We publish quality short stories, poetry, extracts from forthcoming novels, and articles and essays on topics of social, environmental and cultural significance.ISSUE NO. 115
SUMMER 2008
ESSAY
We only fear what we don't know
One afternoon, on the bus from Inala going into Brisbane city, the bus driver and I were chatting. He’d seen my student card and asked what I was studying. I told him I was writing about birth and death at home.
‘Plenty of that around here,’ he said, indicating the Housing Commission sprawl of the western suburbs.
‘What do you mean?’
‘Dying at home and all that. People killing themselves... suicide.’ I explained to him that I wasn’t writing about suicide, but about people who chose to manage birth and death in the home instead of being in a hospital. He liked that idea – ‘Just like the old days’ – and said it would ease the pressure on hospital beds. He also thought it a better way: ‘Who’d want to die in a hospital anyway? Not me, that’s for sure.’
No, not me, either. I’ve avoided hospitals for most of my life. I spent a lot of time in a children’s hospital as a baby, having my crooked neck ‘fixed’ with weekly neck-stretching torture sessions that left me screaming. After six months I still had a crooked neck and I never trusted hospitals again. One thing I know for sure is that I don’t want to die in one.But as we drove towards the city I remembered my Maori friend Barbara’s mother, dying in hospital with her family gathered around the bed.
Barbara’s mother had become seriously ill while visiting Brisbane. Eight adult children flew in from New Zealand and the far reaches of Australia to be together at Barbara’s house in Highgate Hill, near the hospital. I made a large orange and sultana cake and took it to the house one night. The door was open, all the lights were on, but the place looked like it had been suddenly abandoned. Outside a fire was burning low in an old tin drum, beer and whisky bottles were strewn on the ground, and the meaty smell of a barbecue hung in the air. No one was home. I guessed that they were at the hospital, so I put the cake on the bench in the kitchen and left a note.
The next day Barbara rang and said that her mother had died in the night. Later, I went back to visit the family with my oldest son. I didn’t want to intrude on their grief and thought I would just pass on my condolences and leave quickly but I was surprised by the mood in the house. Barbara’s sister met me at the door and said how good it was to wake up and see the cake on the bench and that the family had eaten it for breakfast, with their hands. I hugged Barbara and we talked of her mother’s death. The hospital had called while they were having the barbecue so she’d taken her plate of greasy meat to her mother’s bedside.
‘How could you eat?’ I asked.
‘I was hungry,’ she said.
The family had then sung to their mother as she died. I had a vivid image of the scene, so strong and earthy – the family smelling of beer, meat, and smoke, singing their mother to her death. Singing their love in the sterility of the hospital.
My son and I stayed for a long time with Barbara’s family that afternoon, soaking up everything that was going on. It was very relaxed. People drank, laughed, and Barbara’s sister cooked a big lamb roast for dinner, the Maori way. They weren’t mourning the death of their mother, they were celebrating her life.
Barbara had told me about her childhood in New Zealand, where death and wakes were regular and often enjoyable parts of growing up in a Maori family. It was not uncommon to see a body laid out in the front room, people gathering around it for the wake.
Some time later I saw an episode of The Human Body on television which dealt with death. In the program, a German man had chosen to die in his home, surrounded by the people he loved. He had stomach cancer and, as his death approached, young and old neighbours came to say goodbye and wish him well on his journey. My husband and I sat in front of the television, stunned by the intensity of that man’s home-death, and at the end we held each other and sobbed. I knew then that death, like birth, could be approached in a different way – in your own home, with people you trust and love by your side.
Then our elderly neighbour died. Muriel had been proud, stylish and elegant in a Katharine Hepburn way and had welcomed us warmly when we first moved into the neighbourhood. But she was diagnosed with cancer of the liver and was gone five months later. We all missed her. The house next door seemed so empty. I kept expecting to see her through the kitchen window, preparing her evening meal, or pottering about in her garden wearing her big sunhat. Her red broom still leant on the wall of the house, waiting.
Her funeral was sad. It was the first funeral I had ever been to and I didn’t realise how much the church ritual would affect me. As the coffin was carried down the centre aisle by her two sons, the mourners sang ‘Abide with Me’ and I couldn’t stop crying. I had to ask the woman next to me for tissues.
The month that followed was a dark time. I thought a lot about death and wondered about managing the death of someone I loved at home, rather than using a funeral home. I didn’t like the idea of strangers tending to the body of someone I loved. That seemed, to me, to be a ritual that I would like to do myself. But I didn’t know what physical changes happen to people’s bodies when they died, and not knowing this frightened me.
