I wasn't going to blog about Martha Stewart's vegetarian Thanksgiving show, but when I saw positive coverage of the show on Vegdaily.com and Vegan.com, I had to set the record straight.
Martha Stewart featured some vegetarian and vegan Thanksgiving recipes, but did not do a vegetarian-themed show. Some of the segments were very anti-vegetarian.
I have a love/hate relationship with Martha Stewart. I used to subscribe to her magazine, and I love her crafts, her style, her eye. In 2005, Stewart narrated and appeared in an anti-fur video, and her daughter Alexis is a vegetarian. But I stopped buying the magazine when she went to prison, and I cringe whenever I see her cooking meat, cracking eggs and pouring milk into mixing bowls. So when news went around that she was doing a vegetarian Thanksgiving show, I was cautiously optimistic. I was disappointed.
Her first guest was Robert Kenner, producer of the documentary Food, Inc. Stewart started by mentioning Oprah being sued by Texas cattlemen for disparaging beef, so I couldn't help but wonder if the segment was influenced by fear of a libel suit. During this segment, Kenner and Stewart blame obesity, diabetes and heart disease on corn and soy. After mentioning that animals in factory farms are "tortured," Stewart says to the audience:
Go to your local farmers and support local farm community (sic) as they are trying very hard to provide you with poultry and pork and beef that is grass-fed, that isn't sent to the feedlots.
Her second guest was Joel Salatin, one of the farmers featured in Food, Inc. Salatin's farm, Polyface, produces "pasture-based" beef, pork, poultry and rabbit meat. The Polyface website explains how the animals are rotated to different pastures on a daily basis. And that they respect and honor the animals. You can't make this stuff up - a two-faced farm called "Polyface" claims to respect and honor the very animals they slaughter and sell.
When asked whether the entire country can be fed with meat produced in this way, Salatin naively responds, "Absolutely." Stewart ends the segment by thanking Salatin for "so honorably preserving the rich heritage of American farming."
Neither of these segments had anything to do with vegetarianism. Vegetarianism has nothing to do with feeding grass to cows or buying locally produced meat. It's about not eating meat. I didn't expect Martha Stewart's vegetarian Thanksgiving show to promote veganism, but I did expect it to promote vegetarianism. But sadly, today, too many people believe that caring about animals is about eating them with full awareness of their suffering.
Both segments also promoted the myth that Americans can continue to eat 9 or 10 billion land animals per year, and we can destroy and deforest enough land to raise these animals on wide pastures without annihilating our wildlife and our environment.
Only 3% of the beef produced in the U.S. is grass-fed, and already, thousands of wild horses are displaced by this relatively small number of cattle.
The only reason we are able to produce enough meat to satisfy American appetites is because factory farmed animals are raised on intensively grown grain. As environmentally destructive as feedlot beef is, the land used to produce that beef is minimized because the grain is grown in dense, high-yield monocultures and the animals reach slaughter weight faster on grain than on grass. Factory farming started because scientists in the 1960s were looking for a way to meet the meat demands of an exploding human population. In a report titled, "Putting Meat on the Table: Industrial Farm Animal Production in America," the Pew Commission on Industrial Farm Animal Production wrote:
Animal agriculture has experienced "warp speed" growth over the last 50 years, with intensification resulting in an almost logarithmic increase in numbers. The availability of high-yield and inexpensive grains has fueled this increase and allowed for continually increasing rates of growth in order to feed the burgeoning human population.
To further annoy me, in another segment in this same episode, Stewart says to Jonathan Safran Foer, author of Eating Animals (Buy Direct), "I've been thinking a lot about the animals, and I think backyard animal husbandry is the way to go."
I also have to disagree with Foer's characterization of the episode. Foer wrote that Stewart devoted, "an entire show to the horrors of the meat industry without feeling a need to offer the industry a voice." As a producer of beef, pork, poultry and rabbit meat, Salatin was the voice of the meat industry. Not factory farmers, but the meat industry, nonetheless. And Stewart agreed with and praised Salatin, wholeheartedly.
This week, Gary Steiner eloquently discussed the issue of humane meat in an op-ed in the New York Times, titled, "Animal, Vegetable, Miserable":
Even if it is raised "free range," it still lives a life of pain and confinement that ends with the butcher's knife . . . [M]ost people just don't care about the lives or fortunes of animals. If they did care, they would learn as much as possible about the ways in which our society systematically abuses animals, and they would make what is at once a very simple and a very difficult choice: to forswear the consumption of animal products of all kinds.
We don't need more grass-fed beef, and we don't need more people raising chickens in their back yard. To save animals and to save the environment, we need to reproduce less and we need to spread veganism.
