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Thursday, November 24, 2022

A Roadkill and a Dream of a Better World

The call came after dark on a cold and rainy November evening: there was a road-killed deer south of town, ours for the taking. When we arrived a squad car was directing a spotlight on a buck lying at the base of a slope, several yards off the roadway.  It was a big deer, well over 200 pounds, wearing a headdress of eight polished points. The investigating officer had to put the animal down. 

There was little external sign of injury except a rear leg broken at the knee. Field dressing and processing would show there had been a spinal injury, enough to disable the deer’s hind quarters.


It was an unfortunate end to a beautiful animal, just entering the prime of life. Tooth wear indicated the buck was two and a half years old. A deer in the wild can live up to 10 years, though few do, particularly males which are selectively targeted by hunters. 


Almost immediately after a deer dies there is a dramatic change in its eyes— an attentive and alert gleam gives way to dullness.  It is common among mammals, explained by a lack of blood flow and a breakdown in neurological function. But it can seem that something bigger has happened, something grand and ghostly. 


The native Americans embraced a belief in animal spirits, and most world religions make reference to a sentient if not a spiritual existence among nonhumans.  The question begs consideration at that somber moment when the light in the eyes of a whitetail fades. It persists, days later, as meat is meticulously cut from bone, packaged and frozen.  It returns when the backstrap is searing on hot cast iron, when preparing steak fajitas, meat balls, smoked summer sausage, shepherd's pie. 


In a world where most wild populations are in steep decline, white tailed deer are holding their own, sometimes thriving to the point of nuisance within city limits and protected parks.  Over much of their range they are the only significant big game animal, observed frequently, almost universally appreciated.  They rely on instinct, wit, and learned behaviors to find their way. They are given little consideration if their habitat is lessened or destroyed by urban sprawl, infrastructure or agriculture.They, like all wild species, exist mostly on the shirttails of man’s ambition. Their forced objective is to survive in spite of us. 


I don’t think much about the animal that provides my morning bacon. A grunting, rooting, coarse-haired ungulate is less endearing, despite its proven superior intelligence. But appearance and intelligence has little influence on our demand for pork chops, barbecued ribs, ham, and sausage. Almost one and a half billion hogs are slaughtered annually worldwide.


Before reaching the killing floor, before the light fades from their eyes following a short life, the vast majority of hogs are raised in an environment far removed from what they would have chosen.  Advocates say that animals raised in factory farms are pampered relative to their wild counterparts, fed rations developed by nutrition scientists, given easy access to water and shelter. If they get sick, a licensed veterinarian is standing by.


In a recent airing of NPR’s Living on Earth, author Frances Moore Lappe talked about the high environmental costs of meat production and the urgent need to adjust our diets to one that is more plant-based.  According to Lappe, our food system globally contributes almost 37 percent of greenhouse gas emissions and about 40 percent of that is from the livestock sector.  Of equal significance, industrialized agriculture, as it stands, will not feed a planet of eight billion people and counting (https://www.loe.org/shows/segments.html?programID=22-P13-00046&segmentID=1).  


There are new, promising technologies. Our grocery shelves may soon include meat that is biosynthetically produced using selected animal cells, grown without a living animal that requires food, water, and housing. A California firm is one step closer to earning USDA approval using the technology (https://www.canarymedia.com/articles/food-and-farms/climate-friendlier-meat-just-got-a-step-closer-to-your-plate).  


There is also work being done with Precision fermentation, a refined form of brewing, where microbes are multiplied to create specific products.  One method uses microbes that feed on hydrogen, water, carbon dioxide and fertilizer to manufacture a flour containing 60 percent protein, compared with only 37 percent found in soybeans, and the process requires 1700 times less land mass (https://apple.news/A9dWnaLjHSCmZGYh0EbhPhg). 


Millions of acres now used to grow animal feeds might soon be producing foods we consume directly, with much improved efficiency. With more corn and bean acreage up for grabs, hemp may finally be brought to scale, providing a superior alternative for manufacturing paper and fabric and building materials that are actually carbon negative, all from a crop requiring little or no chemical inputs. Even more exciting, with less demand on acreage for food production, rewilding could enter the mainstream and bring with it our greatest hope for storing carbon, controlling climate disruption, and halting the sixth great extinction. 


Maybe there’s a world in the near-future free of confinement livestock operations and killing floors. In that world, perhaps they’ll be autonomous vehicles so advanced that collisions involving deer will all but disappear. It’s an encouraging possibility. But for now, there is a hundred pounds of fresh venison in the freezer from an animal that will be long appreciated. His spirit, or whatever it was that put the spark in his eyes, lives on. 



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