Three years ago the latest atrocity hit the national news when a meat packing plant was caught on camera abusing and mistreating the livestock near Colton, CA. Both IN N OUT Burger and Jack in the Box pulled their accounts from this packing plant and moved there business elsewhere. Good for them! After seeing their dedication to selling a healthy burger to the public and their sheer decency to cut all ties with a company that would abuse livestock, my husband and I decided to follow suit. We changed the way that we eat, buy and looked at our food forever and have never regretted it. It wasn’t as though we didn’t know these types of things went on in meat packing plants or with livestock in generally speaking, because we did know, myself in particular from my past employment in the livestock industry so many years ago. I just needed another wake up call and to take action. Now cooking and buying food is a much more pleasant experience as is eating it, because I stopped burying my head in the sand.
The public is horribly misguided about where the meat and eggs come from that we consume on a daily basis and how they came to be before winding up in grocery stores. People do express concern for the actual consumption of animals from time to time, but rarely does anyone ever talk about or consider the conditions in which the livestock were raised prior to being eaten. The emphasis is too much on the consumption and not near enough on the actual atmosphere and treatment we bestow upon these animals that wind up on our Sunday afternoon bar be que grill. Now going vegetarian is definitely one solution and I support and commend anyone who has already done that, but eating and buying humanely is definitely another solution.
There is so much more to that process than people even realize. You see the milk cartons at the store, showing a happy cow standing in this big green pasture, the sun is shining and you feel good about your happy cow and the happy milk you are buying, but that is not generally how milk cows live. I would encourage everyone to see a feedlot in person or even a poultry barn or farrowing pig barn to see what it’s really like. Not for shock purposes to change your mind, but more to educate you, after all this is food you’re putting into your body and you should be aware of the conditions, not just for the sake of the animals, but for your own personal health. We all like to know where our money is going and who we are supporting. The food industry however is set up in such a way that consumers take that sort of thing for granted and advertisement is done in such a way to conceal the way things really are. Veal farms, in my opinion, should be outlawed all together and it’s something that I never eat. There are plenty of other meat choices to pick from and we should leave the baby cows out of the mix.
The disconnect between people and the food that they eat is astounding and despite the publics reluctance to focus on what is really going on out there, it’s a good thing we do have some newsworthy incidents bringing these things to light for us. Feedlots were started back in the 1960’s when hybrid grains and irrigation techniques became readily available. They figured out that they could feed a lot more livestock at once if they were kept more of them closed in and in confined spaces. This design was put forth to speed up the fattening process, by feeding a very precise concentration of silage and other prepared mix of grains to the livestock several times a day, on a schedule, 7 days a week. The meat producers figured out they could make a lot more money this way and in a lot less time. So the comfort and quality of life for the animals went straight out the door and in came… corporate involvement. This folks is known as “factory farming”. It was surprising to learn all of this so many years ago, that this is how things were handled with our beef, poultry, sheep and pigs and it was very common and quite normal. Our entire food system in this country was screwed up and it had the USDA’s stamp of approval right on top of it.
Japan’s Kobe beef is an excellent example of this. The Japanese figured out long ago, that if the cattle were treated better, with less stress in their lives and in a much nicer and sanitary environment, the meat would taste a lot better and would be healthier for the Japanese consumers. Japanese consumers not only happily pay more for that beef, but they demand it. The Japanese are just the opposite of Americans in that respect. In Japan, only A grade groceries are available to the public. When you walk into a Japanese grocery store, the produce display is absolutely beautiful and each piece of fruit looks exactly the same as the next. There is no marketing ploy on their labeling to pretend their food is healthier or happier, than they really are. Buying more humanely and conscientiously not only supports the right food producers who choose to raise things better, but it also enhances the quality of life for the livestock, is healthier for you and me and saves the family farm/ranch, which is truly becoming a dying breed. I don’t know about you, but for me, knowing that my Rosie’s Chicken or Mary’s Air Chilled chicken that I bought from Sprouts or Whole Foods was running around in the sunshine enjoying life clear up to the time of the slaughtering process, makes my meal taste all that much better and I sleep good at night.
JLW-W
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