Is there a film/animal connection???

glbeas · Jan 2, 2006

Lee Shively said:
I'm no chemist but I have always thought that since petroleum products are really just dinosaur remains, oil-based synthetic items and plastics are also derived from animals.

Heh! Nope, they are mostly remains of sea life like diatoms, algae, bacteria and such. Much more by the pound present on earth than any land roving or filppered animal ever was. Plus there is a tremendous amount of microscopic life present in the deeper rocks and sediments below ground that is just lately starting to be recognised.

Donald Qualls · Jan 2, 2006

outofoptions said:
I think there was a comic strip where Opus, trying not to harm any life, ended up hanging upside down from a tree branch (didn't want to step on anything) and not breathing so he wouldn't take in microbes that would be destroyed by his immune system. Death happens, we cause it, we can't stop it.

Not surprisingly, there is a real life religious sect, the Jainists, who take things this far. The most devout, often after a long period of increasingly vegan tendencies and even filtering drinking water and wearing a filter mask to avoid breathing in microorganisms, sometimes starve themselves to death as they decrease their intake of *any* other life, even plants, for food.

It's a hard viewpoint to internalize, for one who sees human disgestion and dentition as making us natural omnivores (like bears or pigs, more or less). For most of human history, eating meat was the best thing you could do to ensure you own survival and that of your offspring.

But belief is frequently founded on other systems than logic and science; enough to say that if you want to avoid harming other life forms, you'll harm yourself, inevitably, like a Jainist starving because he refuses to eat vegetables, much less meat, milk, and eggs. I have no plans to give up gelatin based photography, any more than I intend to suspend my consumption of omelets and pizza.

CharlieM · Jan 2, 2006

Donald Qualls said:
It's a hard viewpoint to internalize, for one who sees human disgestion and dentition as making us natural omnivores (like bears or pigs, more or less). For most of human history, eating meat was the best thing you could do to ensure you own survival and that of your offspring.

This is true, of course. The trouble begins when things become 'unnatural'. As when, for example, we humans feed strictly vegetarian animals (cows) bits of their own species ground up into animal feed pellets. Then things go awry through our own making and it all goes out of kilter. We reap what we sow. (There are some suggestions it still goes on, although it's now supposed to be illegal). If I had a choice I'd go nowhere near gelatin, and this is more than anything else a selfish wish not to contaminate myself, by the consequences of bad farming practice (i.e. potential terminal disease, and extremely unpleasantly so). As it is my love for photography is too great to contemplate giving anything up and I just hope that whatever may be lurking in the bone marrow is not harmful unless I eat it! I wouldn't like to bet my life on it though, and distrust in general of the reassurances of scientists is fairly commonplace in the U.K. I might begin thinking about using gloves ....probably a good idea anyway.

Anyway, I would seriously question whether eating meat, now, is the best way of ensuring our survival or that of our offspring. Unless you go free range and organic, and even then, only if you eat meat in moderation.

Michael Kadillak · Jan 3, 2006

I have a client in the beef and pork business and have seen the tons of animal bones that regularly have gone to the Kodak Peabody Mass. gelatin plant (among others) that finds its way into a myriad of consumer products.

What I find equally interesting (in the welcome to the real world category) is the look on a persons face when they learn that primary rendered animal fat is one of the primary ingredients in all womens cosmetics. God knows as an industry they have tried like hell to find a substitute.

The justifications and the personal rational that follow are quite interesting. But at the end of the day it is what it is.....

Michel Hardy-Vallée · Jan 3, 2006

One of my first serious jobs was working in a butcher store, which I did fulltime for a year, and then parttime for another, when I started my studies. I started sweeping the floor and throwing the crap in the garbage but in the end I was serving customers and piecing sides of beef into roasts and whatnot. What it left on me, apart from an intimate knowledge of how to cut a quadrupede, was that when you kill an animal, you better eat everything you can, and use the rest for something worthy, because there's a whole lot more to a beef than the good cuts. I can't count the number of fancy clients I served who would buy nothing but filet mignon, and in the end it really bothered me that when you tried offering them a different cut that was less known (we were doing French cut, so there's a finer division of meat than in American) but just as tasty, they would give us the weird look. We were constantly left with extras from the less fancy parts (neck, shanks, etc) but never from the prime cuts. For my part, I've learned to cook tail, feet, and neck properly, and they are as much favorites as finer cuts.

