Not All Death Is Bad

Rachel and Mack

While I never actually took starter calves to the fair, I did prepare to take some one year. Their names were Fred and Sam. I pulled those boys around the farm a few times but mostly they pulled me around. I loved them. We ate Fred and I made sure who ever got Sam was someone I approved of.

Fast forward about 15-20 years, Mack was born. The bother had a lazy eye and a goofy face. He was built like a Mack truck (hence the name) with the most gentle spirit. When he moved out of hutches to my property, he became a walking buddy who always ran up to the fence to greet us. Loving him so much, we couldn’t stick him out with the steers to be forgotten so we put him in with our milk cows in order to see, pet, and chat with him daily. A week after my daughter was born, I took her to meet Mack. He gave Non her first approving cow lick. A few months later, we butchered Mack. I still miss him, but we ate him.

A question I was regularly asked as a kid was if I ate the cows we raised. The follow up question was “how?” As a kid, I didn’t have the words. I shrugged it off and just replied with “you just do” or something similar.

As an adult, it’s something I’ve had to figure out the words for as the question still lingers in my mind, especially when it comes to cattle like Mack. As I’ve grappled with it, I have formed words for it.

Not all death is bad.

Some death is bad to be sure. When an aged cow finally get pregnant, died in birth, then her and her calf were eaten by coyotes, that was bad. We did everything we could, but not being able to be there right when she calved gave opportunity to predators. We’ve had to put down sick cows. That’s bad. If a cow dies soon after birth, it’s likely that the calf will die sometime soon after. At least, after years of experience, that’s what we have found. And that is bad.

But a cow dying to provide sustenance for others? There’s a lot worse ways to go.

It might sound harsh, but we, as Christians, live under the Genesis 1:26-28 mandate to take dominion over our livestock. We also operate under the knowledge that all belongs to God (Psalm 24:1) and we just steward it (Genesis 2:15). In essence, we are to care, love, and raise our cattle as if they were God, not ours. We are to treat them well since one day we will give an account for all we do which, for us, includes how we raised, sorted, fed, milked, and eventually killed cattle. God saw it fit to make us farmers so that we could raise cattle in the most ethical way we possibly could. This includes how they die so far as it depends on us.

If you don’t share our worldview, that’s okay. I believe there’s still an argument to be made for the ethics of eating meat.

First, grass fed meat is good for the ecosystem. A weird thing people like to make a big deal about is cow farts. But the people making a big deal about cow farts are flying private jets around the world to talk about how bad cows are and how great bugs are. Make it make sense. Anyway, Joel Salatin talks much more and better on this than I can, but in essence, grass fed ruminators are great for the soil. They turn plants into food (themselves), but also poop! Their manure feeds to soil and the microbes in the soil. A good rotational grazing schedule can build soil. Man can make a lot of thing, but we can’t make dirt as well as pastured animals can. But you can’t over graze a field or that will destroy everything you’re trying to accomplish! It’s a delicate balance.

Another point for eating beef is how much they provide! I remember hearing that chicken actually used to be a luxury meat. Hence the campaign “a chicken in every pot.” But think about it: how many meals do you get out of a single chicken? An over grown chicken will provide my family two maybe three meals tops. A normal sized one? Shoot! One or two meals at best. Whereas one whole beef could feed a family of 4-6 for a year! One animal has to die to feed many.

Can we solve the animal dying dilemma by just eating vegan? Nope. Do you know how many field mice die in row crop agriculture? A lot. Rabbits and turtles and many more small animals too. This isn’t just in conventional ag. Organic farms have to till so much more which disrupts animal homes and kills small animals. Now, I’m not against growing things! We do! And I’ll tell you what, I stop that tractor for every rabbit or turtle that I can see. But it’s not fair to say that eating vegan is more ethical. Something always dies in producing our food. It comes down to a conversation of how many animals must die for one meal and what their life was like when they lived.

