Cheap meat and poultry: What is the real cost?

I’ve been on the slaughterhouse ‘kill floor’. I’ve actually slaughtered chickens and cattle (on my cousins’ ranch in Kansas), and cleaned my own game, so I’m hardly a whining vegetarian. Yes, I still enjoy a modest ( and I mean really small ) amount of meat in my weekly diet.

That said, I ONLY buy sustainably, humanly raised meats from independent producers such as my local butcher (Butcher Boy in Reno, Nevada ) where I ask lots of questions, small local beef producers, and such larger cooperatives like Niman Ranch. Whole Foods in Reno offers a line of regionally produced beef, from small producers along the Sierras.

Eating meat isn’t wrong. Raising meat inhumanly is wrong.

I can remember one hot summer day, on a deserted rural road in Utah, as I watched as the driver of a big rig unloading sheep. He just started tossing the dead ones ( suffocated and dehydrated ) off to one side as they unloaded those still barely alive. I was alone and unarmed, so I wasn’t about to make a fuss.

Sure, humanly produced meats cost more, but I eat less of it, and really enjoy meat the way it used to taste 40 years ago before the factory farm, antibiotics and hormones.

Factory farming also contributes more CO2 and methane to the atmosphere, contributing to global climate change than automobiles. Environmentalists don’t eat much meat.

Oh, and if you’re wondering - I wouldn’t join PETA on a bet. They’re too often wrong.

My point here: there are a lot of farmers and ranchers who do a tremendous job raising our food the old way that is easy on our environment, sustainable and humane. Unfortunately, corporate greed has bought most of them out - especially in places like Kansas ( you ought to drive through the feed lots of Dodge City, Kansas for a real education ) and replaced them with factory farms. Family farming is a dying occupation.

If you don’t understand why eating meats from fast food chains, restaurant chains and buying your meats in the usual grocery or Costco type store in that styrofoam package is wrong, then watch the following:

madison parks video on factory farming, opus one.

So, the next time you see a screamin’ deal on that five pound log of ground beef, pork or turkey, think of this film, because that’s what you’re really buying. Same goes for those cheap Tyson chicken tenders and parts.

What a deal, huh?