The ethical ramifications of meat consumption navigate some murky emotional and sociopolitical waters. Loving animals, being concerned about their welfare, and still choosing to eat them at the end of the day in spite of this (or perhaps because of it) means, for some of us, distinguishing between compassion and sentimentality.

One thing I've often heard repeated is that children are wired to be horrified by the realization that meat is, well, meat. I've witnessed this in the U.S., but never did when I was growing up in the Gulf, where, in the 1980s, being vegetarian and certainly vegan would have been a fast track to malnourishment. As an angst-ridden teen, I mourned Chauncey, my beloved pet goat whose fate became stew after he became too rambunctious. I comforted myself with the thought that I'd rather eat his brains myself, thus absorbing his memory with my very cells, then ask that he be portioned off and distributed elsewhere. It seems indulgently sentimental to balk at the thought of people in other countries eating dogs or cats just because our domestic pets reserve a different position in society.

In The Face on Your Plate:The Truth About Food (W.W. Norton & Co), writer Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson extends his vegan convictions with heart-tweaking arguments in favor of reducing both our carbon footprint and the suffering of helpless animals. Any rational person, vegan or otherwise, would be revolted by the abhorrent reality of factory farming, and we can curb the damages we're inflicting on our environment in a number of ways without completely giving up meat. Though our meat consumption is often vilified, vegetable farming is not without ethical implications of its own. Anyone who has eaten tomatoes during the winter has almost certainly eaten ones picked off the vine by slave laborers in Florida or Mexico who live in poverty on the human equivalent of a factory farm.

In a recent Forbes article titled "The Locavore Myth," James E. McWilliams, author of Just Food: Where Locavores Get It Wrong and How We Can Truly Eat Responsibly, wrote, "If you want to make a statement, ride your bike to the farmer's market. If you want to reduce greenhouse gases, become a vegetarian."

People are polarized on these issues, many of which smack of a philosophical luxury that I find deeply unsettling. In fact, when Masson, who lives on a beach in New Zealand, described his family's glorious-sounding vegan diet, I thought, "Gee, I'd be pretty happy eating everything he eats. But I don't grow avocado in my backyard or make my own tofu."

If reducing our carbon footprint is one of the side effects of elevating our awareness about what we eat, then we have to consider the environmental ramifications of getting these foods to our table in the first place. For this reason, couldn't it be argued that hunting can be a sounder and even a more conscious approach to sustenance than veganism? The Taos County Economic Development Corp. touts a mobile matanza — a portable slaughterhouse — for slaughtering and processing animals on-site. How's that for cutting back on transportation costs?

Giving up meat doesn't remove us from the food chain, or from the act of harvesting food from lands that belong to wildlife whose homes and lives are often destroyed because of it. Giving up meat does, however, shift our perceptions of our role in that process.

A vegetarian diet is also not mind over matter for all of us, especially when cultural and genetic predispositions are taken into consideration. Every now and then, and occasionally when I least expect it, my body cries out for meat, as did my mother's when she was carrying me in her womb after
10 years of vegetarianism.

"The Earth's ecosystem is based on a cycle of life and death," says farm shark Avery Affholter of Earth Works Institute, "and this is really obvious to anyone who has herded and raised their own animals. Reducing something to the sum of its parts can make it difficult to assess — and respect — its real value, whereas investing time into another living being and into our sustenance is life-giving, not life-destroying. I think it's ultimately one of the most nourishing experiences we can have."

Talking with Affholter, who works with ranchers who are part of the New Agrarianism movement, helped me better understand just how challenging it is to farm in a way that is beneficial and restorative to the land. And I choose to support those farmers.

Does that make (ethical) meat consumption a human right or a privilege? I have no idea. For me, nose-to-tail eating is at the heart of the ethical debate. Eating whole animals and their organ meats has always seemed to me part and parcel with honoring an animal's sacrifice.

Nouf Al-Qasimi is a freelance writer living in Santa Fe. Send e-mail to food@q.com.