I rang a funeral home and spoke to a woman who worked there. She wasn’t sure why I wanted to know about the physical aspects of death, and answered carefully, not giving too much away. She did tell me, though, that they routinely sewed the deceased’s lips together to stop the mouth gaping. That shocked me. I decided then that if my husband or one of the kids became terminally ill, I would manage their death at home. Because of my fear of hospitals I had always chosen to have my babies at home and, just as I had prepared for each birth, I needed to know how to prepare for a home funeral.
I went to a funeral directors’ information night at one of the big funeral homes in Brisbane. The funeral directors spoke passionately about their work but I didn’t find many answers. We had a tour of the funeral home, then a question and answer session before supper, and although we didn’t see any bodies, knowing they were there was an eerie feeling. It all became very real for me when we visited the coffin room where each elaborate, polished box had a small copper plate with the name and age of the person who would go in it the next day.
Death felt very close.A few days after the Inala bus trip I stopped in at my friend Rowena’s house in Dutton Park. Her house is hidden down the end of a long driveway, away from the noise of a busy road, and always feels like a haven from the world outside.
Rowena had just had a shower and looked vibrant in a red shirt over a black Cambodian dress, her peroxide-blonde hair hanging loose around her shining face. I admired her natural style and as she made me a cup of tea I told her about my conversation with the bus driver.
Smiling wistfully, Rowena said, ‘My grandmother died at home. I realised later that it was just like homebirth and it was a revelation as to how wonderful it could be. My Nana was ninety-three, so it was natural. She’d had cancer for a long time and had been nursed at home by my mum. The Blue Nurses came in to help in the last few months too and they were fantastic. They bathed her and kept her drugs topped up. She was surrounded by women. Mum, my sister and I were sleeping with her, taking it in turns.
‘She’d been in a coma state for three days and had breathing difficulties – the death-rattle. But there were a couple of moments of lucidity when she woke up and said something to my little sister, something lovely. She had her last breath with my Auntie in the room and then we all went in and held her.’
Rowena cried as she remembered. ‘It was very peaceful and she looked happy.’
‘What a wonderful way to die,’ I said, ‘with your loved ones all around you.’
Rowena wiped her eyes and nodded, ‘All of a sudden she looked so young – her skin lost all its wrinkles. My sister and I went outside and got flowers and decorated her, covered her pillows and put hibiscus in her hands. The nurses came and cleaned up all the wee and poo – but we decorated her. It was awesome.’
‘And that’s what your grandmother wanted?’
Rowena laughed. ‘She was a bit loony by that stage, but she was born at home and I think that makes a big difference. I think people who are born at home – if you’re lucky you get to die at home too.’
If you’re lucky.I knew that another friend, Mariah, a homebirth midwife, had also helped her grandmother die at home. I hadn’t seen her in a long time but when I visited her in Woodford she was waiting for me on the steps of her house, looking just the same as always – straight dark-hennaed hair, a long pockmarked face with a huge smile, dressed in an old purple singlet and matching harem pants. As we sat on her veranda drinking coffee, I asked Mariah how they had managed their home death.
‘Well, Gran-nan had one of those advance health directives which stated that when her time came she didn’t want to be interfered with. When it was her turn she just wanted to go. She’d recently moved up to our house at Woodford and had only been there a very short while when she had a stroke. She didn’t want to go to hospital. Although she hadn’t started consulting the local GP, once he saw the advance health directive he was able to say, “Okay, I know what she wants.”’
‘That’s such a good idea,’ I said, ‘to have what you want in writing – like a birth plan.’
‘Well, she was beyond speaking by this stage, so he said, “I’ll just look in every day. There’s nothing much you can do. Just keep turning her, bathing her, and moistening her mouth and so forth.” And I said, “What about spoon feeding?” and he said, “Well look at it this way, the more you feed her the longer she’ll stay alive.” So he was basically just giving us permission to withdraw everything and just sit with her.’ Mariah sat back in her chair and drank some coffee.
‘Withdraw water as well?’ I asked, thinking how difficult that would be.
‘Yeah, and that was really hard because it took her three days from when she went unconscious to when she finally passed over. She didn’t have anything and when I tried putting water in her mouth she started choking and I thought, “Oh, I don’t want to kill her.” It’s one thing to sit with someone while they’re dying but if I’d put fluid down her and she choked to death that would have felt like murder. We had adult nappies on her and they were just sodden with this dark orange urine, really strong. All the fluid went out of her tissues and she shrivelled. Just shrank and shrank and shrank.’
