Organic Meat? I'm so Totally Sure!

Nothing freaks me out more than being in the middle of a health food store bursting and abustle with locally grown fruits and vegetables, biodegradable tampons, fairly-traded herb teas, hemp-wearing, wheat grass- drinking, pierced progressives, and turning my little cart into an isle full of dense, purple hunks of meat. It's one thing in Vons, where everything looks crass, commercial, and integrity-free; but in Henry's, Wild Oats, or even Trader Joe's, the sight of it jars me to the bone. It's like coming across a butt plug in a display of onesies.

I suppose the USDA Certified Organic sticker is supposed to make me feel better. Standards have finally been put into place so that "certified organic" actually means something. According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, organic meat is produced by farmers who emphasize the use of renewable resources, and the conservation of soil and water to enhance environmental quality for future generations. It comes from animals that are given no antibiotics or growth hormones, and it is produced without using most conventional pesticides; fertilizers made with synthetic ingredients or sewage sludge; bioengineering; or ionizing radiation.

Yippee! I can now shop in the relative comfort of knowing that even though the cows who gave their lives for the steaks on sale that day were maimed, tortured and needlessly executed - at least the people who murdered them are conserving water! For the love of God! The juxtaposition of it all is mind boggling! The brown rice on the next aisle was sung to and prayed over, the avocadoes are handled like diamonds by a woman's fair-trade cooperative, the edamame is guaranteed to be raised and packaged on a no-smoking farm, and then in the center of all this lovely, over-the-top, heart-warming kindness, sits a morgue-like freezer full of body parts, sporting the ridiculous little USDA guarantee, like a happy face sticker on a death row inmate.

Organic? Maybe. It's like saying scud missiles are free of perfumes and dyes. So the hell what?

In John Cage's book, Silence, he says,"Food, one assumes, provides nourishment, but Americans eat it fully aware that small amounts of poison have been added to improve its appearance and delay its putrefaction." What one of the many things he means is, we don't care what the facts are behind what we eat - we just want them all covered up and packaged in support of our convenient blindness! After years of vegetarian eating, this weird, postponed, alternate reality starts to shift. I think the vegetables make people smarter, or maybe it's the good karma that comes from not eating murdered things. Either way, one day you are driving down the freeway and you see a billboard advertising burgers three miles ahead, with a big happy cow frying up the patties, and you are stunned and repulsed! How dare they do that! Unnecessarily killing the poor, sweet, beautiful beasts isn't enough? Then you have to falsely enslave them as happy advertisers of their deaths? It's like that whole disgusting Foster Farm's chicken thing. I can't even talk about that. Chicken trying to pass themselves off as Foster Farm's quality, so they can end up in someone's lunchbag! The human race should be ashamed! It happens in the grocery store, too. I can't even go near the meat part of the place. I have to stop three-quarters of the way down the aisles. Whatever they sell in the back quarter of the grocery store, I don't have; and apparently, I don't need.

Here, in summary and according to many, are the arguments in favor of organic meat:

Supporting farms that care for the environment and the animals they raise in an ethical manner is a positive way to spend food dollars. Animal agriculture produces large amounts of air and water pollution, causes 80 percent of the world's annual deforestation, requires large amounts of water, and consumes half the world's total grain harvest. By supporting local, sustainable and organic farms in my community, I also support the larger community of which we are all a part. By eating animal products raised on such farms, I provide the healthiest choice for my family, and support the farms that support healthy and ecological neighborhoods.

Ever heard of "spin"? Well, here it is. Enslaving and torturing animals just long enough to kill them for a price is not, "raising them in an ethical manner". Eating those animals is not, "the healthiest choice" for your family. Supporting the perpetrators is not supporting, "ecological neighborhoods".

For God's sake everybody, look behind the words. Organic meat? Really!