Cow farts and the obesity epidemic

Most Americans, likely including myself, eat too much meat. I'm convinced that if they saw what I had the chance to see during my trip to Morocco that they wouldn't. I'll explain why in a second, but let's begin with a story.

On the second full day of our stay at Hossein's house (the Gite up in the mountains), we woke up to go on another shorter (like 4 hour) morning hike. All the animals were penned up from the previous night, including the huge flock of goats belonging to Hossein's father. We had just been talking about wonderful the two previous nights' food was (tajine one night, couscous the next) and were excited for our third night's dinner. Moha suggested that it might be nice to have goat. Dave (the other chaperone, my supervisor) and I enthusiastically agreed that this was an excellent idea. So next thing we know we're in the middle of the pen with the goats trying to help pick out which one looked tastiest. [Side note: Baby goats are indisputably the cutest baby animals ever. I got to hold one as we were picking out our dinner and I got quite good at conversing with them in their own language. If I ever live on a farm some day, I'm going to have chickens for their eggs and goats for their milk because turns out goats milk cheese is also my favorite type of cheese... and so I can play with the baby goats] They finally identified a suitable grown male (along with its price) and pulled it aside as the rest of the flock was free to leave the pen. We went on our hike and I quickly forgot about the upcoming dinner process. Yes, that's right... process.

After lunch (thankfully), we went down to "prepare" the goat. They got the beast hog-tied and lying on a blue tarp in the middle of their apple orchard. They faced it in the direction of Mecca, said the usual halal blessing, and swiftly and sharply slit the goat's throat allowing blood to flow freely and copiously all over the tarp and the ground. The goat was far from immediately dead. It lied there struggling, kicking, gasping for breath because of course it's esophagus was split in two and so instead it made this disturbing gasping sound from half way down its windpipe... for about 2 or 3 minutes. They chopped off the rest of the head and tossed it aside to be used later.

First was the skinning. It was a fascinating process starting at the tail and working it's way down to the now-severed head. They start by cutting just barely under the skin at one of the feet and actually blowing into the cut to spread a sort of air bubble under the skin of over the entire animal. That loosens up the skin. Then they meticulously and delicately "shave" away the skin from the connective tissue underneath, pulling it all the way down to the front legs and essentially removing it in one solid, unbroken piece. Did I mention that they broke the legs in half to use as handles throughout this process? The solid piece of hide was hung on a nearby tree. That was by far the most labor intensive part of the preparation.

Next was the gutting. They made a small incision in the abdomen and the innards started spilling out of the cut. First came the small intestine, the most obvious of all. They pulled all of the intestine and stomach out so they could clean it. They squeezed out all the non-solid waste closer to the stomach and then did a combination of blowing air into and pouring water into the rest of the small intestine to get all of the solidified waste out. It came out surprisingly easy. Once the digestive system was out of the way, the rest came fairly easy - lungs, heart, liver, kidneys, and all those other small little organs inside the body of a goat. And of course, all of it was put aside in a bucket to be used later.

The final product was left hanging in a tree to drip dry before putting it in the fire pit which still needed to be prepared. The whole process took about 45 minutes or so.

Now I'm not squeamish. I actually watch the nurse stick me with a needle when I donate blood. I wanted to watch the video of my shoulder surgery (which they gave me on a nice little DVD so I could). I was a bit surprised at my reaction to the initial slitting of the throat in that I was more shocked by it than I thought I'd be. But the rest of the preparation was quite fascinating. Took me back to high school biology a little bit being able to identify all of the organs of the abdomen. Regardless, it was an intensive process which took 3 grown men to accomplish. I'm sure factories make that process much easier and more efficient, but it's still the same process. And I'd never seen it from start to finish until this past trip to Morocco.

Seeing the slaughtering of a goat didn't make me into a vegetarian. Quite the contrary. It helped me appreciate my dinner even more because I had known the animal which gave its life for me to be able to eat. And that's the problem with the way most people (not just Americans, either) eat in the world. They never see the source of their food. If we were aware of the extensive process that their meat (or any of their food) went through to get to their grocery cart and into their kitchen, I assure you we'd eat less of it. But instead we can buy it in nicely cut up little chunks displayed aesthetically on a Styrofoam plate and wrapped in plastic and we don't have to think about the impact of buying and eating way more than is necessary for a balanced diet. Fatty meat (particularly those served on greasy buns from fast food restaurants) and the overconsumption of it is large factor in the US, and quickly becoming global, obesity epidemic. The more meat we consume, the greater demand there is to produce more meat and the more cows there are eating grass and producing large amounts of methane. I'm not a crazy tree-hugger, but there's a sizable amount of evidence that points to our unsustainable food consumption habits as a cause for global warming... like eating too much meat.

I challenge everybody and anybody up to the task to at some point in their life watch the slaughtering of the exact animal that they are planning on eating. It will make you think twice about how much of that animal you need to eat in one sitting. And that's good for your health as well as good for the environment.