I nearly became a vegetarian after reading Fast Food Nation a few weeks ago. I wasn't necessarily rejecting meat because the book alerted me to animal rights violations, but because the book talked about the meatpacking industry's systematic destruction of small businesses, farms, and government authority.What bothers me most about meat is the idea behind feedlots. Feedlots were a clever moneymaker designed by meatpacking industries eager to drive down the market prices of livestock. With a surplus of beef standing in meatpacker feedlots awaiting slaughter, meatpackers can use the laws of supply and demand to their own advantage. In other words, they don't have to pay the small farmers as much for their products when the supply is higher than the consumer demand. This forces cows to stand in a pen with a zillion other cows until demand dictates that they be processed. Until this day befalls them, the meatpackers feed the cattle corn laced with hormones and the remains of other animals. The cows get fatter, driving up the profit margins for the meatpacking industry and allowing them to say the cows were "corn-fed." We all praise the taste of corn-fed beef, but cows are supposed to eat grass. And we're supposed to eat corn.
What saved me from vegetarianism was the idea of organic, locally produced meat -- meat that is fed what it is supposed to be fed and processed locally. So organic, locally produced meat is what I expected at the fancy-schmancy Ruth's Chris Steakhouse the other night. Instead, Ruth's Chris prides itself on corn-fed beef. They claim that this beef is the highest possible quality and is certified by the USDA. According to Fast Food Nation, the USDA has no authority in the Bush-buddy-controlled meatpacking industry. My Ruth's Chris beef was arbitrarily chosen, studded with unnatural hormones, and available wherever prison beef and dog food beef is sold. It wasn't lovingly hand chosen by special government agents with x-ray goggles, checklists, and clipboards.
I wanted to leave -- I really did -- but I didn't. I have no willpower. I ate the corn-fed beef and I loved it. After all, it was covered in butter. But I won't go back. I won't.
2 comments:
Whoa, this topic came up on my bus ride this morning. I saw an old coworker and she was reading a book you might want to read - "The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals" by Michael Pollan. She told me if I like eating meat or corn, that I should not read this book.
Here's a blurb from Amazon:
"Pollan meditates on the freakishly protean nature of the corn plant and looks at how the food industry has exploited it, to the detriment of everyone from farmers to fat-and-getting-fatter Americans. Besides Stephen King, few other writers have made a corn field seem so sinister."
Butter makes everything better. :^)
Have you looked at some of the local/"slow" food sites? Here's one for MN:
http://www.slowfoodmn.org/local.html
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