HERCULANEUM

As the years go on, Will and I are eating less and less meat. We mainly just eat chicken or fish. We rarely eat red meat anymore. And we've given up pork entirely. Pigs are just too damn smart for me to feel comfortable consuming them. And the day I saw them listening, really listening to a boy play the harmonica, it was over for me.

This doesn't mean we don't like it. I LOVE hamburgers. I LOVE filet mignon wrapped in bacon with melted bleu cheese on top sitting on a puddle of a port wine reduction (AH! I'M DYING!) and pork chops and pork roasts and sausage and Beef Bourguignon.

LOVE IT.

MEAN IT.

DAMN IT.

And for the most part, I'm comfortable with our place on the food chain.

It's the disgusting, vile way we treat our "food" before it's slaughtered that bothers me.

It's disgraceful. And I want to live more respectfully than that. To support more respectful practices than that.

And just reading,

"Cattle are herd animals, happiest with other cattle. Calves feel most content and secure when with adult cattle (even if none of them are their mothers). Separating a bunch of calves from their mothers and putting them in a pen by themselves creates a great deal of anxiety and stress for the calves. A big calf that is healthy and eating well does not really need milk from his mother anymore, but he still feels emotionally dependent on her, and very insecure without her."

straight from Cattle Today is enough to curb my enthusiasm for meat right there, let alone the environmental ramifications of mass beef consumption, OR health reasons - red meat links to heart disease and some cancers.

Cheeseburger Footprint - from Six Degrees from Jamais Cascio on Vimeo.

The Cheeseburger Footprint: "the greenhouse gas emissions arising every year from the production and consumption of cheeseburgers is roughly the amount emitted by 6.5 million to 19.6 million SUVs."

Jonathan Safran Foer reveals on "Ellen" the facts of our factory farms.

Jonathan Safran Foer's animal farm (Book Review From The Washington Post)

"Ultimately, Foer insists that his is not a call to vegetarianism as much as a call to acknowledge that meat matters. After he has described in brutal detail some of the horrors of industrial slaughterhouses, his visits to heroic farmers such as Frank Reese and Bill Niman demonstrate that the choice doesn't have to be between eating meat and not. So-called compassionate carnivores can choose to seek out meat from family farms that would sooner set their barns on fire than let an animal suffer, although Foer points out that such farms produce less than 1 percent of the animal meat in the country. None of this is simple. Even some of the book's good guys, such as Niman, allow branding, castration and removal of cattle's horn buds with hot irons. Moreover, as Foer was finishing his research, Niman was forced out of the company he founded, saying new owners were more concerned about profits than animal welfare; he publicly proclaimed that he would no longer eat Niman Ranch meat." (And Bill Niman's wife is now a vegetarian.)

I don't really know where I'm going with this... Yes, I do.

I would just like to urge you before the pending Thanksgiving Holiday to shop for your food responsibly. And it DOESN'T have to be expensive:

Sole Food: Eating organically (and responsibly) on a food-stamp budget.

And think respectfully towards what you eat, because it literally becomes part of you. Not because you should. But, rather because you can.

Your choices DO make a difference. Either way, good or bad, you make a difference.

There is no in-between.

*** Freaked out about hamburgers now? There's an alternative: Recipe for Black Bean Burgers

Now granted, the last time Will made Black Bean Burgers, they were yummy in my tummy, yes. Unfortunately, it was the night before I was flying from New York to Los Angeles and I farted the entire way. THE WHOLE WAY, PEOPLE. They just shut down the engines somewhere over Philly and I powered the plane the rest of the way there. We arrived 25 minutes later.

Oh sure, everyone was unconscious upon arrival at LAX, but still. We got there FAST.

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