...but still everyone shies away from saying anything that will actually be frank with the consumer.
Then again, it's hardly good for sales if you put something on the pack which says "This slab of meat came from a cow who had a good life and spent it's time happily munching grass with all the other cows, until we decided to stick a steel bolt between its eyes."
It goes further than shying away from saying anything...the meat industry is well aware of its PR problem (spanning hundreds of years, mind you; in many parts of the world slaughterhouse workers are or were "ritually unclean" and had to live in segregated housing). Most of these plants will not allow cameras or phones inside (I've had to turn in my cell phone at the door, because of the crummy little camera in it) and needless to say the "curious" (are there any of those?) are not getting in for a casual visit. Partly it's that they're worried about some of the animal rights groups, partly it's security issues revolving around food safety (contamination from outside and/or terrorism), partly it's because wandering around these plants is frikkin'
dangerous, what with the blades and the conveyor lines whizzing by and the slippery floors and all. You wouldn't let a school group in there even if you
weren't trying to pretty up everyone's idea of meat. (Oh, and the animals of course in most cases had nothing like a good life. Those concentrated feedlots are in fact the only place where I have a problem with the industry. They are breeding grounds for disease, necessitating a lot of the antibiotics use we have in the modern world, and thus increase the chances of some nasty resistant bug developing. They
smell appalling, far worse than the slaughter places, letting everyone in a five mile radius be aware of their environmental cost. And that's before you even get to any concerns about kindness to animals, which I admit are low on my list: let's see if we can treat our
own species with some fairness and decency first. But, about the feedlots, I don't know how we can feed everybody otherwise, so...)
Then again, maybe the "hiding" of the process is exactly
why so many can't deal with where meat comes from: they've never had the chance to come to terms with it. Thus whenever they
do see it, they freak. People who have grown up on farms or in and around the meat industry often are starkly different from others in this respect.
rovingjack, scurvy can in fact mess up your joints but good. If that is the cause, you should do something immediately before you suffer permanent damage. Does your digestive illness preclude taking the Vitamin C supplements? They're cheap. If it does, maybe your doctor can suggest something? And if the medical personnel where you are aren't too shy about taking X-rays, maybe you should get one just to see if the toe is broken or if it's more likely something else.
