Reflections on the Sarah Palin Turkey Video

From Aaron Kagan via Ezra Klein:

It’s hard to say what’s worse: the fact that a would be vice president could be so oblivious to her surroundings, or the fact that Americans were so alarmed to see that turkeys have to be killed in order for us to eat them. By total coincidence and thanks in large part to youtube [link for the 2 of you who haven't seen it], we’ve all been granted access to the metaphoric glass abattoir that Michael Pollan describes in The Omnivore’s Dilemma.

The attention garnered by this incident is yet further proof that we are disconnected from our food. If Palin had been standing in front of a nicely browned and stuffed bird with those little frilly things on its drumsticks, there would have been no controversy.

Here’s the pertinent passage from page 332 of Pollan’s Omnivore’s Dilemma:

Sometimes I think that all it would take to clarify our feelings about eating meat, and in the process begin to redeem animal agriculture, would be to simply pass a law requiring all the sheet-metal walls of all the CAFOs [concentrated animal feeding operation], and even the concrete walls of the slaughterhouses, to be replaced with glass. If there’s any new right we need to establish, maybe this is the one: The right, I mean, to look. … The industrialization-and brutalization-of animals in America is a relatively new, evitable, and local phenomenon: No other country raises and slaughters its food animals quite as intensively or as brutally as we do. No other people in history has lived at quite so great a remove from the animals they eat. Were the walls of our meat industry to become transparent, literally or even figuratively, we would not long continue to raise, kill, and eat animals the way we do.

And for those of you more willing to explore the topic, here’s video of chef Jamie Oliver electrocuting a chicken. He then tells the visibly shocked audience, “As far as killing anything’s concerned, it’s never nice. I was trained to do it, I don’t feel particularly good about this. But, I eat chickens, and I’m a chef.”

I eat chickens, and I’m not. But I’d be a lot happier about it if we treated animals humanely. I also eat meat; that I’m lucky enough to buy from a local who raises cattle. I am friendly with the owner of the abattoir I frequent. I’ll be meeting Michael Pollan at the Georgia Organics conference.

LATER: A NYTimes Live Thanksgiving Blog reader asked what Michael Pollan is going to have for Thanksgiving. He wrote in with this answer:

“My mom is cooking, though I’m doing the Brussels sprouts — the ones where you cut them and half and caramelize them, with pignolis. Mom’s making a (local) turkey with cornbread stuffing, spinach gratin, mashed potatoes, sweet potatoes with garlic and oil, and turnip puree. For dessert: pecan and chocolate pie. She’s an amazing cook and this is my favorite meal of the year, closely followed by the leftover lunch the next day.

Have a good holiday. A shame you have to work at all.”