In one corner we have author John Joseph, who is heckling male meat eaters by calling them pussies in his new book, and in the other corner: Mike O'Dea, carnivore and intern at Brooklyn's the Meat Hook. As a battle plays out in the comments of yesterday's post about Joseph's book, O'Dea is here to serve up a side of criticism, well-done:

I'm fairly sure humans didn't get to the top of the food chain by eating nuts and berries from day one. If it wasn't for meat in our diets (amino acids, protein etc) we probably wouldn't be having this exchange via electronic mail—and would instead be tossing rocks at one another from behind our primitive huts.

Pretty tough talk for a pussy! But O'Dea goes on to offer a nice perspective—which you can read after the jump—that perhaps, gasp, both sides can relate to? Either way, spoken like a man who has seen Food, Inc. a time or two.

Without reading the book I don't think I have much of an opinion about what he's getting on at. What I can say is it's true the majority of meat fabricated and sold in the US today is gross —antibiotics, hormones, feed and processing are all factors. Ever seen ground turkey at the grocery store? It's beige paste (that's made from a percentage of turkey meat but also other gross turkey-part fillers). Since this is the majority of meat that is consumed, the "bad" eventually ends up in the ultimate consumer: meat eaters.

I'm a huge proponent of knowing where all my meat comes from, how it was raised, what it was fed, how it was slaughtered and processed. If the option is available I'll always go for meat/poultry that has been humanely raised, fed natural feed—does everyone have this option? No. Do I hope that some day the way Americans eat will change for the better? Yes.

I have many Vegetarian/Vegan friends—when I explain my stance, I tend to get a level of acceptance from them. Do I understand why people want to be vegetarian? Yes. Do I respect it? Yes. Do I care for the over the top ultra militant "meat is murder" types? Not really. I work as an intern in a butcher shop in hopes that as I learn I can continually spread the understanding that not all meat is bad, and there are alternatives to large scale production-line farmed beef.