We like to romanticize the wild. We think that animals live better out there than they do in people’s care. Truly, we’ve come to a point in our culture where humans seem like we’re all that’s wrong with this world. Which, again, coming from a biblical worldview, that’s just wild to me. Are people evil? Yes! According to their sin nature by the biblical worldview, yeah, we’re all bad. Romans 3:10 tells us that “no one does good, not even one.” So naturally, we’re going to do bad thing, even to animals. People will mismanage them. They’ll feed bad food because it’s cheap. Some may beat their livestock. Some may raise miserable animals. Those things do happen in a fallen evil world. But that is not representative of all farmer and ranchers or even the majority of them.

Aside from the fact that many farmers are Christians and are driven by the ideology that God gave us dominion over the animals and holds us responsible for how we treat them, it also does not benefit a famer or rancher to abuse an animal. A healthy, thriving, comfortable, and happy animal will be a better producer and one day meat than an abused, sick, unhappy one. For milk cows, a cow only lets her milk down when she feels safe enough to do so. Abusing her wouldn’t benefit a farmer. Feeding her an diet that is what she was made to eat and meets her needs makes her thrive. Giving her clean pastures and clean, cozy barns keeps her healthy and her milk safe for consumption (without pasteurization). Her milk quality is at it’s best when she is at her best. I have heard that even for meat animals, they hold their stress in and it can impact meat quality and flavor. So the better the life of the animals, the better the meat.

Many farmers, us included, operate out of the “one bad day” ideology. In essence, we aim to make every day of our cow’s lives good. Sure, they may get scared or worked up at times for a variety of reasons, but we truly try to make their every day peace filled and happy. The day they die is their only bad day. Which as long as the death is swift and as painless as possible, it’s not going to be all that bad for them after all. A happy, thriving cow every day of their life is our goal on the farm.

Farmers care for their animals and give them a good life for a variety of reasons. In my opinion, the most compelling is accountability and responsibility placed on us by God to do so. But also, from a business perspective, it doesn’t benefit a farmer to abuse animals. Poor quality and lack of production aren’t great for the bottom line. Lastly, and not yet mentioned, when you work animals daily, you truly grow to love them. They become more than just a cow or goat or chicken. They have fun personalities which encourages bonding. It’s a gift to us to give them a good life because we get the good life in return.

Back to romanticizing the wild, the wild is pretty brutal! Think back to the story of the coyote eating the cow and calf. Is it better we leave cows, a prey, out in the wild to be taken down by predators? We shut our ducks in because I have heard stories of racoons ravishing my in-laws ducks. I love free range chickens and their eggs, but is it the best thing to open the doors wide when a fox is waiting for them? I think not! Just as I do try to stop my dog from eating the kids favorite barn cat even though that’s what would happen in the wild (thus far no barn cats have been taken out by Rhett the wonder dog), farmers put fences up, feed sometimes OUT of pasture, and occasionally shut their livestock in the barn because it’s much better than the alternative of the wild. Sometimes the kindest thing we can do for our livestock is to keep them from the wild that is trying to kill them in pretty brutal ways.

This brings us back to the answer that I couldn’t articulate as a child as to how I could eat our own cows: not all death is bad. There’s a lot worse ways to die.

After living a wonderful life on a farm being cared for by people who love you, being slaughtered for meat isn’t the worst way to go. We have wept over sick cows that we have had to put down because their in pain without hope of a cure. In the past, we have been broken by steers that were too big and died of a heart attack on too hot of a summer day. And just recently, we mourned over a poor little calf who was born in the worst of elements, and despite our best efforts to save him, passed before we could even get him back into the warm shop. Those are rough ways to die. Being taken to the butcher to feed a family who will truly appreciate the meat and sacrifice that the animal gave is not the worst way to die.

Fred, Sam, and Mack fed our and other families. They died in the best way possible. Their death may have been hard at times for us, but it was not bad. They thrived in their lives so we can now thrive in ours.