Only veggies for me from now on.

[vernon]

I often wonder how many people would continue to eat meat if they had to catch it, kill it and butcher it themselves.

Done it with rabbits chickens and fish. Not a problem. In my childhood the cellar of my family home was used as an abattoir for goats - goat meat being a preferred meat for the Windrush generation of immigrants and it was unavailable from butchers. Talking to some of collgues of West Indian lineage I discovered that it wasn't such a rare activity within the West Indian community.

 

[ArDee]

Utter bollocks.

Interesting view point.

But, if everybody switched to being vegetarian - why would any farmer keep breeds of cattle that are breed for beef or pigs (with the exception of the few used for truffle hunting) or the greater majority of chickens?

What would happen to the millions of beef cattle, pigs and chickens that there are around on farms at present. If there was no economic value to keeping them, farmers wouldn't they'd get them destroyed. And if there was no economic value to continued breeding, nobody would continue to breed them.

The species of beef cattle would die off or at best a few dozen would become exhibits in "Old and Rear Breed" farms.

 

[Kookas]

I often wonder how many people would continue to eat meat if they had to catch it, kill it and butcher it themselves.

This sort of argument is irrelevant, though. It's like saying we shouldn't care for anything but cats and dogs, because only they are cute. We aren't brought up to butcher our own food, but if we were, then actually, we would be fine with it and it would be the normal thing to do.

 

[Ghost Donkey]

I often wonder how many people would continue to eat meat if they had to catch it, kill it and butcher it themselves.

I've "butchered" my own rabbit and pigeon before (shot by someone else) and regularly bought whole fish in the past. Not been fishing since I was a kid kind but I would do it. I think people wouldn't take it for granted as much but most would do it if they had to or just not eat meat of course.

 

[Lee_M]

I often wonder how many people would continue to eat meat if they had to catch it, kill it and butcher it themselves.

did it as a kid, pigeons, rabbits etc no problem
fish as and when

even went to the abbatoir once to pick up some eyes for a biology experiment. Got given a calves head to do it ourselves (I think teh guy was taking the piss out of school kids!)

I would prefer in fact to be responsible for it myself and cut out the distasteful shipping and abbatoir trade but that's not feasible in western society.

having said that I saw a clip on tv late last year of an eastern european family (out in somewhere like uzbekistan) killing a pig, and if you think abbatoirs are barbaric, you should see how they did it - that image stayed with me for weeks

 

[Licramite]

yea I saw that. - thats the reality of it. - pork doesn't come on plastic trays in the real world.
They wasted far less than our factory process waste.
besides , it was only a pig - It could have been a tourist !

 

[mickle]

This sort of argument is irrelevant, though. It's like saying we shouldn't care for anything but cats and dogs, because only they are cute. We aren't brought up to butcher our own food, but if we were, then actually, we would be fine with it and it would be the normal thing to do.

Yeah, true. I could just as well have asked; 'I often wonder how many people would live in flats if they had to design and build them themselves'. The point I was trying to make was that it's become extremely easy to buy nicely packaged, sanitized meat products, but at the cost of being so far removed from the actual reality of it having once been a piece of a living breathing animal that people take it for granted. The meat industry has done this deliberately - a process which has been growing the fifties - and it allows us to consume vast quantities of dead animal without ever really taking responsibility for the death of an animal. This ever increasing gap between what we push into our faces and the faces of the animals themselves is the root cause of the horse meat scandal, the Bovine Spongiformencapaloyblah scandal, the Brazillian-children-growing-breasts scandal et al.

 

[Melonfish]

in all seriousness if your going veggie for ethics reasons thats kewl, but i urge you to go organic as well.

spraying pesticides on our food. should be safe to eat, yet they have to gear up like that? scary.

 

[Davidc]

I often wonder how many people would continue to eat meat if they had to catch it, kill it and butcher it themselves.

Not a problem. Rabbits, pheasants, deer, fish, chickens, and quite happy with some shellfish and fish raw, and some shellfish live. I've also been in an abattoir (working but not on the abattoir staff), which was a bit smelly but otherwise didn't put me off.

I have no issue with vegetarians, it's a lifestyle choice and as such I respect it. I see no merit in the choice, any more than there's merit in wearing one colour clothing rather than another. I get irritated if anyone tries to persuade me that there's any reason I shouldn't eat meat. That's my lifestyle choice.

I eat some meat-free dishes, and use recipes from vegetarian cookbooks. That's to do with them being enjoyable food and not their lack of meat.

What I certainly accept is that most people eat too much meat, far more than our bodies are adapted to or than the world can sustain.

 

[Fnaar]

Brazillian-children-growing-breasts

Do not google this at work, folks

 

[Speicher]

The only things with legs that I don't eat are tables and chairs.

@vernon

Have you tried vege tables and leg umes?

Yes, my coat is the blue one.

 

[vernon]

@vernon

Have you tried vege tables and leg umes?

Yes, my coat is the blue one.

I've checked with my limb ic system and it says "sometimes".