While in North Carolina for the Boehringer Ingelheim Swine Health Seminar over the weekend, I had some of the best pork I have ever eaten. The hotel served up a fresh whole hog with a tasty vinegar sauce that was fabulous. The best thing about the airport in Charlotte (which I spent an inordinate amount of time in on Sunday) was the real Carolina BBQ I had for lunch – as good as the porker the night before – with a fried pickle on the side! It ranks as the best airport meal I have ever had.
Made me think about the fact that humans eat meat because it tastes good and because that is what we are meant to do. We are omnivores – we eat both plants and animals. That’s our nature. And the great North Carolina pork producers at the event in Carolina Beach produce some of those tasty animals for us to eat, and do it as economically and efficiently as possible. That’s why things like PETA’s “Unhappy Meals” and HSUS really annoy me.
Missouri farmer Blake Hurst wrote an excellent essay in the Journal for the American Enterprise Institute called the “Omnivore’s Delusion” that cries out against the “agri-intellectuals” like PETA and HSUS and Michael Pollan who criticize modern agricultural production. Blake writes:
I’m so tired of people who wouldn’t visit a doctor who used a stethoscope instead of an MRI demanding that farmers like me use 1930s technology to raise food. Farming has always been messy and painful, and bloody and dirty. It still is.
Messy and painful, yes – but rewarding as well, or people like Blake and rest of the agricultural producers in this country who provide us with both plants and animals for food wouldn’t keep doing it. Read Blake’s essay and pass it on to everyone, especially those omnivores you know who are not in agriculture.