I may be unwell

There are a number of things wrong with our world. Many of those things are nearly entirely out of our control. I don't know, for example, what I can do to stop genocides in Africa, suicide bombers in the Middle East, or even the problems associated with poverty in the US. I do know, however, that there are problems that you and I can very easily begin to make a difference with.

One of the latter problems is the the continuing - and worsening - underbelly of our meat production industry. The more I learn, the more horrified I am at the realities of how the chicken, eggs, beef, and pork gets from the hoof to my local grocery stores.

The image that we all hold of a farm is one of bucolic serenity, a gorgeous white farm house with nice red silo and white rail fences holding in a half dozen cattle free to wander a grassy yard edging up to a mud pit where pigs roll about in the mud, nudging themselves around playfully. All of this, of course, takes place against a backdrop of a field of corn that has kids playing between the rows, popping their heads out from time to time.

The realities of modern farms, however, are much, much different. Most of them are factory farms throughout the United States (and in many other countries of the world) is one of huge covered sheds that would span numerous football-fields, housing thousands and thousands of either chickens or hogs living in such close quarters that the sheer concentration of their wastes lead to chemical burns and an environmental disaster of near biblical scale. Animals are kept in horrible conditions, living lives of constant suffering from the moment of their conception until their eventual journey to the slaughter house.

At those slaughter houses, then, the conditions have not much improved since Upton Sinclair's The Jungle. Admittedly, some people have attempted to overhaul the processing of animals, but many slaughterhouses are still run at such ridiculous speeds, demanding such levels of production from their workers that it is almost impossible to maintain sanitary conditions and worker safety.

In eating much of the food that we eat, we sacrifice our environment, our moral responsibility to treat animals humanely, and our responsibility to other humans to allow them to work in safe conditions.

And I continue to love steak and burgers and chicken sandwiches.

I have not done nearly enough to do my part in changing the industrial landscape, and every time I go to the grocery store and see the coolers filled with unethically-produced meat, I feel a pange of guilt.

And I need to start to change that.

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If you want to know more about my topic today, head to the following websites or read these books:

• The Meatrix - a cartoon introduction to many of these issues
• Fast Food Nation - a book by Eric Schlosser that details these issues while also addressing their impact on the ever-growing American waistline
• Chew on This - Schlosser's follow up written for teenagers covering much of the same landscape with a slightly easier writing style