Are we Veggies? There’s a question!
The answer to that particular question is not so straight forward, but I guess that it has to be no. I am animal aware and animal-friendly and want to eat meat consciously and as little as I can, preferring to eat alternative things and cook or create recipes that are not animal-based. Fish? oh, crap struggling with that one.
As I have got older, I have found it increasingly difficult to square the circle on the question of animals and how we, in my view, abuse them. I have always struggled with the concept of killing any living thing and since I have had the pleasure of residing with a couple of crazy beagle dogs, my attitude has hardened in that I believe that as humans, we should think a little more about this subject.
It strikes me that some people take great delight in “if it moves, they have eaten it, or want to try it” like some kind of badge of honour, or something from a bucket list. I know a couple of people who have this attitude to animals and that it is their god-given right to eat animals. To me, it appears as though they believe that they are living the dream. Rather thoughtlessly in my view.
By the way, what is a lamb? a baby sheep. So what the hell are we doing killing and eating babies of any living thing? I will not eat lamb because of the inference that the name lamb has, killing babies! I have discussed this with many people, some who good-humouredly laugh at me, with the forbearance of dealing with a naughty child. Of course, I am most grateful for their forbearance and for them answering my polite query on why they eat lamb but not sheep. Because lamb is tastier and not as tough as mutton. Really?
Poor old Larry, you seem to have had it mate!
The other one that I have always found absurd in terms of the justification of the slaughter and eating animals is “the animal had a happy life” or the animal was allowed to free graze. If that really is the case, why kill the animal if it is happy? I don’t suppose for one moment that the chicken that is just about to have its neck rung says, fair do’s guv, I have had a great life! No, it does not work for me.
I watched a documentary on the effects of cattle rearing and slaughter in the USA for producing meat for beefburgers. The numbers involved were huge and the point of the documentary was the effect on the environment in terms of land needed to graze and the methane that cattle release into the atmosphere. How dare they, damaging our air quality? The documentary showed a cartoony character kind of thing with a long line of cattle going in one end of a slaughterhouse and coming out of the slaughterhouse at the other end was a cow inside a sliced burger bun with legs, head and tail trailing outside the bun.
That image was burnt indelibly into my conscious and I have repeatedly referred to the cattle/slaughterhouse/bun cartoon images in gentle discussion with others on the subject of eating meat. Whilst I am concerned at the environmental impact that overeating meat can have, the very clever and very appropriate cartoon image won the day and caused me a few bad dreams. Well done to whoever came up with it and thank you.
With a couple of people who I have discussed this with we have descended into good-humoured hostility. The other evening when a discussion was being lost, by way of an absurd defence to them eating meat, it was thrown out that “Mike can’t even watch the animals being hurt in the TV series Serengetty” I fail to see the reasoning but whilst on the subject, why would I want to watch a lion or a crocodile kill antelope’s or baby elephants. For entertainment, I would rather watch Santana, Brittany, Rachel and Quin in Glee! Thinking about it, I would rather watch them over most things, lol.
Whilst I can understand that back in the days when humans were hunters that animals were hunted for food, as well as pelts. What I struggle to understand or accept is animal husbandry. The organised rearing and killing of animals for food. I also struggle to accept the meat counters and coolers in supermarkets and home freezers packed with meat, or to call it what it is, parts of dead animals.
Supermarket and butchers shelves packed with stored and arrayed parts of animals parts in a supposed enticing manner to make you want to buy the product. (Ah, the quintessentially English art of dealing with a touchy subject by renaming “dead animal parts” to “Product”- the deceptive art of Euphamism that makes it ok!)
No, I do not have the answers and am very confused with very mixed emotions on this subject. Humans have evolved from the need to hunt for our food, so why can’t we evolve further and evolve into a more balanced diet, away from the meat and 2 veg approach that many people have to diet. The benefits as I see it are massive, Environmental, health, animal welfare but to name a few.
I suppose I should end sharing my thoughts on this by acknowledging that there are always alternative views on a subject and whilst I was being asked about not eating meat by a colleague, I advanced the environmental view about the land needed to keep animals and was amused at the reply. Yeah, it also takes a lot of land in order to grow vegetables. Its a point of view I guess!
And finally, its November and Christmas is coming which is making the family hesitantly asking or questioning our forthcoming Christmas dinner. Yes, I shall be eating Turkey along with pigs in blankets and cooking the sprouts with streaky bacon this year. As I said, confused but very consciously eating some meat!
Animal furs, Let’s not go there!
