Food, Inc. really struck a cord with me. So did King Corn. It’s not just how unhealthy the meat is, but how inhumane. Of course if you’re reading this, I’m probably preaching to the choir, so I’ll pass on getting into all of the nastiness that is “factory meat.” Instead I have a confession. As badly as I want to eliminate factory meat and industrial “food” I don’t forgo it all the time.

Tom called me wanting to know what was for dinner. It was beautiful out and since we don’t have AC I didn’t want to unnecessarily heat up the house with the oven. Oh! BBQ! I’ll have to run to the grocery store. See, we are “meal makers.” We don’t just cook a slab of meat with a side vegetable and starch. Nope, we usually make some complex meal that has multiple ingredients, spices and herbs from scratch. So having something to just throw on the grill isn’t always here. There are two grocery stores near us. Both are Safeway stores. No idea why they need two so close to each other, but whatever. To be perfectly honest, I HATE shopping at regular grocery stores. There are too many products and I just get overwhelmed. We only go there if we don’t have something and need it immediately. We are very lucky to have a year-round farmers market for when our garden isn’t producing enough food. Otherwise, for all things we can’t grow/raise we get at Trader Joe’s.

15 minutes. I stood staring at the hunks of red slabs streaked with white from being corn-fed in feedlots…for 15 minutes. I desperately searched for a label that said “Grass Fed” or even “Organic.” Anything. I just wanted something. “Butchers” passed me. One finally asked if he could help. I asked if they had any meat that wasn’t from a feedlot and he gave me a quizzical look and said “no.” Damn! These are the only options I have? Really? I guess that’s what I get for living in a depressed, bankrupt city. No one can afford the healthy stuff so no one demands it. Or maybe it’s ignorance is bliss and no one here is even aware of their food? Maybe it’s a lot of both.

I don’t want to buy this meat but I do. I feel shame and guilt. I can’t freaking believe I gave in and bought it. Am I really that hardcore of a carnivore?

Then I spent 10 days in the UK. There is so much open space and it’s all dotted with some sort of livestock, whether it’s cattle, sheep or hogs. What struck me the most were the living conditions of the hogs. Some of you may know that I went to an Ag school (though I didn’t study Ag) so there were a lot of interesting and sometimes very disturbing things I saw while going to school there. In a nutshell it appeared that what they taught wasn’t animal husbandry, but rather factory farming. The swine unit was 2 miles from campus but if the wind blew just right the smell on campus from it was nauseating. The hogs were all kept in pens, mostly concrete. But in the UK they are in large fields that are dotted with shelters. They get to do things that pigs do. Root around in the dirt, sun themselves, be social. And it didn’t smell! The highway ran right next to these hog pastures. Your 20′ from the hogs and it doesn’t smell. Yet at my college it smelled from 2 miles away. There are highways here in the states that run by cattle operations (dairy and meat) that smell so bad you want to be sick. So why doesn’t it smell in the UK? Most likely because you don’t have a bunch of animals crammed into pens like we do here in the US. That’s not to say they don’t have the same feedlot issues like we do here, but it seemed that whenever we talked to anybody they seemed confused as to why we would treat animals like that.

This experience made me realize that we need to do something. Factory farming has got to stop. We used to buy our meat in bulk at Costco. No more. We need to become Conscientious Carnivores. We haven’t been back from our trip for a week and we’ve already bought ourselves a live pig. Next week I get to meet the pig right before it’s slaughtered (Tom met him this past Wednesday). We’re going to get a larger freezer and buy a 1/4 or 1/2 a cow from some family friends that raise a few cattle every year for themselves completely grass fed and organic. This summer we’re going to get meat chickens, rabbits and next year we’ll get turkeys. The males our goats produce will become chevon.  It’s just something we need to do for ourselves.

Some people ask how we could possible kill and eat animals we raise. Some people insist we won’t be able to do it. Tom spent his summers on his grandfather’s farm slaughter and dressing rabbits. He’ll be in charge of them. Chickens….well, I’ve found that I’m not particularly attached to our chickens. When we’ve lost chickens I’ve been kind of bummed, but more so because their carcasses go to waste. Goats will be a bit more difficult but we’ll just have to do it or we’ll end up with lots of animals to feed that won’t be of any use here.

And then there’s the knowledge that if we’re going to eat meat anyways (please don’t say we should become vegan because it’s not going to happen) we might as well know our food and give them the most beautiful life they can have so they can give their life to help give us life. Anyone who knows us personally can tell you how spoiled our animals are. They will have a great life and a humane death. I feel that if you aren’t willing to meet the animal you are about to eat then you don’t deserve to eat them. If the naysayers are right – we can’t slaughter our own animals – then we have no business being omnivores.

And with that I’m ok with eating meat.

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