2012-01-24

Another drug to cure our ails! Just kidding.

My mom sent me an email with this link a quite a while ago, and I just got around to cleaning out my emailbox earlier this week.  I was very pleasantly surprised and entertained.  Here it is:
Regardless of your opinion of PETA, or your meat eating habits, you have got to think this is funny.  Personally, I rarely, if ever eat meat.  This isn't necessarily for animal rights reasons, but mostly about health issues.  I think that in American society today, we have really lost the connection between what we are putting into our bodies and what it looked like in its original form.  It is a really simple concept: hamburger=cow, sausage=pig, deli slices=turkey(often), and wings=chicken.  It is so weird to think that many of us have never seen a real farm (where meat should come from), but we are perfectly fine putting something that comes from the grocery store raw and wrapped in plastic and styrofoam into our bodies.

From studying Environmental Science at Washington State University, one concept that has been engrained in my mind are the feedback loops of cause and effect that exist everywhere, and the meat industry's affect on the environment and consumption is no exception.  One of the stats in the video that surprised me was that for every beef patty produced, enough fuel is consumed that it is equivalent to driving 20 miles.  That is insane to think!  I know that before ANK I had hamburgers every now and then and even more when I was a kid, so maybe my burger life total is around 150 (again I have no idea), then that means that I would have consumed around 3000 miles worth of fuel.  That is more miles than it would take to drive from Seattle, WA to New York, NY.  Holy COW(literally)!  I know that this stat alone will make me probably never eat a beef burger again.

Just the environmental factors behind meat production and consumption have made me think twice and drastically limit my consumption of them.  What is your deciding factor on your decision whether to, or how much and of what meat to eat?

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