Perhaps this is a good follow on post for the previous which began by discussing eating disorders.

The word "flexitarian," meaning someone who mostly eats vegetarian with the occasional cheesesteak thrown in, has been around for a while. But only recently have former vegetarians been so smug about their forays to the dark side. "There is something almost primal about it," writes lapsed vegetarian Tara Austen Weaver, describing her first meat-buying expedition in The Butcher and the Vegetarian. "I haven't actually hunted dinner myself, but I set my sights and claimed the prize I sought." The "primalness" of the meat-eating (or meat-purchasing) experience comes up a lot in these conversion narratives, which inevitably take place at a quaint, family-run butcher shop. Some of these shops are even run by former vegetarians and vegans, such as Fleisher's, the upstate New York store where Julie Powell (of Julie and Julia fame) learned to carve up a steer for her forthcoming Cleaving.

Buying only grass-fed, sustainably raised (and incredibly expensive) meat allows former vegetarians to maintain the same sanctimony they expressed with their old "I don't eat anything with a face" T shirts. In response to an article by Jonathan Safran Foer about his decision to give up meat, a Brooklyn meat moralist wrote, "lovingly raised meat is not as hard to find as [Safran Foer] seems to think—at least not if you have the good fortune to live near a farmers' market. Almost all the sheep and cattle and most of the pigs and chickens raised by the farmers who sell at those markets have spent their lives in the fields, free to run, graze and root as their natures dictate." This is the argument used by born-again carnivores like Katzen: eating meat is not ethically wrong. Eating ethically wrong meat (i.e., the cheap, mass-processed, hormone-stuffed burgers and steaks that constitute 80 percent of the meat sold in the U.S.) is wrong.

IMV it's not about right and wrong, not an ethical issue at all. It's about good nutrition, good flavor, attractive scenery (eat the view - yada, yada) and other aesthetic preferences rather than ethics.

While it's true that sustainably raised, grass-fed beef may be better for the consumer, it's hard to argue that it's ultimately better for the cow. What these steak apologists seem to be missing is that no matter how "lovingly" the cow was raised, no matter how much grazing or rooting he did in his life, he gave up that life to become their dinner. Carnivores who only ate the flesh of animals that had died of natural causes at the end of long, satisfying lives might have a claim to moral superiority, but what to call them? Corpsevores? And if these organic farm animals have such great lives, isn't the more humane thing to eat a cage-raised, industrially processed chicken? At least we'd be putting it out of its misery.

So notes the lunatic fringe devoid of reason but filled with mean spirit. Cows are doing very well as a species. There are certainly more of them living better lives for longer periods than they would in a world that did not value them. Similarly, if you think even just a tiny bit, something that may be quite difficult for those whose brains are deficient in DHA, eating CAFO livestock does not reduce their numbers, it increases them.

More seriously, you have to think of the whole agronomic system to make ethical decisions. Just as Mother Nature never farms without livestock, no ethical human agronomic system can be sustained without them. If you need to use food to feel superior then being choosy and spending freely makes more sense as a costly signal of your high status.