Letters to the Editor: There is no ‘humane’ way to raise animals for meat, and, frankly, none of us want to read about these horrible practices in our newspapers.
But we could not bear to look away, as the media has done a fine job of painting our cities and countryside to the life-altering colors that we as readers would love to live in our homes, our cars, or our backyards. And since my wife and I have been working on our own meat-free diet for more than a year now (no meat at home, no cooking from scratch) I thought it would be a good idea to provide an answer to the question of how to do it.
In short, it is not at all humane, and not all of the meat that is raised for our dinner plates is raised this way.
As with any other animals, to begin with I recommend that people (and even our pets) learn as much as possible about the life-cycle of a cow, chicken or pig, as well as the health and handling of every animal type from which to choose. Then, with very few exceptions, most of what I write about applies equally to chicken, beef, pork, and fish, which means, of course, that your choice will fall somewhere between an egg-product, fresh or frozen, and an exotic fish.
In the end, the only animal that really has no place in the kitchen (and certainly not on our plates), is not even in our backyard, but in our stomachs. I guess that most of us feel that animals are deserving of a place on our tables and in our hearts, but we have to face the truth that there is no place for them in our stomachs.
The meat for our plates, and our stomachs, comes from animals that have been raised and slaughtered in a manner that is almost universally condemned as cruel and inhumane. In addition, many of these animals are raised and slaughtered with little to no knowledge of how they taste, or what is involved in growing, fattening, and slaughtering them, as well as what happens to the meat once it leaves the kitchen and gets to the table.
But if some of us truly know