Quality of meat, quality of life.

I feel I left out something very important when I was talking about small (traditional) farms versus factory farms (CAFOS): the quality of life of the animals (and the people who care for them as well, if you think about it). How the animals live and are treated does matter, because animals do feel pain and suffer. If you know that you have only, say, 3 years to live, wouldn't you rather live your 3 years in good, rather than miserable, conditions?

If you were a cow, wouldn't you rather live in a big grassy field, and eat what you were made and supposed to eat- grass (NOT corn), instead of living in a concrete or dirt pen covered in manure, forced to eat food that you were never meant to eat: corn, antibiotics, beef tallow... "beef tallow": cow fat. They are making cows eat cow fat- how sick is that??? It's the same as giving humans human fat.

And where do you stop? Look at how they kill pigs- they gas them to death (don't you think that whatever chemical they use stays in the meat?). Look at how they keep chickens- in permanent darkness, inside a windowless metal pavilion; or how they keep pigs-even worse, in metal cages for their whole lives, just fattening them up, fattening them up... weren't they supposed to live and roll around in the dirt? Weren't they created to do that? I'm not making this up, you can see images of all this stuff, and even worse things (what they do with little chicks...) on the internet- it's all there, for all to see.

It is so upsetting to write this, because it forces you to think and vividly imagine the conditions that we subject animals to live in, just so we can have our milk, meat, pork or chicken- and now, of course, salmon as well (farmed salmon is given corn and antibiotics too)- in big quantities, and at our convenience. That is fast food for you, in a nutshell. It's just wrong, wrong, wrong; just look at the wages and conditions of the people that work on those places to start with, and go from there. Why would you want to even step in a place like that??

It doesn't have to be this way. We can choose to eat, if we must, animals that have been treated with decency, and that have lived and eaten how they are supposed to live and eat. They live a healthier life, and are healthier for you to eat.

It's pretty simple, really: what you would you rather have: tasteless chicken with hormones, or fresh, tasty, firm chicken from the farm (no hormones, no nothing)? Hormone milk, or just pure milk? Old eggs or fresh eggs? Meat with ammonia and other stuff, or just pure meat? The list goes on, and I am sorry to say, it does include cheese and all the hormones that end up stored in its fat (think pizza, right?)

We are so lucky to live in a country where we have choices- we are so fortunate to have that. All we have to do is ask- in the stores, in restaurants... ask for quality, for better.

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