Just in case my resolve was weakening…

Emily and I are just days away from celebrating our first year of being (mostly) meat-free. Last August we decided to stop participating in the wasteful and cruel economies of the big beef, chicken and pork industries. We became pescetarians (vegetarians who eat fish) in large part due to this provocative essay by transhumanist George Dvorsky.

For a while I’ve been saying that once we’d completed a year of more or less strict pescetarianism, I would let myself start to occasionally consume local, humanely raised and slaughtered meat. That’s still the plan, though my desire to consume animal flesh was sharply reduced by seeing this…

“It tastes like meat and it can look like meat but we can actually change the composition of the product quite a lot so we can mask the meaty flavour,” Mike North from AgResearch says.

And with busy families demanding more convenient yet healthy foods AgResearch believes it is on to something.

Kids love spaghetti but for many parents it’s hard to get them to eat meat - so the meaty, protein saturated, pasta version could be an innovative way of providing youngsters with vital nutrients and iron.

Okay, what? We have to convince our kids to eat meat? Since when? And how is extruded, pale yellow meat-poo more appetizing to anyone than a hamburger? Watch the video for all the Play-Doh Fun Factory excitement.

Via Boing Boing

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On August 6, 2008, George Dvorsky said:

Once you go veg you don’t go back
On August 8, 2008, Nate Orshan said:

Awesome, congrats! My weekends will never be the same. [;-)]
On August 8, 2008, Kasten said:

EEEW. Nice work on keeping up the veg. thing!
On August 12, 2008, Spine said:

humanely raised and slaughtered”

Two questions:

1. What does this mean exactly?
2. How do you know that the practices of meat, dairy, and egg producers who use the word “humane” to market themselves adhere to your answer to (1)?
On August 13, 2008, billsimmon said:

Well first of all, we’re basically talking about local chickens. There is no good local slaughtering facility for beef that I know of (though I heard there’s a place that offers halal slaughtering, so I can speak the name of Allah and cut the cow’s throat myself, I suppose), so I won’t be buying any half cows anytime soon. I don’t tend to eat lamb or pork much anyway (though local bacon may be a possibility depending on what I learn about that process).

I won’t eat chickens from farms where my only information comes from marketing materials. Ideally, I’ll visit the farms. So far (since 8/10), I have only eaten chicken that comes from Misty Knoll Farms in New Haven, which is part of the Vermont Fresh Network, and about which I’ve heard nothing but good stuff from many local folks. I have not been there, but they are open to visitors so I’ll stop by there sometime this fall and run with the birds.