"Going Veg" in Argentina

One night over dinner at the Hare Krishna farm, I was talking with one of the nuns, Jai Radhi, a mature and fun-loving 17 year-old, about vegetarianism. I think the conversation began when I asked how they make the delicious, fluffy cake we had eaten the night before for a birthday celebration, without eggs. Hare Krishna don´t eat eggs, according to Jai Radhi, because its part of the menstrual cycle of the animal. Somehow this evolved into a recounting of my experience helping to kill thirty chickens last summer at a friend´s farm in Vermont. By the time I noticed the look of horror on her face, and on the faces of the two or three other devotees in the dining room, listening in, it was too late. "Sarah, you´re a criminal!" she exclaimed, not at all swayed by my argument of, "No, but it's better to come to terms with the killing of the animal than to buy a styrofoam package in the supermarket," etc. The nuns eventually forgave me (I think), but for the remainder of my stay, Jai Radhi greeted me (in English) with "Sara, Go Veg!" which always made me laugh.

I had no intention of "going veg" back then. I was willing to forgo meat during my stay at Eco Yoga Park, but this is Argentina, after all. People eat more meat here than in any country in the world. Nearly every Argentine male I've met has said he eats meat every day (and here, "carne" or meat, means beef), and often, twice a day. I'd be crazy to become a vegetarian in Argentina...right?

Well I've been here three and half months now. I don't eat steak every day; in fact, on the farm, we don't eat any meat, but a steak dinner at A Punto, a great steakhouse (or "meat restaurant," as I call it) is a favorite Saturday night ritual. Let's just say I've eaten my share of great steak since I've been here, not to mention chorizo, salchicha, morcilla (blood sausage), conejo (rabbit), cordero (lamb), and ham.

At the same time, however, I've been listening to the audio version of book that's made it more and more difficult for me to square my carnivorous ways with the reality of meat production. It's called The End of Food and it's about the industrial food system, both in the United States and abroad, and its various and major negative impacts on everything from human health, the environment, and the economies of developing nations.

There are a number of compelling facts in the book that have made me rethink my meat-eating ways. I'd say I'd spare you the details, but I'm pretty convinced that these things are important to know, whether you eat meat or night. One of them is the fact that a single hamburger patty contains meat from an average of fifty different cows, and can have meat from as many as 1,000 cows. This was given as part of the chapter about food-borne illness, and the near-impossibility of tracing the source of an outbreak of e. coli, and it made my stomach turn.

The second fact that I learned, which I'm sure I've heard before, but which really hit home this time, is that beef is incredibly inefficient to produce. It takes 20 lbs. of grain to produce one lb. of beef, versus around 5-7 lb. grain for the same amount of pork and even less for chicken. Like I said, I know I've learned about this before, and even tried out being a vegetarian for a year in college. But, as Jonathan Safran Foer explained more eloquently than I can in this article in the Times Magazine a few months ago, it's easy to "forget" what you don't really want to know, and so I did.

So I've decided to go partially veg, for now. I'm going to stop eating beef, even though I'm in Argentina, the land of beef. I know it sounds crazy, and, some may say, impossible. But I think it can be done; in fact, I've even met some full-on (albeit foreign) vegetarians here, and have eaten in some lovely vegetarian restaurants. Like I said earlier, I've had my share of delicious steaks since I've been here. I've done it, but I don't need to keep doing it. For now, I'll keep eating pork and chicken, placating my conscience with that fact about them being much more efficient, and selectively forgetting all of the reasons why maybe I shouldn't be eating them, either. Maybe when I get back to the States, I'll take Jai Radhi's advice and fully "go veg."