Jumping The Garden Fence

Farewell, bacon. Ciao, chicken. Bye bye, buffalo wings...you too, barbeque. See ya, sausage. My meat-eating days are over. Though I love you so, you are not so good to me and I have to move on.

I'm going vegetarian. Not vegan - they'll have to pry the cheese from my cold, dead hands - but vegetarian. No meat. Anymore. *sniff* Ever.

I've been toying with the notion of going veg for awhile. I managed to maintain my meat-eating status through an entire marriage to a vegetarian. My rebound relationship was with an avid carnivore. The love of my life is, of course, a vegetarian, too. But the men in my life have had little bearing on my decision to enter the broccoli forest, though it has kept the notion in my mind since I did cook vegetarian for so many years.

The thing was, I always liked meat. It tastes good - all smoky and juicy and bloody and expensive.

But the more I learn about meat, especially the way it's handled and processed, the less inclined I am to eat it. Of course, we recently found out that the US has been covering up cases of Mad Cow, and to that end, many countries do not allow US beef imports because of our practice of feeding ground up dead cows to other cows. Yuck. If I could count on free-range organic beef when I went out to eat, that would be one thing. But most likely, my burger was a fat, antibiotic-ridden cownivore. I can't trust it, and I can't order beef without remembering that. Living with CJD is not worth an artfully prepared filet.

Chickens are little better, kept in factory crates 1 foot by 1 foot, their beaks cut off in order to prevent them from pecking each other to death in territorial defense. And again with the antibiotics, and shitting on the heads of the chickens in the crates below.

Pigs are kept over pits of their own wastes that stink up the entire county and destroy the groundwater and the nearby communities. 'Nuff said.

The grains we use to feed all three of these beasts in America alone could feed the entire world and leave a surplus. The water we use to feed and clean them could restore much of the country's depleted groundwater. My dad had to dig a deeper well about a decade back because livestock was brought to southern Missouri and used up all the water.

Seafood is loaded with mercury and dioxin and other VOC's. Overfishing is screwing up the ocean's ecosystem & factory fish farming is just nasty.

So basically, it's pretty damn hypocritical of me to be such a rabid environmentalist at the same time that I'm contributing to a major source of pollution and antibiotic resistance. And we won't even get into the high mortality rate of slaughterhouse workers, who are often illegal immigrants and thus completely unprotected by the already inadequate OSHA regulations. That alone should have been enough. But it wasn't somehow. Denial is a cord that is tough to sever, I guess.

What did it was this study, whic links eating meat with phenomenally high rates of pancreatic cancer, one of the most deadly and incurable forms of cancer, the one my childhood friend lost his dad to a few years back. I was told recently that the first thing they tell new cancer patients is to stop eating meat. So wouldn't it be sort of preventive to stop before it gets that far?

I'm already predisposed to cancer, (though not pancreatic, fortunately). I'm not a lucky person. These are not odds I'm comfortable with. It's time to quit. I stopped smoking for the same reasons, but somehow because others aren't affected by our meat eating, we don't see it as just as harmful, although it certainly is.

But it is not my place to decide what is right for anyone but me. Therefore, I hereby do solemnly swear that this shall be my last righteous vegetarian rant. Respect my right not to eat meat and I will respect your right to eat it. Just please at least let me throw a couple veggies on the grill when you invite me to the barbeque. I am not trying to offend you or guilt you by refusing your meat, I just don't eat it. Thank you in advance for trying to accommodate my diet, but I must inform you that chicken is NOT a vegetarian food.

If you need me, I'll be out in the garden.