Life and Death

The best lechon in the Philippines can be found in Baybay, a small town in Southern Leyte, east of Cebu. I spent my youth taking yearly trips to Baybay, to visit my grandparents and spend time with my extended family. Fifty cousins, uncles, aunts and grandparents spend an entire day by the beach, listening to music, playing mahjong or cards, hunting for hermit crabs, and eating.

We are very, very good at eating. My aunt, Tita Sylvia makes sure that we have enough food to spend the entire day at the beach, preparing the feast days before. I wake up to the cries of the pig in my grandparents’ backyard being slaughtered for our family’s epic lunch. Mang Kardo, my grandmother’s trusted roaster goes to the beach house straight after breakfast to roast the pig on a spit for four hours and turn it into glorious lechon.

I gave up pork for three years while living in Manila, only to fall madly in love with lechon all over again as my cousin swooped her fork from the lechon’s ribs to my plate. I shrugged, ate it with vinegar and garlic, and it was divine.

I realize that this entry might be a bit too graphic for the Western palate. Being passionate about environmental sustainability, I’ve been struggling with the environmental cost of my consumption of meat and how essential meat consumption is to my home culture. Does eating meat make me less passionate about sustainability? Is it strange that I am comfortable looking at the pig I’m having for lunch before it gets slaughtered?

Moving to Vancouver made me realize how disconnected I have become from my food system. Back home, I knew how the trees where my fruits come from looked like, I knew the names of at least twenty kinds of fish, and went to the public market to haggle and buy my meat and seafood early in the morning. Western supermarkets just make it so easy and convenient to get neatly packed meat and produce, and hectic everyday living makes these romantic notions of knowing where your food comes from become such a hassle. Herein lies the problem – we are so disconnected from the earth and the damage that we place on it, that our actions are no longer guided by the non-monetary consequences of our consumption.

A friend of mine once told me about the time he slaughtered a goat for dinner. I’ve never killed a mammal for food before, so I wondered how this affected his consumption of meat. “I still eat meat. In order to have life, there must be death,” he said. I thought about that, and realized that this philosophy applies to all living beings. Even plants have to stop growing to nourish us.

As frequent my local farmer’s market and every week, I am reminded of the tension that exists between health and affordability. I don’t question that the higher price point reflects higher quality, better feed and labour-intensive organic farming. However, our society and economy have much to do before it can become a just and equal food system, accessible to everyone, regardless of their economic situation.

While there are no simple solutions the problems surrounding food security and climate change, reflecting on the process of growing, distributing, slaughtering, preparing and eating food, might make all of us better consumers who waste less, and eat better food.

Eat good food, try new food, share food with other people, grow your own food, kill your food and think about how comfortable you are with that, practice Meatless Mondays, prepare your food and be thankful to everyone who was involved in the process of getting that food on your plate.

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