It still bothers me that so much waste must happen so that Joe fancy gets his fillet. Animals are discrete resources, not continuous ones. You can't produce only sirloin without byproducts, at least until we bio-engineer our steaks--when that happens I'd rather be a full vegan. For now I'd rather see bones and marrow go into gelatin than into more waste in the dump. It's a minimal act of respect towards the animal one's been eating.

srs5694 · Jan 3, 2006

mhv said:
You can't produce only sirloin without byproducts, at least until we bio-engineer our steaks--when that happens I'd rather be a full vegan.

We're actually getting pretty close to that. I don't have any references handy, but there's been a lot of research aimed at growing animal muscles (that is, meat) without the animals. There are obvious commercial applications, at least if the infrastructure needed to grow meat this way isn't too costly. NASA's also funding some of the research, with the goal of supplying meat for long-duration space missions. Some of this research dovetails with medical research (to grow replacement organs for human patients).

To bring this back OT, it's conceivable that these techniques could eventually be used to create gelatin without an animal. It'd probably take a fair amount of R&D, though, even once growing steaks (or whatever) is perfected. Somehow I doubt if film will be a big enough industry to fund the necessary research, but it's conceivable bio-engineered gelatins created for other purposes will be adaptable for film. This is all several years down the road, though, at least AFAIK.

fhovie · Jan 3, 2006

In modern meat processing plants almost everything is used. Even things you wouldn't consider usable. Medical interests take an amazing number of items that included eyes and organs. And then ... you don't even want to know what goes into hot dogs and sausages. I think it is amazing and commendable how little waste there is in a modern slaughterhouse. The final scraps are "rendered" back into animal food.

mhv said:
One of my first serious jobs was working in a butcher store, which I did fulltime for a year, and then parttime for another, when I started my studies. I started sweeping the floor and throwing the crap in the garbage but in the end I was serving customers and piecing sides of beef into roasts and whatnot. What it left on me, apart from an intimate knowledge of how to cut a quadrupede, was that when you kill an animal, you better eat everything you can, and use the rest for something worthy, because there's a whole lot more to a beef than the good cuts. I can't count the number of fancy clients I served who would buy nothing but filet mignon, and in the end it really bothered me that when you tried offering them a different cut that was less known (we were doing French cut, so there's a finer division of meat than in American) but just as tasty, they would give us the weird look. We were constantly left with extras from the less fancy parts (neck, shanks, etc) but never from the prime cuts. For my part, I've learned to cook tail, feet, and neck properly, and they are as much favorites as finer cuts.

It still bothers me that so much waste must happen so that Joe fancy gets his fillet. Animals are discrete resources, not continuous ones. You can't produce only sirloin without byproducts, at least until we bio-engineer our steaks--when that happens I'd rather be a full vegan. For now I'd rather see bones and marrow go into gelatin than into more waste in the dump. It's a minimal act of respect towards the animal one's been eating.

gainer · Jan 3, 2006

It is said that every part of the pig is used but the squeal.

CharlieM · Jan 3, 2006

fhovie said:
I think it is amazing and commendable how little waste there is in a modern slaughterhouse. The final scraps are "rendered" back into animal food.

And as long as it isn't fed to the cows, we should be O.K.

Actually, I think in theory using every scrap of the animal is a good thing, and agree it's the least we should do....

But unfortunately, there is a point here with not only cattle food, but poultry food aswell. Maybe we're more sensitive about it in the U.K. (some people say it's only a matter of time before BSE reaches the U.S.). It's still happening, you know, the whole thing is still unpredictable. Feeding bits of cattle to cattle is now prohibited. I'm not certain about the legal situation with poultry, but saw a documentary suggesting feeding poultry to poultry is going on and is a time-bomb.

I'd say - in the meantime take care what you feed your cattle and poultry. Take care what you feed your kids.

But that's getting a little off-topic...

Jim Chinn · Jan 3, 2006

Maybe as photographers who want to see film always be available we should state in our wills that our skeletal remains be sent off to be ground up for gelatine.

Well, it's just a thought. You might actually live on in relative immortality as part of a great work of art. As long as the proper archival processes were followed of course.

Jose A Martinez · Jan 3, 2006

I wonder, if the vegans succeed in their Crusade, I'll need to find another subject matter!!

Is there a film/animal connection???

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