I saw this on my way in to work recently. If you look closely that huge tanker truck says "Chicken Blood" on it. Just another by-product of our wonderful industrial food system! The irony is that this truck is probably heading to the Tyson plant in Monroe and when I saw this I was reading The Meat Racket by Christopher Leonard which is about the industrial meat industry, specifically Tyson Foods because they created the CAFO (Concentrated Animal Feeding Operation) system that all industrialized meats use. I went to junior high and high school in Monroe and we knew tons of people who were industrial chicken farmers for Tyson. You constantly saw the trucks full of live chickens on their way to the Tyson plant in Monroe where they would be processed. At the time I felt sorry for the chickens, but didn't really connect that to the chicken I ate. Now, seeing this tanker truck full of (or soon to be full of) chicken blood my first thought is "Thank God for small-scale local farmers who give other options than this." I am SO thankful every week when we go to the farmer's market and talk to the farmers we buy from. We tell them about our garden and ask questions about their farms and they KNOW us. We KNOW them - we've visited some of them and know there are no tanker trucks full of blood because they do things on a smaller, sustainable scale. It's nice to know that as Joel Salatin advises you CAN "opt out" of the industrial food system and support your "local, lunatic farmers" - especially when you see this driving down 485 one day.
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