Meat
I've been thinking about meat.
I've been a vegetarian for nigh on 25 years - the kind that doesn't eat things with a face. The only conscious and intentional 'lapse' (wrong word) was when I decided to eat a fish as a magical act to bond me to a place in Wales that ran close to the coast - solidarity with the notion of fishing community - when I became blessed with a caravan there and wanted to mark the occasion.
If you don't understand magical thinking you won't get this at all. Never mind...
But anyway... I watched something called 'Kill It, Cook It, Eat It' on the telly the other day. I watched it because perhaps I wanted to test my vegetarianism. I wanted to reacquaint myself with why I had decided on this path. The programme itself had some redeeming qualities, of course. It was predicated on the idea that our society eats meat without having any personal experience of the harsh realities of what that means. I've always (wryly) said that a visit to an abattoir should be an essential part of the National Curriculum, and maybe this programme was trying in some small way to redress the balance?
Anyhow. I watched the loving care with which the eight week old (as I understood it) piglets had been raised. Organic. Able to snuffle around a field and play and bond with their siblings. And I watched them as they were penned up in the abattoire-cum-studio, with its glass walls for the programme's human participants to watch their demise. And I listened to the specialist vet they had (to reassure us of the stringent protocols they were about to follow for the welfare of the piglets) explaining that they looked healthy and disease-free, particularly because they were exibiting such inquisitiveness: sniffing at the bars on their pen; interested in everything around them in this new exciting environment...
And then I watched them brought singly into the killing area - so they would not be disturbed by the sight of their fellows being stunned and stuck with a blade. And the way the stunned and stuck bodies jerked around on their hooks (just the nervous system taking over the insensible body we were reassured). And then the bodies were thrown into boiling water to slough off the bristles and leave the meat smooth and young and succulent...
And I watched as far as some of the witnesses (too few, I have to say) confessed their distress at what they'd seen, and as the butchers sharpened their blades and geared up for turning the carcasses into scrumptious meals...
And I switched off.
There was something wrong in what I'd seen. Its internal logic didn't pursuade me in any way that my vegetarian stance had been romantic or fay or ridiculous. It only reinforced my conviction that there was really no real reason for exploiting animals in this way. We could choose not to do this and it wouldn't hurt us in any way.
Then a few days later I watched a programme about Tribewanted.com (the ethics of which doesn't really concern us here, though at this point I'd have to say I didn't really see anything terribly awful about it and quite enjoyed the programme!) wherein a ceremony was held on the island of Vorovoro where the indigenous community celebrated the start of the new community's building programme (go follow the link to find out what I'm talking about!)... And they killed and ate a pig.
And I was LESS offended. There were no white coats and surgical gloves. No vets reassuring that everything was ethical and the pig didn't suffer. And, yes, the pig squealed horribly as it was stuck, held down by the participants, no electrical gear to knock it out and leave it jerking around on a hook. But everyone there was a witness, a participant. This wasn't anonymous slaughter of innocents to provide sophisticated westerners with plates of sucking piglet. This was everyone knowing exactly what was entailed and taking personal responsibility for it. And there was no factory farming attrocity happening behind the scenes.
The result was entirely more honourable. And it reminded me why I'd engaged upon this course all those years ago. The way we do it here in our comfortable, developed, civilised society is an abomination. If you can't kill it yourself, if you are quite comfortable and happy that you know nothing about the process that delivers meat to your plate, you have no right to partake of it. I can't, and I won't. I might hunt and kill if I were shipwrecked somewhere and I had to kill to eat; I think there's no shame in that. The problem is that there is no NEED to eat meat in our society. And there is certainly no ethical justification to excuse a public appetite for younger and younger meat to be provided on the basis of taste alone (these pigs were only something like eight weeks old, remember). Are we not crossing from ignorance into decadence here?
The fish? Maybe I'm as sick as the rest, but I think there's a difference. Mammals are clearly more self aware, capable of affection and making relationships, even across the species divide. I don't eat fish as a matter of course, and I'm aware there maybe holes in my reasoning, here. But I know that eating meat is - well, it just doesn't work. There's something really wrong about it.
