Letters to the Editor: There is no ‘humane’ way to raise animals for meat
I am writing in response to the recent New York Times story and an article in People magazine titled “What Is the Best Meat That Cats Can Eat?”
The Times article, written by Christopher Ingraham, is an interesting look at the history of chicken raising and the cruelty involved in meat-raising in the United States. Mr. Ingraham explains that American chicken “has long been a symbol of industrial over-farming” and that this is no longer the case, but that “today, meat producers can’t grow meat fast enough to meet this demand, and they must use antibiotics, hormones and other animal-derived drugs. When people buy meat from the grocery store they’re more likely to find it injected with growth hormones than chicken raised in the United States.”
If chicken were raised according to the laws we’d be talking about organic meat instead of meat-only. What the New York Times has given us is a report on the cruelty of what we are currently eating.
My son’s first meal at a new school this year was chicken nuggets, made with meat from animals raised for meat. The first time I fed my cat meat she went crazy with hunger. My son’s first meat-free meal was at a pet-friendly restaurant where the only source of meat he could find was the chicken that came with his lunch. I am saddened by the fact that our meat-free diet is the result of our animal-loving culture, but I am more than heartened by the fact that he now has another source of animal protein in his diet. But it is this type of culture that is causing the meat industry to lose its foothold in the U.S.
The real way to make a revolution in the way we raise animals for food is by creating a society that no longer kills animals for food and yet still produces meat. That would make the meat industry obsolete and replace it with other ways of producing food,