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and state veterinarians to get certified letters  volution into a new state of ignorance and discon-
                explaining that herbivores actually like to be in  nectedness. The fact is, everything is eating and
                crowds.                                   being eaten. If you don’t believe me, go lie naked
                    Free range chicks. It’s abusive to control  in your flower bed for three days and see what
                them with shelters, they want to run free, say  gets eaten. You see, death is necessary for life.
                our critics. But as soon as one gets out, all it does  Decomposition precedes regeneration, and this
                is spend the rest of the day running around the  cycle has profound meaning on the spiritual level.
                fence trying to get back in because it’s scared to  Without sacrifice there can be no life. And when
                death.                                    your teeth chomp down on the chicken breast or
                    Shipping chicks should be outlawed, they  the baby carrot or the salad greens, that mastica-
                say. “I wouldn’t like to be shipped three days in  tion, that decomposition, that death, gives life to
                the mail. How would you like to be shipped three  us. And so when we have our moment of silence,
                days in the mail?”                        we thank the sacrifice, we thank the death of life
                    The reason chicks can be shipped three days  to feed us and give us regenerative capacity.
                in the mail is because when a hen lays a clutch
                of eggs, she doesn’t lay all those eggs at one  NUMBER NINE:
                time, she lays those ten eggs over ten days. And  COWS CAUSE GLOBAL WARMING
                as she’s laying those eggs, she’s out eating and     A fact: there were almost three times as
                trying to build up body reserves for her incuba-  many pounds of herbivore in North America
                tion period. Since she’s off the nest, the first laid  six hundred years ago than there are today. If
                eggs get cool and that slows the embryo down  herbivores cause global warming, we’d be very
                enough so that by the time she lays her seventh  hot by now. What the herbivore does is eat the
                or tenth egg and starts to actually set, the first  herbage that’s created by solar energy in real
                egg is only about three days ahead of the tenth  time and serves as a biomass growth re-starter.
                egg. And when it hatches three days before the  It’s the herbivore that restarts the biomass ac-
                last one, the chick sits quietly and waits until  cumulation engine. Without the herbivore to eat
                the last egg is hatched. If it hatched and took off  it, herbage just desiccates. It gives off the same
                running around, the mother hen would leave the  methane as it would inside the cow but without
                nest at its most vulnerable time—when the eggs  the redeeming capacity to restart and regenerate
                are almost ready to hatch and when they need  in moving the methane the other way into the  A fact: there
                warmth and the most careful environment pos-  ground. That’s why we practice the bio-mimicry   were almost
                sible—to go running after this wayward chick  of mob stocking on our farm; it’s the best way   three times as
                that’s running around. The other chicks wouldn’t  to get soil fertilization. This is an earth-healing
                hatch, or if they did hatch, they would die. And  system based on perennials instead of annuals,  many pounds

                so the chicks don’t come out from under the hen  herbivores instead of omnivores.    of herbivore
                until all the eggs have hatched. So chicks can     If you really want to eat close to nature, eat   in North
                take three days shipping, that’s a natural thing.  grass-finished beef, and not so much chicken
                They’re chicks, not people.               and pork. Pigs and chickens were always salvage  America six
                    But see, we have this projected anthropo-  animals, not the main driver of the biomass cycle.   hundred years
                morphism on the animals. Electric fence, oh, it  Herbivores represent portable instead of station-  ago than
                might hurt them. You’re talking to a guy who  ary infrastructure, multi-speciation instead of
                still believes in spanking. Castration. Oh my!  mono-speciation,  biomass  regeneration  and  there are
                Castration came along with domestication. What  decomposition instead of petroleum use, pasture-  today. If
                do you want to do, have all our animals fighting  based instead of housing-based, local instead of   herbivores
                all the time?                             global, in-sourced instead of out-sourced, holistic
                    My favorite is the insistence that we as hu-  instead of compartmentalized.      cause global
                mans have developed to the point where we don’t                                      warming,
                need to eat animals. Such a notion indicates not  NUMBER TEN: YOU ARE ELITISTS       we’d be very
                an evolution to a new state of cosmic Nirvana,     “You are elitists, and I don’t like elitist,” say
                heightened awareness and spirituality, but a de-  the critics. “If everyone can’t afford this food,  hot by now.

                WINTER 2010                                Wise Traditions                                           25




         74240_text.indd   25                                                                                     12/13/2010   2:14:02 AM
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