Grill it up

Wednesday October 4, 2006 - 4:09AM EDT

I caught 60 minutes the other night which is weird because I never watch that show. I wasn't paying much attention to it while working on something else. Until Andy Rooney came on for his final piece. He was saying something about food which was mostly ridiculous until his last few words when he said something along the lines of maybe in the future we as humans would all find it so barbaric to grow animals just to eat them that we would all be vegetarians. I think about some of the horrific things that are done to animals that are food. That it is sort of strange that we differentiate between animals we consider food and not food. That we would criticize other cultural groups for eating an animal we don't and call it weird or barbaric. I think about how in previous times in American history peacocks were eaten as preferred over turkeys. Strange, right? The way we pick and choose animals to eat seems to have mostly to do with practicality then any kind of high philosophical reasoning. While growing up I never used to really think about it but over the last few years or so I have slowly come to see to treatment of animals we raise as food as something quite disturbing. I don't see eating meat as intrinsicly bad because that is a normal occurance throughout the animal kingdom. Improving that treatment is not high on the list of priorities however, because there are so many other pressing issues but it is not something that should be ignored forever.