On being a humaneitarian

On the door of your freezer, there might be family photos tacked up with magnets, inspiring quotes, the Boston Red Sox schedule. Push those aside and make room for another piece of paper: a list of the contents of your freezer. A humaneitarian life begins by reflecting on the kind of meat you enjoy now, so you can find humane versions of all the cuts you love.

Here’s a recent freezer list of mine (photo at right). It reflects my love of bacon, stew beef, and breakfast sausage. Perhaps as you sort through your own freezer (ouch, cold!) you discover that you’re a guru of ground beef, a lover of lamb, churlish about chicken. Embrace it. Accept it. Don’t attempt to change your preferences as you shift to humanely raised products!

Take your freezer list to the meat department of your local grocery store, where the employees will wonder what you’re doing as you spend 10 minutes in front of the meat case, searching for the products that were in your freezer. You’re looking for brands that have an alternative label on the packaging, such as “free-range” or “organic.” (A list of these labels is here, along with an explanation of why they indicate better animal treatment.)

At home, return to this website and see if any of the brands you found are on our grocery stores page. Read about the companies’ farming practices and see what you think. Just because it says “humanely raised” on the packaging doesn’t mean the animals were raised in a way that’s acceptable to you. (If you didn’t find any “alternative brands” at your supermarket, see next section.)

As you search for humanely raised meat, go beyond the sliding glass doors. We’re accustomed to shopping at major supermarket chains, but they don’t sell very much humanely raised meat (yet). You’re more likely to find it at farmers’ markets, food co-ops, and natural food stores. In other words, humaneitarians buy meat at pretty unique places and get to encounter interesting things, such as:

So, find a local food co-op here. Find a nearby farmers’ market here. Click on FarmPlate or Local Harvest to find farms near you that sell meat from a farm stand. Here’s a guide to buying meat in alternative ways, such as through CSAs and the mail. And here’s how to find restaurants that serve humanely raised meat.

Be prepared for some sticker shock when you see alternative meat brands. The industrial farming model — which doesn’t exactly put animal welfare first — produces cheap meat. But farms that pasture their animals, give them natural environments to live in, or raise fewer animals in a space, have more costs associated with that kind of treatment.

So chances are you’ll reflexively say, “I can’t afford that.” But dig a little deeper into that assumption. It’s one thing to have very little money for food — people in such circumstances truly can’t afford alternative meat on a regular basis. It’s another thing to be blessed with an income that allows us to buy things we value. If we value a few extra beers at the bar each week (about $10) we’ll pay for that. If we value knowing that the chicken we’re about to cook was able to spread its wings during its lifetime (about $10 more than a conventional chicken), we’ll pay for that. Not to put down beer, but most of us can save a little coin somewhere else in our lives to pay for humane meat.

Given that humanely raised meat can be expensive — and hard to find in some parts of the country — it follows that when humaneitarians can’t afford humanely raised meat, or when we can’t find it, we simply don’t eat meat. We become “temporary vegetarians.” And we do so happily, knowing that giving up meat for a meal when the right kind is not available keeps our money out of factory farms.

I know… we Americans can’t stand the word “less.” We want it all!  Faced with the prospect of eating less meat, we recoil, revolt, rebel. We think it’s necessary to eat meat every day, or a few times a day. Yet the only reason we can eat meat at every meal is because it’s cheap. Before industrial agriculture (only 60 years ago) meat was a treat. Now it’s as common (and as cheap) as soda. Let’s make meat a treat again.

Now put it all together. Determine on a practical level what your humaneitarian life will look like. Take into consideration the availability of humanely raised meat in your area, what you’re willing/able to spend on the meat, and what your “line in the sand” is when it comes to what kind of farming practices you will or will not support with your dollars. As I write on this page, “humane” means different things to different people, so it’s especially important that you determine what farming systems you’re most comfortable with.

You may choose to eat humanely raised meat every time you eat meat, only when you eat at home, only when you eat out, or only during certain times of the year. Also, you may drop your principles entirely when you’re at a friend’s house and they’ve slaved all day over a (factory farmed) pork roast. Or you may put your principles on hold when you travel. Be inspired and get ideas from fellow humaneitarians here.

As you become a humaneitarian, here are some ways you might “mess up”:

1. You’ll… buy clam chowder at the local deli, then realize it includes bacon of unknown origin (darn!) — but you’ll eat the bacon anyway, so as not to waste the animal it came from.
2. You’ll… overcook the first dish of pork ribs you’ve ever made, undercook the chicken legs, burn the lamb shanks — but a few weeks later you’ll try all those recipes again and, eventually, succeed.
3. You’ll… grow weary of searching high and low to find humanely raised versions of your favorite meat, so one day you’ll just buy the industrial version in the store — but at least you’ll be aware that you’re doing it, unlike most people.
4. You’ll… express your eating philosophy to a friend over dinner at a restaurant and unintentionally make them feel “inhumane” when they order the factory farmed steak — but you’ll reassure them that you’re ok with their choice and you’ll express yourself differently next time.
5. You’ll… think that your life as humaneitarian should be easier than it is — but who said this is an easy way of eating? Instead, it’s a deeply rewarding one, and makes a real difference in the lives of animals.

It’s a new word — and honestly, not easy to spell. It’s similar to the word “humanitarian” (as in, “She worked for humanitarian causes around the world”) but with an ‘e’ stuck in the middle. The similarity is intentional.  A humanitarian has concern for the welfare of people, and a desire to help them. A humaneitarian has concern for the welfare of farm animals, and a desire to help them.

Some people who want to help farm animals choose not to eat meat; others don’t make any changes in their diet at all. Humaneitarians make a third choice: to eat only humanely raised meat. In doing so, to paraphrase Gandhi, they eat the change they want to see in the world.