"All natural"

Earlier this week, I went on a field trip for work.  The field trip involved visiting lots and lots of beef feedlots.  And you know what?  I couldn't tell the "all natural" feedlots from the conventional ones.  Each had thousands of animals walking, laying, caked in their own excrement.

Every time the car stopped, I was transfixed, staring at the cattle, thinking that they were so beautiful.  Glassy black eyes with long eyelashes, strong necks, woolly winter coats, steam rising from their nostrils...and I also couldn't help but think that each one existed only to be food.  They looked cold.  Sometimes they were obviously frightened.  Some had wounds and deformities.  There were several that were dead. 

One of the farms had bison, transported from the relative wild to a feedlot to be fattened up before ending up on a plate in some trendy "wild game" restaurant. 

I saw the lakes, rivers, and mountains of waste.  I smelled the sweet smell of distiller's grain, destined to be diluted at least one trophic level before ever meeting a human tongue.

And yet I had a wonderful time.  How could that be?  I told my friend, who brought me on this field trip, that I have the utmost respect for people who can look their choices in the face and be satisfied with them.  So how can I look at all this and not cry out at how wrong it all feels?  Maybe I just like to examine both sides of the coin.