http://motherhoodishell.blogspot.com/2006/10/walking-walk.html
if the direct link doesn’t work maybe try just cutting and pasting. sorry. we’re technically challanged over here.
(this mama blog post really shed some light for me on a tragic, tragic awful, horrible thing.
The following is a post I wrote back in the beginning of May. I never felt like it was really finished. But after reading my meremortal friends intelligentle piece I knew it was time to post it, regardless of the turns of events and choices I have made in my life. After reading Leigh’s writing and re-reading this post (which was orginally titled: Almost A Veg) I knew I had to make another choice. Again.
I have become an almost vegetarian. ( I’m not gonna give up sushi. Period. ) My daughter Mia has also become a vegetarian. Last week I woke up and told her from now on we don’t eat meat. That once in a while when our bodies need it, we will eat certain kinds of wild fish.
No more bacon, ,mama?
No.
I love bacon, mama.
I know, Rosie. But we don’t want to eat a pig anymore.
Okay, mama. Why don’t we want to eat a pig?
Because it’s not nice. The pig gets cut and they are not honored in death.
Period.
And that was that.
I’ve made this decision not because I am convinced we as humans should not consume the meat of other living animals. As a matter of fact, I think meat is a wonderful protein choice but only if an animal is honored in the hunt and there is no waste in the kill. At that point I tend to feel that the animal and the human have lived it’s karma. But about 99% of the meat we consume is what I all baaaaaad karma meat. Besides the karma factor, the meat is mostly a corn by-product and the industrialization of the corn-meat-fossil fuel connection has sickened me to the degree that I have been forced to dropped meat from my plate (and this is hard because I like the taste of a juicy BBQ pork tenderloin). Unless I find a local farmer who is TRULY grass-feeding and slow grazing cattle and chicken, and/or my husband goes out to the hunt himself, my mouth is shut to the stuff.
Although it’s been expensive, and at times has been a drain to our pathetically humble bank account, the only meat (or dairy, especially dairy) that has even entered my house in the past 4 years has been certified organic and if I can’t find organic than it must be labeled “free-range” or “natural”. For a long time that made me feel better about feeding my family meat. Most of the meat I bought was produced from a place called Harris Ranch which is owned by the Sunflower Market chain…the market I frequent the most. In my heart of hearts I often questioned where this meat was coming from, but never really found the answers I wanted from the people behind the meat counter. Sunflower claims their farm animals are given no hormones or pesticides, but after research I found their cows are all fattened up with Midwestern corn. Cows eat grass naturally, they graze on greens; the fresh and lovely greens growing from nutrient rich soil, even the weeds and wild herbs that grow naturally are giving the cows life force and health and vibrancy which in turn makes good meat. Although Harris ranch claims their cows are all in the highest quality ‘feed lots’ I could not get in contact with anyone who would send me an actual a photo of those cows and those feedlots. Harris Ranch cows also end up behind the meat counter at mainstream grocery stores such as Ralph’s, Vons, Safeway, Costco, Albertson’s and Food For Less. So all this time I thought that Sunflower Market was a special place with special meat and although I do believe in most of their products and I appreciate they keep their organic items at a lower rate than most places, their meat just ain’t up to par unless you like eating 50% corn with your flesh. If you don’t live in the southwest or Colorado where the small chain exists, Sunflower has a local-owned feel and farmer’s market type ambience and I don’t want to bash them because they are a much better grocery than most, but in reality they have they same meat as some of the biggest grocery chains in the West.
I began really questioning where my food came from and how it got to my plate after reading an article in Mother Earth News by Barbara Kingsolver entitled Lily’s Chickens . Her article questions the amount of energy and fuel wasted in the productions and the transportation of foods…organic or not. And how good these foods are for us and our local/global community at large. Do you have any idea how much energy is used to package and ship those only half-way decent strawberries from across the country? Or that organic asparagus from Argentina? Apparently it’s a whole lot more than the price of gas you use to get to the market to buy them. I read this article right after I birthed Sula and looking down at this new little life and thinking that what I fed me feeds her and I decided that I needed to find a local farm who could provide me with some meat, eggs, goats milk and vegetables. How hard could it be? I found what seemed to be the most productive independent family farm in the rural Phoenix area, about a 40 minute drive from my house. What I was going to use in gas (it was significantly less than what it takes to package my green beans from Mexico) seemed worth the quality and locality of the food. The unfortunate thing was The Little Farm In Gilbert had little vegetables to harvest, no meat for sale and no goats for milk and cheese. They did have tons of fresh eggs and the potential for some beef a couple years down the road. But it was hardly worth the drive for the eggs. The more research I did the more I found out I couldn’t find any locally raised meat from small farms, hormone and corn free. So I gave up. Sort of. I grew some veggies in my own garden. I headed to the very small farmers markets in Phoenix and got some more produce. Got my bread from a local source and tried to find everything else that was grown/cultivated and packaged in surrounding states. And continued to eat meat (and fed my daughter the same meat) from the store, blessing it and giving thanks to the animal that gave it’s life for us to eat and hoping that it had some goodness left in it.
Last week I began reading The Omnivore’s Dilemma, the new book by Michael Pollen. It was a reminder to me that my desires to change my diet should be urgently put into action. It reminded me that food is utterly and absolutely political and my choices in eating are just as my choices in voting. If I keep eating meat from anywhere other than my local farmer whose life is growing grasses and guiding animals to eat it or from our own hunting then I am supporting a machine that I no longer want in charge of my public life. It sounds drastic, I know, but each time we eat a piece of meat that comes from a farm (organic or not) we are using more fossil fuel than when we take a week long road-trip in a car. The energy it takes to create and process the feed (corn), ship the corn, distribute the corn to the cattle, slaughter and kill the cattle, process the beef, package the beef, and ship the beef off to the store…is feeding an industry: an industry that keeps us fixin’ for oil.
