I grew up on a farm with many relatives who had grown up doing literally all of their own slaughtering. Not a single one of them was a heartless person (well, my grandmother maybe) and not a single one of them had the slightest qualms eating meat. It’s not like these are cute little Pug puppies or mewling kittens, they’re farm and game animals- it’s what you do.
Oh.
You thought I was kidding?
Years ago…as a wee lad…searching the internet…I found a site…containing unimaginable horrors…which seared my very soul…leaving me the warped and twisted person I am today.
Santa. Making Sausage. Outa rabbits. And uppity reindeer. And elves who could no longer pull their weight.
Shudder…
Rabbits are prey animals. Their only purpose is to be eaten by smarter, stronger animals. There was a time when little kids would have grown up with animals being quickly killed for food; now there is a vast gap between what we eat and where it comes from, a gigantic gap that is engendering a mentality of overprocessing, prepackaging, mass production, and generally soulless food. I am very much a disciple of Anthony Bourdain when it comes to food - the closer you are to the source of the food, the better it tastes. The best meal I ever ate in my life was when we camped out one night on a friend’s bison farm and ate chunks of bison roasted on sharpened sticks right over the fire.
Well the only animals that most people have around to eat are other people…well, and pigeons. But mostly people.
Soylent Green!
Whoda thunk it? I think I’m going to fall down and start hyperventilating from lack of shock that this took place in Germany of all places!
Rabbit has been a traditional dish in Germany since time immemorial (Hassenpfeffer.) And pretty much everywhere else in the world where rabbits can be caught. Primary sources from Medieval England are full of references to cuny, cunny, cunie, conie, cony, and coney hunting (in other words, rabbit.) Rabbits are stupid and sexually-irresponsible, amoral animals who would dominate the entire globe with their endless breeding if they were not eaten up, and like fast.
My mother always told me about how when she was little, she’d get little peeps for Easter each year. They’d keep them for a couple of weeks and then when they’d got too big, they’d give them to my great-grandparents-who would raise them for slaughter. And my mom probably ate a few for Sunday dinner.
Freudian Slit said:
Serious answer. Not saying I advocate it, merely explaining it.
Killing animals involves killing. It involves inflicting pain and ending life. From a moral perspective, it is important to understand what it means to have meat for dinner. Not just in a bookish knowledge, but a visceral feel, a witness of an animal going from living to death to dinner.
Think about this - cruelty to animals is a first step on the ladder to being a serial killer. Not to say that everyone that ever smushed a frog became David Berkowitz, but most who go on to kill and mutilate people start out experimenting on animals.
I can state I have taken chicken from live bird to dinner - more than once. It can be a bit of a shock for a city kid.
Knowing that sewage treatment is filthy, or how television signals are transmitted through the air, or how much hard work goes into harvesting wheat is not the same. It does not involve the same moral equivalent.
Well, you shitting doesn’t generally involve killing a mammal. (Well, not directly, anyway.)
Not necessarily saying this should happen, but I think it’s a reasonable idea.
That was kind of my thought. I know full well my meat comes from animals (I used to help my father skin grouse and rabbits) but that doesn’t mean I want to watch you kill them. A better idea might be to start with a dead but whole animal and go through the butchering process.
I don’t understand how this is supposed to be relevant. Are you saying you think there’s something morally wrong with killing animals for food? If there’s nothing morally wrong with it, then the badness of it (I presume) is purely aesthetic. But the badness of working (the wrong job) at the sewage plant is purely aesthetic as well. The two cases are relevantly analogous.
My post 32 is in response to you as well.