From Last Week’s “Is It Just Me?”

So what is an enlightened person to do?  Give up meat altogether and subsist on plants and grasses?  Believe it or not, plants hold enough proteins, fats and other essentials to sustain strong, happy human beings.  Vegan bodybuilders prove that plants can do the job just as well as meat can; so do all the plant-eaters of the animal kingdom – you just need to eat more of it.  Cattle maintain a steady diet of nothing but grass and corn, yet they grow up big and strong with very delicious – I mean developed - muscles.  But who really wants to eat Seaweed Stew, Roast Rack of Lilacs or Tofu anything-at-all?

The problem is this: it’s a part of the web of life to eat meat, but it’s become too easy to attain it.  No longer must we chase our food across the plains – just swing by the local Piggly Wiggly and pick up a smoked shoulder; two, even.  We don’t hunt our meals, we let someone else do the dirty work for us – and dirty it is.  According to the USDA itself, in 2000, the United States alone killed (are you ready for this?) over 8.5 Billion chickens, turkeys and ducks so we could eat.  Of course, these birds are smaller than their mammalian counterparts, so how many cows, pigs and lambs did we snuff?  “Only” about 140 Million – not even close to the number of fowl.  Why?  Aside from the size difference I’m not certain, but I’d guess it’s because our fast-food restaurants get much of their beef and pork from other countries, while most of the birds we eat are produced domestically.  But whether here or somewhere else, the process of turning a clucking, scratching hen into a chicken nugget is horrifying, to say the least.  Have you even killed an animal yourself and ate it?  Most of us have not and the simple thought of it horrifies many, yet nearly every one of us gets excited at the thought of sitting down to a home cooked spiral ham dinner.  Have you ever visited a slaughterhouse or rendering plant?  If you’d like to continue eating and enjoying a fine variety of meats, I would strongly advise against it.

Is there a solution?  Well, in my mind, yes – keep eating meat and ignore the issue altogether.  It’s what we all do – I mean, come on, did you not know they killed a cow for your cheeseburger?  Of course you knew, but you ate it anyway.  How about your bacon and eggs?  Did you think the pig volunteered it’s ass for your breakfast or the chicken had a desire to be stuck in a cage, unable to move, forced to lay eggs onto an assembly line conveyor belt?  We are meat-eaters and we’ve developed ways to efficiently feed the masses through mass slaughtering of animals.  Efficient, but some would argue inhumane, as well.  Were I a pig or a chicken, I would heartily agree.

Perhaps we are inhumane – it certainly wouldn’t be unprecedented, but what are we to do, let the animals roam free and start a big garden?  We have no choice but to continue as we are.  Is there truly a humane way to kill something?  Quick and painless is just faster than slow and painful, but in the end, the result is the same.  There are dark, moist corners of our civilized society that are best left unseen.  We all want to enjoy the perks and bennies of modern life, but we don’t like to think about the mess it entails - much like I want my body to function properly at all times, but I don’t want to see all the digestive processes that help make that happen.  Clearly, some things are better left unexamined. 

The bottom line is that if you eat meat, you really have no grounds for complaint.  If you have a serious problem with either humans eating animals or the treatment of those animals in general, you can protest by not eating meat.  You can even try to convince others that they shouldn’t eat meat – it’s a free country.  But when the argument breaks down into fisticuffs, my money’s on the meat-eater.