So I went to the local meatpacker. I didn't really want to, and I probably could have asked someone else to do it. But it was for a nonvegan children's club (traditional dissection activity), and I figured I could learn something.
I was right.
This isn't an expose. I didn't take gruesome pictures of slaughtered animal bodies or abuse to show you.
I didn't even take a picture of the piles of organs - nothing worse really than what you can see in the stores.
I didn't visit the killing floor to witness life ended in screams of terror and blood.
But as I simply stepped out of my car into the parking lot, a wave of blood and meat smell surrounded me. And this was outside.
I challenge anyone who still eats meat to visit a meatpacker and take a deep breath. Then another. If you manage that, you've beaten me. I could manage only shallow breaths, through my mouth to minimise the smell, the whole time I was there.
Each breath I took sent a powerful impulse through me:
Get away now.Throughout all of evolution, it's been bad for human health to get near dead and decaying animals. If bacterial infections didn't get you, the real carnivores, omnivores, and tough scavengers would - they are evolved to be hungry when they catch that powerful scent.
When you visit that meatpacker, tell me if you felt hungry near all those piles of rich protein and iron.
Evolved to eat meat? My brain knows better. I bet yours does too.
