"I Only Eat Stranger Chickens"

I worry. I feel guilty. And the more I read, the more guilty I feel. Specifically, in this case, about eating industrially raised meat. I have laying hens, and I love them. They are low maintenance, pseudo-pets who give us eggs and make lovely clucking noises outside my window as I wake up. I feel awful thinking about the way the saran-wrapped chickens at my grocery store lived. I am pretty sure they didn't come running from the bushes to be fed mealworms by hand. They didn't get a chance to find a little snake in the yard and play keep away with it (it's really funny if you can avoid any empathy for the snake).

My daughters have no interest in becoming vegetarian. On the other hand, they have no interest in eating any animals they have ever met. I know this because I've asked them--sort of.

When we were first getting used to having chickens, I asked, "Isn't it cool how happy our chickens are? It would be wonderful if the chickens we ate had happy lives like this before they died, wouldn't it?" By now my nephew, the only one really listening to me, looked very suspicious.

"Really, if we're going to eat chicken, shouldn't we take care of them and be sure they have great, happy lives first?"

"No," my nephew said emphatically. "I only eat stranger chickens."

So what became of this ethical dilemma? Not much, at least so far. We still eat meet from the grocery story and my nephew has become very diligent about naming chickens the moment he meets them.  You see, once they have names, they aren't stranger chickens and can't become food.

But I still feel guilty, so this isn't over yet...