Discovering Your Inner Locavore Part 1: The Meat We Eat

When I was a teenager, I had a brief affair with vegetarianism. For this, I blame Ralph.

I have a sister who is fourteen years older than I am. (She appreciates me telling you this.) The best part about this is that she also is an animal lover, and she was the one who had a farm first. Mostly, she had horses, but other animals made appearances now and then, and really, without her, I probably wouldn’t have ever seen a duck or a llama or a goat unless I visited a zoo.

One of the animals she had was Ralph. Ralph was so smart. He came when you called, and his favorite thing in the world was a good back scratching. On top of that, he was a great listener. I loved Ralph. Ralph was a pig. Don’t get all swine-a-phobic on me. He didn’t smell. He was very clean, and he had lovely manners. He could have been the pig E.B. White wrote about in “Charlotte’s Web”.

Whenever I visited my sister, I got to feed Ralph and give him a vigorous back scratch, but if there was a family meal planned, then the schedule was: wash up, eat first, then go out and play with the animals. One day, our family went up for lunch. We washed up, set the table, sat down, starting eating, and that is when it happened.

My mother said: “This ham is delicious. Where did you get it?”

If you guessed Ralph, you are right.

I felt terrible. Guilt rushed in with that familiar sick to my stomach feeling. I was EATING my friend! Honestly, I’m not sure if I could have felt worse if I had been eating a human friend, but I was also 15 so I realize that teenage emotions run a little to the over-dramatic. You see, I just wasn’t prepared to think of Ralph as food.

However, I felt bad enough that I didn’t eat pork again for almost 20 years. It took much less time for me to begin eating chickens and cows again, but pigs were just too smart and too personable to be food.

So here’s my problem: I love animals, and I love the taste and the nutritional benefits of meat. So what wins? My taste buds or my principles? Is it even possible for both to win?

Commercial feed lots are not a nice place to be. You probably already know that. I tried for years not to think about it. Many animal rights advocates refer to feedlots, CAFO’s and factory farms as places of torture. Many people roll their eyes at that description, but I actually think that the advocates are right on the mark. For a good article on conditions inside these facilities, check out this article by Mike Adams:  http://www.naturalnews.com/022101_red_meat_factory_farms.html

I’ll just give you the highlights:

1)      Overcrowded conditions.

Overcrowding has more than its share of hidden dangers: cannibalism, disease, filth. Dairy cows typically stand on concrete floors in their own muck. Cows make up the largest percentile of manure producers of all animals. The WWF reports that farm animals make up to 100,000 metric tons of manure per minute so we’re talking about a lot of poo. 

Beef cattle have an average of 14 square feet to roam. The National Resources Conservation Service recommends 1.5 to 2 acres of pasture for a cow with calf.

Veal calves are chained and kept in dark stalls where they are unable to move at all.

Pigs like Ralph live in metal crates that are about 2 feet wide; that’s not large enough for the average pig to even turn around.

Chickens live in cages that are about 1 foot square. Even so-called “cage free” chickens live in over-crowded barns and usually never see sunlight until they begin their journey to the slaughterhouse.

2)      Disease.

Broiler chickens that are headed for your supermarket are laden with Salmonella enteritis and the bacteria campylobacter which results in diarrhea, cramping, abdominal pain and fever when you catch it. The CDC says that this bacterium is one of the most common causes of diarrhea in the United States. The CDC goes on to report that even one drop of juice from raw chicken meat is enough to infect a person.

Swine are frequent carriers of salmonella, campylobacter, yersiniosis (another diarrhea causing bacteria) and something called toxoplasma gondii. This is a parasite that causes toxoplasmosis. According to a paper published by the London Swine Conference in 2009, 22.5% of us living in the United States have tested positive for toxoplasmosis.  For most of this, this does not manifest itself in any specific symptomatology. It is a “dormant, asymptomatic, but persistent infection”. However acute toxoplasmosis in pregnant women may lead to serious disability or even death of their unborn children. These diseases are there mainly because of the unsanitary conditions that pigs are forced to live in or the food that they are given to eat.

As for cows, have you heard of Mad Cow Disease? More on this later.

3)      Cruelty to animals.

Chickens often have their beaks removed when they start out their life in a broiler barn. Why? Overcrowding leads to cannibalism. Chickens will literally peck each other to death. In order to reduce the amount of money lost to this issue, commercial farmers simply slice off the beak. Layer hens are forced to live in constant light so that they lay more eggs. Hens that stop laying are frequently forced to go into molt by food and water deprivation in hopes that this will jolt their systems back into egg production.

Beef cows are often kept conscious as the slaughtering process begins. Some are even skinned alive. Often animals that are ready for slaughter can no longer walk on their own due to the conditions they were housed in, and so they are snared around the foot or through an ear and dragged to the slaughterhouse.

