Food Intensive: A Merry-Go-Round of Views

I left for the food intensive a vegetarian and came back having eaten more meat then I used to in a month.  In one week I had my views put onto a merry-go-round and spun so much that they no longer knew right from left and top from bottom.  Our first stop brought me close to something very familiar, the smell of manure and the soft low of cows.  The conditions that shocked some of the other people seemed normal to me.  The perfume of the manure pile brought tears to my eyes, because of home and the pungent odor.  I know that scary looking instruments used in the cows care are safe and humane and it took the edge off the feedlot. 

That day we also visited a slaughterhouse.  My only knowledge of slaughterhouses came from horror flicks and TV shows.  I was surprised at how clean the whole operation appeared.  The efficiency reached by the gleaming metal machinery was fascinating.   The whole process was a lot more sanitary and humane than I thought it would be.  While there I realized that if I knew an animal had been slaughtered in such a manner I could eat it.  My new found perception on meat got a chance to show itself during that tour when the tour guide gave us bags of beef jerky and other pre-cooked meats.  I was able to eat the jerky without seeing the old images of horror movie slaughterhouses and with the ability to respect the unknown cow it had come from.

My views were flipped in more ways than meat though, as I found myself turned off by the polarized sides of food.  Where I once thought that organic equaled good and GMO was bad, I started to re-evaluate.  I started to wonder if, in the struggle for a more sustainable future, a mixture of both practices was what was needed.  Genetic Modification can be more than just adding pesticides to the plants, it can also mean making plants able to grow in inhospitable areas or add nutrients back to the ground while growing.  The “good” organics on the other hand became too biased, with people picking and choosing data just as much as the “other side”.  I felt alienated because I wanted to find a bridge between the two sides were I could comfortably try to understand and combine the points of view.  In a way, I wanted my revelation about eating meat to be true for organic and GMO crops, where you can have it as long as you take knowledge with you.