There are many different ideas about the importance of what we eat. Do we eat meat? Should we be vegetarian? Should we be vegan? Should we follow the Old Testament dietary laws? Should we buy all of our food from the store? Should we grow and raise all of our own food? Is “test tube meat” a viable substitute for real meat? Organic? Non-GMO? The list goes on.
Personally, I’m one who not only will eat meat, I’ll kill the animals myself. I know that may sound cruel, but there are varying levels how humanly one can dispatch an animal, and I try to accomplish this task in the quickest and least painful manner possible.
I believe that the best way to preserve certain species is to eat them.
I know that such a statement may sound backwards and illogical, but please allow me a chance to reason my point.
The Food and Agriculture Organization reported in 2006 on the subject of farm animal biodiversity that in the 15 years prior to that almost 200 breeds of farm animals had gone extinct, and in the 5 years prior to that, over 50 breeds of livestock had gone extinct. That means that we were forever losing more than 10 species per year during that 5 year time period, which was less than two decades ago. This pertains to the actual and eternal extinction of specific kinds of cows, horses, pigs, goats, chickens and other traditional “farm animals”.
Personally, I think that is a lot of animal species to be losing in our modern times. Now I’m not blaming non-meat-eaters for this, nor am I blaming the meat-eaters. If everyone in the world opted out of eating meat I believe that it would most certainly lead to the mass extinction of many more breeds of livestock. However, if everyone in the world ate meat, that alone would not solve the problem.
Whether we are discussing milk cows or meat animals, such as cows, chickens and pigs, the vast majority of what is consumed comes from a very few breeds. That’s bad news for about every other breed of that kind of animal.
To put it simply, unless there is a benefit that some animals can provide, no one will want to raise them.
The specific types of animals that I am writing about are all domesticated. Whether it was “right or wrong” for people to domesticate these animals in the past certainly can be debated, but it doesn’t change the fact that they now are. Since they are, we have to treat them as such. Many maternal and survival instincts have actually been bred out of certain breeds during the millennia of domestication that these animals have been subjected to, so having everyone boycott meat and letting all the farm animals go would just not work. Many would die within a few generations, at best. And if they didn’t, who would want a 2000# bull standing in their backyard or a small herd of cattle on the freeway as you attempt to drive to work? We already know the devastation that the wild hogs are creating across the southern United States; how much better would that be if all the domesticated pigs were released as well?
There has to be a use for these animals or no one will ever raise them.
Soon, I believe that steemit will be paying for some pigs for @papa-pepper and his family. @bluerthangreen and I used to have some Mulefoot Hogs, but we ate them. We wanted to test them out as a food source before we bred them and got stuck with a pile of pork that we didn’t really enjoy. Anyways, they taste great, and hopefully we will get some more soon. I believe that pigs are a great way to turn food scraps into more food, because the hogs will eat the waste food and then you can eat the hogs. If we get some to breed, we can have a continuous supply of pork on hand, as needed.
The Mulefoot Hog is a good example of a breed that was almost lost forever due to extinction. Even though meat from the Mulefoot won a blind taste-test Grit magazine put on some years back against some other heritage breeds and commercial pork, this breed is almost one that went extinct.
How could the best tasting pork be almost lost forever?
Basically, those who don’t eat meat have no desire to raise hogs. Neither do people who want to pick up their pork off the shelf at the local grocery store. The major corporations in the pork production business only want low overhead and high ROI. They have no interest in preserving heritage breeds, which is why most meat-eaters will only taste a flavor or two of beef, or chicken, or pig, etc. (By “flavor” I mean meat from a certain breed.) Plus, how many of you have multiple acres on which you want to allow a herd of cattle to graze?
Unless someone has an interest in eating these rare breeds, no one will have an interest in breeding them and raising them.
I want to get some more Mulefoot hogs. Most of you have probably never even heard of them. If steemit winds up buying us some of these pigs, I’ll do a post on it and show you some original pictures. Unlike other pigs, Mulefoots have solid hooves, like a horse or mule, hence the name. Other pigs have cloven hooves like cows.
As neat as that feature alone may be, without being able to have a tangible reason to raise and breed them, like meat for my family, I too would have no interest in keeping any.
In closing, I hope that I have made my point. Perhaps you are a vegan or a vegetarian and think that eating meat is murder (some do). Perhaps you believe that killing animals for meat is wrong and that it will have a negative effect on the species being eaten, but such may not be the case. If no one ever eats them, they will still die, and maybe even go extinct.
I believe that people can have their own beliefs, even if they contradict the evidence or are even blatantly errant (I’m not saying that vegans or vegetarians or people who buy meat at the store fit into these categories, just that people certainly do have the freedom to believe whatever they want even if it is not true.) If you have @papa-pepper over for dinner, I’ll eat the salad and whatever else is offered, and you come over for dinner, we’ve got a lot of great meat-free options.
I also realize that living in an apartment or in a city with certain ordinances will prevent many of us from ever raising any livestock, and many people will never even have a desire to do so. However, I have the opportunity and freedom to raise some livestock, so I am choosing to do so, and having my own source of meat is one of the main reasons. I hope that we can all appreciate that.