Food and Fear

Okay this is unscientific and to be honest I'm not looking to prove or disprove it but I'm going share my thoughts with you anyway. When we first switched to eating meat from a local farm (butchered locally by a butcher with a reputation as being caring and good to the animals sent to him) I began thinking more about how animals are treated in the industrial farm system and how horrible their end is.

I'm not going to get into the crap they're fed (and us by extension) or descriptions of the horrendous conditions many of them are forced to live and die in. Other people have done it well and in far more depth than I.

We know that cattle and sheep are given sex hormones to boost their weight before slaughter. We know that at least some of those hormones remain in the meat that we consume. But it's other hormones that are on my mind tonight.

When we feel fear our bodies get flooded with hormones (such as adrenalin). Animals go through a similar process. So where does this leave the meat we eat?

I did read a study that states that the stress on herbivores slaughtered in the US for human consumption is minimal enough that we shouldn't be concerned (but forget eating dog meat unless you want to suffer from impotence - http://www.scn.org/~bk269/fear.html). I'm not sure I buy that. I'm grappling with the entire issue.

I'm not prepared to become a vegetarian and to be honest my husband and daughter and to a lesser degree our son all really would not do well on a meat-free diet. So our diet causes pain and suffering in other creatures. I'm not happy about that but I accept that it is a choice my husband and I are making.

The thing I've been wondering is if the fear and stress hormones that flood the animal can alter our own bodies when we consume them. Does eating meat from animals who are treated more ethically and humanely both through their lives and through their deaths make for healthier meat? I don't know. I do know it makes me feel a bit better about what we eat.