‘And then after three days she...?’
‘She passed over. My sister and brother were both there and her breathing was very laboured. We were all present in the room when it was becoming obvious that she was letting go. She was such a strong woman and so in control of herself. Relaxing enough to die was the biggest struggle of her life. But it was very beautiful and time stood still. The energy really reminded me of labour sitting. I really understood for the first time how it’s all part of the same continuum.’
‘It’s the waiting, isn’t it?’ I said. ‘You can’t do anything to hurry it up – it’s actually wrong to do something to speed it along.’
‘Just like it’s wrong to hurry up birth.’
‘And what did you do after she died?’
‘Well, we all cried. We stood around the bed and held each other and wept. Even though it was what she wanted and what we’d been waiting for, it was still like, “Oh Gran-nan, there’s never going to be Gran-nan again.” That was really hard.’
I asked Mariah what happened with her grandmother’s body.
‘Well, we sat with her for a long time and then we called the doctor and he came and did the death certificate. She was just lying at home for quite a few hours before we got the ball rolling. We comforted the children and did lots of crying, reminiscing and reassuring ourselves we’d done the right thing. There was all of that before we started thinking about what comes next. But everyone was ready to let go by then. It was lovely not to be pressured, not to have anyone trying to get us to sign stuff.’
‘You mean people bustling around?’
‘Yeah, there was no bustling at all. It’s the same after a birth at home
– you’re just being with the energy.’ I knew what she meant. I loved that special quietness after birthing at
home.
‘It was good that your Gran-nan died at home,’ I said.
Mariah nodded. ‘Well, I always promised her that I wouldn’t let her languish in a nursing home, so I felt that by sitting with her I was giving her a gift and paying her back for all the times she looked after me. I was really glad to do it and I wouldn’t have changed a thing, except I would have shut her jaw. That’s the only thing I would have done differently.’
‘Is that because of the mouth gaping open?’ I said, thinking of what the woman from the funeral home had said on the phone.
‘Yeah, I actually drew a sketch of her when she was passing over and her mouth was... ahhh.’ Mariah hung her mouth loose and open. ‘But I would have shut Gran-nan’s mouth, even tied her jaw shut because when we saw her laid out in the funeral home they must have had to break her jaw to get her mouth to shut and her cheekbones were poking out, not through the skin but it didn’t look like Gran-nan. It was like they’d taken all the lines out of her face and wired her jaw shut. It completely changed the look of her. And she was very waxy. I wish I’d shut her mouth so she could have kept her own face. It was only her hands and the rings on her hands and the shape of her ears that I could be sure of.’
That was my fear of other people tending to the body of someone I loved. ‘You didn’t want to prepare the body yourself for the funeral?’
Mariah shook her head. ‘Oh, the funeral people were so brisk. I didn’t feel like I had any say in the preparation of the body. Maybe I could have said, “Well, I’d really like to dress her and paint her face”, but it just never occurred to me. The professionals had a hold of her by then. Just like it never occurs to anyone to ask to keep the placenta in hospitals because it’s whisked away and put through the incinerator before you even get to ask for it. One of those things that you don’t think about till after.’
Mariah thought for a moment and then said, ‘Probably the hardest part was when they came and collected her. They put her in the body bag and strapped her onto a trolley. Watching her get wheeled out in a body bag... that was the hardest, I think. That and not recognising the face at the funeral home. It’s the ritual stuff that is out of your control afterwards that I found difficult. More difficult than the actual death.’
For me, that was the worst part of her story as well. To die with such love and care and then be wheeled out of the house in a plastic bag.
Body bags belong in wars.For weeks after seeing Mariah I was still thinking of body bags and trolleys. I didn’t want that. I wanted to know what to do with a body at home. I ordered a copy of the Do-It-Yourself Funeral Book from the Bellingen Shire Bereavement Service. I read through it in one sitting, over a cup of tea in the kitchen, and found that the book included everything I needed to know. Just as in preparing for a birth at home, death is really very simple.
In the introduction the author, Leah Munro, wrote: ‘We only fear what we don’t know. The more knowledge we have, the more empowered we will be to make wise decisions in a crisis time, thus enabling us to begin our grieving process and our healing.’
The first instruction was ‘Slow Down – there is no need to rush.’ I thought of what Mariah said about ‘being with the energy’. The only legal requirements in New South Wales are that the dead person needs to be seen by their own doctor within 24 hours of death and that the body needs to be disposed of in five days.Plenty of time.
