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In reference to the letter written by Art.
Some people eat no meat because and you must know this but have chosen to leave it out of your comment, they care about animal welfare as their prime reason for making that choice. Let me explain to you how this works from someone who lived on a working sheep farm (600 sheep, 250 ewes) for 10 years and knows enough horror stories about that industry that you do not care to hear for their wicked nastiness or you would have changed your mentality long ago.
Way back when, people had a small plot, a few animals. They cared for them as best they could so that they would produce offspring, thrive and become food in return. In general, these beasts were fattened and slaughtered before the coming winter when they would lose weight and not have enough reserves to make it through winter due to a lack of forage for all the farm's needs. It was a humane enough system with "healthy" meat. Today animals are treated like plastic shopping bags or worse. We all know or should the horrors they suffer and the filth they are fed. How many cows die for McDonalds DAILY and under atrocious conditions. This is UNACCEPTABLE to me and anyone with a thought in their brain. To coninue eating meat is sinful because god did not make animals to be treated as disposable diapers which the industry has done to SUPPOSEDLY have a better profit margin. Even that is false because I discovered during my farm life that Purina donates MILLIONS of Dollars to agricultural schools so the "future farmers" will learn the "right technics" to feed that PURINA food to their 1000s of future cows, calves, sheep, lambs, pigs piglets, goats, kids, chickens, chicks all these animals are now agrobusiness. They are just an industrial afterthought of a profit margin that agrobusiness wants to INCREASE yearly. That is the tip of the ugly iceberg.
My sheep were treated humanely every day. They had names like Blackfousse, Belle, KeyLime. They ate fresh grass or fresh hay and alfalfa. NEVER did Purina sell us stuff but they did try hard. They tried many tricks like it's cheaper and easier to feed those sheep this artificial bulk "sawdust" to "fatten them up". But there was no grass in their product. It was chemicals and filler. It smelled really bad. They gave us a few trial bags that no animal; sheep, horse or dog would go near given a choice. We dug a hole and buried that poison. Art, please contact me for more details if that is not convincing enough. I've lived it, have you?
