What is interesting to think about is that in a near future, as future generations come to be and less and less kids are exposed to the process of butchering animals, it may be that our society will slowly change toward becoming totally vegetarian. I think we can validate that by looking at how many city folks vs farm folks are vegetarians…
Plus, it’s getting dead easy to become vegetarian as meat-substitutes become better (I know you people don’t like tofu right now, but wait till food engineering really kicks in!)
On a side note, do you people think it would be technologically plausible to “grow meat” in large nutrient pool like they do for skin now? I think it would be more productive and perhaps less icky… Perhaps even better tasting (omnivores tell me that veal is quite good and we know how they do it…).
Great, now I’m all hungry for some venison or some wild turkey. I’m with John Corrado on this one. While I don’t know what my reaction to having a dead deer in front of me for me to make into food, I do know that the results could not possibly be good. My cooking skills run all the way from ramen noodles to macaroni and cheese. My only experience with starting with something still alive consisted of swallowing goldfish whole at a fraternity party one time.
I don’t hunt, being too soft hearted to kill an animal like a deer, a cute squirrel, fluffy bunny and it even bothers me when fishing buddies let their catch slowly suffocate on land or maul them up extracting the hook. I put mine in water or on ice (which quickly kills them), careful extract hooks or cut the line if getting it out is going to butcher the fish I’m going to throw back
However, I have no doubt that if I had to do so, I would kill and eat anything to survive – except cats and dogs. I consider them pets. I have raised chickens and eaten them, with some reluctance. I know how animals are butchered but I prefer not to get to know them first hand and to let someone else do the dirty work.
Once, when I was poor, I supplemented my food by fishing, gathering crabs and went hunting for Quail. I never got any Quail, because the area is so developed, I discovered, that if I missed, I might hit someone down the road. I have helped raise pigs that were later slaughtered by someone else and enjoyed the meat.
I figure in a time of need, I can get used to killing and cleaning food animals. I’ve been hungry enough to cut mold off of old bread, toast and eat it, ate buggy rice, buggy flour and buggy macaroni – picking out the larger bugs when they floated to the surface. I’ve even gone fishing, caught piles of hand sized fish and ate them when most would have thrown them back.
Been there, done that, and it sure is a lot of work getting the bloodstains put of your clothes.
I have eaten quite the wide variety of wild meat; moose, elk, deer, beaver, bear, beaver, rabbit, snake, and all manner of fish and fowl. They are all tasty animals to me.
If I was really hungry I could probably chow down on anything… now my dogs are looking at me funny…
I would have no problem raising and eating kosher animals. Besides the other restriction, inflicting pain on an animal (branding, cattle prods) makes it unkosher. So I’d have a herd of pampered cattle. The throat must be slit in a single stroke with a flawlessly sharp knife. Having once slit my finger open while carving a sculpture, I know from experience that a truly sharp knife is painless. I assumed that I’d only scratched the outer layer of dead skin until the blood started to gush.
So, no eating dogs, cats, monkeys or other unkosher species. No hunting. Tame birds are kosher. Wild birds are not. The proper slaughtering of birds also calls for a sharp knife not a shotgun
To any vegeterians I ask DO YOU REALISE THAT YOU ARE KILLING LIVE ORGANISMS? Potatos (potatoes?) are alive and viable until cooked. This applies to many other plants. Countless yeasts are killed in baking and brewing. The Jainists mentioned above have a very strict diet of plants that are already dead. Give up meat if you want, but every time you bake a cake or a potato you kill a living thing