The most important thing about keeping a body at home is to keep the temperature down, somewhere between one to five degrees Celsius. The book suggests using an air conditioner or a fan in the coolest room in the house and packing frozen water bottles around the body. The next job is to buy a coffin or have one made. As for preparing the body – ‘If necessary, wash the person and then rub warm Rosemary oil on the body which makes it easier to position the person. Use large pads in case of leakage of the perineal area, dress the person, tie a scarf under their chin to close their mouth. Close their eyes and place their hands over their heart or on their lap. This encourages people to touch them.’ The coffin should be lined with plastic, with frozen water bottles placed along the bottom: ‘Pick up the person on a sheet and place on top of bottles. Renew the bottles when necessary.’
I was also interested to read about burial on private land. In New South Wales you need at least five hectares and an ‘Application for Private Burial’ form from the Council. The Do-It-Yourself Funeral Book gave detailed instructions on digging the grave and advised that you ‘supply enough shovels for people who wish to fill in the grave’. As for making and transporting the coffin: ‘The coffin can have plastic in the bottom then be covered by woodchips, shredded paper, or fresh herbs. A van, station wagon, truck or utility can be used for transporting the coffined body.’It really was very simple. We only fear what we don’t know.Rowena had once mentioned to me that she wanted to have some land so, if need be, she could bury her family in the bush. The next time we met I told her about the home funeral book and asked her when she’d started thinking about bush burials.
‘Well, I walk every morning in the Dutton Park cemetery and see all these cement stones and cement crosses. They’re all in disrepair and in between all of this cement with people’s names on it are these enormous, spiritually strong trees – fantastic trees. And I often think if only all of these people had had a tree planted on them instead I’d be walking in a forest, a holy forest. The world needs more trees and I’d love to be planted and have a tree, and be able to do that for my mother or for anybody. To have a tree rather than a man-made, rectangular cement thing. You can still have your lovely words and a little plaque or something on a living growing thing that is giving something back. Something that is beautiful and grows... for hundreds of years.’ Rowena sighed. ‘Oh, I really do want my bit of land.’
‘Yes,’ I agreed. ‘A holy forest. In New South Wales you need to have five hectares. It’s probably the same in Queensland.’
‘Five hectares? So you can plant somebody.’ She laughed. ‘Yeah, not bury them. Just plant them! My friend planted his father’s ashes up the top of a mountain with an olive tree. You need a really good four-wheel drive to get there so I haven’t been for years but I suppose that olive tree is pretty big now. I want to pick my own tree – a big fertile palm tree.’ She circled her arms out wide and gave me a beaming smile.I wondered what sort of tree I would choose.
At the end of the Do-It-Yourself Funeral Book were some personal stories of home deaths. The one I liked the best was by Dorin who lived on a community near Bellingen. She wrote of her partner Ralf’s death and the immense sense of achievement she felt after having a home funeral: ‘There were no priests, no undertakers, no fancy coffin and hearse, no fake grass and hydraulic lifts at the gravesite. We were self-sufficiency in action.’
I recognised that sense of achievement. I had felt like that after birthing at home. I read on: ‘Two friends laid out Ralf’s body at home, where he died. Another two made a simple, elegant, plywood coffin. We had my VW Kombi van for transport, then a four-wheel-drive ute for the last section up to our own bush cemetery in the trees.’
‘A friend led the ceremony – moving tributes and poems. We lowered the coffin into the deep shaly grave and all filed past, throwing in a handful or spadeful of dirt. Then the real shovelling began. After the sadness and emotion of the days before it was a great release to be able to do something physical, to use our bodies and shovel that dirt. The successful planning and conducting of our own funeral, so many friends coming together, all this gave me an energy that helped through the difficult days to come. As a community too we gained, for facing death together creates strong bonds. And we were so proud of what we had achieved.’
Yes, I thought, by bringing death back into our own hands and homes we allow our hearts to open more fully to death’s power.
Then one night there was a knock on our front door and our neighbour Carole was there looking upset. I wondered if there had been some trouble with the kids who had been playing together that afternoon, but she said, ‘Helena, I think your cat’s been run over.’ ‘It can’t be Rocky,’ I told her. ‘He’s locked up.’
‘It looks a lot like him,’ she said softly.I walked over to the shape lying on the road and from a distance I knew it was Rocky because I could see his fur. He was the only fluffy grey cat in the street. The woman from the house across the road was holding a torch on him, keeping cars from driving too close. I saw that his eyes were open and staring and I knew that he was dead. Our cat, lying dead on the road. Our Rocky. We locked him up. ‘It is Rocky. Thank you for helping,’ I told the woman from across the road.
