In the very first Valbella newsletter a couple of months ago, Beau, our Marketing Manager, asked me, “Why is it important to include quality animal foods in our diet?” In my opinion, there are 3 reasons:
- For our Health
- For the environment
- For the animals
It’s now obvious that animal foods are required for optimal health and properly managed grazing is crucial for the soils and hence the environment, but what about the animals? Does a cruelty-free diet truly exist?
If we ask ourselves a few simple questions we realize that no matter what ends up on our plate, at some point an animal died, in most cases many, and that’s before you even get to the meat that’s on your plate.
In a study done by the University of New South Wales in Australia, it was noted that producing wheat and grains kills at least 25 times more sentient beings per kilogram of protein than raising livestock. https://newsroom.unsw.edu.au/news/science-technology/vegetarian-dilemma
The truth is there is no such thing as a cruelty-free diet. With life comes death and to think that we are somehow above this is delusional. I by no means advocate for a strict carnivore diet but if we did compare a nose to tail carnivore diet to that of a vegan diet, we would quickly see that a vegan diet has a higher overall death toll than the opposite. I would prefer a humanely killed cow that has given back to the earth many times over, rather than knowing thousands of sentient beings unnecessarily had to die for all the processed plant foods on my plate. Let’s look back in time for clues on how we can reinvent our broken food system, respect the animals we harvest, and use them in their entirety. Let’s give our kids the choice to eat what they naturally crave, rather than relying on mass marketing to entice them into the processed food aisles. To think that mono-cropping and fake meat will have a smaller effect on the environment than raising cattle is a dangerous place to be. Properly managed livestock, fed and finished on their natural diet is not animal cruelty. Swiftly and humanely killing an animal is not animal cruelty. Destroying ecosystems to grow mass produced mono-crops is animal cruelty.
I’ll finish by saying that I find it truly fascinating that the same 3 reasons I believe meat is not just important but required for optimal human health are the same 3 reasons veganism claims we shouldn’t eat meat. How backward has this world become when we let corporate “science” decide what should be on our plate. How can we simply forget about how our ancestors lived a disease-free life with an abundance of animal foods? The more trust and hope we put into a broken food system, the harder it will be to come back from it. Put your money where your mouth is seems like a fitting analogy here., find a farmer that can produce real food for your family because it’s not a matter of if, it’s a matter of when the grocery store shelves will run dry again.
For more information on the benefits of meat please visit https://www.sacredcow.info/
Please feel free to reach out to me directly at jeff@valbella.ca with questions or comments or any meaty topics you’d like to hear about