Eat meat?

Today we fed pigs and chickens and spent an hour peeling garlic to find the healthy bulbs for planting. Feeding the animals made me think about eating meat and how abstract the actual living, breathing animals are when you are enjoying chicken parm or a cheeseburger or something. I was a vegetarian for pretty much all of 2007- mostly because of the sustainability issues and antibiotics in our meat- but those cute little pigs butting me with their noses made me rethink my decision to start eating meat again.

I originally began eating meat again because I spent the spring in Italy and knew that it would be extremely difficult and often insulting to Europeans if I refused to eat meat while there- especially since all of my meals were prepared for me by the Italian family that ran my pensione (bed and breakfast sort of place where I lived). When I came home, I quit eating red meat (the beef industry is terrible and I don't really enjoy red meat that much to begin with), but I am still eating tons of chicken these days.

We watched a short clip in class about a dairy farm where the cows were pretty much milk machines and it seemed very unnatural and wrong. I mean, I guess we all are here for some mechanical purpose- even humans- but I feel that every living thing deserves some sort of freedom- imagined or real- to do things that it enjoys. Raising animals in cruel conditions with every aspect of their lives directed towards the goal of food just seems immoral.

One of the best parts of farming today was when we all sat around the crates of garlic and talked about the social climate at Colgate and the problems we have with the university. Common Thread really provides an escape from the bubble where we can take ourselves out of the hectic lives we are living and sort of reflect on their validity.

I'm going to go eat some vegetarian dinner now. Ciao.

-Jenna