How’s that burger taste now?
19 02 2008When people ask me why I’m a vegetarian I tell them it’s for a host of reasons but you don’t need more than this to convince you that meat should not but industrialized. I’m convinced that there’s no way to insure that meat is safe when the animals are raised and processed this way.
I also think that it’s impossible for most people to work in situations like this without becoming damaged on an psychological level. I just don’t see a lot of difference from these guys and the guards an concentration camps that ‘processed’ people into the ovens or created ‘games’ to dehumanize, torture and kill. It’s all about establishing emotional distance from the thing you are killing and treating it like a thing.
Unfortunately, we in the West have distanced ourselves from our food. We don’t recognize where it came from or how it got into that patty shape. Personally, I think it’s important, even on a symbolic level for people to take part in the collecting their food, at least occasionally. I still eat fish and so it’s important to me that a couple times a year I catch and prepare fish to eat. It may not seem like a big deal but I think I am going to something that was, at one point alive, I shouldn’t shy away from having to kill it. On some level it gives me respect for where my food came from.
I think there can be a good argument made for eating meat from organic, diversified farms like the one described in Michael Pollen’s book “The Omnivore’s Dilemma“. Cherry Grove Farm is one such place in New Jersey (although I couldn’t seem to find where they actually process their meat.) I know the USDA makes it very difficult for small farmers to do their own processing on site and so forces many to use the big industrial plants but at raising and feeding farm animals properly that eventually get to the table is not small task and anyone who does that is making huge strides in both animal welfare and public safety.
I still don’t know if I could eat beef, pork, lamb or chicken. Even when faced with free range, grass fed, organic and humanely raised meat products I couldn’t cross over to the dark side to buy any. I don’t think I have any moral issues about hunting particular animals for food (particularly if human activity has resulted in them over populating an area and causing ecological damage - like white tail deer in the Northeast) but that may just be because I haven’t had a piece of venison on a plate in front of me.
Methinks it’s time for some moral searching…
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