Really wrong.
I've been a vegetarian for nigh on 25 years - the kind that doesn't eat things with a face. The only conscious and intentional 'lapse' (wrong word) was when I decided to eat a fish as a magical act to bond me to a place in Wales that ran close to the coast - solidarity with the notion of fishing community - when I became blessed with a caravan there and wanted to mark the occasion.
If you don't understand magical thinking you won't get this at all. Never mind...
But anyway... I watched something called 'Kill It, Cook It, Eat It' on the telly the other day. I watched it because perhaps I wanted to test my vegetarianism. I wanted to reacquaint myself with why I had decided on this path. The programme itself had some redeeming qualities, of course. It was predicated on the idea that our society eats meat without having any personal experience of the harsh realities of what that means. I've always (wryly) said that a visit to an abattoir should be an essential part of the National Curriculum, and maybe this programme was trying in some small way to redress the balance?
Anyhow. I watched the loving care with which the eight week old (as I understood it) piglets had been raised. Organic. Able to snuffle around a field and play and bond with their siblings. And I watched them as they were penned up in the abattoire-cum-studio, with its glass walls for the programme's human participants to watch their demise. And I listened to the specialist vet they had (to reassure us of the stringent protocols they were about to follow for the welfare of the piglets) explaining that they looked healthy and disease-free, particularly because they were exibiting such inquisitiveness: sniffing at the bars on their pen; interested in everything around them in this new exciting environment...
And then I watched them brought singly into the killing area - so they would not be disturbed by the sight of their fellows being stunned and stuck with a blade. And the way the stunned and stuck bodies jerked around on their hooks (just the nervous system taking over the insensible body we were reassured). And then the bodies were thrown into boiling water to slough off the bristles and leave the meat smooth and young and succulent...
And I watched as far as some of the witnesses (too few, I have to say) confessed their distress at what they'd seen, and as the butchers sharpened their blades and geared up for turning the carcasses into scrumptious meals...
And I switched off.
There was something wrong in what I'd seen. Its internal logic didn't pursuade me in any way that my vegetarian stance had been romantic or fay or ridiculous. It only reinforced my conviction that there was really no real reason for exploiting animals in this way. We could choose not to do this and it wouldn't hurt us in any way.
Then a few days later I watched a programme about Tribewanted.com (the ethics of which doesn't really concern us here, though at this point I'd have to say I didn't really see anything terribly awful about it and quite enjoyed the programme!) wherein a ceremony was held on the island of Vorovoro where the indigenous community celebrated the start of the new community's building programme (go follow the link to find out what I'm talking about!)... And they killed and ate a pig.
And I was LESS offended. There were no white coats and surgical gloves. No vets reassuring that everything was ethical and the pig didn't suffer. And, yes, the pig squealed horribly as it was stuck, held down by the participants, no electrical gear to knock it out and leave it jerking around on a hook. But everyone there was a witness, a participant. This wasn't anonymous slaughter of innocents to provide sophisticated westerners with plates of sucking piglet. This was everyone knowing exactly what was entailed and taking personal responsibility for it. And there was no factory farming attrocity happening behind the scenes.
The result was entirely more honourable. And it reminded me why I'd engaged upon this course all those years ago. The way we do it here in our comfortable, developed, civilised society is an abomination. If you can't kill it yourself, if you are quite comfortable and happy that you know nothing about the process that delivers meat to your plate, you have no right to partake of it. I can't, and I won't. I might hunt and kill if I were shipwrecked somewhere and I had to kill to eat; I think there's no shame in that. The problem is that there is no NEED to eat meat in our society. And there is certainly no ethical justification to excuse a public appetite for younger and younger meat to be provided on the basis of taste alone (these pigs were only something like eight weeks old, remember). Are we not crossing from ignorance into decadence here?
The fish? Maybe I'm as sick as the rest, but I think there's a difference. Mammals are clearly more self aware, capable of affection and making relationships, even across the species divide. I don't eat fish as a matter of course, and I'm aware there maybe holes in my reasoning, here. But I know that eating meat is - well, it just doesn't work. There's something really wrong about it.
Really wrong.