Last year we made a decision to try not to buy any more animal protein at the grocery store. That included chicken, beef, pork and lamb. We've been mostly successful.
The reasons are plentiful...You've seen the meat recalls, you've seen the footage of cows being tortured that made it up on CNN. Perhaps you've even eaten a dry, tasteless chicken breast or pork chop from the store recently. I really don't want to get into how chickens (whether for roasting or eggs), pigs and cattle are being raised, treated, kept alive with antibiotics, and slaughtered in the factory farms that supply the stores that most of us buy our food from. Read a little about it here or better yet, buy The Omnivore's Dilemma. If you haven't already thought about it or read about it, you'll be sickened and appalled and might just change the way you eat as well.
We didn't want to give up meat altogether - from my perspective, the issue isn't with eating meat, it's with what happens to that animal between its birth and its eventual destination. That includes what it ate, where it was raised (geographically and physically), who raised it, how it was processed and how it gets to our doorstep. Completely giving it up doesn't seem consistent with eating a balanced diet. And it seems too drastic, an over-reaction. Instead of complete denial, it's easier (and really, healthier and tastier) to implement a few simple rules...
1) Who was responsible for raising the animal? Do you know their name? Even better, have you met them?
2) What did the animal eat (not my phrase, but I don't think there's a better way to say it: "You are what what you eat eats"). Did it get to eat what it was born to eat or was it forced to eat something else to speed it on the path to processing?
3) How was it raised? Was it confined? Did it get to see the first rays of Sunlight in a field somewhere south of Lake Erie on the first 60 degree day in April? (Yeah, winter is starting to wear a little thin).
If you can find a supply of food that delivers satisfactory answers to those questions (satisfactory to you, not to me) - and I bet you can - then what's the problem?
Well, potentially the price. Good, healthy real food costs more than its mass produced counterpart. But there are ways to mitigate this, and we'll get into those...
So, where are we getting our chicken, beef, lamb and pork from now? We'll get into that too...
Comments