EDITOR’S NOTE: Mr. Cannon’s essay, below, was mistakenly posted as “NEWS/POLITICS” on March 22. It was always intended to be published in the “HUMOR” section. The Daily Post regrets the error, and offers our apologies to those who took the column as anything other than a poor attempt at humor.
The Colorado meat industry is not happy right now.
According to the Denver Post, the state’s beef producers “felt very attacked” when Colorado Governor Jared Polis issued an official proclamation, designating Saturday, March 20 to be ‘Meat Out Day.’
The proclamation stated,
em>WHEREAS, removing animal products from our diets reduces the risk of various ailments, including heart disease, high-blood pressure, stroke, various cancers, and diabetes; and
WHEREAS, a plant-based diet helps protect the environment by reducing our carbon footprint, preserving forests, grasslands and wildlife habitats, and reduces pollution of waterways; and
WHEREAS, a growing number of people are reducing their meat consumption to help prevent animal cruelty…
That was last Saturday, in case you missed it. We can, of course, still choose to reduce our risk of deadly diseases today — or whenever it feels right. No need to wait for the Governor to tell us what to do, and when.
We can wipe the carbon out of our footprints, any day of the week, and twice on Sunday. And we can help prevent animal cruelty, if we happen to be suffering from “meat guilt”.
Not to be outdone by a mere proclamation, however, Andrew Timmerman of Timmerman Feeding Co. in Sterling, Colorado, helped organize “Denver’s Meat & Eat”, a March 20 event to feed cooked flesh to “people in need” — or to anyone else feeling carnivorous, for that matter — from 11am to 7pm at ‘Civic Center EATS’ in Denver’s Civic Center Park. According to a press release, 10 food trucks were lined up for the event, and Timmerman expected the food trucks to serve up 1,200 meals — burgers, tacos, gyros and more — at no cost to the public.
The general idea, it seems, was to thumb some meat-smeared noses at Governor Polis’ March 20 proclamation.
The event logo looked like this:
I personally don’t have a strong opinion about this controversy. I’ve eaten hamburgers, and I’ve eaten veggie burgers, and I can’t truly say one is “better” than the other, except that the hamburger tasted like a roasted dead animal, and the veggie burger tasted like roasted dead soybeans.
But I do have strong opinions about English grammar, and spelling. Farmers and ranchers are very important to Colorado’s economy, but they should be setting a better example. Especially when our school children have missed almost a year of schooling due to this whole COVID mess.
For example. When you name your event “Denver’s Meat & Eat”…
Obviously, the ranchers who labeled this event either didn’t know how to spell “Meet & Eat”… or else they thought “Meat” was a verb. According to accepted English grammar, you can use the word “and” to join two verbs — like “Meet and Greet” — or two nouns — like “Meat and Potatoes”. But you can’t join a noun and a verb.
“Eat” is a verb. “Meat” is a noun. You can’t tell people to “Meat & Eat” without looking like you dropped out of high school in 9th grade.
The Governor’s Office, meanwhile, tried to explain away what they’d done, by claiming that someone else had asked them to declare “Meat Out Day”, and that they try and accommodate those kinds of requests. The Office explained:
The Governor’s office gets hundreds of requests for proclamations throughout the year and rarely declines these non-binding ceremonial proclamations that get auto penned by the Governor. For example, the Governor has issued proclamations for Agriculture Day, Colorado Farm Bureau Day, and Truck Driver Appreciation Day…
I’m more than happy to step up and appreciate truck drivers, even if the proclamation gets “auto penned” by the Governor. But I didn’t know — until I saw an article on TheDenverChannel.com — that the Governor has also urged us to celebrate “…Rocky Ford Cantaloupe Day, Breakfast Burrito Day, Bat Awareness Week, Sesame Street Day, Car Wash Day, and many others.”
Sort of puts “Meat Out Day” into perspective.
Not that it has anything to do with this essay, but when I viewed the Denver Post article about the “Meat & Eat” event, I was offered a display advertisement, inserted into the article, that asked me:
Is It Time to Talk to Your Doctor About Colorectal Cancer?
Or maybe… it does have something to do with this essay, after all?
Harvard Medical School published a report back in 2008, citing two large-scale studies (478,000 people in Europe, and 149,000 people in the US) that indicated that we have a statistically greater chance of developing colon cancer — about 33% greater — if we eat red meat regularly. They also cited additional studies that showed regular consumption of fish and chicken had the opposite effect — you will be less likely to develop colon cancer.
These are just statistical numbers, and I don’t put much faith in statistics.
But what was important to me, was the grammar. The Harvard School of Medicine authors who wrote this report — and who, I’m assuming, did not drop out of high school in 9th grade — very distinctly used the word “meat” as a noun, throughout the entire 1,500-word report.
Underrated writer Louis Cannon grew up in the vast American West, although his ex-wife, given the slightest opportunity, will deny that he ever grew up at all.