It is October 4 - World Animal Day.
Of course this makes me think of my own animal, our pet cat Manchego, who has been a member of our little family since 2009.
But it makes me think of other things, too.
A couple of weeks ago Dutch researchers presented the first lab-grown hamburger to the world. For years I have been pessimistic, or even downright depressed, about the way we deal with animals as a source of food, but this left me hopeful. Like it or not, this appears to be where we are heading and I, for one, welcome it with great enthusiasm. Moreover, I do not appear to be alone in this - Andras Forgacs agrees with me. When I showed this to my students, though, they could not have been more repulsed by the idea. I guess there is still a long way to go.
I have been a vegetarian for more than two years now, so I no longer crave meat or fish. Last week Jochem and I were in The Hague to have dinner at Bacco Perbacco to cash in my birthday gift to Jochem from April and we made a quick stop at The Vegetarian Butcher to spend a small fortune on fake animal products. It turns out that we find their fish salads too 'fishy'. I guess we've turned into 'those people'.
Darcy Cosper once wrote that "principles don't mean anything if you abandon them when they become inconvenient or uncomfortable". Truth is, though, that while I do not miss meat or fish, it can be tiring to be a person of principle all the time. Why travel to Morocco if there is nothing to eat there but lamb? But then I remember one of my favorite excerpts from Jonathan Safran Foer's Eating Animals about sentimentality:
"The valuing of emotions over reality. Sentimentality is widely considered out of touch, weak. Very often, those who express concern about (or even an interest in) the conditions in which farmed animals are raised are disregarded as sentimentalists. But it's worth taking a step back to ask who is the sentimentalist and who is the realist.
Is caring to know about the treatment of farmed animals a confrontation with the facts about the animals and ourselves or an avoidance of them? Is arguing that a sentiment of compassion should be given greater value than a cheaper burger (or having a burger at all) an expression of emotion and impulse or an engagement with reality and our moral intuitions?
Two friends are ordering lunch. One says, 'I'm in the mood for a burger,' and orders it. The other says, 'I'm in the mood for a burger,' but remembers that there are things more important to him than what he is in the mood for at any given moment, and order something else.
Who is the sentimentalist?"
Manchego and I will be home alone today, since Jochem is going out with some old colleagues. For myself I am making a Roman pasta dish for dinner called cacio e pepe - spaghetti with two of my all-time favorite ingredients: Italian cheeses and lots of crushed black pepper. Manchego will be having white fish for dinner. He is a cat, after all.
I wish you a Happy World Animal Day!
Of course this makes me think of my own animal, our pet cat Manchego, who has been a member of our little family since 2009.
But it makes me think of other things, too.
A couple of weeks ago Dutch researchers presented the first lab-grown hamburger to the world. For years I have been pessimistic, or even downright depressed, about the way we deal with animals as a source of food, but this left me hopeful. Like it or not, this appears to be where we are heading and I, for one, welcome it with great enthusiasm. Moreover, I do not appear to be alone in this - Andras Forgacs agrees with me. When I showed this to my students, though, they could not have been more repulsed by the idea. I guess there is still a long way to go.
I have been a vegetarian for more than two years now, so I no longer crave meat or fish. Last week Jochem and I were in The Hague to have dinner at Bacco Perbacco to cash in my birthday gift to Jochem from April and we made a quick stop at The Vegetarian Butcher to spend a small fortune on fake animal products. It turns out that we find their fish salads too 'fishy'. I guess we've turned into 'those people'.
Darcy Cosper once wrote that "principles don't mean anything if you abandon them when they become inconvenient or uncomfortable". Truth is, though, that while I do not miss meat or fish, it can be tiring to be a person of principle all the time. Why travel to Morocco if there is nothing to eat there but lamb? But then I remember one of my favorite excerpts from Jonathan Safran Foer's Eating Animals about sentimentality:
"The valuing of emotions over reality. Sentimentality is widely considered out of touch, weak. Very often, those who express concern about (or even an interest in) the conditions in which farmed animals are raised are disregarded as sentimentalists. But it's worth taking a step back to ask who is the sentimentalist and who is the realist.
Is caring to know about the treatment of farmed animals a confrontation with the facts about the animals and ourselves or an avoidance of them? Is arguing that a sentiment of compassion should be given greater value than a cheaper burger (or having a burger at all) an expression of emotion and impulse or an engagement with reality and our moral intuitions?
Two friends are ordering lunch. One says, 'I'm in the mood for a burger,' and orders it. The other says, 'I'm in the mood for a burger,' but remembers that there are things more important to him than what he is in the mood for at any given moment, and order something else.
Who is the sentimentalist?"
Manchego and I will be home alone today, since Jochem is going out with some old colleagues. For myself I am making a Roman pasta dish for dinner called cacio e pepe - spaghetti with two of my all-time favorite ingredients: Italian cheeses and lots of crushed black pepper. Manchego will be having white fish for dinner. He is a cat, after all.
I wish you a Happy World Animal Day!
