i’ve seen this article referenced twice in blogs already today. the first was in a blog dedicated to information about drugs (mostly meds) and what they do to people. (like, i learned that the reason dramamine knocks me out is that one of the two active agents is basically benadryl.) the second reference was on boing boing.
now, there were two major reasons i became vegitarian. the first was that i don’t like a lot of meats, and the second was that cheeseburgers were the top of my list of favourite foods and i lived practically next door to a wendy’s. if i was going to stop having a cheeseburger for dinner almost every night, i needed to just cut out all meat cause without the cheeseburger, what was the point? (i consider myself a catholic vegetarian, i still eat fish and seafood. get it? no meat fridays…) it wasn’t a political or religious decision.
last year i read fast food nation. as a consequence this article in rolling stone about pig farming doesn’t surprise me, but it reinforces my conviction that if and when i ‘cheat’ on my vegetarianism, i will only eat meet from small farms where the animals are treated better, hopefully fed organically grown feed, and certainly not given antibiotics.
supporting the small farm keeps us all healthier. really. think about where your meat comes from and if you want to be eating something that was hardly able to walk itself to slaughter because it was so ill; alive only because of a cocktail of four wide spectrum antibiotics, only one of which is given to humans. not to mention, the smaller farms also don’t have as negative an impact on the environment.