Vegetarianism

Alright, since I don't have any fresh video of the kids, I thought I would delve briefly into the world of vegetarianism. As some of you may know, I have been a vegetarian for the past two years. Largely I did this to help save the earth - Over twenty percent of greenhouses gases come from COWS. It is more detrimental to the earth to eat red meat than it is to drive a Hummer. I had originally given up red meat and pork (articles on the waste products of these animals alone are very troubling) and I just ate poultry and then the "chicken trucks" of Arkansas made me give up all meat. I have never liked fish so that wasn't hard to give up. Like the rest of you, I had occasionally seen reports on animal cruelty in slaughterhouses (kind of an oxymoronish statement, eh?), and yes, it was troubling, but I guess I didn't realize how VERY commonplace torture of animals was in these places (now if you are eating a burger while reading this, you might want to stop reading).

I finished an eye-opening book last night called Eating Animals. It delves into the world of commercial fisheries and factory farming. It is disturbing to say the least, but I am so glad I read it as I now have the tools I need to continue to eliminate more animal products from my diet. There are some startling facts in this book. The average American consumes over 21,000 animals in their lifetime. Twenty-one thousand. By 2050 we will have so many cows on our planet that they alone will be eating enough food and grain that could have fed FOUR BILLION people. We have so overfished our oceans that within the next 50 years we very well might see the total collapse of the oceans. The most shocking part of this book deals with factory farms. Ninety-nine percent of our meat today comes from factory farms. I had no idea how these animals are treated at these factories until I read this book. Stories of how they kill them or torture them until the animal succumbs. And this is the norm. I won't go into the gory details that are in this book, but by the end of it I was almost crying about the stories of cows on the conveyer belt. I always thought I was being "good" by buying organic, but these animals are not treated any better than the non-organic counterparts. I thought I was doing a good job by buying "cage free" eggs, but they are typically confined to space the same size as a small cage.

I need to do better. I have given up eating meat, but now I'm going to move on to dairy. The very hard thing is that dairy products are in almost EVERYTHING. Even in my veggie chicken patties. In my bread. It is everywhere. The kids and Greg still eat poultry at home, but I'm going to go back to buying it at the local natural foods store where they buy chicken that is raised on a local monastery and it is "humanely" raised and butchered. Greg's first question was of course, "Won't this be more expensive?" Yes, it will be, but then you can just eat less of it. He's going to be thrilled about the fact that I'm now cooking my whole family more vegetarian meals. :) I'm going to work on the dairy, but this is going to be one that will have to be gradual so that I don't fail. I need to do a lot of reading - perhaps I should buy my own dairy cow and milk her myself. Greg can help me pasteurize the milk and build me something to put the manure in for the methane gas and then maybe we can run our whole house off the methane? Then there is the whole topic of dog and cat food which of course if full of meat products. I need to investigate vegetarian animal foods. There is a statement in this book which I love - "We can't plead ignorance, only indifference."

The author talks about how fifty or sixty years ago he never would have considered being a vegetarian as factory farms didn't exist. Cows, pigs, and chickens lived on farms outside and ate grass, bugs, etc. We didn't need to fill them with antibiotics and steroids and yes, they grew slower, but that is just how it was. The slaughter wasn't automated by equipment that doesn't work properly a large amount of the time. Farmers took care of their livestock and made sure their deaths were respectfully handled. He is pro-farmer, but anti-factory farm. Very interesting book. So that was my "Somber Sunday" blog - I'll work on some video of the kids so that my next blog isn't so serious!