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Rachel Nagy - My Blog
Rachel Nagy - My Blog
the vegetarian economy
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With animal rights coming up as the new featured issue on TIG, it got me thinking about vegetarianism and my own decision to cut meat out of my diet.
It also got me to take family guy more seriously.
For those who don’t know, Family Guy is an idiotic cartoon sitcom that follows the lives of an all-American family, and although most adult cartoons are stupid, Family Guy exceeds those expectations to an impressive extent. Although the show is an obnoxious, sleazy and completely peasant attempt at adult humour, I must admit that it does, occasionally, spit out bits of hilarity left over from the chewed up vulgar and distaste that it’s demographic would otherwise swallow whole.
In this particular episode that I caught while concurrently engaged in a bowl of cold pasta, I found myself laughing loudly at some very clever anecdote...
The scene showed the main character Meg speaking with the local nudist boy in the mall. While the nudist half-heartedly attempts to ask Meg out on a date, he is bombarded by two disapproving peers from the balcony above. After first dropping an egg on the nudist’s head, the peers proceed to yell obscenities at the boy, one of them exclaiming, “My dad’s a tailor, you jerk!”
Only such a plainly dumb anecdote could generate such questioning of my own morals. And so I thought, could it be that my own decision to reject a societal norm is also pissing off kids in the mall? After all, it is somebody’s job to provide that meat so it’s available for purchase, and if I don’t buy that meat; I’m potentially putting that individual out of work. Just like the tailor’s kid was pissed off with the nudist, is some Angus breeder’s kid pissed at me? Probably, because I just potentially took away his college fund.
I have my own beliefs and ideas about animals and their role in our society, and I object to the roles that are forced upon them, but does that really give me the right to choose an animal’s rights over a person’s? What am I really sacrificing by refusing to eat meat? And yes, perhaps there are better methods of farming and maybe there are steps that could be taken to make the industry more humane, but does that really mean that the farmers (and their mall-attending, egg-throwing children) should be the ones to pay for the mistakes of our society?
The farming industry is majorly supported by meat-eaters. According to StatsCan., 35.3% of the cattle inventory in Canada is made up of beef cows. If everyone in Canada were to give up beef, where would that leave the cattle industry? And that’s just beef. What about chicken and pork, and veal? How much of the economy are we really surrendering when we cut meat out of our diets?
Now, having been a city kid my entire life, I don’t know the first thing about farming. In fact, the closest I’ve ever come to a cow was during a bush party that went awry. Long story. So, I have no idea what the life of a farmer entails, but I can imagine, and I imagine they have hardships and pressures just like in every other industry. So I did some research.
Turns out that a black Angus really isn’t all that valuable to a farmer. A whole kilogram of black Angus meat (which is considered to be of a higher grade) is priced between 7 and 10 dollars for a farmer. If the average angus weighs 635 kg, that’s only 6 grand per cow. Meaning that a farmer would have to sell at least 5 cows a year in order to make $30 000, a barely accommodating salary. And that’s not factoring in costs of supplies needed to raise the cow to the point of selling. You try sending your kids to college on thirty grand a year.
It’s no wonder why farmers resort to factory farming, how else are they supposed to provide for the insane demand for meat at a low cost? Just to give you an idea, let’s play with some numbers...
If we assume that the average Canadian eats one chicken a week, collectively. Between all the wings and legs and breasts, that’s not unreasonable. Well, one chicken a week is 52 chickens a year. Let’s say that 60% of Toronto (just because I happen to live here) consumes chicken at that same rate. 60% of 5 million is 3 million. That’s 3 million people each eating 52 chickens a year. That’s 156 MILLION CHICKENS PER YEAR, just in Toronto! Never mind Montreal, and Edmonton and Vancouver, that’s just one city in all of Canada, consuming 156 million chickens a year. That`s a LOT of chicken, but we`ve got a whole industry of people devoted to producing those chickens. That`s a lot of people... right...? WRONG!
Out of a population of 30 million people in Canada, there are only 327, 055 people who operate farms for a living. That’s 1.1 % of the population. ONE PERCENT! Only one percent of all the people in the Canada have the responsibility of providing the food for the whole country. Oh and by the way, we don’t to pay a lot for it either. We want it available and cheap!! And it’s up to our farmers to make it happen efficiently, at a rate that can sustain our habits. And we’re still just talking about chicken; I haven’t even touched on beef or pork. Or MILK for that matter. Want to estimate how much milk we drink? Good, neither do I.
You know, now that I’ve thought about it, maybe it’s better that I don’t eat meat. With all those people consuming meat at that rate, I think they can afford to lose me as a customer.

April 1, 2009 | 2:51 PM Comments  1 comments

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adham5555 Adham Tobail
April 1, 2009 | 3:13 PM

Good participation my friend
its formation good
adham
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