I picked Rocky up and his body felt different – heavy and floppy. I carried him home and went inside to my husband and children. ‘John, something terrible has happened!’
‘What?’ He saw Rocky in my arms. ‘Oh, no... Rocky!’
‘He’s been hit by a car,’ I cried.
Our two younger sons, Leo and Goth, were screaming – ‘No! No!’
John moaned. We were all crying. I put Rocky on the floor and he lay there on the rug. He must have died quickly. The life was gone from his eyes, but there was no blood, just some fur taken off his back leg and those blank staring eyes. He was still beautiful. We sat around him, crying and hugging. Then Leo was suddenly angry, pushing us away. ‘He was my cat!’ he cried. ‘I should have checked him.’
I had already looked in the laundry, expecting to see the real Rocky still there, lying on the washing machine. It was all locked up but the window was open. I opened it earlier because it had been so hot. Normally it was shut at night. I should have checked it. Then our beautiful cat wouldn’t be dead.
John said, ‘I don’t know if I’m strong enough for this.’
Our new baby Felix woke up from all the noise and I brought him into the lounge room to sit with us.
‘We’ll have to bury him,’ said John.
‘Let’s bury him next to Rosie, out the back,’ Leo cried. Rosie is a dog that we never knew but whose grave is marked in the back corner of the yard.
‘I’ve got a torch!’ Goth said and ran off to get it.
John and Goth went down the back to dig the grave while Leo, Felix and I sat with Rocky. ‘There’s a flea!’ said Leo. The fleas were jumping off the body. Leo couldn’t stand it. ‘Go away!’ he shouted at the fleas.
John and Goth finished digging the grave.
Our teenage son was at a friend’s house. ‘I’ll go and get Jack,’ I said. ‘He needs to see Rocky’s body before we bury him.’
Leo and I drove off, crying all the way. Luckily Jack was standing outside, talking to his friend, and I was able to call him over to the car. ‘Jack,’ I cried, ‘a terrible thing has happened. Rocky’s been run over. He’s dead.’
Jack looked shocked. ‘When I saw you I thought something must have happened to the baby.’
We went home and Jack gently touched Rocky’s body, which was still lying on the floor. Then John wrapped Rocky in the green sheet he used to sleep on and we took him outside and buried him. ‘Thank you for being our cat,’ I told Rocky, who was now in his grave.
John was very upset. ‘We have to remember the good times. We were lucky to have such a lovely cat for four years. And he was lucky to have five people who loved him.’
I felt guilty. With a new baby I had been neglecting the cat. ‘Rocky,’ I said, ‘I’m sorry for being mean to you in the last months, for withdrawing my love.’
The kids cried themselves to sleep. When John went in to see Leo I heard him say, ‘Imagine how sad we would be if it was one of our human family that had been killed. Mum and I would never stop crying. We’d cry forever.’
Leo went to sleep with Rocky’s collar around his wrist.
Jack was subdued, still shocked. Much later, I heard him sobbing in his room and I went in to see him. We hugged. ‘He was my best friend,’ Jack told me, tears running down his face.
‘I know that, Jack. He loved you very much.’
John and I went to bed and cried. Wiping his eyes, John said, ‘I keep thinking it’s only a cat, but he was more than that.’
‘Yes,’ I said, ‘Rocky was more than just a cat.’
As I lay there, holding my sobbing husband, I wondered what sort of tree Rocky would choose.
In the days that followed Rocky’s death I felt thankful that his body was unharmed by the accident, that we were able to lay him on the rug where we could touch him, stroke him, say goodbye and then lay him in a hole that we had dug ourselves, covered with earth from the garden bed where he used to curl up on sunny afternoons. His home.
The bus driver was right. Dying at home will ease the pressure on hospital beds. But maybe it can also revive the lost and forgotten knowledge of how to tend for our dead. We can remember how to wash the bodies of our loved ones, to brush their hair and paint their face, or just to rub oil into skin that still needs a warm touch. We can choose a special outfit and decorate a simple plywood coffin with paint or flowers to suit the human being who will lie in it. We can again be witness to the power of death. The grief, of course, will always be there... but perhaps we can lessen the fear.
HELENA PASTOR writes fiction and creative nonfiction and is currently working on a PhD in Communication at the University of Canberra. Part of this essay is taken from a longer homebirth memoir she wrote for a Masters in Creative Writing at the University of Queensland.
