3. If We’re Going To End Factory Farms, We Need To Eat Way Less Meat

If We’re Going To End Factory Farms, We Need To Eat Way Less Meat

I am the biggest hypocrite when it comes to this, and I think a lot of us are. I eat burgers/steaks/chicken wings/you name it like they're going out of style. Yet when I really sit down and think about it I don't agree with raising and killing animals for food at all.

I read articles like this and other accounts of how horrible animals raised for food are treated and it just feels wrong to me. Put it this way - if there was a cow living in my backyard I would do whatever I could to look after it. I would defend it if something or someone were trying to cause it harm. I would feed it and make sure it had a happy life. I sure as hell wouldn't slaughter it because I know there are tasty bits inside. Yet as I type this I have a beef stew cooking in my crock pot and I'm already looking forward to devouring it this evening.

What would have happened if the only way I could have got the cut of meat for the stew was to kill the cow and cut it up myself? I'll tell you what - I would never know the taste of beef again because there is no chance in hell I could ever deal with taking the life of an animal just so I could have a tasty dinner. But unfortunately for the cow cooking in my kitchen I wasn't personally there to see any of that so that somehow makes it OK.

"OK, so why don't you align your actions with your beliefs and stop eating meat then?"

A few reasons, all of which end up fallacious if you dig into them:

  1. Except for a small minority it is so deeply embedded in our culture. Most of the food I like has meat in it. Most things I know how to cook have meat in them. All my friends and family eat meat every day. It's been that way for my entire life so the roots are very deep.

  2. A lot of the meat you buy from the grocery store is all very neat/packaged/processed to the point where the connection between the thing you see on the shelf and real, live cow walking around a field mooing is several steps removed. It's just another ingredient you buy, like flour or salt. Sometimes this isn't true - a whole turkey for example - honestly over time it's getting harder for me to eat those kinds of meat vs. a pound of ground beef for that very reason.

  3. On a personal level, I'm a typical big burly "manly" guy. I like drinking beer, watching football, all that kind of stuff. I'm older now so it's not a typical "I gotta fit in with my friends" peer pressure situation, but I guess it's similar. Imagine if we're all at the pub - "oh don't forget to order a side of tofu chicken wings for mr. holier-than-thou over here...". Possible? Yes. Difficult? Also yes.

  4. Honestly I don't think too deeply about this very often. Obtaining meat is so convenient and no different from any other food item we just don't have to. If I was confronted with this contradiction more often I honestly think I'd end up changing. But I'm not, and change is hard.

/r/TrueReddit Thread Parent Link - huffingtonpost.com
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