Whence the Beef? The gruesome trip from pasture to platter (and how to ensure that it's not so bad) (thanks to Brian Kane)
A very wise man once said that there are two things whose creation should never be witnessed: sausage and legislation. Well, once certainly cannot expect that the food chain would be a pretty and painless exercise, eh? That steak gracing your plate isn't there because some cow decided to sacrifice itself for the greater good. No, there is a good deal of pain, suffering, and death involved in getting that Porterhouse to you. Whether or not you feel guilty about that is, of course, completely optional.
Brian makes a good point when he says
Animal activists like to say that if most people knew how their meat was processed, we'd all be vegetarians.... Beyond that, I do think it's worth not giving in to the appeal of being ignorant about such things. The meat processing industry was transformed a century or so ago by one single book that exposed the conditions of the stockyards and meat packing plants of the time, so change is possible. Sometimes it just takes enough awareness.
That book, of course, is Upton Sinclair's "The Jungle", which was written, if memory serves, in the 1920s, and it served as the clarion call that exposed the meat-packing industry as the cynical, callous, profit-above-all-else industry that it was. I remember reading it while I was in Kosovo and thinking that it must have blown the lid off the secrecy that shrouded the industry in those days, and indeed it did.
Meat-packing is still not a business that could be described as anything close to humane. Cows are still terrorized, brutalized, and murdered to feed our expanding waistlines. Of course, the poultry industry is hardly an improvement. If this sort of thing offends you, well, vegetarianism is probably for you. If it doesn't...well, that's why the call it a "food chain", y'all.
I do not eat red meat, and I haven't for close to 12 years. For me, though, it's not a moral issue, rather a health one. In the early '90s, when I was living in Minneapolis, I was so broke that I couldn't afford beef. After awhile, I noticed that I'd lost some weight, and I felt better. I just took that and ran with it. I was a complete vegetarian for several years, but I found that I missed poultry and seafood.
Call me a heretic if you must, but there is no political agenda involved for me here. I may, in fact, go back to eating beef some day, but I frankly doubt it. This is my choice- PETA and Jeremy Rifkin be damned. Go make your own choice.
