Someone on NPR said that the only way he could see to opt out of the mainstream meat industry was to become a vegetarian.
Well, that’s one way of looking at it.
Another way is: By becoming a vegetarian, you are only ensuring that the meat factory industry does very well, because you are denying the alternative—local, sustainable animal husbandry—which makes it less accessible.
Capitalism is about supply and demand, and the bottom line, and nothing else. By choosing to not eat meat, meat-eating is increasingly left to people who don’t know or don’t care how animals are raised, thereby securing the monopoly of meat production conglomerates and really horrible CAFOs (concentrated animal feeding operations).
Yes, becoming a vegetarian means not getting your hands dirty. But it will arguably change nothing about the meat industry.
The guy on NPR did qualify it, a little later, with, “if you know your farmers”-but he said it like it wasn’t really a valid option, like it wasn’t really possible. Let’s prove him wrong!
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sapczynski says
YES - LET’S!!!!