Reality Check-How We Treat the Animals We Eat-Oprah Show

While watching the Oprah show today, I listened to a man tell a story which captured my attention and pulled at my heart. Today's subject on the Oprah's show was How We Treat the Animals We Eat. I knew deep down inside I didn't want to know or acknowledge how the bacon I love came to grace my breakfast table or how the beef patties met it's death. I didn't want to see horrifying scenes reminiscent of the KFC debacle of chickens being slammed to death or cows slipping under the throes of mad cow disease. In the audience there was a man who owned a farm. He related a story of how when he was a kid growing up on his parent's farm where they raised geese, one of his chores was to catch a geese for slaughter. The flocks of geese would run in sheer terror into the barn where he would eventually catch the unlucky goose. As he carried the goose out of the barn, he would be chased by a sole goose bravely running after him in defiance in defense of the partner he had by the wings. This vivid picture tugged at my heart, as I have previously written of my fond memories by the shore of Lake Tahoe feeding the Canadian geese that would make their way around the shore knowing which neighbors would have bread ready. I would see groups of geese but always knew who was paired with whom. Occasionally there would be the solitary goose, a partnerless creature who lost it's mate and was like a third wheel on a date. I always had hopes that those solitary geese would find another love, another partner. So when this confessed geese catcher realized as a child that the geese had personalities and social behaviors, he became involved in the human treatment of farm animals as a farmer. And so as I continued to watch the show and the treatment of the pigs, cows and chickens in pens so small that they can't turn around, I found myself horrified and sadden. The knowledge of calves in pens all their short lives (for this reason I have always boycotted veal), fed a liquid diet, weaken in muscle and diseased sicken me with the thought that it was all for the sake of veal scallopini . Have we as a nation forgotten that the food that sustains us also have intelligence and are social animals just like us? Have we lost our consciousness for the sake of the almighty dollar? I know we will always have the animals as a food source, but at least can't we treat them with dignity and respect for what they do for us? I vowed as I watched it that I would try to support the free range and cage free animal products and support the small farmers that are trying to make a difference and hold to a higher standard. I still love a good steak, will eat my eggs at breakfast and who knows maybe eat one less pound of bacon a week!-Single D