The Eat with Care blog
Writing on humane farming issues by Caroline Abels, founder of Humaneitarian.
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House takes up chicken bill
The Farm Bill is currently under debate in the U.S. House of Representatives, and the people behind the “chicken bill” (mainly the Humane Society of the United States) are encouraging supporters of the bill to call their House rep this week so that the bill can become part of the Farm Bill as an amendment. Read up on the bill here, and if you believe in what it’s trying to accomplish for America’s egg-laying hens, you can call the main House switchboard [...]
Pastured Poultry Week (with bonus video)
Georgia isn’t on my mind very often (I live closer to Canada than to Cuba) but for many years Georgia was probably on my plate — in the form of factory farmed chicken. The state raises more chickens than any other — 1.4 billion a year – so before I became a humaneitarian I’m sure I ate a lot of this industrial export. Who knew the peach and peanut state is also the poultry state?
“Probably most Georgians don’t know that, either,” [...]
Action opportunity: Chickens in Congress again
Some of you may remember the “hen bill” or “chicken bill” that was introduced in Congress last year. It would have mandated better cages for egg laying hens in America — all 280 million of them — allowing birds room to perch, scratch, nest, and stretch their wings. It would have been the first federal law mandating humane on-farm treatment of any animal. It was a big deal, both for farm animals and those of us who care about them.
Well, [...]
Julia Phelps, Georgia
A Vegetarian Cooks for Her Omnivore Spouse
I have been a consistent vegetarian for about 3 years now. I dabbled in it as a young adult, as I was appalled at the conditions animals were raised and slaughtered in. It took a few events to get me back on track and keep me there.
The first was when I was living in a southern state. I was stuck on more than one occasion behind a tall, swaying chicken truck heading to the [...]
At the New England Meat Conference
Nothing like a meat conference to get your juices flowing!
The first (and hopefully now annual) gathering of New England meat producers and processors was, as someone said, a fantastic “peek behind the curtain” at all the moving parts that make local meat happen. When we eat humanely raised meat, do we ever think of the guy who sells poultry processing equipment, the bookkeeper at the rendering plant, the slaughterhouse operator, the trucking distributor, the health inspector, the artisan butcher, the [...]
Humane on the Brain: Fall & Winter 2012-13
Welcome to “Humane on the Brain,” my running series on Facebook of quirky experiences in which I try to buy, order, inquire about, or eat humanely raised meat. The consequences are sometimes hilarious, sometimess embarassing, but always enlightening. Someone said these little stories take humane eating “out of the realm of rhetoric and into the texture of daily life and daily choices.” So every now and then I’ll compile the Facebook posts here on the blog, for those of you [...]
About an ox…
“We all have an ox who made us what we are today.” — Lee Chung-ryoul
Until yesterday, I would have joined you in chuckling a bit at this statement. An ox? Making me who I am today? Ridiculous. Who uses oxen anymore, anyway?
But then, tired and worn out last night, I watched “Old Partner,” a short documentary film about an elderly Korean farmer and his aging ox. I was quickly reminded that I don’t know a thing about being truly [...]
Do you have a meat mentor?
What if you never had a grandmother who took apart a chicken with her rumpled, old-lady hands as you stood by, a kid transfixed at seeing the inside of an animal for the first time?
What if your mom — who raised you in the ’60s or ’70s and was relieved to be liberated from the kitchen — bought frozen hamburger patties and liverwurst in cans and shrink-wrapped pork chops so often that you never learned the difference between a skirt steak and [...]
Eating tip #2: Take stock
A few weeks ago I stood in my mother’s kitchen, determined to make use of the entire animal that was momentarily to become our Christmas turkey. I was going to put every part of it to good use — every bone and sinew and muscle of it — not just because this precious bird had nestled and cooed in my hand when it was a wee babe, or because I’d rescued it (along with its flock-mates) when a sudden August thunderstorm [...]
Go “factory-farm free” in 2013!
I hate New Year’s resolutions, but I hate factory farms even more. Perhaps you do, too — both are impossible to justify, but hard to avoid. Come the turning of the calendar year, one can easily slip into self-judgment and try to become “more this” or “less that” through the making of a resolution that one will inevitably forget by March. Come a visit to the supermarket, one can easily slip into buying whatever meat is for sale there — which tends [...]