# Childish innocence I ... That yummy sausage means a cow died. **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [February 4, 2016, 3:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/childish-innocence-i-that-yummy-sausage-means-a-cow-died/745144 "2016-02-04T15:41:50Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 7\ **Page:** 5
**Author:** ![Cazzle](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cazzle/32/75_2.png) [@Cazzle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cazzle)\ **Post date:** [February 7, 2016, 11:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/childish-innocence-i-that-yummy-sausage-means-a-cow-died/745144/81 "2016-02-07T23:53:12Z")
> [@Jophiel](#): > > Honestly, I don’t see the point any more than taking my kids to watch trees get cut down and turned into 2x4s or watch ore get strip mined and smelted into steel or watch oil get extracted and plastic forks get injection molded. If someone wants to have reverence for their cows and chickens then more power to them, I guess but the only reason they exist (both individually and as a domesticated species) is as a resource. > > Sure, tell them that meat comes from animals. Trying to make it into something more than that seems silly. You wouldn’t take your kids to see industrial processes? I would. I have. And I went on excursions like that with my parents when I was a kid. We live in an area when brown coal is extracted in open cut mines, so I took the kids to see the mines and we talked about the impact on the landscape and environment. We drove past the coal fired power stations and talked about how they work. We will visit the paper mill on its bi-annual open day (the kids have been too young until now) and we’ve driven past the pine plantations. We’ve been to a dairy farm and watched the cows get milked. If we had a plastic fork factory, I’d go. Industrial processes can be fascinating to watch. We’re not going to the slaughterhouse to make them watch the process, but we’ve done all we can to make sure the children understand that their meat comes from living animals and that we, as meat eaters, owe the animals a good, healthy life and a humane death. ---
**Author:** ![Jophiel](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jophiel/32/66_2.png) [@Jophiel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jophiel)\ **Post date:** [February 8, 2016, 12:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/childish-innocence-i-that-yummy-sausage-means-a-cow-died/745144/82 "2016-02-08T00:48:53Z")
> [@GuanoLad](#): > > Farms are not petting zoos, neither are they slaughter houses. If I was taking kids to see how farms work, with the agenda of also explaining where food comes from, I would be pointing out how the farmer has to look after the fields to make sure they’re full of grass and straw to feed the animals every day, how they have to maintain the farm’s fences and buildings and water troughs, how the animals must be moved to new fields every week, how cows aren’t just for meat they also provide milk, how sheep aren’t just meat they also provide wool, what each vehicle (truck, tractor, motorbike, horse) is typically needed for, etc etc etc. Sure, but the context of this thread was being sure that the kids “understand” where meat comes from. Meat doesn’t come from living animals, it comes from recently dead animals, slaughtered so we can eat them. Trucks and grain and fences don’t show that. Perfectly educational and perhaps entertaining in their own right but not really a lesson in the origins of your ham sandwich. > [@Eliahna](#): > > You wouldn’t take your kids to see industrial processes? I would. Not unless they showed explicit interest in seeing it. I wouldn’t take them solely because I had some notion that they had a duty or obligation to see where paper comes from. If he suddenly became fascinated with paper manufacturing, sure. Same with food – if the kid is really interested then sure, so pursue it to whatever degree. But there’s no onus to make sure the kid has it drilled into them by staring at livestock. ---
**Author:** ![GuanoLad](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/guanolad/32/42_2.png) [@GuanoLad](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GuanoLad)\ **Post date:** [February 8, 2016, 1:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/childish-innocence-i-that-yummy-sausage-means-a-cow-died/745144/83 "2016-02-08T01:26:02Z")
**Jophiel** , you seem determined to twist anything anyone says specifically into a thing you can complain about. There’s no point to this conversation anymore. ---
**Author:** ![puzzlegal](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/puzzlegal/32/3827_2.png) [@puzzlegal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/puzzlegal)\ **Post date:** [February 8, 2016, 3:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/childish-innocence-i-that-yummy-sausage-means-a-cow-died/745144/84 "2016-02-08T03:51:49Z")
> [@Jophiel](#): > > Honestly, I don’t see the point any more than taking my kids to watch trees get cut down and turned into 2x4s or watch ore get strip mined and smelted into steel or watch oil get extracted and plastic forks get injection molded. If someone wants to have reverence for their cows and chickens then more power to them, I guess but the only reason they exist (both individually and as a domesticated species) is as a resource. > > Sure, tell them that meat comes from animals. Trying to make it into something more than that seems silly. Huh, both I and my kids’ school took them to see all sorts of production processes when they were young. It’s educational to know where stuff comes from, and it’s fascinating. I never took then to a slaughter house, but I took then to a farm where they could see living animals, and people caring for the animals, and meat in a freezer, with labels saying which (named) animal had contributed to each package of meat. They got to milk a cow and help herd turkeys into their barn, too. They already knew where meat came from at that point. I guess I’m not helping the op because I don’t feel it’s wrong to eat meat, although I do think it’s wrong to mistreat living animals. So I didn’t have much of a moral quandary teaching my children where meat comes from. ---
**Author:** ![BigT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bigt/32/12044_2.png) [@BigT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BigT)\ **Post date:** [February 8, 2016, 6:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/childish-innocence-i-that-yummy-sausage-means-a-cow-died/745144/85 "2016-02-08T06:18:09Z")
> [@GuanoLad](#): > > **Jophiel** , you seem determined to twist anything anyone says specifically into a thing you can complain about. There’s no point to this conversation anymore. All I know is that you guys are talking about farms, when the worst stuff are not what happens at what we normally consider farms. It is the video of the slaughterhouse that made me finally consider there to be an ethical issue with meat. Granted, I still chose to eat meat, but, before, it wasn’t even anything I considered. (If I had more money, I might try to eat more humanely treated animals. And I will be glad once we grow meat in vats. Until then, I eat meat, as I have trouble getting satisfied without it.) ---
**Author:** ![GuanoLad](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/guanolad/32/42_2.png) [@GuanoLad](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GuanoLad)\ **Post date:** [February 8, 2016, 6:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/childish-innocence-i-that-yummy-sausage-means-a-cow-died/745144/86 "2016-02-08T06:43:43Z")
The OP doesn’t want to spoil innocence, while being honest. Couching it in the context of a farm visit achieves that, in my opinion. I don’t think any of this is meant to put people off eating meat or be grossed out by the nitty-gritty of what goes on in slaughterhouses. Save that for when they’re 15yrs old. ---
**Author:** ![Peremensoe](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/ce7236/32.png) [@Peremensoe](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Peremensoe)\ **Post date:** [February 8, 2016, 2:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/childish-innocence-i-that-yummy-sausage-means-a-cow-died/745144/87 "2016-02-08T14:00:32Z")
> [@puzzlegal](#): > > I guess I’m not helping the op because I don’t feel it’s wrong to eat meat, although I do think it’s wrong to mistreat living animals. That would appear to be the OP position. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/childish-innocence-i-that-yummy-sausage-means-a-cow-died/745144.md?page=4)