I admit I am easily swayed in my thoughts and decisions. Make one good argument and I will probably agree with you. So writing this blog does not confirm any decision for me because I know this is a big one to make but I just thought I would put it out there.

I am considering becoming a vegetarian. Many of my family members and friends have done it and I think most came out of it also so I am not sure what to do. I think it began when I first heard about cage free eggs that you can buy. "Why would you want to do that" I asked. Because chickens used for laying eggs are kept in tiny cages with tons of other chickens. They can’t do any of their normal chicken things, their beaks are burned off, their feet grow around the cage bottoms and they are given so many antibiotics just to survive. I have heard quoted many times that around half of the antibiotics made in the US are put into farm animals.

So I heard about that and started buying cage free eggs. Fixed that problem right? Then over spring break I stopped in the new cute little book store in Golden and a book title caught my eye. The book is called Skinny ***** and I choose not to use that word. A lot of the book is about eating right and the junk we put in our bodies that are really bad for us. Then the book goes into all the awful farm animal treatment. I won’t go into detail but let’s just say sometimes the animals are not dead when they begin the slaughter process and the ways to even kill them are awful and they scream. A video I watched, some of the cows could not even walk to the slaughter by the time they got there because they were so sick and injured. That’s what we eat. Mmmm!

Once again I pushed those thoughts out of my mind and moved on. Then I read my friend Cris' blog and it put the thoughts back in there. THEN tonight I was making a yummy dinner of salad, toast and eggs (cage free) and as I was cooking them I just looked at them and thought about what I was cooking. I was cooking baby chickens. BABY CHICKENS!!!! Ever wonder if the animals are sad when their babies are taken away over and over and over again. Yes I know animal’s brains are not as smart or large as ours but they do have animal instincts that know they are not supposed to give up their babies.

I started thinking about all this and then searched around on the internet some. I found the PETA website. If you want to stay a meat eater don't go there. They have a video called Meet your Meat. Not so cute!!!! I started crying watching it and had to stop cause I thought I might meet my dinner of baby chickens I just ate.

Now I don’t know what to do. I have never been a huge meat eater but I have always enjoyed a yummy steak or grilled chicken or some fajitas! I never wanted to be the annoying girl who is hard to cook for and offends people when she travels abroad by not eating their food. I also have always thought God gave us the animals and he probably does not mind us eating them. It really is not the eating process that is so awful to me, it is more about how horribly they are treated before and how unhealthy they are.

But then I think about how many poor people there are in the world that have no food and I should not be complaining about the food I do have. But this video I saw said how much water and grain it takes to keep all these farm animals going and that could be going to the poor (so could the money from the war but I wont get into that). But THEN I heard a fact lately that said if this organic thing takes over all of our land will be used for grazing animals and we don’t want that either.

Also, if I do go through with this how far do I have to go? Does it rule out fish? I dont know how they are treated. Milk products? I'm sure that cow treatment is no better, but I haven't jumped on the popular soy train yet. Am I really willing to make this sacrifice? What about fajitas and taco salad? I MUST have ice cream!!!!!

What to do what to do!!!!!!!!! I wish I could write one of my research papers on this. HA!!

Advice anyone?