According to Pollen it all boils down to the kernal of corn. A close cousin of maize, corn is known as sacred and divine to Native American, but in our present day culture, it is a crop that keeps this nation of greed and gluttony running. We have become dependent on these little niblets. Our body is now used to massive amounts of it. We eat in our beef and chicken, we eat in almost every processed food you can name in the form of modified corn starch, corn oil or corn syrup. Check out the labels, you’ll be shock at how many foods have corn something or other in the first 3 ingredients. Our government subsidizes the farming industry to keep growing this cheap from of energy that reaches or plates in forms of animal fat, surgar and starch. Corn is making the cows nice and fat so that they can be a good commodity and slaughtered close to 4 years younger than if they were grass-fed. Corn is also making us obese. While we are warned that are children are fatter than ever before, living on less than whole foods; one fast-food meal of chicken nuggets (chickens fed with corn, breaded in corn meal and deep friend in corn oil, fries flavored with High Fructose Corn Syrup -HFCS-, and fried in corn oil and a soda which is comprised mostly of HFCS. We are talking about ½ pound of corn used for one fast-food meal. That same meal needs the equivalent of 1.3 gallons of oil to be produced. T government signs bills designed to keep the river of corn flowing into the mouths of cattle and anything else it can possible make. Corn is money.
Pollen also brings the industrial organic food chain to the discussion. Although we all know that foods laden with pesticides are not good for us, are all organic foods are so much better for our community? Are those Venezulan organic blueberries from Whole Foods any better than the local farm that might be across town that might use some minor pesticides? While shipping the blueberries over, they were exposed to numerous gasses and pretty much bathed in environmental pollutants. Not to mention the amount of oil used to get them here. The non-organic berries may or may not have pesticides and they grown locally. Which choice is better for the family and the community at large? This is a question I must start asking myself.
Pollen visits an organic chicken farm in Petaluma, CA. Rosie’s Chickens. Many a night my family and I have enjoyed Rosie’s chicken wings, which we’ve coated in extra virgin olive oil, salt and fresh-cracked pepper and maybe even a little sprinkler of chili powder or cumin and broiled until gooey and crispy. Chicken Wings priced at 8 bucks a pound and named Rosie’s better be good karma meat, right? They claim their Rosie’s are free-range and cage-free. Pollen visited Rosie’s farm and in his eyes the bottom line was that those birds were crammed in a coup, feather to feather with no room to move. At 2 weeks of age a little open window to the outside world is offered to these petrified chickens whose life until that point has been in a dark, crammed coup, not knowing what is up or down and pecking at each other to find food. No chicken dares to venture out into the scary world once they are offered the open window. Who can blame them? These little chickens are NOT clucking through the grass, happily and joyfully until they are fat and ready to made into nurishment for us. Instead, they are treated closely like any other industrial chicken farm. Stuffed in a feces filled corridor with no room to breath. Granted, they don’t have hormones injected into them and their corn-meal is not treated with pesticides. I think that this does make the Rosie’s of the world better chickens to eat. But reading the literature Whole Foods gives out regarding Rosie’s Chickesn, you might be misguided into thinking your poultry comes from a little chicken utopia, where your Rosie lives a sweet and free life until she is ritualistically killed for food. Not the case. Between Rosie’s Organic chicken and the non-organic, truly free-range, grass and vegetable fed chicken farm that may be 1/2 hour away from your home, go with the later. Organic means something. But not enough. We are at a point were we need to understand food beyond organic. We need to look at the system as a whole. By importing fish, meats and produce from lands far away, organic or not, we are contributing to a Factory Farming Machine. By supporting a meat and processed food industry that has relies on factory farmed, heavily sprayed corn and corn-based ingredients, we are not only supporting the Factory Farm Machine, we are supporting the Military Industrial Complex which depends on War which depends on our addiction of fossil fuels.
I know it is not easy. To take the time to re-evaluate and re-organize your families eating style, to find pure food products. To grow your own food. It’s a challenge, a human challenge. It’s kind of a test to us living her on Earth which provides us with an abundance of good things if only we can find the right tools and path to garner them. But somewhere there is a way we can go back to feeding ourselves and our children for health and energy and goodness. Somewhere there must be a way to find foods that connect us with the deep, dark nourishing soils filled with the essence to preserve our planet and avoid extinction. There is away to bind and connect us to an honorable way utilize the chains of life. I still have not found it and I by no means eat or live the way I dream to eat or live. But I can keep dreaming and taking these little steps to actualize.
If anyone has resources or advice, I am all ears.
Over a month of eating nothing besides a piece of fish a week and we feel great. My husband still had not made the cross-over but while we are here in Ojai he promises to leap into pesca-a-tarianism. It’s too confusing for Mia to see him eat meat while we don’t. I feel so much better about the choices in protein I make: lentils, beans, quinoa, tofu, nuts eggs and oils. Just today Mia says to me:
Mama remember the pig?
What pig?
The pig that got cut and then he was bacon? I don’t eat animals mama. That’s just mean.
4 months later.
We have failed. When we were in NY at my parents place we broke down and gnawed on flesh. There were days I just did not have it in me to fight for my right to cook something else. My mother is queen of her kitchen, it is her one source of control and to be able to make a meal in their she either has to be sleeping or gone. Since she never sleeps, just “rests her eyes” and she is rarely gone for long since the town is quite small, I did little cooking.
After reading my Leigh’s piece about how satisfying and joyful her experience has been being meat-free I am inspired, ashamed, excited, motivated, guilty; all things that mean action will be taken. Starting right now, today, I no longer eat meat.
I no longer eat meat until there is a better way.
