Yesterday I saw interviews with 2 hog farmers on TV, one was a mass producer who supplied hogs to a nearby meat-processing plant and with the COVID-19 shutdowns, he was concerned with the fate of his mature animals, as he had a new crop of piglets coming in. The second hog farmer was a small Mom 'n Pop operation, they sent their animals to a neighboring Mom 'n Pop slaughterhouse which didn't have the COVID-19 problem, so for him it was business as usual. But the first farmer made a good point, if farmers are to feed the millions of people in this country, it has to be done on a large "factory" scale, otherwise there's not enough food (or it would be prohibitively expensive to the consumer). There has to be a middle ground, perhaps consumers can go back to growing, foraging, or bartering some of their food - locally - and lessen demand for these large-scale operations. There are advantages to both large and small systems, but we have to find a way to balance both and strive for better outcomes for the consumers, farmers, animals, crops, and land in a way that will benefit us all.

Meat is apparently critically important to our president, who has mandated that meat-processing plants remain open during the COVID-19 pandemic despite continuing infections and deaths among plant workers in a number of states. I was rather looking forward to a meat shortage, if only to "force" myself into a plant-based diet for more than just a day or two. 

If nothing else, this has opened my eyes to the sweatshop-like conditions many plant workers ,must endure and how little their employers care about them. In addition to the obvious harm factory meat production does to animals and the planet, it hurts humans too, from the workers on the production line to the consumers for whom excess meat consumption negatively affects both their health and their wallet.

Today we had both garbage and recycling pickup, and I'm always amazed at how much STUFF my neighbors throw away. We have the smallest sized bins (just 2 of us) but other 1- and 2- person households in our coul-de-sac have the largest size bins and they're still overflowing with pizza boxes, blocks of Styrofoam, all kinds of crap! We've always been about minimizing waste and reusing things whenever possible. For example, I donate all my clean packing material, bubble wrap, and empty boxes to the local UPS store, and they gratefully accept it. Items that are still usable are donated to Goodwill or other charities, sometimes I'll even post it on the Free section of Craigslist and somebody always comes by within 24-48 hours and takes it.