expensive good food, organically-grown food that isn’t a subsidized corn-derivative — has caused Henry Ford’s assembly line principles to be applied to the production of the animals that provide meat. Besides causing all sorts of problems, from E. coli outbreaks to a generation where 1 in 3 will develop early onset diabetes, it’s caused us to lose respect for meat. In order to grow meat in the terrible way we do, we must either lose respect for it, let our conscience drive us insane, change, or ignore reality. Ignoring reality and disrespecting meat is a lot easier than the other two options.
No Respect for Meat
So, today while contemplating our lack of respect for meat, I surfed on over to the blog of Indigobusiness, God is Not an Asshole, and his post about Terry Bisson’s short story, They’re Made Out of Meat, slapped me in the face, because among other things, this short sci-fi story is concerned with a large lack of respect for meat:
“No brain?”
“Oh, there’s a brain all right. It’s just that the brain is made out of meat! That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you.”
“So … what does the thinking?”
“You’re not understanding, are you? You’re refusing to deal with what I’m telling you. The brain does the thinking. The meat.”
“Thinking meat! You’re asking me to believe in thinking meat!”
This short story, published in OMNI in 1990, was later published in Bisson’s 1993 anthology Bears Discover Fire and Other Stories. It’s short, even for a short story, and best of all, Bisson has posted it in full on his website: They’re Made Out of Meat. It’s a good light-hearted weekend afternoon read, especially after something heavy like watching Food, Inc.