Eating our way to a better future
Everyone knows that we’re living in the midst of an environmental crisis. Or really, one should say, many crises. There’s too much carbon dioxide being created by our activities on the planet, too little water in many places, too much deforestation, species extinction, pollution, consumption, too many people, too little thought given to the future. Too much, too little, too many. That about sums up the situation today for both humans and numerous other life forms that depend on us for habitat and survival. The problems seem overwhelming; but we must never give in to discouragement or evasiveness, especially when the stakes are so high. If you ask yourself, ‘What can I do about it all?’ your response is likely to be directed toward saving water and electricity, driving a more efficient car, recycling, donating to environmental protection organisations, and the like. These are good things to do, but they are the ways in which we have been conditioned to respond by various cultural influences, such as the media, with governments advocating a still narrower band of choices. Even in well-researched articles and more lengthy works devoted to the environment, global food distribution and the shape of the future, attention is seldom trained on our eating habits. I propose to do so here, for the simple reason that dietary choice has a huge impact on the world around us. Important though they are, it would be dishonest to pretend (as is often done) that changes to individual behaviour will save the environment, since the global effects of industry, government and the military are much greater, but at least our own lives are a place to begin and are what we have some control over. There are two basic issues to look at with respect to food choices: what we eat and where it comes from. Regarding the first of these, most of us include a sizable component of meat in our diets; but meat production is very effectively helping to kill the planet. A big positive environmental benefit can therefore be realised if many people switch to a vegetarian diet. As for the second issue, we need to think about the animals we turn into food and that pay the ultimate price of our flesh-centred meal. Furthermore, when we talk about where our food comes from, we also cannot ignore how far it has travelled in order to arrive on our plates. As some people are now coming to realise, not only environmental but also social benefits flow from sourcing food closer to where we live.
To start with what we eat, on a global scale meat production is wasteful of energy, water, land, and other resources. As well, animal agriculture creates high concentrations of toxic excrement and urine that pollute fields and waterways, and cattle are a major source of methane, a very damaging greenhouse gas. Traditional farms, on which livestock once grazed or foraged, were not so wasteful and destructive, but these are rapidly giving way to confinement operations, the most notorious of which are ‘factory farms’. These operations utilise grain and soy in such proportions that it takes from two times the input of nutrients (for chicken) to more than seven (for beef) in order to yield one unit of output suitable for human consumption. A quarter-pound hamburger is estimated to require 11,000 litres of water to produce (while a kilo of wheat – almost nine times the weight – requires but 1,000 litres). The International Water Management Institute contends that: ‘Meat-eaters consume the equivalent of about 5,000 litres of water a day compared to the 1,000-2,000 litres used by people on vegetarian diets in developing countries.’ Modern farming since World War II has become intensely dependent on petrochemicals, which factor into the fertilisers used to grow food, as well as pesticides, herbicides, running irrigation systems, transportation, and refrigeration. Ecological agriculture expert, David Pimentel, argues that on average eight times as much fossil fuel is used to produce animal protein compared to plant protein. In the United States, major cattle operations rely hugely on corn (an unnatural diet for ruminants) to fatten their animals. The amount each eats before slaughter represents almost a barrel of oil expended to grow and harvest the corn. Michael Pollen suggests (in The Omnivore’s Dilemma) that this signifies ‘taking this sunlight and prairie grass-powered organism and turning it into the last thing we need: another fossil fuel machine’. But even assuming we could get off the grain/soy and fossil fuel treadmills and go back to traditional farming methods, as a 2004 report by the nongovernmental organisation Compassion in World Farming: The Global Benefits of Eating Less Meat indicates, worldwide meat production increased five hundred percent from 1950-2000, and is expected to swell again by fifty percent from 2000-2020. There just isn’t enough land to accommodate this and the rising tide of human population as well.
