{"id":878,"date":"2015-09-03T12:08:19","date_gmt":"2015-09-03T16:08:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.dailypitchfork.org\/?p=878"},"modified":"2015-09-03T14:21:17","modified_gmt":"2015-09-03T18:21:17","slug":"will-the-clean-plate-sustainable-foodie-club-embrace-pig-anus-for-dinner","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.dailypitchfork.org\/?p=878","title":{"rendered":"Will the Clean Plate Sustainable Foodie Club Embrace the Most Private Part of the Pig?"},"content":{"rendered":"\"Facebook\"<\/a>\"twitter\"<\/a>\"reddit\"<\/a>\"pinterest\"<\/a>\"linkedin\"<\/a>\"mail\"<\/a>

The current rage in sustainable agriculture circles is to\u00a0avoid food waste<\/a>. But it\u2019s a qualified kind of advocacy. Proponents don\u2019t suggest avoiding the most wasteful forms of agriculture\u2014by eliminating animal products\u2014but instead simply ask us to consume our way out of the problem by eating the whole animal rather than limiting ourselves to the traditional cuts.<\/p>\n

This is a troublesome approach for at least two reasons. First, as suggested, it obscures the underlying source of food waste.\u00a0Eating a pig\u2019s face<\/a>\u00a0(or its other end<\/a>) might seem to be a virtuous example of reducing food waste, but it\u2019s an irrelevant ecological gesture compared to not raising that pig to eat in the first place. In this respect, the current whole-hog ethic is yet another case of wishfully thinking we can eat our way out of a dire environmental predicament. It\u2019s the kind of logic that will take us to our global grave.<\/p>\n

Second, and more problematically, this approach to\u00a0reducing food waste mimics the efficiency of\u00a0industrial animal agriculture that foodies are so quick to condemn. To a significant degree, the industrial slaughterhouse is the epitome of food waste avoidance\u2014all blood, offal, bone matter is commodified and consumed. Pink slime\u2014lamented by foodies as a sickening outcome of industrial agriculture\u2014is in fact a supremely efficient example of using the whole animal. So is harvesting pig anus\u00a0as a calamari substitute. And dehydrating blood for dog food. And . . . you get the picture.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s an inconvenient underlying fact about environmental virtue. It requires rules and it requires sacrifices. But\u00a0these often severely infringe on our freedom\u2014in this case, our culinary freedom. Eating rabbit guts, or goat testicles, or the face of a swine might make for an\u00a0edgy\u00a0Facebook post, the kind that rock-ribbed devotees\u00a0of waste reduction like to wave about. But these options are little more than stunts that hide the dark reality of unnecessary and immeasurably wasteful animal slaughter.<\/p>\n\"Facebook\"<\/a>\"twitter\"<\/a>\"reddit\"<\/a>\"pinterest\"<\/a>\"linkedin\"<\/a>\"mail\"<\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The current rage in sustainable agriculture circles is to\u00a0avoid food waste. But it\u2019s a qualified kind of advocacy. Proponents don\u2019t suggest avoiding the most wasteful forms of agriculture\u2014by eliminating animal products\u2014but instead simply ask us to consume our way out of the problem by eating the whole animal rather than limiting ourselves to the traditional cuts. This is a troublesome approach for at least two reasons. First, as suggested, it obscures the underlying source of food waste.\u00a0Eating a pig\u2019s face\u00a0(or its other end) might seem to be a virtuous example of reducing food waste, but it\u2019s an irrelevant ecological gesture compared to not raising that pig to eat in the first place. In this respect, the current whole-hog ethic is yet another case of wishfully thinking we can eat our way out of a dire environmental predicament. It\u2019s the kind of logic that will take us to our global grave. Second, and more problematically, this approach to\u00a0reducing food waste mimics the efficiency of\u00a0industrial animal agriculture that foodies are so quick to condemn. To a significant degree, the industrial slaughterhouse is the epitome of food waste avoidance\u2014all blood, offal, bone matter is commodified and consumed. Pink slime\u2014lamented by foodies as a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":879,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[6],"tags":[136,135,31,134],"class_list":["post-878","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-opinion","tag-food-waste","tag-sustainability","tag-sustainable-agriculture","tag-whole-hog"],"acf":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.dailypitchfork.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/09\/Calamari.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p54Vzk-ea","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dailypitchfork.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/878","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dailypitchfork.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dailypitchfork.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dailypitchfork.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dailypitchfork.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=878"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/www.dailypitchfork.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/878\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":889,"href":"https:\/\/www.dailypitchfork.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/878\/revisions\/889"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dailypitchfork.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/879"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dailypitchfork.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=878"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dailypitchfork.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=878"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dailypitchfork.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=878"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}