It produces unhealthy meat with no flavor. It teaches us to accept incredibly inhumane practices as long as they are kept out of our sight and produce huge corporate profits. It seperates us even further from the production of our food.
It destroyed family farming.
Pause and consider this. I live in Smithfield, Virginia--SMITHFIELD VIRGINIA--yet nearly none of my young riders have ever touched a hog before coming to the horse lot and many have never seen a living hog.
I have heard it suggested that it does not matter how a hog is going to live if it is just going to be slauhtered any way. How ignorant--how purely ridiculous!
My hogs provide meat--they also teach. They teach my riders about birth, life, death, and the cycle of existence. Many of my little riders assist in the slaughtering of the hogs when it is time to do so. Cute, sweet, kind hearted, animal loving children and teens join in on the work just as cute, sweet, kind hearted, animal loving children and teens have from the time hogs were domesticated. Only a fool would think that these children are being taught cruelty. They are taught the exact opposite.
I despise killing. I dread the slaughter for weeks before it is done. I work very hard to make it a painless ending for the hogs. Winter pigs roam free across my horse lot as they grow. During the spring and summer pigs must be contained to keep them from destroying neighboring fields. The winter pigs have the best life, running and frolicing as little kids do on a playground. Even the summer pigs seem to enjoy playing in their pens.
The killing is done by firing a .22 squarely into the brain from an a few inches away. The hog's muscles cause movement but the hog is obviously not suffering. He is brain dead when the trigger is pulled.
Still, I hate doing it.
I do it because it must be done, because it has been done for thousands of years, and because I have no right to ask another to take to on task, but most of all, I do it so I can make sure that the end is painless.
We lose a great deal when we get so far from the earth that we can eat without thinking about where our food comes from. Or even worse, if we loose our appetite when we do think about where our food comes from. We lose even more when we eat yet refuse to participate in any way in the production of that food.
We lose connection to that which is most real--birth, life, and death. We pick and choose which aspects of each we will endorse and which we pretend do not exist. When we turn away from any of the three we forfeit our chance at gaining wisdom.
I am afraid that it is that aspect of our culture that causes so many adult suburbanites to be so vacuous, frivolous, and permanently immature.
Turning back to the earth will help restore our ability to become wise.
Dirt and blood on the hands fertilize the soul.
2 comments:
Spot on. Where does food come from?
The grocery store.
I find myself putting off the slaughter in many cases...I do not like the kill either. But. Never can one find meat which tastes like meat without this very necessary step in the dance we call life.
Anthony Bourdain mentions in "Kitchen Confidential" The guilt he feels at knowing every time he pick up the phone to D'artagnan or one of the other purveyors his restaurants patronize, he is sentencing some critter to death. Well...yeah, but it's number was up anyhow. Still, a cook, whether a professional two star chef, or grandma who respects the ingredient enough to think about where it comes from is the cook I want making my lunch.
I see in the news where "Meat" is being "Grown" in laboratories...the first wholly artificial hamburger has been sold and consumed.
No Thanks.
I prefer my meat to have lived it's life as well as can be arranged, dispatched humanely, and handled with the respect that is it's due. -Lloyd
Steve, this was a brave post. I applaud the truth and wisdom you have chosen to share.
We home-slaughter for the same reasons you cite. At the top of my personal list of reasons is because this way, I know the animals have been raised in a healthy environment, eating good food and drinking clean water, with plenty of space to roam and forage on natural food.
We don't actually raise the livestock ourselves, but our neighbors do, and I drive by wide rolling green fields populated by these animals every day. Our nation's food laws are controlled by Corporate Food, and these laws make it illegal for my neighbors to butcher their own animals and sell the meat themselves (the nearest legal slaughter facility is hundreds of miles away), but it is legal for us to buy a live animal, bring it home and butcher it for our own use. A bullet to the brain at point-blank range ensures instant death. There is no suffering, not even the suffering of anticipation, because the animal has no reason to feel fear. It is treated with respect and compassion.
Contrast this with a factory-farmed animal raised in severe confinement under conditions so unhealthy and crowded that tails must be docked (to prevent other neurotic cell-mates from chewing them off) or beaks cut off, etc, not to mention antibiotics and other drugs that are CONSTANTLY fed these animals in order to keep them alive under horrific conditions. Then, the suffering as confused and frightened animals are herded through a conveyor-like system to death amid the smell and carnage of all the animals that have proceeded them along that route.
I apologize to those who may feel the above details are too horrid to share in this blog, but the truth of what happens in the factory farm system is so much worse than mere words can describe -- and this is the system that consumers support EVERY TIME, and ANY time, they buy that neat little package of cellophane-wrapped meat at the supermarket.
Not every household has the option of doing their own home butchering, but many could. If you live in a rural-adjacent area where this option is possible, I urge you to consider it. If you hesitate to venture into such a dramatic move on your own, you may find that by asking around, you can find a local mentor who will come to your property to help you, and teach you the fundamentals (know any hunters? know anyone who knows a hunter?)
By buying a local farmer's animal and butchering it yourself, you not only get good healthy locally grown meat, but you are supporting your local farmer by paying more than the whole-sale price offered by factory slaughterhouses (and you will still save alot of money).
If home-butchering is not an option, I hope more people will still make the effort to buy organically raised and humanely slaughtered meat. For example, many city folk patronize Joel Saladin's Polyface farm (as featured in the terrific documentary FOOD, INC). By doing so, we, as consumers, can make a real difference towards ending the cruelty and horror of factory farming.
Deb in CA
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