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I find it momentarily jarring to eat meat around vegetarians, a big reminder that I am being Bad. A living thing has died for me to enjoy this -- admittedly, very delicious -- meal before me. So, as I eat, I remind myself to understand this.
Somewhere, I assume in the wilds of Montana or someplace near to it, perhaps on the central plains, a cow was raised on a purely vegetarian diet for the expressed purpose of someone killing it. I'm not sure on the policy of The Counter on how humanely it requires the slaughter of the meat it purchases, but I'll go with the traditional, instant-death "bolt-though-the-head" over the sledgehammer approach.
The carcass was then broken down into large cuts of meat and flash-frozen for transport. A wholesaler then purchased the meat and worked it into cuts usable by their customers -- larger cuts for the restaurants, smaller cuts for home use. Some of that meat ended up being ground into hamburger and shaped into patties. In my case, the 1/3 pound burger I ate was weighed before cooking and, on average, all the patties produced in this manner weigh 1/3 a pound.
In the kitchen, this patty was cooked to medium done, just a little pink in the center, some nice char on the outside, by a chef I did not see but might guess as being from Guatemala, perhaps, or maybe a local college student working their way through school as a grill cook.
It is hard to estimate the number of lives touched by my decision to eat this meal. For sure, there is, at the heart of it, the death of the cow. But there is also the salaries of those who worked in the feedlot, the slaughterhouse, the shipping company, the local supplier, the owner of the local franchise of The Counter and the employees there, not to mention all the ripple effects that that purchase had on the broader economy -- all those people spend their paychecks on other items, and so on.
So I think I can be at peace with my purchase. Although it is sad that an animal did have to die in my pursuit of lunch, it does not outweigh, in my opinion, the needs of those hundreds of people I mentioned as benefiting from its death.
So cow, I salute you. The burger was delicious.