My Wants Are Not Worth Someone's Life

My heart is heavy as I write this post. As I read about the executive order mandating that the meat-processing facilities keep operating despite the danger, I am grieved. (If the order gave permission for plants to operate if they could do so safely, I would be behind that 100%. I'd also support formal rationing or stores limiting how much we can purchase in a day.)

This isn't a faceless crowd that prepares our meat. This impacts people we know personally. For 4 years, my husband and I lived within 15 minutes of a beef-packing plant in the Texan panhandle. So when I hear about how the plants are required to keep working, despite the rising number of cases at their facilities, I see the faces of the people who work there. They are students I taught. They are friends I made.

The order references our national need for protein as a driving force behind it. But meat is a small selection of all the protein sources available. In fact, here is a chart with many vegan protein sources.

We want meat. We don't need it.

Rather than rationing like we did during the World Wars, we are ordering people to work in dangerous environments for a luxury item.

Rather than encouraging plants to operate at 1/4 or 1/2 capacity, we don't want the ground beef to run out.

The contempt we are showing for human life by requiring workers to keep supplying us with meat devastates me.

But what can one person do in the face of this? Can one family make a difference?

Absolutely.

We can stop buying meat for a season.
We can avoid contributing to the demand of something that will require more people to keep working in virus hotspots.
We can cook with quinoa, couscous, rice, beans, barley, oatmeal, millet, tofu, and lentils.
We can find ways to stretch out the meats we have in our freezer to last longer.
We can have Meatless Mondays, Tofu Tuesdays, Walnut Wednesdays, Tempeh Thursdays, Friendship Bread Fridays, Sesame Seed Saturdays, and Sweet Potato Sundays.
We can realize that eating meat every day is a luxury that many in the world don't enjoy.

And if you join, we can give the meat industry the breathing room they need to get back on their feet safely.

Because my desire for bacon is not worth someone's life.