Production pigs become so frustrated in their filthy cramped conditions that they chew on the bars of their cages. We don’t think of them this way, but pigs, like Ralph, are highly social and affectionate. Lives spent in cramped, dirty conditions will literally drive them crazy.

4)      What they eat, you eat too.

Production animals are not peacefully grazing on pasture. They are fed things that really defy belief, and the frightening part is that these things make their way into YOUR body when you eat them. Common feed ingredients as reported by Adams include: plastic (fed as an artificial source of fiber), meat from their own species (that’s where Mad Cow Disease comes from), manure, animal byproducts (this can include dead horses, euthanized dogs and cats as well as road kill) and let’s not forget drugs and chemicals such as hormones.

IDAUSA reports that the animals are pumped with so many antibiotics that treating humans that contract salmonella from contaminated eggs, milk or meat is very difficult because the disease has become antibiotic resistant.

All those hormones being pumped into these animals to make them grow faster and produce more have affected us as well. My only non-farming sister is a teacher. She was telling me the other day about a third grade girl at her school that had started her period. That, my friends, isn’t normal. Well, I guess it is. It’s the new normal thanks to growth hormones in your food chain.

As if that wasn’t bad enough, these CAFO’s are responsible for large scale air pollution and water contamination. Remember, when the EPA came out with that study that blamed cows for global warming? Their theory was that all that methane from cow farts was bad for the environment. It’s not really so much all the gas being passed by cows as it is gas being passed through the engines of farm machinery and 18-wheelers and planes and trains to get your meat to market that is the problem. Remember, every food item on your table has traveled on average 1,500 miles to get there. Don’t forget about the energy being consumed in the processing, packaging and storage of these items. As if that wasn’t enough fossil fuel gobbling right there, you have to take into account the fuel being burned in growing the crops that feed these animals. (We’ll talk more about that in “The Soil We Despoil”.)

All that manure is no laughing matter however. It’s not just that these animals are producing 1.4 billion metric tons of manure per year. The real problem is that so many of them do it in one localized area. The farm (if you can call it that) where these animals are being raised in over-crowded conditions have nowhere to put all this poo. Enter water pollution, algal blooms and acid rain.

If you are anything like me, when you read this, it doesn’t make you feel good. Both my conscious and my stomach are upset, but what’s the alternative? Many people, including me at one brief point in my life, would say vegetarianism or veganism.

Here’s the problem: we’re built to be omnivores. We biologically need meat. We need the oils and fats found in meat for the health of our hair, skin and joints. They also aid in cognitive function and help fight those nasty free radicals that can cause cancer.  A human who doesn’t eat meat can, and probably will have, protein and mineral deficiencies. Protein is a major component of what makes our bodies run. If you only get your protein from eggs and soy beans, you run the risk of biotin deficiency. Protein in veggies doesn’t have the same amino acids as are found in meat, and it is much more difficult (and sometimes impossible) for our bodies to break them down in an effective manner.

So how does this really affect us? Wounds won’t heal as quickly. Your skin will look dull. Your muscles won’t grow and what muscles you already have may become weaker, and it is actually harder to think! If you don’t believe me, check out www.healthguidance.org – they’ll back me up.

Another side effect of vegetarianism according to healthguidance.org is weight gain. I know. I was shocked by this. According to them, vegetarians eat more carbohydrates to compensate for the lower levels of protein in their bodies and voila! Weight gain.

Vegetarians are also missing out on vitamin B12 – in order to make up for that loss, they have to take supplements. Which would you rather have: food or a pill?

I don’t want to be a Debbie Downer here, but for many of us, we’re caught in this quagmire. We like meat, but we feel guilty about how we’re getting it. I, personally, don’t want to be part of the program that tortures animals. So what’s our option?

Enter the small, local farmer.

I don’t intend to make every small, local farmer sound like Mother Teresa because they aren’t.  There are likely poultry farmers in your area who have sold out to the commercial industry, and they’ve got those poor broilers stacked in their barns from wall to wall. However, there are farmers who are doing it right, and they are who you should be looking for and buying from.

A small farmer is going to be breeding his animals towards certain genetic strains, and in many cases, will be trying to either keep his breed pure or establish a new breed. He will be concerned with good mothering skills, perhaps coloring or other physical attributes and yes, production of either meat or eggs or fiber. Fiber farmers (as in where your 100% natural materials – like wool – come from) are concerned with the density, coarseness and color of their fiber. It’s hard to manage all that information when animals are packed together in a too small area. Actually, it’s hard to even get those kinds of results naturally in that environment.

