One Simple Way to Reduce Animal Death and Suffering While Saving Money

Many people are concerned with the suffering of animals in the food industry. Some have gone the the extreme of becoming a Vegan. Not everyone wants to become a vegan or can successfully where they live. Many people do not have access to cruelty free food. I even though I live on a farm can not produce enough cruelty free food for my family year round because of the climate.  The local market where I live has a small section of such food. About 4 square feet. If I want to get cruelty free or vegan food I have to travel at least 40 kilometers.  I am not a vegan. I do eat meat. I try to buy free range when I can and my family is trying to live by an 80/20 rule when it comes to meat. If you do eat me like my family and I you can still reduce the amount of animal death and suffering while saving money with one simple act.

Farms are not always this idyllic.

Andy Beecroft [CC-BY-SA-2.0 (www.creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

That simple act is keep your freezer organized and actually consume all of the meat you purchase. That amount of meat that is wasted annually because it is simply forgotten about in the depths of a family’s freezer is mind boggling. Some estimate that an average family throws out as much as $590 of food a year. Even if only a 1/38th of that is meat it is too much.

If the cows in the above photo have a male calf he has a good chance of ending up like this.

Image by stevendepolo via Flickr

These conditions are maybe not as good as the ones in the first photo, but not as bad as some.  Still would you want to live like this and then have your offspring that is not used for breeding killed and their remains thrown out because of freezer burn?

By Baileynorwoodrocks (Own work) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

The animals that thrown out meat came from gave their lives to provide food. Most likely against their will and some lived their lives in very bad conditions before their execution. Have you ever seen how battery hens live? Not very nice. If you eat meat then you can at least have the goddamn common courtesy to eat all of the meat you purchase instead of letting it get freezer burn and throwing it out with the trash. Yes I swore in that last sentence and that is a minor infraction as compared to wasting meat as those animals were living things and deserve better than ending up in a landfill with little Jenny’s broken Barbie Doll. That Barbie was plastic and that Chicken you just throughout, because of freeze burn, was real and breathing and it might have wanted to live.

This is how many of the animals we eat live until then are killed.

By MyName (Ethelred) [Public domain], from Wikimedia Commons

So if you care about reducing some of the suffering and death in the meat industry then go to your freezer and organize it. Take some time to see how much meat you eat in a month and plan accordingly when you buy meat. This will save your family money and will reduce the amount of animal death and suffering in the world greatly. Also a Chicken won’t have its life ended in vain, a steer won’t end up in a land fill because someone forget to eat it, and pig won’t find itself next to little Joey’s dirty old socks because someone forget they had a ham in the deep freeze.

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