In an effort to be more green and concious, my New Years resolution was to give up meat. Something very unnatural is happening to agriculture In the United States. We are just eating such a huge amount of meat today, that agriculture has had to take some very extreme routes to keep up. Some of these unhealthy extremes are steroids, GMO's and unsanitary living and production conditions. Outside of the moral aspect to the animals and the people who eat them, the environmental impact has been pretty catastrophic. I read the other day that the average American today eats 3-7 times more meat then their grandparents. Last year we ate over 8 billion animals. We give more resources to the livestock we raise to eat, than directly to ourselves. It's crazy. So far I have eaten meat only four times this year. Which although I wish it was none at all, I am not going to lie going from eating meat three times a day to not at all has proven difficult. For one, meat is everywhere. My husband and I went to Cracker Barrel and I literally could only get Mac and cheese! One thing is for sure, we Americans love our meat. But animals not only use a lot of resources they directly effect their environment just like we do. Anyway, if you want more on that some interesting documentaries you can watch on Netflix include: Farmageddon, Food, Inc., Forks over Knives and Fat, Sick and Nearly Dead (which by the way is not as depressing as it sounds).
This post though is about something else. In my effort to learn more about how our meat consumption effects the environment, I actually have found out a lot of interesting things about the animals we eat. As a prior meat eater and a one time consumption addict, I found it easy to justify us eating these animals because we "needed" them to live. We don't and they like us are not only important parts of the environment around them but many of them buld strong family networks and have lifespans just as long as ours if not longer. One example I am pretty much obsessed with right now is the lobster.
Anyone who had eaten lobster knows just how delicious these little sea creatures are. Well, did you know that lobsters can live up to 70 years??!!! Or they would if we would stop eating them so much. Today, 90% of lobsters will end up on someone's plate. 90%!!! Imagine if ther was something that killed 90 % of humans??! That would be horrible!! These little guys are getting eaten like it's going out of style. Here are some facts pages about them and fishing them here in the US.