I'm sure that my love/hate of Martha Stewart will continue. I'm glad that Stewart discussed animal suffering and provided some vegan and vegetarian recipes, and very glad that she mentioned that she's going to have a vegetarian Thanksgiving at her daughter's house. But this episode did not live up to its promise.
Nancy Ostertag / Getty Images
Thanksgiving Links:
- Bush and Palin Pardon Turkeys
- Tips for Vegetarians at Thanksgiving
- How to Accomodate Your Vegetarian and Vegan Guests at Thanksgiving
- Vegan Thanksgiving Desserts
- Vegan Green Bean Casserole Recipe
Suggested Reading:
- Arguments For and Against Humane Meat
- What's Wrong with Grass-Fed Beef?
- .A Streetcar Named Denial - The Conscious Carnivore
- What's Wrong with Livestock on Public Lands?
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Comments
Well said, Doris.
I think MS falls into the same situation that many intelligent people do… They honestly know what needs to be done, but because of marketing issues – They will only go so far; For fear of lost revenue, they abstain from presenting the whole picture. And if they leave the subject mostly “rosey”, people can ignore it and continue on with their purchases of meat and meat cookbooks. Always been about the money.
Happy ThanksLiving Day – Feast in Peace!
Thanks Doris – you’re column on this subject is, as always, right one the money. There are some so-called “animal rights activists” sending messages to their distribution lists asking people to thank Martha Stewart for her show. I think we should do the opposite – we should slam Stewart for supporting and promoting the disgraceful lie that is “happy meat.” Marth Stewart is a tool and so too are those who think this show promoted a positive vegetarian message.
I think the arguments presented in this article were weak. I also think, for goodness sakes, it is just a Martha Stewart show. She is not GOD, even though she may act like it at times, cut the woman some slack.
Just a quick note- The “wild horses” that you are so worried about grass-fed cattle displacing are an invasive species. They aren’t an original part of the North American ecosystem and have been taking resources away from native species for generations.
No, I’m not a meat eater, I’m just a 16 year (out of 37) veg who is really getting frustrated by some peoples inability to reason (or is it just a desire to stay in attack mode?). Your attack on Polyface, for instance. They are taking steps (in comparison to standard factory farms) but you seem to want ‘all or nothing’ and you want it instantly. If you knew of 100 children that were starving, but were only able to help a few of them, would you let them suffer until you had the resources to feed them all? Would you criticize someone who did help the ones they could? (If so, there are plenty of targets available since the Haiti disaster. Why some of them are even only foster parenting ONE orphan!)
Are you on the defensive yet? If so, then I’ve demonstrated my point. Some companies are trying to go about things in a gentler way, so why not ease up on them and aim the venom at the ones who are still literally torturing animals to make a profit? Continuing to attack the people who are attempting to make a difference, no matter how small, is counter-productive.
Yeah, I’ve already donned my asbestos undies, so flame away.
Thanks for your comment, Jeremy.
The cattle are not a native species, either, so why should wild horses be removed to accommodate cattle? No one is breeding wild horses, but people are breeding cattle, so it’s easier to reduce the cattle population than the horse population.
If Polyface were merely a farm that allowed its animals to roam free before they were slaughtered, I wouldn’t have mentioned them. They probably wouldn’t have even appeard on my radar. But that’s not the whole story. First, Polyface appeared on a supposedly vegetarian-themed show, and it’s important for people to know that “vegetarian” does not mean someone who eats free-roaming meat. Also, Polyface claims to “respect and honor” the animals. If you respected and honored someone, would you kill them and sell their body parts? Third, Polyface claims that everyone can be fed in this way, and that is simply false.
If you explore my site, you’ll find numerous articles and blog posts criticizing factory farming.
Jeremy said smart stuff. I grew up on a farm AND I worked for the BLM horse program. Those horses are not part of the natural eco system and are ruining many native species of plants and then of course the true wild life that feeds from it. I love all animals, even stupid humans who as Jeremy noted often aren’t thinking things all the way through. I think you need a lot more education on the way the world can be fed before you keep up this righteous attitude. I read Joel Salatin’s book You Can Farm. Have you? I think he makes a great plan for feeding the world. We ALL benefit from his plan. I grieve for every animal that dies whether its by the butcher or by the grain producer who tears up the habitate for the wild animals. We all are guilty of consumption. You too.
Wow! Okay, the farmers have to have some way of making a living and animals can be respected even if they’re going to be butchered. Martha Stewart is just trying to show people what goes on with their food while it’s being made as well as Robert Kenner. My class just watched his movie and it even makes me, someone who loves McDonald’s and restaurants like that not want to eat fast food anymore. He’s just trying to get the information that’s hidden from us out there!
I will right away clutch your rss feed as I can’t find your e-mail subscription link or e-newsletter service. Do you have any? Please let me recognise so that I may just subscribe. Thanks.