Care to Meat?
I do not want it from a box
Poked and pulled, electric shocks
Raised in a cage, served in a can
Taste the plastic and not the land
I have feelings towards meat. Opinions. With friends vegetarian and vegan, I have tasted new things, rethought what it is that makes a meal. I was anxious for the Farmer’s Market in coming back to Eau Claire. And I am active with the Foodlums (UWEC’s local and organic food club). My diet has been shifting, evolving. At the forefront, is meat. I like meat, I eat it, and I am not opposed to its presence on the dinner table. We started out carnivores. It is natural. When humans took to eating plants, that was unnatural, we got sick. Time happens, we got healthy, balanced out. It works.
Where my concern enters, is the process which brings the meal to my plate. We have turned our animals into products. They may lack our abilities of cognition, yet that does not defend their treatment as little more than plastic. Animals live in forests and fields, not in factories. What it boils down to, is that I do not want an animal to have existed for me alone. What creature should live for no other purpose than to feed another? The idea disturbs me. Everything deserves sunshine. If I have no other conviction in life, so be it. But everything, all of it, deserves sunshine. Our current practice falls greatly short of this. The issue goes to far more brutality than light deprivation, but you do not have to take my word for it. PETA.org will tell you all you care to know, and plenty more. …In fact, they may be a poor source. Rather scary and polarizing.
My resolution is to know what I am eating. I want to respect the life that preceded my meal. I can do this by knowing where it came from, what it ate, and how it lived. I want to know that it had the capacity to roll in a field of grass and was not squatted down in a cramped cage of filth. I will continue to consume meat, though consciously. And only when I know and agree with the origin. The term is free range. This is more work, often more financial expense, and overall less meat eaten. I can live with this, and what is more… I can sleep with this.