Tilhana
Songster
I totally agree, I had a similar journey. My vegetarianism was mostly a reaction to learning about industrial farming practices. Once I started homesteading and learning more about the movement and having to seek out ethical sources of meat for my family, I started having to reevaluate my reasons for abstaining and realized I didnt' really have a problem eating meat that's ethically sourced. I've also heard that saying about farm animals having just "one bad day", although some have amended it to two for some of the males that get castrated :-/, but that's still a lot better than the life of the average CAFO resident.I did a pescatarian diet for about 20 years while I was practicing Buddhism. But my son is a hunter and it forced me to think a lot about my reasons for that. Growing up on a small farm, I had to help butcher cows and I always felt like they at least got a good life before they became meat. Same for squirrels or deer that are hunted for their meat. I realized my issues had more to do with my dismay about commercial farming practices and the horror of the lives of cows on CAFOs and de-beaked chickens in tiny cages. I am now etchially comfortable with eating meat from humanely raised animals and buy from local farms. A farmer recently commented to me that the cows only had one bad day in their life. I told that to my son and he said that for cows on CAFOs, that day was probably the best day of their lives. That’s what I can’t live with - knowingly participating in commercial farming that keeps animals in abject misery. So when we get the house built andI can start raising chickens, I am comfortable with the idea of treating them well and then killing them for their meat.