Animals in a horror world of our making
October 24, 2005
Give people the facts on factory farming and they can make their own choice, writes Paul Sheehan.
"But your own vegetarianism, Mrs Costello," says President Garrard, "it comes out of moral conviction, does it not?"
"No, I don't think so," she says. "It comes out of a desire to save my soul."
- from The Lives of Animals, by J.M. Coetzee
Australian food has become so good that we export chefs and ideas and a flurry of recent stories overseas has noted the phenomenon, which we have begun to take for granted. Take, for example, this passing comment from The New Yorker of September 5: "The new cooking, which has spread from America and Australia out into the world, is almost purely melodic: the unadorned perfect thing."
The New Yorker then describes the influence of new cooking on one of the great chefs of France, Alain Passard, whose Paris restaurant, L'Arpege, has had three Michelin stars since 1996. Five years ago, Passard had an epiphany: "For most of his career, though an infinitely inventive cook, he was famous for his roasts ... Then, five years ago, he startled his diners, and his staff, by announcing that he would no longer cook red meat in his restaurant, and that he might phase out animal protein entirely ... The menu he now prefers is made entirely of vegetables.
'I no longer wanted to be in a daily relationship with the corpse of an animal. I had a moment when I took a roast out into the dining room, and the reality struck me ... And I could feel inside the weight and the sadness of the cuisine animal. And since then - gone! All the terrible nervousness and bad temper that are so much part of the burden of being a chef: that was gone with the old cooking ... Everyone in the kitchen commented on it ... a new lightness of step and spirit that entered my life."'
Snip.......
Sydney Morning Herald 
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