Disturbed

I'm a vegetarian.

Everyone becomes a vegetarian for different reasons, I think. I mostly became one because I unpleasantly discovered first hand what comes from eating tainted meat* (answer: hospitalization, three days of vomiting blood, and severe dehydration. Also, the occasional seizure) and also, because I am unhappy about the way we treat our food.

I'm mentioning it now because I bought eggs the other day (I have reached the point where I am again willing to eat eggs, which took some time) and one of the containers said: "All Natural, Vegetarian Fed".

Which really, just emphasizes my point.

People.

Chickens like to eat seeds and vegetables and mealworms. They should not, probably, be fed things like -- other chickens. Or arsenic (which has turned up in chickens that are mass farmed).  However, in many chicken production facilities (typing that, makes me sad, by the way ... like chickens are something manufactured, like a car) the chickens are so packed in and so stressed out that they often resort to cannibalism. This is partially because of the (it doesn't bear thinking about) stuff -- non vegetarian, as a rule -- that they are being fed and partially because they are crammed into cages that don't really allow movement. So they are de-beaked. They can't walk around. There can be such a concentration of ammonia in the chicken pens (cages, stacked one on another) that they get burned.

So when a chicken is treated humanely, when it is allowed to roam free and eat what chickens like to eat and what they SHOULD eat, when it hasn't had its beak removed, isn't caged every day, doesn't have ammonia burns on it's birdy body, this is a selling point.

Does this disturb you? It disturbs me.

I became a vegetarian when I realized that the power of the FDA has been chipped away by special interests, most of which are much more interested in profit than food safety. I get that -- businesses should make profits. However, I do not believe that those profits should come at the expense of the safety of the population that is eating the food they produce, and I surely do not believe that it is in the interest of anyone to be eating animals that have been horrifically mistreated or inhumanely slaughtered.

I don't think everyone needs to be a vegetarian -- I don't write this to try to persuade anyone to stop eating meat. However, I DO firmly believe that it is in EVERYONE'S best interest to insist that our food supply be monitored for contamination -- and the more inhumane the slaughterhouse, the higher the chances there are for contamination.**

And I believe that we owe it to ourselves to find out where our food is coming from, how it has been slaughtered and harvested. (I also believe that if you can't stomach the idea of where your food comes from, than that's a food you shouldn't eat. Just saying.) For our own safety, and for the safety of our families, we should do this; if we discover that we are not happy with how food is being produced, then we should complain and buy that food elsewhere.

I know it's not easy. I know it can be expensive at a time when expenses -- all of them -- are an issue. But I would say again: you put food IN YOUR BODY. Shouldn't what you put in your body be something you can trust not to kill you?

Or, to put it another way: the same governmental genius that has allowed our economy to go down the toilet (and let's face it, kids, this has come from YEARS of neglect, not one president's worth -- it just happened to come to a head during this guy's watch) is also in charge of policing your food sources.

Disturbing, right?

Don't you think maybe it's time to check into it on your own?


*full disclosure: I ate the tainted meat in another country. However, if you think that the meat supply in the US is completely safe? Good luck to you.

**(See Eric Schlosser's Fast Food Nation for more)