happy cows frolicking. (not.)

[aamcnamara]

There is no possible way I could be vegetarian. Not ever. Certainly not at college.

But I realized yesterday--(yes, it took me a while)--that I am not eating happy animals here. Which made me really sad. I am still dwelling on this, even though I know there is no way I can eat vegetarian and not be unhealthy.

See, I am okay with the idea of people eating animals. I am even okay with raising animals to be eaten. I am much less okay with raising animals inhumanely (and how weird is it that "inhumane" is our word for that concept?) to be eaten. If you are going to not care about them, not care about people, not care about the planet, it just doesn't make sense.

Gah.

Comments

[amberdine.livejournal.com]

I know what you mean. I really prefer to be vegetarian, but I'm so anemic all the time. I was constantly sick the years I tried it.

Felt a little better about eating beef after I moved to the country, and saw the actual ranching conditions all around me. The cattle here have better lives than most people! Hang out all day in lush grassy pastures with all their friends. Sure, they don't live a long time, but it doesn't look bad.

I try to get get organic/free range/known-private-farm meats. And I can't get along with modern pig farming. It's both cruel and disgusting. I avoid pork, which is sad but doable.

Still kind of ambivalent on fish and turkey.

[ph-unbalanced.livejournal.com]

Just a note on fish:

Whenever possible, you should eat wild fish -- a lot of farmed fish have high levels of PCBs from the feed that they use. I expect that to get better in coming years -- we're still really figuring out aquaculture. But stay as low as possible on the food chain, to avoid mercury.

Having said that, if what you're concerned about is fishery *practices*, then you really want to stick with US fish as much as possible. We have strict fishery laws here -- a lot of other countries are engaged in the fishing equivalent of strip mining. (The Russians are especially notorious.)

The Alaska fisheries are the best managed in the world, so anything from there is guiltfree. (Of course, I worked in the Alaskan fishing industry up until a year ago, so I *am* biased.)

[aamcnamara.livejournal.com]

I try to get organic/free range/etc. meats, too. Unfortunately, with the eating at college dining halls, I don't have much choice.

(I don't like pork much, or beef, so I don't eat those often in any case--I do eat poultry, and I do eat fish. I should probably look into conditions for poultry farms, since that's most of the meat I eat, but given the allergies and the college thing, it'd probably just make me even more sad to no particular point.)

[ph-unbalanced.livejournal.com]

Oh I *totally* get that. When I was growing up we had a farm with ~100 head of cattle, and I put in a lot of work out there on weekends. And, of course, hunting is an important part of the Texas lifestyle, so we did a lot of that, too. (Not that I ever actually managed to *shoot* anything, mind you.)

And for me, when you're that aware of the animals as *animals*, then killing them for meat isn't cruel. Animals kill and eat other animals -- it's just part of how things work. You can certainly *make* it cruel (and modern farming techniques often are) but I don't see the act as intrinsically cruel -- as long as you're mindful of where meat comes from.

I respect people who feel otherwise, of course.

Ironically, I rarely eat beef anymore. Most beef these days tastes like crap, compared to what I grew up eating.

[aamcnamara.livejournal.com]

Yeah. Using animals as things is not cool.

I am not surprised. Growing/raising your own food always tastes better, for a number of reasons.

[kayjayoh.livejournal.com]

One of the reasons I feel so lucky to live where I do is that there are quite a few farmers in the area with humanely raised animals. I made a promise to myself that I wouldn't buy meat when grocery shopping unless it was locally and sustainably raised.

I like knowing that this meat comes from Farmer Brown, and that I could drive to Farmer Brown's pasture in less than an hour, to visit my future meat. It provides transparency.

It also means that I pay more for my meat, so I eat less of it and think of it as a treat when I have it.

[aamcnamara.livejournal.com]

Makes sense. I hadn't realized, before, how fortunate that is--and how little control I really do have over my food here. Even if there are farmers in the area with humanely-raised animals, all I can do is send an email to the college dining services asking if they've considered switching sources, and the answer will probably be "sorry, it costs too much".

But yes, I definitely know what you're saying. Transparency is something to strive for.

[aliseadae]

Yeah. College food just feels icky in general. It all comes in such large boxes and I'm sure the places that make it are horrible and I miss fresh vegetables and fruits and things bought locally.

[aamcnamara.livejournal.com]

Mostly I think we do okay with food. Like, okay, all college food is sort of sketchy. But once in a while they do a local-food thing (we had a week of Local Apples which was really nice), and we always have fair trade coffee, and stuff.

But not free-range meat or anything yet. Maybe it just wants a petition. Someone must have started the fair trade coffee thing, after all.

[aliseadae]

Yah, your college does better than mine. We have apple day where there are local apples. That is once a year and we all look forward to it. I don't think we have fair trade coffee or fair trade anything or anything local. Bleh.

[vcmw]

I think you need to keep yourself healthy first, and it does seem to me since many of your starch/protein plant sources are limited that flesh should probably stay in your diet.

But it's perfectly possible, once you're out of college, to buy fish and poultry that have had pretty good lives. A local farm here sells their "stewing hens" after they've ended their lives as egg laying hens. Apparently the meat must be cooked quite a long time for tenderness but is flavorful when done.

Wheat-gluten, soy, dairy, eggs, and nuts are definitely key sources of protein for most vegetarians so I think it would be needlessly difficult for you to become completely vegetarian. But whole grains of various sorts and legumes (many of which I recall you can eat such as black beans right?) are also good sources of many amino acids, so you could create over time a balanced diet high in fiber supplemented by affordably sensible amounts of humanely raised meat.

Many of my vegetarian friends who do it for animal ethics reasons as opposed to dietary reasons are actually contemplating a switch to eating some meat, but only that raised humanely, out of a desire to add to the economic pressures that encourage more humane raising practices - they want to use their dollars to vote for ethical treatment of animals. So don't feel too bad - you're in with the trend!