A great article by Ysanne Spevack, ( editor of OrganicFood.co.uk) who after many years as a conscientious vegan made the decision to eat organic meat.
exerpts:
I eat meat. Organic meat, about once a fortnight. I have been vegetarian or vegan for the best part of twenty years. I was a vegan throughout the period when I traveled extensively around the world. Despite the extreme difficulties of finding anything at all to eat that wasn’t beef in Columbia, I remained a vegan. Even though I would have loved to have tried authentic Japanese sushi whilst living in Tokyo, I stayed true to my beliefs and refrained from all fish.
I don’t want to eat non-organic meat. It is poisonous, because it contains the residues of a daily dose of antibiotics and growth hormones fed to distressed animals living in barbaric conditions. I don’t want to eat non-organic dairy products, because the toxic residues from intensively farmed dairy cows are stored in fats, particularly cream. I will always be disgusted about the uncivilised and inhumane way in which battery farmed poultry are mistreated throughout their artificially short and horrible lives. But I have grown to feel comfortable with the thought of truly free-range chickens eating appropriate food in a suitable farmyard with the grim reality of ending up as my dinner. I still have trouble reconciling the thought of drinking the milk of a much larger beast than myself with more than one stomach and hooves. Especially as I am over the age of toddling by a long shot. But I somehow can’t resist some expertly crafted cheeses, and blissfully gobble them up whilst trying not to think of where they came from.
You simply cannot grow organic lettuces without using organic fertilisers made from blood products. And soil fertility is traditionally enriched with manure and animal waste. Wild herb seeds are distributed by farm animals, too, such as the clover maintained by grazing cows.
