[Gemara D'Jessica]

In some recent posts I mentioned that I am no longer eating chicken. I felt like I should explain why. But please just keep in mind that as with everything on my blog - upsherin, sheitles, etc - I’m only applying these things to myself. I don’t judge or look down upon people who do it differently because, while I believe that I’m right, there is no guarantee that I am. 

I don’t know how many of you remember - or how many of you even knew me back then - but there was about a month in my late teens (or early 20s? Even I don’t remember!) where I went vegetarian. I felt badly eating animals. Plain and simple. But I still craved that taste so I ended up quickly reverting back to my carnivorous ways. Shortly after Asher was born I started having issues with my gallbladder. We didn’t have any health insurance at the time so I looked online for a potential cure and thankfully Google was truthful this time around. I cut out nearly all fat - including red meat - from my diet and the gallbladder issue went away. I haven’t had any red meat since March of 2009. For a while it did still seem delicious to me, but now the sight - let alone the smell - of red meat actually causes my stomach to churn. Since giving up red meat and eating healthier I have become much more food conscious. I have watched documentaries like Food Inc, King Corn and Tapped. I have read books like The Omnivores Dilemma and Eating Animals. And I have done my own research by just Googling - gotta love Google! And the one thing that I have gotten from this is that most foods are no longer healthy.

Most of what we eat is filled with chemicals. Animal, vegetable, mineral(?). I don’t like that I have to take my thyroid medication. Heck, I don’t even like it when I take a Tylenol! So why when I’m healthy would I willingly take a chemical if I don’t want to take one even when I’m sick? The meat in this country - meat being cows, pigs, chickens, turkeys, lamb… and whatever other animal flesh you can find at your local butcher - is filled with chemicals. Between the antibiotics  and the various hormones to make the animals grow more quickly so that they have more meat, I can’t, in good conscience put that inside of my body. 

While I still don’t like the idea of eating animals, it goes even deeper now that I know how many are treated. Chickens, in order to get to their fattest and have the maximum amount of meat are brought up in tiny cages where they can’t move around. All they can do is eat. And while it is a nice idea to eat organic and free range, the laws in America make it so that these words actually have very little impact on the way that the animals are treated.* 

I can see myself in the near future giving up dairy products and eggs as well - unless of course I live my dream of running my own farm and in which case I’ll actually know how these animals were treated - but I’m not quite *there* yet. I know that I am only one person and that only one person not eating meat (or dairy or eggs) won’t make things change, but, who knows… maybe it will.

*Read this in Eating Animals too lazy right now to look up the source in the book.