Chelsea Green - in general one of my favorite sites - is running a campaign right now that is making me crazy. "Meatless in May." The premise being that meat production is responsible for huge greenhouse gas emissions and we should recognize that.

But when you dig a little deeper into the website, you find out that they're talking about something else. Here's what they say: "When one takes into account the chemicals, the grain, the fossil fuels, the medications, the shipping, the storage, the packaging, and the medical aftermath associated with eating a diet full of corn-fed, industrialized meats..."

In other words, the villain here isn't red meat, it's industrially produced red meat.

If I sound defensive here, it's because I am. I am, after all, a card-carrying member of the Park Slope Food Coop, home to an astonishing number of New York's vegetarians, vegans, raw vegans, and heaven only knows what else. (I once overheard a food coop shopper telling a friend about all the foods she had given up and complaining that she still didn't feel any better. It was a long, long list, and I felt like suggesting that maybe she should try eating....)

A few years back, the Coop decided, after a considerable battle, to start selling local, grass-fed, humanely raised meat. During the debate, I was astonished at how many of the anti-meat-selling contingent seemed to have drawn all their ammunition from the entirely valid arguments against industrially raised meat, and didn't even seem to have noticed that was not what the coop was proposing to sell.

If you believe that it is morally wrong to kill animals for food, then of course you won't eat meat - in May or any other month. But if you simply want to raise consciousness about the dreadful environmental effects of industrial meat production, why don't you at least point out that there are other kinds of meat available? From animals that spend their lives as nature intended, eating the grass they were created to eat, treated with love and respect? And that the people who raise them struggle against considerable odds, and need all the help they can get from environmentally conscious consumers?

If, instead of giving up meat in May, Chelsea Green's readers were to buy only locally raised, grass-fed meat, they'd not only be doing the environment a favor. They'd also be doing the local farm economy a favor, helping their communities become more self-sustaining, helping to preserve open land and a varied landscape...the benefits go on and on.

Not all meat is the same. Adjectives matter.

Labels: Chelsea Green, grass-fed, local food, meatless in May, park slope food coop

I had a chance this week to watch an urban legend grow first-hand.

I'm a member of the Park Slope Food Coop, and my job (everyone at PSFC has to work) is helping to chair the monthly General Meeting that sets the rules. At January's meeting, a member asked about what Israeli products we sold. Almost in passing, she said she thought we should boycott Israeli products (all four of them). She was politely told that to make such a proposition, she needed to submit it to the agenda committee.

And that was that. We thought.

Then came a story in the Jewish Daily Forward saying the coop was considering a boycott of Israeli products. On New York Magazine's Daily Grub blog, that became "Park Slope Coop Bans Israeli Food." Soon the blogosphere was alight from here to Jerusalem and back. "We are going to protest these leftard dhimmis," said one blogger, adding indignantly - " in Brooklyn of all places. This is inexcusable."

As the February GM approached, the staff was nervous enough to mull police protection. So was the rabbi of the temple that hosts our GMs. It was starting to look like there might be an ugly scene.

It all got so tense that last night, walking to the GM half an hour late, I half expected to hear sirens and see flashing lights. But alas, no such excitement (although I was later told that a police van was circling the block - just in case). All I found was an incredibly crowded meeting that had long since disposed of what was, in fact, a complete non-issue. As anyone who had looked at the February agenda knew, there was no such proposal.

And now I know how urban legends are born. Like a game of telephone.

Labels: food, park slope food coop, urban legend