Actually, these trends are interrelated. We can argue that world population should be reduced and/or controlled. Whether this happens or not, however, it won’t do so overnight, and the fact is that while there are six billion mouths to feed now, predictions are that there will be nine billion within a few decades. If there is any hope of meeting this target, it cannot rest on creating more meat. On the contrary, urgent ways must be found to maximise plant-based agricultural efficiency and to develop the will to make meat a thing of the past. Right now, a third of the world’s grain crop is fed to livestock. This ‘protein factory in reverse’, as Frances Moore Lappé called these animals in Diet for a Small Planet many years ago, processes our food for us, yielding less protein and fewer calories than it consumes, or than we could consume directly without its intervention by eating lower down on the food chain. David Pimentel has calculated that the amount of grain fed to American livestock could alternatively feed 800 million people a vegetarian diet (ABC Radio National interview on ‘Earthbeat,’ 20 July, 2002). As long ago as 1983, Keith Akers pointed out (in A Vegetarian Sourcebook) that: ‘In the long run, we are all going to be vegetarians.... Only a small minority of the world’s citizens will ever be able to consume meat at current American levels: the resources to support a more intensive livestock agriculture simply don’t exist. We will probably not feel the real effects of our present actions in the realm of agriculture for another twenty or thirty years.’ Now, right on schedule, we are beginning to experience some of these effects, as in places like Australia, livestock that have already contributed to climate change scrabble for nourishment on unwisely managed lands and vie for a share of critically limited water supplies. Akers’ estimate is supported by the Worldwatch Institute, which regards the world’s pasturelands as having reached their utilisation limits. This trend can only be hastened by global water shortages.
Meanwhile, out on the salt water, many fish stocks are seriously in jeopardy. The imminent collapse of ocean fisheries was predicted not long ago in the prestigious journal Science (3 November, 2006). Canada’s cod industry was shut down over a decade ago and the north Pacific salmon supply is gravely endangered. Bottom-net trawling and other large-scale practices are destroying ecosystems and decimating sea-dwelling populations. By-catches (the netting or hooking of unintended species) are on the rise and affect turtles, seabirds and other animals, some of which belong to endangered species.
Back on the land, it would seem self-evident that to feed more people, either a greater area must be cultivated or existing farmlands must be made more productive or both. None of these avenues, however, is consistent with setting aside more acreage for pastures or for growing animal feed. What’s needed is more land devoted to raising those crops that humans can eat. And there are ways, now being experimentally worked out, to make existing farmland more productive, to reclaim marginal lands and to make plant agriculture more sustainable – for example by replacing single-season crops with hardier perennials that grow deeper root systems (Scientific American, August, 2007). But this creative thinking must recognise that obvious limits for agriculture are set by other needs – for wild lands, forests, wetlands, recreation areas, space for urban expansion, and so on.
When we talk about a better future, we should consider, in addition to human survival and quality of life, the nonhuman population and nature as a whole. It takes a great deal of refocusing to get a grip on the impact of our collective behaviour on the world around us – not just the world as it affects us, but in its own right. Let’s take animals first. Globally, there are estimated to be twenty-two billion farm animals, most of whom are destined for slaughter, if not in the short term, then when their days of being useful (for producing milk, eggs, wool, or whatever) are finished. The vast majority of these will meet their end in the mechanised (and dehumanised) commercial slaughterhouse, where thousands of animals are indifferently ‘processed’ each hour. This is a place people generally don’t want to be aware of or know about and most certainly don’t want to visit. Why? Because we know it is a gory place of great suffering and this turns us off meat-eating and makes us feel guilty for being omnivores. (Fish are spared slaughterhouses; they are just left to suffocate on decks or in holds.)
We are learning more all the time about how socially developed animals are, about their emotional life and their forms of communication and intelligence. But we have to ignore these insights and go on treating them instrumentally – like things – in order to continue eating them with anything resembling a clear conscience. At least we have to pretend and separate off what we know better, not thinking too carefully as we get on with the job of feeding ourselves in the fashion to which we’re accustomed.
Beyond suffering, eating animals in the way we do is based on the premise that as beings, they don’t matter much, if at all, because they have no life of their own that amounts to anything. But aside from asking how we could ever ascertain this, each of us can observe that animals would rather live than die if given the choice. Some philosophers have called this the ‘will to live’ and maintained that it is universal. Whatever name we give it, however, the phenomenon is discernible except where conditions make it impossible to carry on. Perhaps an animal doesn’t have as much going on in its life as a human, but there is evidently enough going on to render it valuable to the being that has it. In any case, once we start down this road, we will soon encounter invidious comparisons between the relative value of human lives, and I think it would be agreed we’d best not go there.
Another way of thinking, foreign to many of us, is that nature (or the biosphere, if you prefer) has value of its own, independent of its value to humans. This is partly a function of the value of animals’ lives just discussed. But it also has to do with the presence in the world of features to which we respond and the mode of those responses. Beauty, symbolic significance, the capacity to inspire awe and to rejuvenate – these are some of the dimensions within which nature has always been apprehended, appreciated and found to contain elements of fascination that cannot be quantified, given monetary value or reduced just to what goes on in the eye of the beholder. There is much room for argument over what it is exactly that we respond to in nature that gives rise to judgments of value. But whatever it is, in order to assure it flourishes we need to guard and protect both wild and cultivated landscapes, habitats, wetlands, unusual geological features, and places of spiritual heritage for their own sake and for the animals that live in and around them as well as for our enjoyment.
