Me and the Happy Chicken

I hope you're all sitting down for this...It's big...Last night, for the first time in five years, I ate meat. I ate an organically and sustainably raised chicken bought at the farmer's market from a local farm. Nicholas roasted it up and I have to admit it was quite yummy.

After hearing me preach from my vegetarian soapbox for several years, I'm sure you are all shocked. I became a vegetarian because I felt and still feel the cruelty inflicted on animals in the industrial farming system was unethical and unnecessary. I became a vegetarian because the environmental impact of confined animal feeding operations is terrifying and the impact of consuming that much meat on our bodies is unhealthy. I became a vegetarian because I was not comfortable distinguishing between a dog I treat like my child and another animal which is only food.

The first crack in my armor came after reading Omnivore's Dilemma. The author makes a valid point that domesticated farm animals could not survive in the wild and that these species have evolved or been breed to feed us. Still, I thought I couldn't kill the animal myself so I'm not going to eat it.

Then I read Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver and everything changed.

This book is amazing for a thousand different reasons, some of which I will post about later on, but one of them is her attitude towards meat. Like Pollan, she argues that these chickens and turkeys would not survive in the wild and that they are very energy-efficient ways to turn grass and sun that we can't eat into meat we can. However, what really swayed me was her argument about eating meat that is locally raised. She argues that is much more environmentally friendly to eat a chicken from down the road then an orange shipped from New Zealand or tofu from California, especially in the dead of winter.

Still, I was a little hesitant about eating something I wouldn't kill. However, she describes a "harvest day" on her farm when her family, including her young daughter, slaughter some of the chickens and turkeys they've raised. I realized that if a ten-year-old can become comfortable with the reality of slaughter then I can too. That's not to say I'm prepared to eat beef or pork yet but who knows.

So, I ate the chicken. It wasn't as momentous as I thought it would be. I think just making the decision to eat meat was what felt huge. I didn't get sick but I wasn't immediately overwhelmed by what I'd been missing either.

I actually thought my mother, who is in town visiting, would be more excited than she was, but she couldn't get over how much the bird cost. (It was $17 for 3.25 lb bird.) But listen, happy chickens aren't cheap and that suits me just fine. Breeding or evolution aside, animals make the ultimate sacrifice to get to our plates and I don't think making meat cheap and abundant is the way to respect that sacrifice. Not to mention, that I think the time and labor involved in raising any type of animal is nature's way of telling us we probably shouldn't be eating it all the time anyway.

Vegetables and grains will remain the mainstay of my diet, but I'm sure another happy chicken will cross my path eventually.