I Was Just Thinking…

  I have been worried about our food supply.  We have had e-coli outbreaks for years, and then there was the “mad cow” scare.  After I heard rumors of mad cow disease victims’  bones (cows, of course) being ground up and sent to Asia to be fed to their farm animals, I became a vegetarian.  Then there was the problem with pet food and more problems with strange substances showing up in people food.  I was beginning to feel very nervous about eating.

   Finally, today I read something encouraging.  Wolfgang Puck, well known chef of  Spago in Los Angeles, has taken a stand on the cruel treatment meted out to animals used as food and the other strange things that sometimes wind up, quite legally, in our food.  At first I thought it was a joke.  I thought it meant no more smothered chicken or pressed duck.  Are they perhaps only going to use animals who die of old age for food?   Will slaughterhouses become nursing homes for animals?

   It reminded me of a funny story told to me by one of my patients when I was working as a physical therapy technician in a hospital in Indiana.  I was helping this young man with therapy on his knee.  Making conversation in an attempt to get his mind off the pain, I asked him how he had injured the knee.  He replied that he had been shot by a pig.  It was the late seventies and some people of a rebellious nature referred to law enforcement officers as pigs, so I thought that perhaps I was treating a felon.  He must have realized by the look on my face that I had suddenly become suspicious of him, so he quickly explained that he worked in a slaughter house, and the hogs penned up for killing had stampeded.  One of them knocked him down causing him to drop the rifle that he was using , and another one ran across its trigger and shot him in the knee.  So even some thirty years ago, animals were not completely without defense.

  But Wolfgang is serious.  He has teamed up with the Humane Society to ensure that animals will not be abused in preparation for entering the food supply, and he also is concerned about the growth hormones, antibiotics, and other unnatural substances that are added to our food.   

   More news like this just might cause me to abandon my “safe ice cream” diet and go back on regular food.