A few weeks ago I was driving down Hwy 74 in Monroe, which I rarely ever do anymore. I saw this truck and another one full of poor chickens on their way to the processing plant just outside Monroe. I happened to have my camera with me, so when I was stopped at a red light I snapped this picture. To me this perfectly illustrates the true cost of cheap food. I think most people would like to ignore things like this and just pretend that this is not how most meat animals are treated. But, this is the reality and if more people could see stuff like this then maybe they would realize that the "higher" prices of organic/free-range food is actually pretty fair. I LOVE the fact that Chad and I have visisted the farm where we mainly buy our meat and eggs and we have seen the animals and the conditions for ourselves. Farmers who are really trying to do things right don't mind people stopping by to visit - the farm we visited even said we could come back on chicken processing day if we wanted to see how they kill and process their meat chickens - try getting a tour of Tyson or Perdue's processing plants and see if anyone will let the general public in. Like Joel Salatin and Michael Pollan say in Food Inc. and Omnivore's Dilemma cheap food isn't really cheap - it's just that the animals and farmers pay the true cost.
No comments:
Post a Comment