I'm Going Vegetarian

Slowly but surely, I'm heading home. Reports like this one:

Barns infested with flies, maggots and scurrying rodents, and overflowing manure pits were among the widespread food safety problems that federal inspectors found at a group of Iowa egg farms at the heart of a nationwide recall and salmonella outbreak...

The recall, which began Aug. 13, involves more than half a billion eggs from the Iowa operations of two leading egg producers, Wright County Egg and Hillandale Farms. About 1,500 reported cases of Salmonella enteritidis have been linked to tainted eggs since the spring -- the largest known outbreak associated with that strain of salmonella.

...make it easier. There is something very wrong with how we eat. One consequence of my slow, continuous return to my fit self is growing consciousness. And it's not a "low-fat/calorie-count" consciousness--though that has its place. It's more a sense that there's something bigger, and systemic that's wrong here.

One of the best questions that we've arrived at, collectively, through our study of the past here is the following: If slavery was the seductive moral wrong of our ancestor's time, what is the seductive moral wrong of our time? I don't think everyone should be a vegetarian. And I'm not all the way there yet. But, increasingly, it's hard for me to see the deep justice in eating meat.