Beef, what a relief,
when will this poisonous product cease?
This is another public service announcement,
you can believe it, or you can doubt it.
Let us begin now with the cow,
the way it gets to your plate and how
the cow doesn't grow fast enough for man
so through his greed he makes a faster plan.
He has drugs to make the cow grow quicker,
through the stress the cow gets sicker,
21 different drugs are pumped
into the cow in one big lump
so just before it dies, it cries,
in the slaughterhouse full of germs and flies,
off with the head, they pack it, drain it, and cart it,
and there it is in your local supermarket
red and bloody, a corpse neatly packed
and you wonder about heart attacks?
C'mon now, man, let's be for real,
you are what you eat is the way I feel
But, the Food and Drug Administration
will tell you meat is the perfect combination
See, cows live under fear and stress
trying to think what's gonna happen next
fear and stress can become a part of you
in your cells and blood this is true
So when the cow is killed, believe it,
you preserve those cells, you freeze it
thaw it out with the blood and season it
then you sit down and begin eatin' it
In your body its structure becomes your structure
all the fear and stress of another
Any drug is addictive, by any name
even drugs in meat they are the same
the FDA has America strung out
on drugs in beef no doubt
So if you think that what I say is a bunch of crap
tell yourself you're gonna try and stop
eatin' meat and you'll see you can't compete
It's the number one drug on the street
Not crack, 'cause that was made for just blacks
but ground beef, for all American teeth
Life brings life, death brings death,
Keep on eatin' the dead and what's left?
Absolute disease and negative,
read the book How to Eat to Live
by Elijah Muhammed it's a brown paperback
for anybody either white or black
See, how many cows must be pumped up fatter?
how many rats gotta fall in the batter?
how many chickens that eat shit do you eat?
how much high blood pressure you get from pig feet?
see you'll consume, the FDA could care less,
they'll sell you donkey meat and say it's fresh
—KRS-ONE, from Edutainment
Sarah
recommended this book to me after I gave her
My
Year of Meats. I'd been walking home across the park when Ruth Ozeki
was introduced on summer stage. I stayed for readings by her,
Andrei
Codrescu, and
Michael
Moore, with an added bonus of distant fireworks during the pee break.
Sarah's only part of the reason I stopped eating meat; I just thought it
was time to start living according to my principles, one of which is to eschew
cruelty.
“I’ve
taken out my job pressure and frustration on the animals, on my wife, ...
and on myself, with heavy drinking.” Then it gets much worse: “...with
an animal who pisses you off, you don’t just kill it. You ... blow the
windpipe, make it drown in its own blood, split its nose... I would cut its
eye out... and this hog would just scream. One time I ...sliced off the end
of a hog’s nose. The hog went crazy, so I took a handful of salt brine
and ground it into his nose. Now that hog really went nuts...”
Excellent
introductory essay goes into nutritional reasons why meat is not necessary,
followed by practical recipes for everyday use. For anyone who ever thought
vegetarianism would take too much time and effort. Special attention is paid
to getting enough protein and B vitamins—two of the reasons most often
cited by those who claim they can't do without meat.