The other aspect of where our food comes from, mentioned earlier, has to do with getting it from there to here. Today we are all used to having pretty much any kind of food that strikes our fancy made available to us at any time of the year: mangoes from Mexico, strawberries from California and asparagus from the Philippines in the Australian winter; in the United States, New Zealand lamb and ethnic staples for a great blend of immigrants; in Europe, the best coffee and chocolate from all parts of the globe; and in most countries, wine and beer from practically anywhere. This is a luxury and a miracle in which, only a century or so ago, only a king could afford to revel. But the price for it is ecologically high, even though it does not always show up in what we actually pay for the goods, owing to government subsidies, unrealistically low-costed resources (such as water and energy), ‘externalities’ passed on to the environment (such as pollution and carbon dioxide emissions), and so on. According to Michael Pollen, who has carefully scrutinised the American food production system, ‘only a fifth of the total energy used to feed us is consumed on the farm; the rest is spent processing the food and moving it around’. If this is even approximately true in general, and in another big country like Australia in particular, it really must give us pause to consider the rationality of such a procedure. As Pamela Rice notes, humans can ‘run a natural-resource deficit with the planet for extended periods’, but not forever (101 Reasons Why I’m a Vegetarian). It doesn’t take much reflection to come to the conclusion that – whatever we eat – buying locally as much as possible is good for the environment. Not only that, it is good for us too, because foods that are fresher are better for our health. And finally, buying locally is good for local producers and for building and sustaining communities.
How much responsibility does each of us have for changing the world? What difference will my individual choices make anyway? No one can state the answers to these questions with any degree of precision. The problems we are collectively up against are truly enormous. Even in relation to the food supply alone, it has been reported recently that a massive shift now going on in agricultural production, in the United States and elsewhere, from crops for animals and humans to crops for biofuels, makes the world food situation more precarious and will increase the cost of eating in many places where poverty and malnutrition are rife (The Guardian Weekly, 7-13 September, 2007). We should be under no illusion that the way we choose our diet alone can solve the world’s hunger problems. According to Greenpeace, restricted access to resources, unfair trade regimes and lack of agricultural research benefiting marginal farmers are principal causes of chronic food shortages (‘Feeding the world – facts versus fiction,’ online at the following URL: www.greenpeace.org/international/campaigns/genetic-engineering/feeding-theworld-facts-vers). Conversion of agriculture from a meat economy to a vegetarian economy will also create many problems of its own, as it represents a large set of readjustments. And the same mistakes we find in animal agriculture cannot be repeated in the new economy. Clearly
governments, acting together and through international organisations, must find solutions if any are to be found.Nongovernmental organisations (NGOs), supported by our monetary contributions, will also continue to lobby for change. Professional farmers are adaptable and resilient and there is no doubt that the transition we are trying to imagine can be handled, with the support of the right kinds of policies.
Aside from all this, each of us, as individuals, does have some responsibility, some clout to exert and a role to play, even if we can’t say how much or how effective we might be. We should never underestimate the power of our consumer dollar and of the statements we make by our own example. Perhaps it is not an old saying, but it should be: ‘The action of many pebbles can start an avalanche’. If China and India (with about forty percent of the world’s population) are increasingly devouring meat because it equates with status and affluence, then we can knock the props from under this symbolism by establishing a countertrend. (The same argument can be made – and would be, by vegans – for dairy products, for which the demand in these countries is also rising.)
In the end, we have many reasons to choose a vegetarian diet – some personal, some to do with the fate of animals, some interpersonal and, dare I say, political. We are at a point in time when we and the Earth are living on borrowed time. But there are many voices and good minds working towards making the world a better place, and trying to persuade decision-makers that there are sustainable ways for our species (and others) to survive and evolve. How we choose to eat and act can contribute important momentum to these initiatives.
MICHAEL ALLEN FOX is the author of Deep Vegetarianism (1999; Chinese edition, 2005), The Accessible Hegel (2005), The Remarkable Existentialists (2008), and other works. He taught philosophy for many years at Queen’s University in Canada and now lives in Armidale, NSW, where he is Adjunct Professor in the School of Humanities, University of New England.
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