Choose Humane Meat with Organic

While the best thing you can do for the environment when it comes to your diet is to develop at least one meat-free day per week, you can also reduce your environmental footprint by increasing the quantity of organic food you eat, which also means choosing meat that has been raised organically. You’ll be ensuring that the animals raised for your meat are treated humanely, while also encouraging farming methods that lesson the damage done to the environment.

The meat industry effects the environment on so many levels—problems like soil and water pollution, climate change, deforestation, diseases, and more are all perpetuated by large-scale animal farms. Often called CAFOS for confined animal feeding operations, these factory farms are not only damaging to the environment, they are a den of cruelty for the animals.

Creatures who are raised for meat on large-scale farms are often confined in very tight spaces with little to no room to move around or lie down. They are deprived of fresh air and forbidden from doing what comes naturally to them—roaming in green pastures, taking care of their young, feeding in a free-range fashion, and resting when necessary. Instead, they lead lives of fear, pain, and misery. Those who consider eating a spiritual act (such as Hindus and Buddhists) also believe that when an animal lives and dies in fear, they pass along their negative emotions to those who eat them.

Conventionally-raised animals are also less healthy to eat. Through a process known as bioaccumulation, meat can contain 14 times more pesticides than plant-based foods. As animals eat plants filled with toxic chemicals like pesticides and herbicides, these chemicals get concentrated in their fatty tissue, making meat protein much less healthy than plant protein. In addition, according to the US Food and Drug Administration, every year there are at least 5,000 people with health problems attributable to the overuse of antibiotics in animal farming.

The US Department of Agriculture National Organic Program requires that organically-raised animals be hormone- and antibiotic-free, and that they receive only organic feed. This eliminates the problems associated with pesticide overdose, but doesn’t solve the issue of how the animals were treated. So if you care about animal cruelty, you’ll want to choose animal protein that comes from small-scale farms that allow their animals to roam freely and feed naturally.

You can often find this kind of meat at the farmer’s market or through a community supported agriculture (CSA) organization. Although “free range” and “natural” are unregulated terms, if you ask your farmer to see pictures of their animals and/or have them define for you how they were raised, you have a better chance of ensuring they were not ill-treated. Buying from vendors like these also ensures that you’re supporting your local economy.

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