(Nasty) Food, Inc.

This past week has been a very enlightening one to say the least. For the past several years when anyone would mention "organic" I would have one of two reactions. 1) I would stick my fingers in my ears and sing "la-la-la-la-la" or 2) I would rant about how expensive organics were and how I could not afford them.

All that changed after watching Food, Inc.

Let me preface all this with the fact that I grew up in south GA where there were thousands of stinky smelly chicken houses. I had cows in both my front and back yard ( and even on the side when they were going from one field to the other). We even had neighbors that were pig farmers. GG, my grandmother, used to work at the sale barn in Americus where all the local farmers would bring their cattle, pigs, and the such to sell them. My brother and I would go up to see her at work and watch the auctions. So, of course, I pompously thought I had a pretty good grasp on how that end of the food industry ran.

The idea of providing good living conditions for animals was ludicrous to me. I mean, what more did they want? Shelter for the stupid cows when it rained? Apparently they way I see the cows being raised (by my grandfather, BTW) is a lot different from the way most cattle is raised on feed lots.

The pictures I saw on Food, Inc. showed these beasts standing in their own waste which piled up taller than they were. It was disgusting. Our fields back home are littered with "cow patties" but they were just more or less the things you avoided hitting on the 4-wheeler b/c the poop would spin out in the tires and splatter your entire back. Our cows don't stand in it 24/7. Their poo just went back into the soil as fertilizer.

I had heard rumors of chickens being given hormones to decrease the amount of time it took for a egg to become an chicken. I tried not to think about it ( remember the "la-la-la" episodes?). But when it is thrust in your face you just have to give it some thought. Do I want to feed a chicken to my kids that has been given hormones (and who knows what else?) to make it grow at twice the normal speed? It is hard for me to even go there. There are just sooooo many things wrong with that.

The whole time I lived in south GA I never went into a chicken house. I never wanted to . They stunk to high heaven. So I truly have no idea what the living conditions for the chickens were. I have a feeling their living conditions were as deplorable as the chickens in that documentary.

"Free range chicken" is what you're supposed to look for on the tag. I'll pay the extra money for the "organic, free range chicken" not just because the chickens have more room to move around but because they don't have to stand in their own poop all day.

As I'm telling David all about what I have learned from watching this very compelling documentary he gets this weird look on his. Um.... It might be a possibility that he told me all of this a few years ago. I must have pretended to listen while mentally stuffing my ears full of cotton and singing the "la-la-la-la" song.

Sorry babe! You were right!