Jeez, Maastricht, you are anguishing over something that I never gave a moment’s thought when raising my son. I mean, we lived in big cities, so he never saw farm animals or butchering or anything, but he knew what a chicken was from books and TV, and certainly he saw meat for sale in the grocery store. He was smart enough to figure it out all by himself. His mother and I are omnivores, so that’s the way he grew up.
Scootergirl – are you sure your daughter wasn’t asking if that hot dog was a specific part of the animal? 
I lived out in the countryside in New Zealand, a country where farming is central to our culture. We all knew what sheep and cows were for from a very young age. Plus my Dad hunted rabbits as a hobby, which he’d skin and gut in our yard, and we kept chickens for a little while. I saw chickens running around with their heads cut off before I’d heard the phrase in context.
Anyway, the point is, take them to a farm and tell them honestly. No need to be grisly with the details, but be frank.
At the right age and with certain kids, a headless chicken is the funniest thing ever.
I would wager that most adults don’t think that the pigs were actually smiling when slaughtered, and not being upset by the sign has nothing to do with empathy or whatever else you want to ascribe the decision to eat meat or not. Pig entrails would be a terrible shop sign.
I was vegetarian for several years. I stopped being vegetarian. I see no need to go back to it – there is no difference for me in measurable aspects of health, and I am able to purchase meat from local producers and thus avoid the business of giant slaughterhouses. I figure that if I’m ok with killing and dressing a duck or deer myself (which I’ve done), I’m not sticking my head in the sand about the “real” origins of meat. It’s ethically fine for me to eat a formerly-free-range-local chicken killed as humanely as possible, because I’m having someone else do the dirty work because of time. I don’t have time or space to raise and kill my own chickens (or hogs, or cows – the condo association really frowns on cows).
My kids are too young for such questions, but it came up with two of my nieces. The older (full disclosure: my favorite) was briefly dismayed that the venison she was eating had once been Bambi, but came to a rational decision and continued eating. The younger thought and still avers to believe that lions are cruel for eating gazelles.
I would tell the kid that livestock and pets are two different things.
This old sign by my house comes close…
You have no choice for “farm kid here”. Both my boys raised & butchered rabbits, cows, & chickens. One also raised hogs, the other raised turkeys. These also were butchered on the farm. I Hunt, & trapping is also practiced by my relatives that live close by. They have both done both.
We never had a need for “The Talk” on where the meat that we eat came from.
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.
Well, you’re a barrel of laughs. In my experience, depending on their age, kids tend to like journeys to the country to see new things, and it’s easier and more educational to show than to just tell. Making a day of it sounds like fun to me.
I don’t remember how we told the kids. But I often buy identifiable the pieces of an animal, like a whole chicken, so I think it was probably obvious. We’ve taken the children to farms and discussed buying more humanely reared meat (something I am happy I can afford to do) and we have vegetarian friends. So we certainly discussed some of the ethical aspects. My daughter chose to stop eating pork. My son eats all types of meat.
Yeah, who cares where things come from or what they’re made of? You buy stuff at the store, throw away what you don’t want. All there is to it!
I must agree with both of Manda JO’s posts on this thread. From what has been described, the child in question seems to be at the point of understanding that is comfortable right now.
Maastricht, you ask that this not be about the morals/ethics of meat, but about parenting – your question has a large component of the morals-ethical part of parenting itself. Namely the question many conscientious parents have, of how do you convey your values to your children, without either coming across as a command imposition or a passive/aggressive demand, making it a basis for a future rebellion/rejection, or sounding too loose and open-ended giving the impression you do not really care… or indeed whether there are some values a parent should even care to convey to begin with. Families may face this on vegetarian/meat, on religion, sexuality, political alignment, frugality/luxury, career choices. etc. It’s something I do not envy my parenting friends about and at which I can only wish them the best outcome – you seem to be doing rather well so far.
Oh dear.
I wonder what would have happened had you used reverse psychology and told them that you were going to eat meat regardless of what people said.
I wonder if they would have then decided to go vegetarian just to spite their parents?
What do you think about that?
Sure, if it’s going to be fun. Are you taking your kids for the fun of watching cows get slaughtered? Because that’s where meat comes from – cows getting slaughtered. Taking them to “the farm” to watch people feed chickens and pet a cow on the nose isn’t really teaching them where meat comes from.
What does that have to do with watching cows get slaughtered and processed into meat? Do you make special trips to watch everything in your home get fabricated? “Come on kids, it’s time to watch a steel press roll furniture polish cans! What, you don’t care? Sure who cares where things come from anyway?!”
I’m well aware of where meat comes from. I see no value in watching it occur or treating it as anything more special than the rest of the stuff in my house.
I haven’t covered a lot of things yet, but I do believe in knowing the meaning and impact of our choices, versus complacent ignorance. Personal trips may not always be practical, but there are other ways to learn.
You eat it. You take it into your body and make it part of you. That sure seems like something worth caring very particularly about, to me.
Sure, that means you make intelligent choices about what food you buy or who you buy it from, same as you don’t buy pills made by some guy in his basement (I hope). I can decide to buy a specific type or brand of chicken without going down to the poultry farm with my kids and watching it get slaughtered and defeathered. Same as I can make choices about everything else in my household without making some special trip out of watching it get produced.
Well, that’s pretty much what I was saying before. No reason to treat meat as something special that it needs a “personal trip” to see it happen. Other ways to learn about stuff besides watching a bolt gun blow a hole through a cow’s brain. And if you’re not willing to show your kid THAT then you’re just taking a trip to the barnyard petting zoo. Which is lots of fun but let’s not pretend it’s about “learning about our food”.
So what you’re saying is, you’ve never actually been to a farm before.
That’s a pretty silly interpretation. It’s also not what I said. You should probably just clearly state what YOU’RE saying since you’re apparently having trouble understanding what I’m saying. Be easier that way.
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.
There is a lot to learn from a farm visit, and where meat comes from need only be a small part of it. As I said, there’s no need to be grisly about it, just be frank and make it educational and entertaining.
Disclaimer: the farms I’m familiar with may not be much like what you typically get in America