I'm sort of... bias I think. I live near a lot of ranchland. Siblings in FFA/Agriculture, worked in an animal shelter for a while...
But in general. Spend a couple of extra bucks and buy local if you can (heck sometimes it's cheaper) or buy grass fed if possible. Local is always the best way to go (again if possible cause you might be far from any farming communities that serve their local area).
I think it's pretty healthy to think about where your food comes from and, at risk of sounding like a stereotype, it's respectful to that animal. I find it much more disturbing when people don't know/care where their food comes from. Or worse, when they're disturbed but continue to take part in munching on that animal. Comes across as apathy, out of site out of mind.
In general, in Western society we should eat less meat. We produce more than actually gets eaten. Whenever a cut of meat goes unsold it's a waste of not only that meat but the resources that went into making it.
@Kaga-kun It all depends where the cow (or bison, or other roaming bovine like animal we eat) is being raised. Around here, at least, I have never seen farmers feed cows anything than the fields they live on. Usually free range animals are pretty self-sufficient.
Depends on the location and the animal. Cows and horses for instance can be nearly self sufficient about 6 months out of the year if the grazing pasture is good and has a strong yield regularly. but there's always going to be supplemental feed.
In an enclosed pasture large grazing animals can just eat everything down to numbs. And all it would take would be some very harsh rains or a long winter to stunt the pasture growth.
So you can bring in feed (for grass fed animals this would be some kind of grass, or grain) or some people will load all the cows up and take them to some other pasture on public land. All depends on the ranch and the rancher and where it is!
Here's a question for everyone; let's say they start producing lab grown meat for public consumption, and let's say it's more or less identical to animal harvested meat nutrition, texture, and taste wise. Also for this discussion, there's no adverse effects to your health or anything like that.
Would you replace farm grown meat with lab grown meat should it become available?
When they perfect the lab grown meat I will totally be putting it in my face. :D
And hopefully soon we'll be adding insect protein to our diets. Tasty, tasty bugs.
In general I'm more concerned with the quality of life the creature had and the quality of death. No slow bleeding, no hanging, etc. Putting funding into researching removing male laying chickens while they're just eggs or before to avoid culling after hatching. etc.
Heck, maybe we'll even remove animal deaths from veggie farming eventually. Vertical farms for the future maybe?
Please, let the future come!
And It's cool and all to be vegetarian. I eat very little meat, personally.
But from a chemical response and that's all fear and pain is (that's why you can be born without those responses), plants are alive too.
And I find eating animals raised for thousands of years to be eaten, less horrible that the necessary mass euthanasia that would have to happen if we just closed all the ranchers down right now.
There are already a ton of homeless livestock. People get em and then dump em when their cute pet gets huge. They are not capable of surviving without human care. They would all have to be killed. Because I gotta tell you, no one is adopting these animals.
For every great person out there who buys a couple of piglets knowing that when they're 600+ lbs they'll still be cared for there's a bunch more who got them cause 'so cute, micro pigs r real' and then drop them off at sometimes really unprepared or underfunded animal shelters.
I'm not saying 'zomg vegetarians are such crazies' cause no. Eat veggies. Totally. No one should have anyone's lifestyle forced upon them if they believe a thing. Eat that carrot like no one's business.
