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.)