Chicks Dude

So I've done some thinking and I found myself at lunch today at First Watch avoiding ordering meat because I wasn't quite sure where it was from. I grew up on a farm and was quite accustomed to eating animals that I had seen as a baby. I'm fine with that. It's just the images of chickens not being able to walk because they've been given so much growth hormones that they can't walk or the cows standing in two feet of their own poop that has really gotten me to this point. I'm not becoming a vegetarian because I don't think it's wrong to eat animals but I do think it's wrong to mistreat them and then hid the gross truth from the public.

One of my favorite memories as a kid was going with my grandma to Cherry's Feed and Seed to pick out baby chicks. We would keep them on the porch until they were big enough for the chicken coop and then I would visit them often to get eggs or just watch their crazy chicken behavior. The coop often doubled as a playhouse for me. I think they were happy so the idea of eating chickens like that is fine to me but the idea of them not being able to walk or ever seeing sunlight during their short life span is gross.

This is my plan; I'm not going to eat meat that doesn't come from a free range farm which pretty much means that I can't eat meat in most chain restaurants and many other restaurants for that matter. I'm not going to pretend that I'll stick to this rigidly but I'm going to make my best efforts. I'm also going to buy more organic fruits and vegetables. Oh how I will miss McDonald's cheeseburgers and hot dogs from random gas stations. Those are my biggest worries sadly enough. I'm sort of depressed about this realization. Then I feel depressed about being depressed over the idea of no more cheeseburgers from crappy restaurants. Blah.