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Food and Violence The idea of food is so fundamental to life as we know it that we take it for granted, assuming that food is inherent to life. But there was a time when eating did not exist, when it had to be invented by nature to solve a pressing problem threatening to thwart the progress of evolution of the universe. There was no such thing as food, of course, at the original big bang 13 billion years ago, nor at the formation of Earth four billion years ago, nor at the first terrestrial life about three billion years ago. The earliest forms of life did not have respiration using oxygen and nutrients. Rather, they extracted energy from certain minerals without needing other substances. But this process soon threatened to exhaust itself without a good source of replenishment. Nature soon found an ingenious and surprising solution. There was, as there still is, a great abundance of solar radiation reaching the earth every day and being dissipated in the form of heat. To capture this solar energy a new process was invented, photosynthesis, wherein chlorophyll in green plants was able to capture solar energy and produce organic compounds, which the plants could store and use for their own nutritional needs. As frequently happens, the solution produced another problem. It turns out that photosynthesis also releases oxygen into the atmosphere (which at that time contained little oxygen). Eventually the oxygen concentration built up to the point where it became toxic to the plants, again threatening the progress of evolution. Now nature invented another surprising and ingenious solution. Plants are producers; what was needed was consumers. Organisms came along which did not produce their own nutrients, but instead consumed plants, using the stored nutrients for their own needs and releasing carbon dioxide. The respiration of these animals also consumed oxygen and thereby reduced the excess, eventually bringing about a balance with plants. To this happy solution there was a down side. The very process which saved the plants from oxygen toxicity required their death. This was the first appearance of food, and it was inescapably linked to a form of violence, the killing of plants. It did not take long for nature to devise a more efficient form of food; soon animals learned to consume other animals. Whereas herbivores must spend most of their time eating and digesting their food, carnivores need relatively infrequent kills of their prey with its highly concentrated energy content. Here again, a new form of violence appears. Violence is nothing new to the evolutionary process. The formation of our Earth, for example, resulted from the violent explosion of our ancestor supernova which bequeathed to us the higher chemical elements. Prior to the emergence of human beings, all was carried out by physical laws or by instinct: there was no self-reflection, no moral choice. Still, even though there was no moral choice involved, these violent transformations can be regarded as a sort of self sacrifice built into the structure of the universe. Perhaps the universe, sensing that human beings would come along later, arranged it all as a lesson to us, to teach us that only by losing our own life do we find it. With human beings, the killing of plants and animals for food, while still necessary, is no longer instinctual; the degree of violence involved is largely within our conscious control. Our ancient ancestors hunted and killed, skillfully and systematically, but also respectfully. They considered the hunting and killing part of a sacred drama, with a sense of the sacrifice being exacted of the animal. They followed up the slaughter with a ritual which apologized to the animal, pointing out that it was only by necessity that they killed and asking forgiveness. This ritual has a faint echo in our traditional blessing before meals. In the blessing there is an awareness that the food is a gift from the Creator and perhaps a reflection on how many hands it has had to go through to reach our table. But there is rarely a sense of the sacrifice being made by the plants and animals so that we may have nourishment. For us, food is a commodity. It appears on our table without any sense of the living creatures from which it is derived. There is no regret at the death of these creatures, at their sacrifice to sustain us. For us, they are merely so many objects placed on earth for our use. But Thomas Berry reminds us that there are no objects in the universe, only subjects. Subjects are to be respected and cared for; they should be the objects of our compassion. Modern agribusiness has reached the ultimate in objectification of the plants and animals which become our food. Living organisms are considered just so much raw material to be transformed on a factory-farm into so much product as efficiently as possible. Even more important than product-food is product-profits. It is not surprising that much violence is thereby produced, not instinctually and by necessity as in nature, but fully intentionally. Few consumers of meat appreciate the feed-lot system, for example, which produces our beef. Calves are shipped to central holding areas where they are practically immobilized within pens and given scientifically formulated feed, perhaps along with antibiotics and hormones. After all, the object is to have them gain as much weight as possible as soon as possible so as to have the greatest payoff at the slaughterhouse. We all know the formula for gaining weight: lots of food and no exercise. Is this not cruelty and a form of violence? Is it far-fetched to believe that the suffering of the animal is conveyed in some way embedded in the food and passed on to the consumer? As another example, consider agricultural crops. Again, the objective of agribusiness is to produce maximum yield from a given acreage. A single strain of corn, for example, becomes the exclusive crop over many acres, a monoculture which goes contrary to the natural need for diversity. Fertilizer, pesticides, and often irrigation boost efficiency, as does fossil-fueled farm machinery. Even genetic modification can be introduced, sometimes to make the plant resistant to a particular disease, sometimes to make it resistant to a specific herbicide which would then be poured all over to kill weeds. Again, the farm becomes simply a factory. Actually, our insensitivity to these things does not really hurt the plants and animals as much as it hurts ourselves. It results in poorer nutrition for us, and it also hardens our hearts toward our fellow creatures in the universe. Let us try as far as possible to select food with compassion. Let us also be grateful for our food, not only to the Creator, but also to the plants and animals which have given their lives for us, and most of all to the Universe which makes it all possible. Dom Roberti |