To prey.....or not

This is another thing I struggle with. If I had to kill an animal or bird to eat I would be a vegetarian. A lot more people would be. I'm not sure that most urban kids ever think of it any further than that meat comes from the grocery store.

We did butcher a hog here once, many years ago now. Never again. Paul McCartney has a video out called If slaughterhouses had glass walls everyone would be a vegetarian. It is ghastly. I became aware just how bad it has gotten due to a magazine called Orion, several years ago. Conditions in these houses of death have become much worse since the unions were broken, probably back in Reagan's era. Unless an inspector comes to the plant, which is known ahead of time, animals are pushed through hurriedly. If one isn't stunned properly there is no time to do it over. Throats are cut when they are kicking and screaming. Some are scalded alive to remove hair or feathers. Often workers are illegal immigrants who work in dangerous conditions for low pay.

The whole meat business in the USA is disgusting, except for the few who are raising animals the old way on pasture and are not being run through these big packing houses. These animals are treated humanely and not pumped full of concentrated feed, growth hormones and antibiotics. But we have become accustomed to relatively cheap meat. Buying it from these humane producers is significantly more expensive. Odd that doing things the old way, without concentrated feed and drugs, is now more costly. It takes significantly longer. It takes more land. It takes more work.

So in order to have our cheap meat animals and birds are raised in concentration camps under abysmal conditions, often tended by low-paid workers who abuse them during their pitiful lives. They are neither recognized as living, feeling creatures nor treated as such.

Just writing this makes me want to opt out and go back to being a vegetarian. One problem. My husband has no desire to give up meat. I was a vegetarian for 2-3 years, back 15-18 years ago, while my husband and son were not. I still had to deal with meat for them and after a while I gave up the hassle.

We have about 50 acres here. We could raise our own animals for food in a humane manner, but as I mentioned earlier, they would die of old age if we had to kill creatures that we have come to know. I know, this is absolutely cowardly. The best compromise I can come up with at present is to buy from the few producers who raise animals humanely.

Totally on the other side of the issue, I would not begrudge myself being the meal of some predatory animal. This is unlikely to happen in Iowa, so I guess I am pretty safe making that statement. I do wish that we had the choice of something like an air burial though when we die. This is where Buddhist monks who die in monasteries in the Himalayas are put out on ledges for the vultures. I definitely think we should have the choice to give back to nature in this way. I have buried my son, my mother and my father, and all of them were in caskets, inside of vaults. This strikes me not only as selfish and bizarre, but downright creepy. These were their wishes, which had to be honored. I will be cremated and ashes spread. On this, my husband is with me.

I still have seen enough to suspect that plants are sentient in their own way. I do hope they don't feel physical pain, but do they have some sort of psychological pain at being uprooted or cut? There is a book out there called The Secret Lives of Plants that I feel I must read. This makes the subject of vegetarianism somewhat dissatisfying as well, which is why I have opted for the more Native American or animistic view that life feeds on life and there really isn't a way around that, so the best one can do is to be very respectful and thankful at how you go about it. The amount of waste we have in this country is just overwhelming, and treating food animals or fruits and vegetables, and all natural resources, as existing solely for our needs and pleasure is a symptom of that. I have read that if the whole world were to come up to the level of usage and waste of we Americans it would take two more planet Earths to sustain us, which is downright shameful.

I saw a program on Bhutan the other day. Their national priorities are happiness and preservation of their natural world. If only Americans were so wise.

Where I stand

Lest someone actually read this and accuse me of preaching, let me say that I am far from perfect in my relationship to the natural world. I was raised pretty much as homocentric as anyone else in the western world. I struggle with this daily.

Brian May, Queen guitarist, has made his stand against the restoration of fox hunting in the UK, and culling badgers over the spread of bovine TB, eradicating hedgehogs in areas and so on. He is a vegetarian and against all kinds of animal exploitation and hunting.

I have been a vegetarian for 2-3 years back in the 90's, after Tinker came to live with me, and I still can't deal with chicken in anything but anonymous pieces. But having the animist belief that all living beings are sentient to some degree means that I accept that life feeds on life, and this has to be approached with a sense of respect for the taking of life for food, be it animal or plant life.

We have factory farming here, which to me is like animal and bird concentration camps. I find that to be one of the saddest commentaries on our culture that these are not even seen to be living, feeling creatures. Male baby chicks, unwanted by egg producers, are sorted out at commercial hatcheries and ground up alive to be sold to pet food producers. Grinding up babies alive - are we monsters? When I protest I am told by producers, "These are food animals, not pets." So these food animals don't have feelings then, like pets?

But also I live in the woods and this puts me in an adversarial position with other beings at times. It is not black and white. There are animals like raccoons who are very good at exploitation of human premises and who have no predators who keep their numbers in check. They are quite intelligent and very capable of climbing and manipulating. There are times when I have exhausted every other means I can think of for living with coons and finally just have to start taking them out.

I do try to practice what I preach, and I work toward being better at it, but it can be very complicated.