"Meet Your Meat" Changed My Life

A little video, available at YouTube, called "Meet Your Meat," changed my life, although, the transformation took a little time to percolate.

I've been mentioning raw food lately, and it's been an interesting path that has led me here finally. It started a long, long time ago when my mother became, what many friends and family members jokingly (for the most part) referred to as a "health nut." But that story is too long for today, so I'll cut to the chase.

Somehow today I came across Pam Anderson's video (honestly, I think it was a link from a link from a blog or some kind of internet surfing scenario) about "Kentucky Fried Cruelty." It seems PETA is after KFC to change it's torturous treatment of chickens. If you love animals at all, you'll agree it's torturous.

See here:


Watch more videos at KentuckyFriedCruelty.com.


But something bothered me. Why was it only KFC?? What about Chick-fil-A? Church's? Popeye's? Yes, the South runs rampant with chicken "joints" that serve up lots and lots of chicken. (In fact, my husband brought some Popeye's home the other day, much to my dismay, and yet, I was weak and I ate of it and am ashamed.) So I did a little searching, and REALLY, it's the chicken processing plants that are doling out the torture, the biggest offender allegedly being Tyson. Now, all I could think of were all the people who made their living at the Tyson plant down the street from where I lived in rural Mississippi! People or chickens, people or chickens?

Ok, so chicken "farmers" and processors are to blame. So again, in my searches to find more answers, I came across the "Meet Your Meat" video that I had stumbled upon two years ago. I tried to make myself watch it again, but after about four minues or so, I was in tears. And then, I heard a line I had forgotten. Narrator Alec Baldwin said, "If you drink milk, you are supporting the veal industry." And that made me come here to just get this off my chest.

I've lived my whole life feeling guilty if I ate veal, and have only done so about 3 times (a couple of the parmesan variety, and a picatta). And I've heard BUNCHES of folks say, no, they don't eat veal because, awww, it's a poor baby. Well guess what? Apparently the milk is making the veal, so to speak. And it makes sense, but I never thought of it (and apparently didn't remember it after the first viewing!).

To keep milk production going, cows are routinely impregnated. The calf is taken away almost immediately and "raised," confined in a "stall," until it is auctioned off and/or slaughtered. Ugh. Now, I did finally switch to organic milk, but I don't know if this is across the board for milk production or what. My uncle's family owned a dairy when I was a kid and I loved cows, and we would visit them, and I never knew that it could be a bad thing. But this was an independent dairy that still DELIVERED fresh milk in glass bottles, so I don't believe it was anything like what is in this video. These cows roamed the fields and ate grass and hay and came home at night, so it seems to be "industrial" in nature. I would think organic dairy farms are more like those of old with cow pastures and all.

So anyway. All those folks who don't eat veal, not because of it's price tag but because of some love for baby cows, beware the milk. Oh goodness, I digress?!

I'm about one step away from being an ovo-vegetarian (my eggs are organic free-range--and now raw!). Before that, any meat I ate was mostly chicken, sometimes a ground turkey spaghetti dinner, an occasional Texas-raised beef steak, and an even rarer pork chop. But I slowly became more and more repulsed when handling meat. Especially chicken. And I was buying Pilgrim Farms "all natural" (no hormones or antibiotics, but not organic though). But after watching this Pam Anderson chicken video and starting "Meet Your Meat" again, I think I'm ready to quit (no, it wouldn't have been very kind to say "cold turkey").

There are all kinds of other statistics out there about the amount of crops raised just to feed the "meat" being so many times the amount that could feed everyone on the planet...cutting down rainforests to do it...CO2 emissions from animals...blah blah blah.

I'm not posting this to change your mind. I'm posting it because I'm simplifying my life and finding my connection to the Great I AM, and the common level of avoiding the truth in our "modern day society" just isn't cutting it for me anymore.

Ghandi said, "Be the change you wish to see in the world," and so I'm practicing being the change. I'm giving myself permission to live the way I believe without worrying about what other people think. I've lived too long hoping that nobody thinks I'm "weird," or "different," or "too sensitive," or that I "think too much."

Well, too bad, I am all of those things according to the inherent peer pressure of acceptable norms I find surrounding me on a daily basis. I would like to experience balance. And peace. In my opinion, there just isn't enough of that in the world these days.

Love baby. That's where it's at. Love ourselves. Love each other. Love the animals. Love the planet that sustains us. For God's sake, if not for our own?

Amen.