Image by Janet Gooch from Pixabay
Text art and verse in the second image by Cara Hartley/Ornery Owl. You're welcome to use it, but please credit me.
I've deviated from my fish pictures this Sunday. I didn't create the image I used for the Haiga. Some may deem this a cheat, but I'm a terrible artist, especially with animals. Mine look like a preschooler with the opposite of artistic promise drew them.
I'm embarrassed to say how long it took me to accomplish the text art portion of the Haiga. First, I had to figure out how to make the area around the chickens bigger without enlarging the entire image. Let us never speak of it again.
Ethical treatment of food animals is a big concern for me. As a person of the omnivorous persuasion, I agree in theory that not eating meat is optimal. In practice, it's not quite so cut and dry.
People can take supplements to replace the nutrients they would otherwise derive from meat. I do not agree with feeding cats and dogs a vegan diet. Cats are obligate carnivores and giving them supplements will not cut the mustard. Anyone who is opposed enough to the consumption of meat that they would put their cat on a vegan diet should opt for a herbivorous pet instead. I am not being facetious when I say that a rabbit is a better pet for someone with this mindset than a cat.
Back to the humans and meat dilemma. While humans can choose supplementation to replace nutrients usually derived from meat, eating a strictly vegan or even vegetarian diet isn't always practical, particularly if you are a member of the lower class. When my son and I buy meat, we purchase from an independent butcher who sources his meat from farms within our state (Colorado) committed to ethical practices. He keeps his prices competitive with those at the supermarket, and the meat is significantly better quality.
My son and I do rely on the monthly local food pantry and we do take any meat that is offered to us. Except for items such as chicken nuggets, which I make in the air fryer, or a whole turkey, which I prepare using my countertop roaster, I usually cook meat from the food bank in the slow cooker. This allows it to slowly simmer in sauce over several hours, tenderizing cheap cuts of meat that would be unpalatable using other methods.
I am aware that meat from the food bank is likely to originate from factory-farmed sources, and this presents an ethical dilemma. I am opposed to factory farming, but the meat we get from the food bank allows me to prepare a more nutritionally complete and flavorful meal than we would get from the canned pasta that we usually leave for someone else to have. The canned pasta usually contains meat anyway, as do most of the soups available from the food pantry.
One might think that living in a rural area, I would always see cattle and sheep grazing contentedly in a field. While we do see grazing animals, we also see many of them confined to feedlots. I wrote a Haibun entitled The Smell of Death last month. The subject was the smell from the feedlots along Highway 14 between Ault and Briggsdale. Said Haibun was accepted along with several other of my poems for inclusion in the Soul Ink anthology, which will be published on June 23.
Shameless Self-Promotion
I discuss the thoughts leading to the creation of The Smell of Death in this post.
I guess that's about all the damage I can do around this pop stand today. The TL:DR is as follows. I'm not going to play the morality police and scold people for eating meat. Doing so would be hypocritical of me since I eat meat myself. I will, however, point out the problems with modern methods of meat production, which are both unhealthy and unethical. The good folks at The Meatrix explain things better than I can.
I was inspired by this prompt for World Animal Day.
~Ornery Owl Has Spoken~
Free use image from Open Clipart Vectors
"This sausage was ethically sourced, Hangry."
Free use image from Clker Free Vector Images
"Great, Ornery. Give it here so I can ethically chow down!"
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