Core Value 4: Food.
Most previous SOSes have featured a vegan kitchen for most of the participants, and a ‘First Peoples’ Kitchen’ which prepared meat-based meals for the Aboriginal delegates attending. This year we’re playing with this dividing line, and will offer a choice between something soy/legume based, or some meat, for the protein component of one meal each day. The meat will be sourced from local, agro-ecological farms conformant to the principle that eating animals can, in a select few cases, play an essential role in the healthy reproduction of ecological systems.
Certainly, many of us feel uncomfortable with the idea that an animal has died in order to feed the attendees of SOS. But the suffering of organic life in all its forms (of soils, of non-human and human animals) is implicated at every level of our current food system, from habitat destruction for monocrop plantation, to soil mining, to the ongoing use of rodenticides to kill marsupial ‘pests’ (even on stockless organic farms). The ideal of a ‘cruelty-free’ diet reproduces the myth that consumer choices alone can deal with systemic problems. We’d like SOS to seriously challenge the mass suffering inflicted by the global food system, rather than attempting to ethically insulate itself from this.
We have sourced the beef from Boxgum Grazing, a farm which, following agro-ecological principles, aims to restore the ecological health of grassland systems just to the north of Canberra. Essential to soil health in these systems is the eating and pooing of grasses by herds of tightly-bunched, roaming herbivores: and essential to the management of these herbivores are the farmers (and their customers, since the farmers need a livelihood). Such a system proposes that humans, while aware that the death of any living thing is tragic, in eating the cows play a deeply necessary role in the healthy reproduction of the system as a whole. Where in industrial agriculture animals are degraded to the status of machines for converting grains into protein, Claire and Sam from Boxgum have described the human animals in their system (their buyers) as “basically tools for taking better care of soil.” It is out of this kind of humility, and not out of any sense of entitlement, that we offer meat to participants at SOS.
Canberra is surrounded by rocky foothills, inhospitable to large protein-rich crop plantations (such as soybean), but perfect for roving livestock. Eating animals is the only way to source protein in this region without importing it from interstate or overseas through oil-intensive processes. Certainly the modes of meat and dairy production (as well as levels of consumption) in our current system are an ecological and ethical nightmare: but whether a vegan diet, for every person, in every part of the world, would be sustainable, or end the suffering of non-human and human animals, remains an open question.
This discussion is a huge and complex one: what about methane emissions from ruminants, for example? What about cultural and culinary traditions involving meat? There are two special ‘dialogue sessions’, as well as many other workshops, set aside at SOS for friendly and fruitful discussions about food systems and our role within them.
We (the organisers) also haven’t made up our minds, and that’s ok! Some of us are vegan-freegan, others vegetarian, others vegan, others omnivorous. But behind all these terms lie a much more complex range of choices, many of which are political, rather than consumer choices. Maybe – just maybe – the question of how we relate to other organic life (including one another) in the provision of our food is bigger than meat or veg.
Certainly, many of us feel uncomfortable with the idea that an animal has died in order to feed the attendees of SOS. But the suffering of organic life in all its forms (of soils, of non-human and human animals) is implicated at every level of our current food system, from habitat destruction for monocrop plantation, to soil mining, to the ongoing use of rodenticides to kill marsupial ‘pests’ (even on stockless organic farms). The ideal of a ‘cruelty-free’ diet reproduces the myth that consumer choices alone can deal with systemic problems. We’d like SOS to seriously challenge the mass suffering inflicted by the global food system, rather than attempting to ethically insulate itself from this.
We have sourced the beef from Boxgum Grazing, a farm which, following agro-ecological principles, aims to restore the ecological health of grassland systems just to the north of Canberra. Essential to soil health in these systems is the eating and pooing of grasses by herds of tightly-bunched, roaming herbivores: and essential to the management of these herbivores are the farmers (and their customers, since the farmers need a livelihood). Such a system proposes that humans, while aware that the death of any living thing is tragic, in eating the cows play a deeply necessary role in the healthy reproduction of the system as a whole. Where in industrial agriculture animals are degraded to the status of machines for converting grains into protein, Claire and Sam from Boxgum have described the human animals in their system (their buyers) as “basically tools for taking better care of soil.” It is out of this kind of humility, and not out of any sense of entitlement, that we offer meat to participants at SOS.
Canberra is surrounded by rocky foothills, inhospitable to large protein-rich crop plantations (such as soybean), but perfect for roving livestock. Eating animals is the only way to source protein in this region without importing it from interstate or overseas through oil-intensive processes. Certainly the modes of meat and dairy production (as well as levels of consumption) in our current system are an ecological and ethical nightmare: but whether a vegan diet, for every person, in every part of the world, would be sustainable, or end the suffering of non-human and human animals, remains an open question.
This discussion is a huge and complex one: what about methane emissions from ruminants, for example? What about cultural and culinary traditions involving meat? There are two special ‘dialogue sessions’, as well as many other workshops, set aside at SOS for friendly and fruitful discussions about food systems and our role within them.
We (the organisers) also haven’t made up our minds, and that’s ok! Some of us are vegan-freegan, others vegetarian, others vegan, others omnivorous. But behind all these terms lie a much more complex range of choices, many of which are political, rather than consumer choices. Maybe – just maybe – the question of how we relate to other organic life (including one another) in the provision of our food is bigger than meat or veg.