Check out Andrew Weil’s post regarding the new book “Eating Animals,” by Jonathan Safran Foer. Although I’m interested in reading the book, I’m not sure whether I will end with the conclusion in supporting those farmers who conduct responsible farming including humanely raising animals or just decide to give up meat altogether. While Jennifer is a vegetarian, I am not. I have, however, drastically reduced the amount of meat in my diet by focusing more on plant foods and only purchase humanely raised, organic meats. Even with these efforts, I still feel as though it would be difficult for me to completely give up poultry (I have given up pork and rarely eat beef) especially when I think supporting responsible farming is important.
Any one else have thoughts on this topic? Should we support responsible farmers who raise their animals humanely or should we promote vegetarianism/veganism as a stance against factory farming?
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I think you ARE still taking a stance against factory farming when you buy humanely raised, organic meat because responsible farming is the complete opposite of big, factory farm mentality. The bottom line is that when a person chooses to eat an animal they should raise that animal and kill that animal in a manner that shows respect for the fact that it gave its life so that we could be sustained.
I eat mostly vegetarian now — more because I am looking for variety and afford-ability than from a desire to avoid meats. I think though that humans are natively omnivorous — and as such the vast majority of us are going to eat meat as some portion of our diet, so the more powerful approach to modifying food industry behavior is to only buy local and only from small/human/organic producers.
Know your farmer, eat mostly plants, enjoy the meat that you do eat — and be prepared to consume smaller portions of it, and to pay more for it.
I appreciate both of your perspectives. I really agree with supporting responsible farmers & eating a mostly plant based diet!
While I love plant-based diets, I myself need a lot of protein and so eating meat is something that works for me. I’m DEFINITELY for supporting family farms, which I do my best to do. I personally would rather support a small local farm that labels only “grass-fed beef” instead of choosing a larger “organic factory farm”….