“Did you know our beef and chicken is raised without the use of hormones and steroids?” asks the man in the latest commercial for the a fast food giant.
“No – but I like that!” say the people in the street.
And so, perhaps, has begun a new day in the way we grow our meat.
Happy meat.
Cows and chickens and turkeys and pigs that are allowed to roam on pasture, and eat grass and grain.
More in keeping with how Mother Nature intended it to be.
Not cramped in unsterile feed lots, or cooped up in quarters contaminated with their own feces.
So contaminated, that the fecal matter has to be bleached out once the animal has been slaughtered.
Oh yes.
And yes, such pasture meat is undoubtedly more expensive.
But more nutrient rich – and more tasteful, apparently.
One local producer says it would take 7 eggs from cooped up hens to match the nutrient density of a single egg of a pasture hen.
Perhaps if we had to pay more for our food, if it was better quality and taste, we would waste less of it.
We would only buy what we would use.
And considering how much food people in first world countries waste, which is criminal in my books, perhaps that would be a major rethinking of where and how we spend our food money.
And I don’t know if animals would acknowledge that they are happy being allowed to live out on pasture, romping in the grass and playing and socializing with their friends and family.
But I know for sure they would be less stressed, less dirty, and less inclined to need hormones and steroids and other drugs in the event they become sick or infected from bacteria from their own waste.
And less stress chemicals being released into the animal, for sure, if an animal wasn’t forced to live in a dense population.
And that alone might result in better taste.
Not quite to the scale of Kobe beef, where the cows are brushed, massaged, and fed beer and saki.
And so, as we enter a new era of enlightenment when it comes to where our food comes from, and caring about the animal that gave its life so we could eat, it only behooves us that we benefit from that also.
More nutrient density. Less chemicals. More taste.
I realize that in the end the animals must give their lives.
But even that is more humane than often Mother Nature herself allows. At least there is (hopefully) very little, if any, suffering. The end comes quickly and hopefully mercifully – unlike in the animal kingdom where often animals will eat each other while they are still alive.
There are many diet movements out there, from vegetarian to ovi-vegetarian to pecto-ovi-vegetarian.
And the most recent trend is vegan, which means no animal products at all, as a matter of protest for the suffering and exploitation of the beasts.
I love animals with all my heart and soul, and although I do find it hard to come to terms with the fact that they ultimately give their lives for us, I do eat their flesh so their deaths do not go in vain.
I try to tell myself that the chicken on my plate has given its life for humans, so I cannot let it go to waste, or else its death was in vain.
That’s the difference between people who hunt for sport, and those who hunt for sustinence.
To take a life for no other purpose is murder.
And so, to end on a happy note, I hope the new awareness and enlightenment that seems to be happening right now catches on and spreads around the world.
Humane meat.
Happy meat.