To The Old School Farmers, Thank You*

I love meat. Meat, meat, meat, I think it’s grand. While most times at a restaurant I’ll steer away from ordering a nice juicy, plump steak, sometimes nothing else can satisfy me. In the morning when I wake up and I smell bacon frying up on the stove—thick slices of it lain between two paper towels to catch the dripping grease—oh the temptation not to just eat it up before my eggs are ready. Or when my dad whips up a hearty Bolognese sauce; sometimes with duck or just good ground beef, it simmers forever in tomato sauce just waiting to topple over every bite of pasta. What about mince meat pies when you go to a pub? Roasted chicken breasts accompanied by fried potatoes and asparagus? Plain and simple, nothing beats a good hot dog, wrapped in a bun with some caramelized onions. Oh baby.
Needless to say, I’m not a vegetarian. That would be a challenge of a lifetime to convert; however since reading Michael Pollen’s Omnivore’s Dilemma, I have committed myself to change my meat eating habits. Did you know that, “The FDA ban on feeing ruminant protein to ruminants makes an exception for blood products and fat; my steer will probably dine on beef tallow recycled from the very slaughterhouse he’s heading to in June” (pg. 76)? To catch you up to the quote above, Mr. Pollen purchased a cow with intentions to follow it all the way through the industrial food chain—how bushels of corn are made into steaks. If cows weren’t meant to eat corn as a main food source, I cannot imagine cows were meant to eat other cows either. Now think about that hamburger you ate the other night? There’s a high chance you’re eating not only a ridiculous amount of corn (it marbles the meat faster in cows, actually shortening the lifespan significantly because it gets fatter quicker), which is rather unhealthy, but you’re also most likely eating another cow. Not only are you then eating two cows, you’re also ingesting a number of antibiotics given to the cows prior to their slaughter, which could put you/us/the world at risk of creating a antibiotic-resistant superbug.
My solution? I could hunt for my own food or eat only free-range and grass fed meat (as local as possible). I want to know that my cows, chickens, ducks, lambs, and pigs developed naturally and happily on a farm that encouraged grazing and loitering in an open field and not in some shit hole (literally). No de-beaked birds, no hormone induced animals, no color additives in my fish. I want to love meat and I want to love the animals that I eat. Although the book is still making me feel guilty about eating meat because the industrialization of it is so messed up, change as I’ve always said before starts, small. In the words of Michael Jackson, “I’m staring with the man in the mirror”. ME!
picture by: http://cdkenterprises.com/coloring/animals/images/BarnyardCrew-dk.gif