The Elite's Guilt-Free Meat

Food Chain Radio Podcast with Michael Olson

Amanda Starbuck, Research Director, Food & Water Watch

Will we be made to eat the elite's guilt-free meat?

Franz Kafka, author of The Trial, once said, “My guiding principle is this: Guilt is never to be doubted.”

There are a lot of ways to make people feel guilty, and so most of us go through life being guilty about something.

What if our guilt could be used to make us to do something we would otherwise not want to do?

Let’s give it a try, on me! Let’s put our collective finger on the chest of Michael Olson and accuse him of being cruel to animals. After all, he does eat meat and some of that meat does come from factory farms. Let’s sit Olson down in a chair and force him to watch videos of poor farm animals being tortured as they are led to their death. “Cruel… so cruel!”

There’s more, so keep jabbing those fingers: “Look here, Olson, by eating the meat of factory farmed animals, you are causing the climate to warm, the sea to rise, and the green turn to brown. Sit back down on that chair and watch videos of the earth on fire, cities flooding over, and poor fish flopping around in mud. Cruel, Olson… so very, very cruel!”

But wait! Here they come to save Olson’s day! They are the elites who have come up with new forms of patented, guilt-free, animal-less meat to eat. For Olson to atone for all his animal cruelty and environmental terrorism guilt, all he needs to do is eat the elites’ guilt-free meat!

And so Franz Kafka’s guiding principle leads one to ask:

Will we be made to eat the elites’ guilt-free meat?