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Americans eat a lot of meat.
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We eat it
for all meals for the day,
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Because it's the Fourth of July,
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because we're at a baseball game, and because, hey, it's on sale.
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We consume more of it then the rest of
the world,
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and all that consumption has a big
impact. If everyone ate meat like Americans,
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it would be a disaster. so what is it
about us
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So what is it about us, that's turned America into a nation of carnivores?
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It could be our wealth –
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but there are other countries that are
wealthier.
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It could be our farm subsidies –
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but lots of other countries have those too. I was curious –
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so I phoned a meat historian.
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"My name is Maureen Ogle, and I'm a historian."
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For seven years she researched meat and
in the end, she wrote a book about it.
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This book.
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So, why are we such meat fanatics?
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"One thing that's important to know
about the people who settled North America,
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is that they all left a place that food was often scarce
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in a way that's nearly impossible for us to imagine now."
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In Europe land was in short supply and
cities were growing rapidly.
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Only royalty ate meat regularly,
because they were the only ones who had
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access to grazing land.
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In America, by contrast, the land was there for the taking
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– from the Native Americans.
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Colonists didn't know how far west the West went.
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And with their legal structure, almost
anyone could own livestock.
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"It was so easy for livestock to
reproduce – within just a generation or two,
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colonists became accustomed to the
notion that
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meat was always available
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and always on the table."
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There are cases where indentured
servants complained or away because
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they weren't getting fed enough meat –
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and in general, the colonial legal system agreed –
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everyone deserved meat.
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"But I think that sense of entitlement became a defining characteristic of what it meant to be an American."
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Right from the beginning we wanted meat, because it felt like America was teeming in this
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endless bounty of wildlife, land, and, uh –
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pigs.
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After Americans had settled down and got
comfortable,
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farmers packed up been headed to the
city –
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but urban Americans kept their appetite for meat.
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"That's important because
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city people don't produce their own food.
Approximately 1810, about 7 percent
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of Americans lived in an urban
place.
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By the time the Civil War broke out,
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almost a quarter of them did."
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Initially, people just ate less meat.
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It made sense – fewer farms meant less.
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But, urban Americans demanded more and cheaper meat
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and our modern industrial system obliged. By the late 1800s
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America had built up an extraordinarily
large, lucrative, and efficient system
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for raising livestock
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turning them into meat,
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and distributing that meat to stores across the U.S.
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Meat traveled distances in hours –distances that once took weeks.
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Transportation and other technologies,
like refrigeration,
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made meat cheaper and cities more
attractive.
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And cheap meat is what Americans wanted.
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So what's the deal with Americans and meat?
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It's the idea that we're entitled to it –
the sense that land and resources are
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plentiful and inexhaustible –
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and even if the US is consumption has
decreased
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ever so slightly were still far more carnivorous than most.
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Most countries love meat – but we Americans have
had such a full history with it,
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because it was – from the very beginning – cheap and available.
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and we've worked hard to keep it that way.
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"Meat is a whole lot like gasoline,
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the only time Americans really get upset
about meat is if it suddenly seams unafforable
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and as soon as the prices go back down – well then no one's got any complaint."
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When Americans met meat,
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it was love at first sight. Now we
have to figure out
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how to live happily ever after.