And remember the poo? Well, a small farmer has to have somewhere to put it. He wants to avoid angry neighbors complaining about the stench so he has to have a composting plan or a source for disposal. Your average small farmer would have the ASPCA on him in a second if his animals were wallowing knee or even hip deep in excrement.

Another reason that small farmers avoid over-crowding is feeding. As a small farmer myself, I can tell you that a very good reason to raise pasturing and foraging animals is that I don’t have to feed them as much actual feed. Less feed equals less overhead. I want those babies eating as much grass and herbs and weeds and, in the case of the chickens, bugs as possible! This is healthier for them and for me. This will come up again in the “Soil We Despoil” article. Small farmers understand that their resources are limited. I have the same seven and a half acres to work with year after year no matter what. I have to take care of it!

As I’ve already mentioned most of the diseases that our meat animals carry stem from dirty or overcrowded conditions or what they are ingesting. If a farmer is maintaining a clean environment where animals have plenty of room to roam, this often takes care of itself. As I reported in an earlier article (“I Have Egg-sellent News”), the risk of contracting salmonella from eggs is about one in two million when those eggs come from pastured birds.

Most farmers, who have chosen their profession, love animals. I wouldn’t have chosen this lifestyle if I didn’t enjoy it, and it stands to reason that if I love animals, I wouldn’t mistreat them. When I was at a farming convention recently, I was talking to a farmer who was relating some of the criticism she faced about raising animals to become the meat we eat. With her eyes welling up, she said, “I can feel good about what I do. My cows know their names, and they get cookies (cow treats) every day of their lives. When I load them on the trailer (that is headed for the slaughterhouse), I can look them in the eye.”

Another farmer when discussing the butchering methodology she uses for her chickens said, “There is dignity in the death I give them.” In other words, we aren’t out there like a bunch of crazy animal serial killers. We don’t get off on kicking dogs or drowning kittens. We care. We know the cost of a life lost. We struggle to help our baby livestock survive, and sometimes, we cry when they don’t. More than our bank account is invested in what we do.

I had someone who didn’t like the fact that I raised chickens for meat talk to me once, and like I’ve already said, vegetarianism is a viable, principled opinion. I used to be a “meat is murder” kind of girl myself. So I asked, “Are you a vegetarian then?” Well, no. “Oh, well, where do you get your chicken?” She named a large, commercial producer: Perdue.

Despite his good guy persona in his commercials, I can guarantee that Frank isn’t out there spending quality time with his chickens every day. They are raised just like all the other CAFO animals are: overcrowded, dirty and cruel. You can check out a complaint filed against Perdue Farms, Inc. here: http://www.animallawcoalition.com/farm-animals/article/1485.

Knowing this, I asked this lady, “Wouldn’t you feel better knowing that the chickens you eat are like mine? Having a good life before they are slaughtered? They are out every day in the sunshine, eating bugs and running around. Doesn’t that seem like a better quality of life?”

I guess that is fundamentally my question. If you aren’t willing to be a vegetarian, don’t you bear some responsibility for where your food comes from and how those animals are treated and what it is ultimately doing to our planet?

So how can you be really sure about the quality of life for these animals that you eat and the quality of meat that you are purchasing? Be informed. Ask a lot of questions. Don’t worry about being rude. If you call me, you can ask what my animals are fed. You can ask where they live. You can ask me about hormones and antibiotics. Actually, if you call me, you’ll probably get an invite to come see for yourself! I can always use an extra set of hands during chores. If a farmer isn’t willing to let you see his farm, I’d be very concerned. Likewise, if you do go see it and don’t like what you see, keep shopping!

Here’s the thing: I eat meat from the animals I raise, and I feel confident about what I’m putting in my body. I don’t feel that way strolling down the meat aisle at the grocery store anymore. I’m afraid of what goes in there.

A friend and I were actually talking about the (try not to laugh) zombie apocalypse the other day. She said that her husband asked her if things got really bad, would she be able to eat her dog. She said no. The sad truth is she might already be eating a dog because euthanized pets are in the feed fed to commercially raised animals. Try looking your Labradoodle in the eye right now. It’s uncomfortable, isn’t it? I do not want to support cruelty to animals.

I do not want to recycle, reduce and re-use but avoid one simple lifestyle change that could be a crushing blow to pollution. Remember the introduction to this series? Barbara Kingsolver said that if each person in the U.S. “ate just one meal a week….composed of locally and organically raised meats and produce, we would reduce our country’s oil consumption by over 1.1 million barrels of oil every week.” I want that. I want energy independence, and I can be part of the solution.

These are all very good reasons to eat locally and knowledgeably.

So, I’ve got to ask you, what’s in the meat you eat?

~ Sarah