We don’t eat laying hens. We raise a few pigs every year and trade some for beef, chicken, turkey etc.
That way everything we eat is from a real animal with a real life and real food and tastes super. We also avoid the slaughterhouse disaster where all the adrenalin pumps into the meat from the terror the animals go through, and makes the meat bitter and likely makes us nervous.
The butcher comes to the house and shoots the animals at touch range and they never know what is happening. Best meat you ever ate, and no one has to suffer at any time to get it, not the animals either.
Our pigs like to play when they are young – they build straw igloos (not a fairy tale!) inside their house and they like to roll tires and play soccer with a soccer ball. Later they get too big and lazy and just lie in the grass like a “dead pig in the sunshine”. Unless they are eating, that is. Sure beats the life they have in pork factories, where they cannot turn around because a metal yoke holds them in place and scours their meat off to the bone on their back. Disgusting. And makes the meat spongy and tasteless. Nothing like the tender, tasty meat you get from the real thing.
Maybe we are the last generation to ever have the luxury of eating real food – although I suppose the Japanese way will take over, where you can pay top price for some real food…
I think one of the best things you can do is to buy some land that would support farm animals and just keep it for your kids or grandkids – there will be a day not too long from now when that will be one of the most desireable things on earth.