I read an article on another blog, which forwarded me to the Original New York Times article on the high cost of meat production and consumption worldwide, but primarily in (yes) the United States.
I hadn’t considered writing such a lengthy blog tonight, but a response on the other blog kind of fueled my fire, so here I am, at your expense.
Now, as most of you know (or at least the three of you that read my blog), I am not a vegetarian. I fully condone meat eating in its natural state or at the furthest removal, a local-to-you accountable farm. Sure, you’ll pay a little more for it, but really, you’re paying a lot less in the long run.
All corporate meat (this includes organic, halal, kosher and otherwise) that is grown (not raised, mind you) in feedlots and slaughterhouses are contributers to a host of problems that, frankly, we just don’t need.
Firstly, these animals are treated cruelly. Don’t believe me? CNN published an article on the undercover video of a dairy farm in (guess where?) California.
But this article just talks about cows, and cows are treated the least cruel in the holy triad of to-yer-plate cruelty between their brethren: the chickens and pigs. In other words: cows got it made by comparison. Cows, at least, get to be in fields for a short period of their ill-begotten lives.
But I’m not here to tell you all the awful things that happen to cows, chickens and pigs in corporate feedlots. You already know! I don’t need to preach to you, even though I might anyway.
What I’m here to do is to pose the question: What should we do with all this shit??
So that corporate burger joints can serve up a cheap burger for after church on Sunday, Americans endure approximately 810 million tons of toxic, antibiotic-laden shit. That’s not even considering our own shit. That’s just the first round of shit. Consider how much you excrete every day. Multiply that by everyone in your home. Then by the population of your neighborhood. City. State. Region. Country. World.
Where does all the feedlot shit go?
Right into our streams, of course! And I suppose that might not be all that big of a deal if, the feedlot animals weren’t shot up with antibiotics and other drugs to keep them alive (note, not necessarily in good health) until slaughter.
But is all this really necessary?
“Americans are downing close to 200 pounds of meat, poultry and fish per capita per year (dairy and eggs are separate, and hardly insignificant), an increase of 50 pounds per person from 50 years ago. We each consume something like 110 grams of protein a day, about twice the federal government’s recommended allowance; of that, about 75 grams come from animal protein. (The recommended level is itself considered by many dietary experts to be higher than it needs to be.) It’s likely that most of us would do just fine on around 30 grams of protein a day, virtually all of it from plant sources.” (NYT Article ref at top)
So, okay. You don’t care about the effects of meat on your body. That’s fine by me, cuz it’s your body and you can do what you wish with it. I hold no judgments on you.
However, you should know exactly what happens when you choose to support an economy that is based on greed, gluttony and overproduction. What happens, exactly, is that we become a product of the things we endorse. You want a cheap, fatty piece of meat? Guess what you are! [I am striking this sentence in retrospect of my sometimes getting overly preachy on accident. I don’t mean to do it, so I apologize for that. The point I was feebly trying to make is that we are *all* of what we eat whether that’s wholesome meat or cheap meat or fresh vegetables or rotten vegetables or advertising or sickness or none of it or all of it.]
Food isn’t the only thing we consume. We consume the sickness of the things we eat. We consume the advertising that benefits from our unawareness. We consume the judgments of our peers and water-cooler talk. We move away from nature and a sense of brute understanding to some world that is supposedly “refined” and “intelligent.” Except it’s totally not.
And yes, in a hunter/gatherer situation, the effects of meat eating would be much different. Firstly, hunters didn’t catch meat at $4.99 /lb at the market. They had to run! They had to hunt! Secondly, the animal itself was healthy and a viable part of the food chain since many cultures feel it is taboo to eat a sick animal because they feel the sickness would spread itself through the community. Thirdly, the amount of meat consumed would have been a much, much smaller part of the diet than the current American diet. It’s not a reasonable argument for today’s society.
But you’re doing what you can, right? You watched Al Gore’s movie, and you’re all about it! You unplug unnecessary gadgets; you walk when possible; you recycle, reuse and reduce; you don’t excessively travel to exotic places; you keep the heat down to 60 and wear a sweater. That’s great! You’re totally on the right track!
Take a look at the carbon footprint of corporate meat farming.
It’s really important to see how much pollutant is put into the air, land and water from meat production. If you consider yourself a conscious consumer at all, keep this in mind.
If you can grow your own vegetables, that’s even better because you reduce your carbon footprint even more! Just be sure to get the ground tested first, or use potted organic soil.
Now, if you just can’t help it and you really have a taste for meat and there’s not a local independent farm around, then go the next best steps: first support the local farmer, then the farmer’s market, then the local market, then local chain, then national chain in that order.
I’m not suggesting you drop your car, become a vegetarian and eat nothing but rice for the rest of your no-meat-for-me days – no, of course not. I think that’s unreasonable also. I just want you to know what’s up. That’s it. Nothing more.
Nothing has to change, except your social awareness.
0 replies on “Full of Shit… Literally”
K-
You bring up an excellent point. It’s really interesting to think about.
I think you’re right about plants being sentient on a certain level – there are plants that have made themselves not for eating, and that’s far smarter than a chicken.
If you cut a limb of a tree, I am not certain it feels pain and it does, in fact, heal itself.
If you cut a limb off a chicken – I am certain it is in pain AND it may not heal itself.
I don’t know if one is “better” than the other. I have no problem eating a chicken if it’s raised well. I also have no problem eating plants if they, too, are raised well.
I just read an article about human rights violations >> modern-day slavery in a particular Florida tomato field. I won’t buy those tomatoes because if the farm treats the people that badly, imagine what they do to the tomatoes!
Hi Keri- You believe plants are not sentient beings (by the way I had to look that word up in the dictionary) but I do. OK – when you cut off the limb of a tree – it knows the limb is gone and it heals the cut. A flower can make itself look exactly like an insect to attract a pollinator. How can it see the insect to know what to grow like? I believe it knows the insect is there and can feel it even pollinating it. How do we know the tree doesn’t say “Ouch” when we cut it? Man doesn’t believe a plant is a sentient being because it can’t dissect a brain. On this matter I also believe that there is more to this world than scientist can prove – I think life may be not of creation or evolution but probably something entirely different.
Yeah, K..
Some of it is used for fertilizer, but there’s a lot that just runs off into the streams, which wouldn’t be a problem i think, if there weren’t like a ton of antibiotics and hormones shot into the animals (and left in the waste).
there’s also something called a “waste lagoon” which i don’t know much about and tried to get more information last night. i understand that it’s basically like a big shit pot, but what happens to it after it goes there, i’m not sure.
I guess my whole point is to eat what you want, just be aware of what it actually *is* and how it contributes to the greater world.
When I sit down to eat now, I like to make a little trace-back of the life of the thing I’m eating. Plants aren’t sentient beings, though they do have a life and I am grateful for them consuming the sun’s energy so that I may have some energy, too.
Again, I’m not a vegetarian. I like to eat meat and when I do, I like to have a clean conscious of where that meat came from, how it was treated and what kind of a carbon footprint it left behind for my children.
I thought they use the shit for fertilizer? They do on small farms for sure. Now I know you know attitude is everything. My attitude is this — what about plants? I believe they have as much claim to life as we do. They are not different really, they grow, and reproduce – we just don’t know how to communicate with them any more than we can communicate with a cow. I suppose when it comes right down to it our consumption of air is changing energy also. I agree that we all need to be aware of what changes we are making in this world and paying it forward is a great idea. I’m not sure where I am going with this except maybe that we do need to be true to ourselves and know that we can’t help but exist. (Art says the worms are going to eat us after we die – so we should eat the worms now.)