In my last article, I posed the question that plagued me during my semester abroad: Can we travel and honestly call ourselves environmentalists? This week, I am facing yet another challenge against my identity as an environmentalist. I am working for enemy number one: the meat industry. I won’t disclose the name of my new place of employment, but here’s what you need to know:
It’s a BBQ restaurant and I’m vegetarian.
The irony of the situation did not hit me until the end of my first day of training when my manager served me a platter of smoking hot beef and pork. It dawned on me then that I hadn’t seen meat on my plate since I transitioned to a vegetarian diet almost three years ago. The smell of BBQ went straight to my nose and I had to put my hands under my legs to stop myself from pushing the plate in the opposite direction.
“This is embarrassing,” I mumbled to my new manager, “But I don’t eat meat.”
“Oh,” he blinked in confusion. “Well… you can bring it home to someone, but lemme go through what’s in front of you.”
He rattled off the names of the dishes that I had studied during the previous two hours of training: tri-tip, baby back, spare rib, brisket. The only time my fork touched any of it was when I scraped it into a to-go bag for my friend’s carnivorous boyfriend.
“It’s a BBQ restaurant and I’m vegetarian.”
“Why are you working here?” was the overwhelming response from my coworkers when they found out that I don’t eat meat. Initially, my answer was clear-cut: I needed money so I took a job. After working for over a month now, my answer has become more complicated.
Fact: Meat and dairy consumption in America is trending upwards.
Speculation: Am I contributing to this trend by working in the meat industry? Does abstaining from eating meat offset its sale? How does one calculate a meat-neutral lifestyle?
Pondering these contradictions at my host stand, I realized that I’m a registered herbivore at the carnivore convention.
Excluding religious affiliations and allergies, going vegetarian in the United States is seen less as a dietary choice and more as a political stance. In American culture, vegetarians lean more left while meat-eaters are typically more conservative.
The left is most concerned with the ethics of the meat industry as it relates to animal rights and environmental sustainability. When we point and wag our fingers, who are we blaming? A farmer in a straw hat in a red barnyard?
City dwellers get their meat from Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations (CAFOs), which are ethically questionable operations. Our issue is with them, not small family farmers.
It’s no coincidence that there is an overlap between vegetarians and liberals in America. This group of people, myself included, often do not see where meat comes from. It’s a mystery to us, so we can fill in the blanks as we see fit. We can view meat production as a wholly unethical industry.
This, however, is not the absolute truth. Raising animals for consumption is said by local farmers to be a humbling experience. They eat the meat to honor its life.
I can understand this. During my time working at the BBQ restaurant, I’ve developed an oddly intimate relationship with meat — one that I have never experienced before being immersed in a meat-eating culture. I’ve learned to identify all of the different variations of chicken, pork and beef that we serve. I know what part of the animal they come from. I know what the meat is rubbed in and how long it needs to roast. I see how our cooks honor the animals with the care they put into making delicious dishes, and I see happy people walk out of the restaurant rubbing their full bellies.
Will I start eating meat again? Not anytime soon. I still see the environmental value in a plant based diet. But working in a BBQ restaurant has opened my eyes to how ingrained meat is in our culture and politics.
Annika White PZ ’24 is an environmental columnist from Southport, Connecticut. She enjoys hammocking, journaling and making playlists on Spotify.