Hospitality and a Good Cow Sale

By M.P. Cremer

We sold our black calves yesterday and went up to our local marketing company’s office, Fraser Livestock, Frontier Productions, to stream the sale on TV and enjoy some time in the air conditioning after hauling hay all morning.

Around noon, Fraser Livestock’s right-hand man Tom cooked burgers for everyone in the office watching the sale. 

This is the second year I’ve watched our calves sell in the Fraser Livestock office and both years Tom has done this. I love it. It shows they appreciate their customers and love their town. 

But, I’m not writing this column to kiss up to Fraser Livestock for their work marketing our cattle or their hospitality, I’m writing this column to talk about the exploitation of real, medically diagnosed food allergies and intolerances for the personal gain of woke vegans everywhere. 

How does this fit into my morning at Fraser Livestock? Let me explain.

After our calves sold, Lane and I ran home to tend to our bulls and when we got back to the office, Tom had fresh burger patties with our names on them, and like the gentleman he is, handed them to us with a bun and melted cheese on them.

I’ve talked about this in the column once before, but as a reminder, I am allergic to dairy products. When Tom handed me my burger, I smiled and said thank you. I didn’t want to make a scene about my allergy. Frankly, I’ve come to realize most of the time when I say I don’t/can’t eat dairy, to most people, they think I’m doing it as a choice. 

Which, no biggie, it’s my body I should be able to decide what kind of food I put into it, but if a nice man, in a room full of animal-raising agriculturists hands me a burger on a silver (paper plate) platter, I take it, because that’s the polite thing to do.

If you’re me, you eat what you’re served, even though it’s 100 percent not my choice to exclude dairy from my diet, because you don’t want someone to make a snap-judgement you’re boycotting the dairy industry for ethical reasons. Besides, I can take cheese out from a meal most of the time.

Okay, back to the story. Tom hands me a burger with cheese on it. I am grateful for his hospitality and the burger looked super appetizing. I decided I’d just pick off the cheese, I’ve done it before. 

However, before I even had the chance to do so, my husband Lane came to the rescue and said, “Oh, Tom, are you cooking more burgers? I’m sorry, Mayzie doesn’t do well with dairy – she’s allergic.”

Tom said he absolutely was, and he would be more than happy to get me a burger without cheese. I told him it was no biggie; I’d pick it off. We went back and forth because I didn’t want to be a burden, but Tom didn’t want me to spend the next three days being sick as a dog. 

One of the ranchers beside us said he would gladly eat my cheeseburger, so I handed it to him and in a few minutes, Tom once again brought me a burger. All was right with the world.

As I took my first bite, my sister-in-law Megan said, “You shouldn’t be embarrassed to tell someone you can’t eat cheese, it’s not your fault and it’s not your choice.” 

“Yeah, I know, I just don’t like to make it a big thing,” I replied.

“Mayzie, you are not some uninformed hipster who thinks dairy cattle kill the planet, you’re someone who was diagnosed by a doctor; anyone who looks down on you for it is in the wrong,” Megan said. “You shouldn’t feel bad about having an allergy.”

Megan is right, I shouldn’t feel that way, but I do, and you know why? Because most of the people who are dairy-free in this world choose it; most of those people make this choice because they’re anti-animal ag; and most of these people tell restaurant waitstaff or the host of a dinner party they’re allergic to whatever they don’t want to eat to ensure their meal won’t accidently be brought out with dairy products. 

You know what happens when too many people do this? Those servers and cooks catch on, and when they catch on to one false claim, they assume others who make these allergy claims are also lying. 

These anti-ags hide behind the curtain of fake allergies/intolerances, elimination diets and trends, boasting they’re helping the environment by not supporting dairy farmers because they watched some bogus Netflix documentary. I’d say they’re riding on a high horse, but heck, they probably think horseback riding is unethical too.

The moral of the story here is don’t feel guilty about being allergic to something, stop lying about food allergies for personal gain and market your calves with Fraser Livestock if you want a tasty, dairy-optional burger on sale day.