Eating Animals

Piece Description

I have my own version of the Golden Rule which goes something like this: Do unto others as Barbara Kingsolver would do unto you.

For the most part it works. But when she published Animal, Vegetable, Miracle a few years ago it meant I had to finally confront my eating habits. If Barbara was making an effort to eat more consciously, then so would I.

This turned out to be easier than I’d expected. I’ve been a gardener all my life, so I just stopped focusing on flowers, and turned toward vegetables. My mother and I dug up a big plot of my nana’s yard and planted all the staples of a home garden. I used some of the container-friendly plants in pots and put them out on my apartment steps. How much more local can I get?

But that still left one problem: meat. Strangely, Nana wouldn’t allow me to raise free-range cattle in her backyard, so I had to tackle this issue in a different way.

I live by myself, and meat is just too much hassle for a single serving, so I don’t really eat it at home. I rely on eggs and dairy (always bought from the Farmer’s Cow) for my main source of protein. As a result, the only time I really eat meat is when I go to a restaurant or have dinner with my family.

I am a self-proclaimed tree-hugger. I was an early adopter of the Prius; I recycle obsessively; and I try to avoid using harsh chemical cleaners in my house. But I just can’t imagine being an actual, committed vegetarian. Every once in a great while I get a real hankering for some red meat – probably brought on by low iron – but more over, my objections aren’t with eating animals…it’s with how we treat them before we eat them.

Me eating a chicken isn’t any different than a coyote eating a rabbit…except that it is. A coyote’s rabbit isn’t raised in some heinous factory farm in Iowa, electrocuted at a slaughterhouse, processed, and shipped across the country in a gas-guzzling truck, only to spend a couple of days wrapped in plastic, going gray in a grocery case.

And as numerous as bunnies may seem in the spring, the last time I checked Thumper wasn’t responsible for poisoning our environment with his mind-boggling amounts of waste.

So, I figure my money is better spent supporting responsible, local family-farmers than it is buying organic grains I can’t pronounce. Unfortunately for those responsible, family-farmers I don’t eat much meat, or have much money. Perhaps a more wallet-friendly solution to the meat conundrum would be to take a cue from the hunters I’ve known, get a rifle and bag me a deer! For the price of the guns and ammo, I can dine on venison steaks and jerky until the proverbial cows come home.