I am no vegetarian.
I have spent countless hours researching factory farms and looking through “Go Veg” galleries, but I still can’t stop salivating when I think about a big, juicy burger. Don’t stop reading; I promise that I am a sensitive, loving person. Even though I do enjoy meat, I don’t share the ignorant bliss of the millions (or billions) of whopper worshippers. Instead, I try as hard as I can to only eat meat when I have an idea of where it comes from, as in, it’s free range and free of toxic chemicals. I don’t support, nor dare to even bite into, any protein that’s available via a drive-thru window.
When I’m shopping to satisfy my carnivorous cravings, the low quality of nonorganic meat is actually less of a factor for me than the idea of supporting the animal cruelty that occurs in factory farming. There are times of hunger when my guard almost comes down, but usually the thought of cows and chickens living in their own feces is enough to put me off. Even fish and turkeys are raised and slaughtered in mass production where conditions are not happy, let alone clean.
I get that fast food is cheap and people are broke, I really do. But for those who can’t afford organic, there is always the option of eating less meat — in the long run that’s healthier for everyone, human and animal alike. USM graduate Aimee Chaput has been a vegetarian for 5 years and isn’t going back to burgers anytime soon. “What has kept me from going back to meat is the information I’ve learned about the meat industry. Pamphlets like ‘Meet your Meat’ and documentaries on the industry showing how the animals are treated and slaughtered have kept me as a vegetarian. I don’t want to put food in my body that came from an animal that lived in fear every day and was only fed corn and antibiotics.”
While researching the meat industry for his book The Omnivore’s Dilemma, New York Times writer Michael Pollan investigated the relationship between cattle and corn. What he found is that cows are not evolved to digest corn, but they are fed it anyway because it fattens them up quickly, rendering them ready for the slaughterhouse when they’re only 14 months old. The problem with corn, however, is that it’s likely to make cattle sick, because their bodied aren’t designed to digest it. When they get sick, they are given “technological fixes,” usually antibiotics.
If supporting a corrupt industry that treats animals like dirt isn’t enough to put someone off mainstream products, then maybe the multitudes of food borne illnesses from diseased meat would do the trick. In the documentary “Modern Meat,” Carol Tucker Foreman, director of the Food Policy Institute at the Consumer Federation of America, attributes the thousands of fatal food-poisoning cases to common bacteria found in meat and poultry products. “Every package of meat that’s sold in the United States of America has a seal on it that says, ‘Inspected and approved, United States Department of Agriculture.’ The seal is there. You expect it to be clean and safe, and the truth is that it’s not.”
From animal treatment to antibiotics, it all boils down to our culture, conditioned to produce as much as possible regardless of quality. We want a lot, we want it cheap, and we want it now.
Some steps towards improvement could be as simple as cutting down on meat-focused meals a couple times a week, or buying from a farmer’s market instead of a chain grocery store. If you find yourself in Hannaford anyway, try replacing mass-produced meat with something different, like lamb chops or bison burgers. Some people might have it in them to be vegetarians, a healthy — and for me an enviable — way to go. I have tried to cut out meat many times, but I always end up going back. I don’t want to live in a black-and-white world where you are either evil or vegetarian. I just want to live in a world where people think about what they put into their bodies; a world where cows eat grass.