Where Does Your Meat Come From?

From The Catechism of the Catholic Church
339 Each creature possesses its own particular goodness and perfection. For each one of the works of the "six days" it is said: "And God saw that it was good." "By the very nature of creation, material being is endowed with its own stability, truth and excellence, its own order and laws."208 Each of the various creatures, willed in its own being, reflects in its own way a ray of God's infinite wisdom and goodness. Man must therefore respect the particular goodness of every creature, to avoid any disordered use of things which would be in contempt of the Creator and would bring disastrous consequences for human beings and their environment. [emphasis added]










The modern hen laying eggs for human consumption is far removed from the Burmese jungle fowl from whom she derives and the active farmyard fowl of recent memory. Rather, she is an anxious, frustrated, fear-ridden bird forced to spend 10 to 12 months squeezed inside a small wire cage with three to eight or nine other tormented hens amid tiers of identical cages in gloomy sheds holding 50,000 to 125,000 debeaked, terrified, bewildered birds. By nature an energetic forager, she should be ranging by day, perching at night, and enjoying cleansing dust baths with her flock mates--a need so strong that she pathetically executes "vacuum" dust bathing on the wire floor of her cage.

Caged for life without exercise while constantly drained of calcium to form egg shells, battery hens develop the severe osteoporosis of intensive confinement know as caged layer fatigue. Calcium depleted, millions of hens become paralyzed and die of hunger and thirst inches from their food and water. Read more.

Must see video. [footage of dead and dying birds, no slaughterhouse] The footage at the end with the "rescued" chickens fully recovered, being chickens out on grass is truly a testament to the quote from the Catechism. Each animal in these pictures is God's creation and even though they are "only chickens" or "only pigs" they are still complex mysteries which cannot be confined, moved, and used like inanimate objects.

A factory tour




A mother pig, or sow, spends her adult life confined to a tiny metal crate. She will never feel the warmth of a nest or the affectionate nuzzle of her mate—she will spend her life surrounded by thick, cold metal bars, living on wet, feces-caked concrete floors. When she is old enough to give birth, she will be artificially impregnated and then imprisoned again for the entire length of her pregnancy in a “gestation crate,” a cage only 2 feet wide—too small for her even to turn around or lie down in comfortably. Read more.

Click The Pig Picture for video [no slaughterhouse scenes]. The footage of the hog giving birth in the metal cage, and the newborn piglet struggling to get to her is especially wrenching.




The veal crate is a wooden restraining device that is the veal calf's permanent home. It is so small (22" x 54") that the calves cannot turn around or even lie down and stretch and is the ultimate in high-profit, confinement animal agriculture.(1) Designed to prevent movement (exercise), the crate does its job of atrophying the calves' muscles, thus producing tender "gourmet" veal. Read more.

Thinking Outside the Crate video [no slaughterhouse scenes]

More cattle footage [with slaughterhouse and other graphic scenes]


They Die Piece by Piece' In Overtaxed Plants, Humane Treatment of Cattle Is Often a Battle Lost

Now, confession time. I enjoy meat very much and I come from a heavily meat-eating family. Most of our meals growing up were planned around meat - you'd ask what we were having and it would generally be "chicken" or "beef" or "pork." I do not remember many full days passing without eating any kind of meat, even those Lenten days when we were to fast from meat the void was usually filled with fish. After observing myself for a while now I've come to the conclusion that I'm even protein-oriented biologically, as I seem to function best when I've had a high protein meal (not every person does best with high protein, some are better with grains and others with vegs/fruits). So it has been quite a journey coming to where I am now.

At first I ate meat from the grocery and coming from a thrifty background, at any good meat sale you'd see me there stocking up the freezer. Then I went into a "less refined foods" stage which didn't affect my meat consumption at all, then into "organic/antibiotic-free" which helped me look more at labels than I had been, and pay more than I had been. I still bought meat occasionally from the grocery when I was there and something looked good. Now I've reached the point where I try to exclusively buy locally produced meat, from farms I can visit and farmers I can talk to (though I do not always follow through with questions I should be asking, yet), and overall I am purchasing and eating less than I ever have. We have 2-3 meatless days a week at this point. The days we do eat meat it is usually only at one meal. We are also trying more and more ways of using the whole animal, from experimenting with organ meats to rendering lard and making stock. It has been a real change for me and my motivation is partly the articles, pictures and videos above. Part of it is the fact that we are heading toward owning our own small farm, and I know that if we try to eat mostly what we produce, meat will not always be available for the table. There will be a season for meat, and a season for other things, so best that I learn how to do without it now. Part of it is just the acknowledgement that I eat far too much meat, and if everyone ate as much as I have it would not be sustainable. Now I know that this isn't stellar progress, but I figure with baby steps I'm more likely to keep these habits permanent.

Probably the most important step in all of these was the switch to locally produced meat, dairy and eggs. If I want to see a farmer's operation, I can go and see it. I can verify for myself that his animals are out on pasture, on large lots, healthy and contented. I can go to the butcher and ask questions, and I can choose which butcher my animal goes to. I can stock my freezer once and forget about it. Buying locally puts wealth into the local economy. It keeps that small farmer alive when he may be struggling to make it, year after year. It saves all of the oil and gas which go into transporting meat across the country to a grocery store.

I can't wait until the day that we raise our own animals. I will know exactly how they're treated and if I do my job right, there will be no underlying questions when we have an animal in front of us at the dinner table. I want to be able to look the animal in the eyes at the end of its life, to thank it for what it gives me, and also to know that I have done right by it. I also want to remove myself from this insulated world we live in, where meat is packaged aseptically at the store and you see some animals as you drive down the road, or in a petting zoo, but you don't have the experience of what it takes to convert one into the other. How many Americans, upon killing and dressing an animal themselves, would continue to eat meat? How many Americans would be able to eat all the edible parts of that animal, wasting nothing? Where is the dignity of the living animal in the steak which sits in its plastic tray 200 miles away from where it lived and died?

If you live in Illinois, this is a helpful resource in finding locally produced animal products, and many other foods. It is very easy to order a half or quarter of an animal; you just order it from the farmer and pick it up. The hardest part is probably deciding which way you want your portion cut and/or cured, but he will help you understand the differences.

Ask Farmer Brown, a nice little website with the motto "Putting the Family Back in Farming."

I intend to write a follow-up post in the future with more ideas in taking the emphasis off of meat in the diet and some recipes which we enjoy.