The importance of halal when choosing to officially return to omnivore status: the sentience of plants has yet to be confirmed, and is until then denied, and their consumption does not stand to end a life “aware” of itself. But animals, these undoubtably aware and alive things, to consume them requires, by my soul, an acknowledgment of their conscience and the life that brought them to my dinner table. So then, my soul requires that these animals lived a good life. The only way to truly guarantee the source and the happiness of the meat I eat would lend to ranching— not something I (yet) have interest in.
My sister-in-law’s husband, by which I mean my brother-in-law by the most distant of means, counts down the days until their herd can accumulate on their properties, a source of good, American sustenance in all its star-spangled, masculine glory. These few degrees of separation– my husband’s sister’s husband– that’s about as close as I want to get to a carbon footprint the size of a snowshoe.
Besides, it’s less expensive to live off the land and all the bounty springing up from the soil on vines, branches, brambles, and stems. With particularly good rainfall, even the cost of watering a garden becomes negligible.
Raccoon Commune Co. 