I’ve had it with meat eaters who go all squirmy and judgemental when they see or hear about animals being slaughtered. So often, I have had to put up with people saying ‘No, I don’t want to hear it. \/ No, I don’t want to see it. \/ I don’t need to hear about where my food comes from. \/ Eeeewwww…that’s so cruel!’ when talk evolves round how animals are being slaughtered for human consumption. It really pisses me off big time.
\nI’m sorry, but choosing not to see or hear about it is just pure denial. And accusing the person who kills the animal for your consumption of cruelty just reeks of total hypocrisy. In choosing to eat the animal, you are no less guilty of killing the animal than the person who wielded the knife. So spare me all that moral high ground and quit pontificating.
\nI can accept such opinions or judgement only if you’re a vegetarian or vegan – a pescetarian doesn’t even cut it. Granted, pescetarians do reduce their carbon footprint in not eating red meat and poultry, but still, who is to say that fish and other sea creatures don’t feel pain when they are killed? In fact I’ve read in books that they do – and I believe so. If you are so humane, you should be going vegetarian or vegan. Otherwise, hold your judgement as you really have no cause to pontificate.
\nThen you have the people who squirm and act all high and mighty about not eating innards like cow’s tongue, tripe, kidney, blood etc. OK, fine, you don’t eat them, but don’t go judging people who do, thinking that we are barbarians in eating these things. Really, people who do not scoff at eating innards are those who are actually respecting the animals who have died to give nourishment to their body.
\nI’m not arguing that it is not cruel to kill animals. Rather, I accept the fact that this is how it is if I choose to eat meat. I can only hope that the kill was done in as swift and as painless a way as possible for the animal. And so, out of respect for the animal who had died for me, I make sure I don’t waste food and enjoy the pleasure that the animal gives me in its death.
\nWhen I was Wwoofing at an Italian farm in Nov 2007, I had seen a pig being slaughtered in front of my eyes. I didn’t squirm away from it – in fact I was busy taking photos of the whole process. It was the first time I had seen how it was all done and after that I knew how my food came about. The Italians, like the Chinese, don’t waste any part of the pig. They eat the innards, they cook the blood, they use the bones to make a lip-smackingly good pasta sauce, they roast the head, they use the flesh to make different kinds of salami. That’s what respecting the animal is about.
\nRecently I had a conversation with a friend who had raised the hypothetical question of whether I would eat human placenta. For him, it was an absolute no-no as he equated it to cannibalism. I however, begged to differ. While I wouldn’t go out of my way to search for a placenta to eat, if someone presented me with cooked placenta and told me to try it, I would. I mean, is it not less cruel to eat placenta than it is to eat meat or seafood? Placenta is something gotten out of new life and not something you get from death. I didn’t have to kill anyone to have it so how does that make that cannibalism? Needless to say, my friend thought me gross and inhumane and he’s one of those people who take some imaginary moral high ground which doesn’t exist for him – not when he waxes lyrical about roasted pork, beef steak, steamed fish and the like.
\nIt’s sad that many people distance themselves from their food’s origins. They choose only to see meat cut up in pieces, wrapped up in plastic on supermarket shelves and freezers. They choose only to see that succulent beef steak lying on the plate but not to see how the cow was probably teary-eyed when it was led to the abattoir. As if in blocking these images out, it absolves them of the killing. Well, I’m sorry, it doesn’t. That such people go around accusing others of being cruel is, I repeat, hypocritical.
\nSo please, if you eat meat and choose to act all squirmy and judgemental as described, please don’t do so in front of me. I don’t want to talk to you.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I’ve had it with meat eaters who go all squirmy and judgemental when they see or hear about animals being slaughtered. So often, I have had to put up with people saying ‘No, I don’t want to hear it. \/ … Continue reading