Dude, I can’t eat chicken when they keep telling me about how they’re treated! This is not a question about compassion or concern about humane treatment; I am simply one of those meat eaters who cannot bear to make eye contact with her food. I cannot eat something when I see what it resembled in real life. Like the last time I had a lobster, which was years ago at my cousin Chris’s wedding, I made my father crack it open for me because I was too freaked out. As long as my meat is shaped like a patty in a bun, I’m in good shape.
What My Friends Think of Chicken
My friend Mike thinks this is a messed up attitude — that if we eat meat, we should see and appreciate where it comes from. Not that he goes out and hunts for his own prosciuotto, but I can appreciate the point, though I’d rather not EVER participate in it.
My friend Kirsten used to get stuck in rush hour traffic behind chicken trucks when she lived in Georgia. She would have to stare at these poor things, all jammed into the crates and truck, with no regard to where, you know, the proper placement of feet and heads.
Now I’m not about to go Mary Tyler Moore on you and start befriending chickens and petting them, but that sort of thing seems unnecessarily cruel.
(As another aside, if you google images of chicken, a page full of chicken fingers and chicken dinners appears alongside frolicking chickens. Thankfully, the image attached is a robot chicken.)
Luckily, I live with vegetarians so I don’t have to think about this too much. And the best point of all is, we get plenty to eat! And even if my mother would like us to eat a little less, we don’t go hungry! Hooray!