Katie and I have raised and kept chickens since 2008. For you poultry folk, in the last year and a half we have raised 7 hens, a Rhode Island Red (Semilla), two Easter Eggers (Archibald and Eve), two Black Australorpes (Pati and Miss Viola), and a Black Sexlink (Fred). In winter of 2008, we raised a rooster in the Dominican Republic named Napoleon.
For the last three years Katie and I have hesitantly continued eating chicken meat, full knowing that the reconstituted chicken patty goo that makes up a delicious 99 cent sandwich, once came from an animal not unlike our beloved pets. We would even spend short periods of time abstaining from meat, but upon realizing how inconvenient and expensive it was, we would return to our animal eating habits.
That all changed a month ago.
After watching Food, Inc., and some other documentary films on the commercial farming industry, we began to look more seriously at our food choices. One interview with a responsible old fashioned farmer stuck in my mind. He raises animals for meat in a sustainable, chemical-free, minimally processed operation out in open fields. He said to take another creature’s life for our own sustenance is an intimate thing. The average consumer is no longer connected to any agrarian elements of life and is now so far removed from the processing operations of the US meat giants that most hardly think of the original source of his or her foods. After watching this, we internalized the idea of valuing integrity in our food choices, but due to finances and convenience we didn’t live it out.
About four months ago, Semilla, our Rhode Island Red, began displaying very aggressive behavior; so much so, that it was becoming detrimental to the health and well being of our other chickens. We contemplated the idea of giving her away to a farmer in the rural areas surrounding our city, but we knew she would end up in a crockpot. Knowing this, we decided that if we need to get rid of her, and if she was going to get cooked anyway, we might as well enjoy her as food instead of letting someone else have the opportunity. We had poured a year of our life into keeping this chicken well fed, well exercised, and healthy. So we had a friend of ours helped cull and butcher her.
Katie couldn’t watch.
I held Semilla as he grabbed her neck and said, “Ready?” I won’t go into details, but the process was pretty quick and uncomplicated. But I can still vividly picture it in my mind and in those moments began to understand the gravity of taking a chicken’s life for food. We knew we shouldn’t waste her, so we had soup and decided to finish off all the meat in our house and buy no more.
A person might think that we made an emotional decision and were shocked and disturbed out of eating chicken. I can honestly say that the emotions, shock, and disturbance from the experience of participating in taking Semilla’s life have worn off. So I know trauma is not the primary motivator.
Our primary reason is that we have now more fully embraced the value of integrity in our choices.
If we are not comfortable with killing our own chicken, why should we be comfortable eating the flesh of a chicken that some industrial giant killed for us? If I couldn’t raise a cow, sheep, or goat and with no remorse kill that animal for food, how could I eat beef, mutton, or goat meat with no remorse?
Consequently, Katie and I are both unbothered by fishing. I’ve caught and gutted many-a-fish with my Dad and brother, and experienced no guilt. So I can continue eating fish without feeling like I’m being duplicitous. We’ll eat what we would be willing to catch or kill ourselves… we won’t eat what we wouldn’t be willing to catch or kill ourselves.
So for us, this translates to no eating mammals, reptiles, birds or amphibians. But we do feel comfortable eating fish, and if we were to grow a palate for bugs (don’t hold your breath)… we’d eat them too.
I have heard people say, “I don’t like rotisserie chicken because it still looks like the animal, but I love chicken nuggets or grilled chicken breast because the chicken is unrecognizable!” If acknowledging that we took an animal’s life is too disturbing or unappetizing for us to eat a chicken leg, then should we really be cultivating a numbness to the effects of our decisions by eating chicken nuggets?
I’m beginning to yield to this principal, allowing it to infiltrate my views and decisions in other areas as well. I have a long way to go, but I’m beginning.
If I wouldn’t be comfortable condemning my own child to death after he/she has done something wrong, why would I support killing anyone else’s child by approving of the death penalty?
If I wouldn’t be willing to look another person in the eye and kill them in the name of a nation-state, why would I encourage friends, family, or politicians to engage in anymore wars?
If I wouldn’t be willing to steal someone’s money in order to accomplish something that I deem “a good cause,” why would I then support the government taxing its citizens to do the same thing?
Sadly, the answer I get too often is, “Well, I just don’t like to think about it.”
What we eat, drink, endorse, condemn, buy, and sell are all huge decisions.
I think it’s time that we started thinking about “it.”
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