You can imagine the sight: a golden Thanksgiving turkey, savory homemade stuffing, glazed ham, vibrant sweet potatoes, and perhaps some sort of traditional alcoholic beverage. The idyllic family chats in uproarious gaiety. But have you ever considered the more sinister undercurrent of this time-honored tradition?
Upon that table likely lies many pounds of animal meat — often more than anyone is likely to consume that evening. There is ground beef or sausage in the stuffing, ham basted in a sweet maple glaze, and of course the 10–15 pound turkey steeped in its mouth-watering juices. Some families may accent their feasts with poultry, veal, duck, venison, and maybe even some sort of seafood. Naturally, this was all picked up beforehand at rock bottom (although slightly inflated) prices from the local multi-national supermarket chain. A dollar or less per pound is pretty standard for an average turkey. Ground beef and ham can be procured for around four dollars per pound. To the average American, this amounts to just a little more than pocket change.
After all of the plates have been cleaned and the conversation begins to die down, the host is left with the perplexing question of what to do with the leftovers. Some will be accepted begrudgingly by relatives, wrapped in aluminum foil. Others will end up in the back of the host’s fridge to moulder before being tossed in the trash or fed to the enthusiastic family dog. Why not? It’s just some old turkey. There’s plenty more at the store and it was only a few dollars to begin with.
Meat consumption has been a staple of the human diet since the origin of the species. This is not the problem. The problem lies in the willful separation between the sacrifice of an animal’s life and the consumption of its flesh. How many modern consumers have had to end the life of an animal themselves in order to eat? Modern industrialized slaughter of animals shelters Americans from the horrific and heartbreaking origins of their food. With that separation, they are able to relinquish both an appreciation for the sacrifice as well as moral responsibility therefor. It might be a bit harder to throw out those two pounds of ground beef if it were you who slaughtered the cow.
Perhaps it is an act of willful blindness to cease one’s analysis of the cost of consumption with the price of the food. Packaged appealingly on a supermarket shelf, it is much easier to put out of one’s mind the image of the animal from which that piece of meat came. Furthermore, we upstanding and benevolent Americans prefer to not consider the process of slaughtering a live animal, let alone being the beneficiaries thereof. We are so determined to separate the animal from the food that we use separate words. It’s not a cow, it’s beef. It’s not a portly, pink, pig, it’s ham. Indeed, it is much easier to consume veal when you don’t think of it as a dead baby calf.
There aren’t many people who are unaware that the meat they throw in the trash had to come from something that once lived and breathed. Most just prefer to put it out of their mind. Easier to think of it as $1.99/pound than the flesh of a slaughtered animal. This isolation from production does have an effect. Even while hunger and poverty still grace this earth, it is estimated that the average American household wastes more than 30% of their food supply. But why does it matter? It was only a few dollars.
What does it say of a society that can so easily, happily, and willfully turn a blind eye to the cost of their consumption?
This is what it says.
Many will not even sit down to their Thanksgiving meals before the onslaught of Black Friday sales begins. Americans rush to stores and overload internet servers in an attempt to get a sweet deal on gifts for Christmas. Nothing says thanksgiving like buying unnecessary gifts on credit.
And what of those sweet Black Friday purchases? They end up wrapped in shiny paper, sitting gingerly beneath the withering pine you chopped out of a nursery. Those tantalizing little packages about which children fantasize, the gifts inside them you smugly snagged during a sale, where are they from? In what hellish country and under what intolerable conditions were they made? What unfed, unrested hands twisted those tiny aluminum screws into place? What horrible chemicals were dumped into rivers from which people drink? You don’t know. You’d rather not know. How better to celebrate the birth of Christ than by purchasing the good favor of your children or spouse with items made by the hands of abused foreign workers?
As with the separation of the act of slaughter from the consumption of meat, the production of goods has been willfully and intentionally separated from the act of their consumption. If it became known that a company in the United States was relying on child labor to produce cheap goods and edge out competition, that company would rightly be the subject of boycotts, frantic news articles, and serious prosecution. But somehow, if those child laborers are an ocean away, the moral indignation is blunted. Out of sight, out of mind.
Just as Americans happily turn a blind eye to the sources of the meat they consume on Thanksgiving, they cheerfully ignore the origin of the items they purchase for Christmas. It’s much easier to look at the great specs and elegant packaging of your new cellphone than to consider the inhumanity that went into its production — the inhumanity that you helped to fund. Your children’s toys, your clothes, your computer, your furniture, and your cheery holiday decorations: what of their origins would you just rather not know?
The United States Department of Labor provides a list of “Goods Produced by Child Labor or Forced Labor.” It is worth a read. How many have considered that the chestnuts roasting on an open fire may have been produced by forced labor if they’re from Brazil? Did you ever think that the trendy $6 holiday peppermint mocha you bought might have been made with coffee and sugar produced using child labor in Latin America? Even those jolly Christmas decorations, where were they made? Some Christmas decorations have been produced using forced Chinese labor, according to the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission.
Will anyone consider this when they see those shiny wrapped packages beneath the old tinseled pine? Or will the cute packaging, pretty colors, and promise of momentary gratification overshadow the dark origins of many of the items they now own? Sometime after you toss the dried up pine, those items too will end up in a land fill, replaced by something bigger, better, and cheaper — undoubtedly produced by someone far less fortunate than you.
Capitalism without a moral underpinning leads to abuse. It is the job of the consumer to have an understanding of that which they consume and to comport themselves accordingly, even when it may be slightly inconvenient. Still, just as it is difficult to live without eating meat, it has become almost impossible to exist in a globalized society without purchasing and using products of dubious origin. That is not because of greedy corporations or bad trade deals. It is solely because the people who purchase those items from the store shelves care more about the price than the human being who produced it. And so, when you sit down at the decadent holiday feast with your family, consider the true cost of all that lays before you. Chances are, the cost was far higher than was listed on the price tag.
