I am by no means a 100% vegetarian or a vegan, but what bothers me the most about people who eat meat, are the ones who say things like:
“YUCK! I can’t stand seeing that animal killed! “
…or my perennial favourite…
“That’s gross! You can see its head and its eyes!”
[said by many an ignorant child AND ADULT at a fish market or in Chinatown]
I was out for dinner about a year ago at a steakhouse, and we all ordered a steak each.
A guy at the table recounted how he wanted to have lobster one night because he loved it so much, went to the store and tried to buy a few, but ultimately when he got home, he couldn’t bear to kill them to eat them.
…then he ordered a huge 32 ounce steak and prepared to dig in with gusto.
O_o
So if it comes prepared and totally cut up beyond a recognizable animal before you eat it, it’s okay?
Another girl at the table said that she couldn’t imagine animals being killed, and I stared at her in disbelief that she would say such a thing.
I told her in a blunt but not too unkindly way:
“Your steak came from a part of a cow that was killed so you could eat it.
If you can’t imagine an animal being killed to be eaten, you have no business eating your steak.”
She was shocked and went a bit silent, but .. hey, I’m not a sugar coater, but if it helps, I didn’t go into detail before the steaks arrived, although she didn’t seem to enjoy it as much as she did ordering it, I’ll tell you that much.
Even when animals are butchered, I want them to be butchered so that it’s a fast, and efficient kill by a skilled butcher, and they don’t feel any pain or are tortured on their way to death.
This culture of ours in North America that tries to de-sensitize what we’re eating by putting it into styrofoam packages and neatly packaged, lifeless, bloodless packs of meat, is really hypocritical.
Frankly, if you can’t imagine a head, a body, legs, and a life to the meat that you’re eating, you shouldn’t be damn well eating it.
I am a bona fide occasional meat eater. Like I said, I’m not a vegetarian or a vegan 100% of the time, but it’s now 80% – 90% of my diet. I do eat meat on occasion.
No, I don’t kill my own animals, and I don’t butcher them, but I KNOW where my food comes from.
For instance I grew up eating fish with its head and tail on, and when I heard this woman say to a friend:
“I went on a trip and had fish, but they served it to me whole, with its eyes and everything!!
I had to ask the chef to bring out a towel or something to cover its face and the tail so I could eat the fish.”
…I get really annoyed.
(Yes I eavesdrop a lot. I look like I am not listening, but I AM because I am nosy.)
It’s ridiculous and hypocritical to feel outraged at a death of an animal when you yourself are munching on a huge piece of meat that came from an animal.
It is just as hypocritical for us to feel bad for those who died in Bangladesh being crammed together in a sweatshop that was crumbling due to bad building maintenance, and then go out to shop at Joe Fresh (that used that factory), or H&M where they also manufacture a lot of items in that country.
(As a side note, here’s some refreshing news about Disney leaving those countries with little to no work standards, and quietly voting with their business.)
I didn’t grow up on a farm by any means, but I have enough knowledge and respect to understand where my food comes from.
I wouldn’t be adverse to living on a farm and learning how it’s done to raise a calf to a cow and then to watch it (or learn how) it is butchered in the same way that I would not shy away from learning from someone how to garden and grow vegetables.
It’s the same thing to me.
This is where food comes from, and if you can’t handle the idea of killing animals to eat them, or hunting, you should consider becoming a vegetarian.
Me, I’m sticking to eating meat, poultry and fish on occasion, but at least I am at peace and I know what I’m eating.
I’m also starting to see that meat-eating people who have pets and are horrified when animals are abused (cats, dogs, and other “cute” animals), are also hypocritical.
They don’t take into account that the pork chop that they’re eating came from a pig that was crammed into a huge industrial room with other pigs without any space to move or act like animals before being slaughtered and sold.
Too harsh for you?
Read this.
Almost all industrial meat comes from animals that are abused on a daily basis for our consumption.
Why is your dog or cat exempt from such abuse but the pig from which your pork chop came from, is not?
This is why I buy from small farms where I know how the animals are raised, and that they live an actual life of a happy animal before they’re killed for my consumption.
(Not that I eat much meat to begin with these days, but… it’s something to I always consider when I buy meat.)
