When looking at this theme of intersection, I really wanted to respond to posts before that really have resonated with me. A post that caught my eye was Kristy’s “A Personal Passion” post about vegetarianism, and really about how to make change in our food system. I too have struggled mercilessly of how to engage people about topics that I am very passionate about. When I was a first year here at Lewis & Clark College I made a decision to become a vegetarian, but for reasons not necessarily directly dealing with animal welfare in our current food system. I became a vegetarian because I weirdly felt pressured by the Portland culture to be vegetarian, and by the mere fact that it was so darn easy to be one here with all of the vegetarian and vegan options that actually didn’t taste that bad. Convenience was a great launching pad into the lessons and values that I acquired living as a vegetarian.
As months of cravings for chicken and steak rolled by, I found this time of fasting to be very beneficial in analyzing my behavior, and ultimately my values. I was going to become an environmental studies major, yet I was living a life that seemed contradictory, if I want to stop bad behavior I shouldn’t be supporting it through my own actions. But unfortunately when trying to live a life free of contradictions, you find that you are just going to be running into more and more of them, because much of our actions are deeply ingrained and interrelated throughout not only the food system, but also the education system, policy, economics, etc. etc. I also found that changing your own actions will not necessarily change the system or even another person’s behavior, it seems that if you really want to make long lasting change in behavior, it has to be a long arduous process of growth and self-discovery. Change also seems to be related to making change integrated with infrastructure so that transitions are more easily accepted and convenient. Always try to find connections of the issue to a broad audience.
Drawing back from a class I took that is very much pertinent to this topic is The Political Economy of Food, and it really takes you deep into how the food system works and how we interact with it. It turns out like many of the lessons learned in the ENVS program, is that everything is so related and ingrained, that every action will have some sort of effect on something unintended. Perhaps one of the biggest things I hadn’t even thought about when addressing issues of animal welfare, GMOs, farming was labor. It is something that is so overlooked in these topics, and that with a possible movement of transitioning away from meats would mean a ton of labor would be needed to grow the necessary amount of food to satisfy consumers. Would it mean more workers who are hired for less than a living wage? How would those workers be treated? What are the consequences? These are the many things we have to think through even if we were able to reach that goal of engagement and any sort of change. It is important to think through victories, and push it. What can we do better? How can we address issues of social justice along with issues of environmental problems? These questions should not make us pause and freeze, but rather keep us moving forward, and motivating us to always be better.