Most of the people I know are well-informed and well-intentioned. Over the past several decades, animal rights activists, food advocates and environmental watchdogs have relentlessly pumped their warnings into the public consciousness. It is now, I believe, common knowledge in the privileged Western world that factory farming is a problem on many fronts. In general, we know that its practices are harmful to the environment, its products are hard on our bodies, and the animals raised in this way suffer sometimes immense physical and emotional pain and discomfort before and during slaughter.
We wonder what we can do, faced with this ethical nightmare and our own omnivorous appetites. Vegetarians and vegans opt out of this dilemma. Some people don’t like the taste or texture of meat, and some people feel viscerally disgusted by the thought of killing, butchering, or eating another animal. Many people find themselves happy and healthy on a meat-free diet. But abstinence is a personal choice, and no matter how righteous, it does not solve the problem.
Abstinence from meat also does not address the unimaginable cruelty and destruction inherent in growing vegetable crops for consumption. With top soil erosion, deforestation, the decimation of soil organisms (also known as “less-cute animals than the ones we empathize with”), farm worker enslavement, and the inconceivable network of food transport, storage, marketing and waste, very few foods are free from the taint of suffering. I would argue that none of them are. Research now points to the sentience of plants and their ability to feel pain. There is no escape for the tender-hearted, and reconciling with a sometimes terrible world is a very personal thing.
Here on the farm, we grow a garden, and we are raising a number of pigs and chickens and goats with the intention of harvesting them. We feed them by hand. We treat them lovingly. They come to us eagerly for scratches and treats. Because they’re tame, they are easier to care for when sick or injured. They forage freely, milling around the fields and barnyards at will. Theirs is a vast and novel world. I believe I can see them smiling.
I will be completely heartbroken when it comes time to slaughter them. But I will cut the throats of my friends and bleed them out and mourn them, because food was never meant to be free of suffering. It was never supposed to be easy to kill or forage for sustenance. It is a great gift and a great burden to be this close to our own nourishment, to take responsibility for their joy as well as their suffering. What we don’t need for our family we will sell at an admittedly steep price, because if you’ve ever carefully cared for an animal every single day from birth to death, grocery store prices are laughable. They are obscene. They are offensive to the love, labour, and loss involved for a being to live and die well.
The contradictions and paradox of living this way are part of our everyday lives. They are not lost on us and we do not dissociate from them. This is one way, this is how we choose to interact with the truth of living and dying. It isn’t perfect, and it’s a lot of work, but it’s how we reconcile these things to ourselves.
So if you are one of these well-intentioned, well-informed people I speak of, and you’re not sure about abstaining from eating meat, please take your heart and your health into your own hands. Seek out the farmers raising small batches of hearty, heritage animals on whole foods and pasture, or growing lush and nutritious produce on organic, nourished soil. Find someone with a heart that feels a little like yours and pay them handsomely for what they do for you. Eat less meat if you have to, go without coffee or cigarettes or streaming services, but do not give in to the ridiculous assumption that food should be cheap. Do not let yourself believe that cheap food has been raised well and cared for. You can engage with the world you want through the food that you choose.
And every good-hearted, local farmer you keep in business will do their best to put your hopeful, trusting cash into thoughtful practice.
Well written article!!
Thank you, Brenda!
Love love love love this! We as human beings really have to think about how “comfortable” we really should be in many things. To think we live outside the rules of Nature is arrogance.
Thank you Erin, and please forgive the slow reply!! we have been neglecting our website terribly as we get on with farming life.
so true Sandra! We apologize for this very late response! We have been neglecting our website and just found over 10,000 “comments”, mostly spam so have to now figure out how to deal with that!
I can sympathize more with this article because I just finish my first batch of chickens and turkeys this year.
Like you I care for them , treated them with love and respect. When the butchering time came it was very difficult but o was making sure their dead was clean and fast.
It is not easy to do because no matter what you get attached to this wonderful creatures who give you not only their lives but lapso give you the opportunity to learn more from them and to make you appreciate what live is all about.
Thank you for this article.
Thank you Sandra – we’ve been at this for a few years now and it never stops being complex. Love to you and the lives you have tended, the deaths you have ministered, and the food you have put away.