Sausage and Bacon Were Happy
Last Sunday, anticipating my favorite weekend meal, I eagerly grabbed bacon out of the fridge. This was my second time enjoying this brand of bacon, and it is good, really good. Not Benton’s bacon good, but close.
As I began to place the bacon on the skillet, I noticed boldly printed on the package the phrase, ‘humanely raised.’ That piqued my interest; what exactly does that mean, and more to point, why does the company who brought me this fine bacon feel the need to say it?
Am I supposed to have a different view of the bacon because they claim a standard for how it was raised? Will it make the general consumer proud, or less uncomfortable, consuming the product? Is this bold statement for the buyer’s benefit, or is it for the producer? What exactly is driving the need to point out the contributing pigs were treated special? Intrigued, I stopped breakfast preparation and began to search for more evidence on the package that confirmed the swine’s above-average treatment continued all the way to their demise. That would only be fair, I mean it is nice to fatten them up and love them, but what about the end game?
At this point I recognized I was imagining a path that may not be fair, I didn’t even know the definition of humanely raised. It was time to look it up. According to Google’s AI, humanely raised means “animals are treated with respect and compassion from birth through slaughter, adhering to strict welfare standards that allow natural behaviors, providing adequate shelter, clean water, and a healthy diet free from antibiotics and hormones.” It goes on to reference seeking to ensure they are happy. “The ‘happy’ aspect is not just a marketing slogan; it reflects the belief that contented, stress-free animals lead to better products.”
I am glad I got that settled.
But I am sure you are like me; this answer didn’t satisfy my need for more information. I am a naturally inquisitive person; I wonder if it is true, does happiness among our food sources make the food taste better. I recall my time on a ranch in Colorado -- the ranch raised cattle in a beautiful hay meadow tucked amongst ten-thousand-foot-tall mountains – when I was excited to enjoy the benefits of one of the cows. I asked the ranch manager if we could set one aside for my family. He was happy to oblige, and we picked the perfect cow for future dinners. The ranch manager was excited to share with me the process for caring for my new special cow and even offered this helpful hint. “This cow will be wonderful,” he said. “In fact, we can take it to another level and make it Wagyu beef, but I will need your help.”
I wasn’t sure what he meant; I thought Wagyu was a Japanese cattle breed, but maybe I was missing something. In the spirit of snipe hunting, he said, “If we want this cow to become Wagyu beef, we need to give it a back rub twice a day from now on until it is time. I can rub her some, but I need you to do most of the sessions. Can you do that?”
He was joking of course. Or was he? Maybe you couldn’t turn my cow into Wagyu, but was it possible to make it happy, thus improving how it tasted?
I am not sure about this; this seems weird. Do we really need to make our food happy before we consume it. I don’t recall my mom taking special care with her tomatoes to ensure they were comfortable and content before she served them. Mybe she was wrong, what if a little extra care created more flavor. Do you suppose our friends in Grainger County make their tomatoes joyful? Maybe that is their secret to delicious tomatoes.
Making livestock happy seems challenging. I am not sure I would know how to make pigs and cattle content and at peace. They don’t exactly strike me as fun-loving, never far away from a good time, animals. I guess we could give them edibles to ensure they hit the right note of tranquility. After all they like grass.
What does it say when a bee stings its beekeeper? Does that mean it was unhappy and wanted to make sure management knew it.
I suspect it is true chickens provide better eggs if there is peace in the pen. In fact, I recall when the government was suggesting we all begin to raise chickens, reading that happy chickens produce better. I probably should take this initiative more serious.
But it is hard to take seriously. I don’t want the pressure of needing everything I touch to be happy. It feels like a full-time job. For example, our society seems to have decided that part of life is to make everyone, and everything, feel better. I watched two young boys sitting with their mother yesterday at a restaurant and they never looked at each other or even looked up. Their cell phones were all the joy they needed, and mom seemed none too interested in challenging them. You don’t want to make the fragile fellas uncomfortable.
Don’t get me wrong, I don’t want to think of our food source living in squalid conditions; it doesn’t seem healthy. However, like most things, this seems to have gone too far. Again, I could be wrong, maybe the effort to improve conditions is worthy, but the need to proclaim a special status for how you treat the animals all the way up to the moment you slit their throat is a stretch.
Not only did we enjoy a cow raised on our ranch – and it was good – we also raised two pigs. I took an unusual interest in visiting those pigs and watching their daily routine. It wasn’t impressive and it wasn’t pretty. Nevertheless, they were pigs and maybe they were living high on the hog compared to their relatives and I didn’t know better. To my knowledge, we did nothing special to elevate their lifestyle. We did, however, name them, sausage and bacon.
They never took to their names. No number of calls for them would cause them to rise up and come over to say high; that is unless we had food. Maybe we should have tried harder to bring joy to their lives. Maybe we did and didn’t know it. That’s what I am going to assume. I am going to assume sausage and bacon were happy. They must have been, because they were damn good to eat.
