It's that time of the year again, where walking in the woods isn't safe unless both you and your dogs wear flashing bright fluorescent vests with bells on... cuz you just might get mistaken for a juicy buck and whack! Get a bullet in the head.
Gawd, I hate hunting season.
Not only for the sight of poor bloodied carcasses of once-noble deer roped to the roof of cars, but for the hyprocrisy it shelters.
If you're a meat eater and you loathe hunting, you're a hypocrite.
*points finger at self*
Our meat industry today tries its darndest to erase all ties from the slab of flesh on your plate to the living, breathing, feeling creature that body part once belonged to. Everything is sanitized, sterilized, chopped up and trimmed and neatly packaged for your pleasure - a long cry from how it used to be. And oh, the waste and destruction that is tied to the price tag!
You have to be lucky to find a butcher today who still displays whole dripping animals hanging from a hook (although Chinatowns tend to be more ritualistic and don't mind the mess so much). Nobody wants to look into the eyes of the beast while picking out a pork chop, thank you very much.
I think there'd be alot less waste if everyone had to slaughter, dismember and fillet the animals they consume. Blood goes to make blood pudding, brains make headcheese, innards make pies, fat makes soap, fur and skin make coats and boots, heads make stews, bones make soup and hooves make chew treats for the dogs.
You'd give alot more care to what the animal eats and how it lives and dies, too... an all-around better deal for everyone, don't you think?
No more messy mass slaughtering 24/7. No more antibiotics, steroids, diseases caused by overcrowding, filth, stress and feeding animals back to themselves. No more genetically mutated animals crammed in cages, shitting on top of each other for months before they are boiled alive. No more using only 30% of the animal, wasting the rest.
And list goes on.
So. Although I hate hunting, if the hunters kill sparingly and humanely, and use every bit of the animal with grace and dignity... hats off to them, actually.
/end of I Never Thought I'd Say That post/
14 comments:
Not a fan of hunting. I like shooting, but hunting is an issue for me for some reason... I don't like killing animals that weren't herded and made for slaughter. To be fair, it's also because I don't know how to use all the animal bits either. So it would be pointless for me.
If you're a meat eater and you loathe hunting, you're a hypocrite.
I'm not against hunting, per se. What I am against is people sitting on their asses hundreds of meters away with a scope shooting the fittest of the wild beasts. That's not right.
I always told the ex's family (of hunters), if they could chase a moose down with a spear, by all means, go for it.
But to sit on your ass in the woods for 12 hours waiting for one to walk by where it has no chance of seeing you or hearing you, and therefore has no chance of survival, regardless of its fitness and its personal resources, to me, is not ethical.
And no, factory farming is not ethical either.
If you need to hunt to eat, then please, do so, if you don't, then go buy it in a butcher like the rest of us.
If I thought long and hard about where my meat (and this includes fish) came from, I would be a veggie. Period.
My parents have an abbatoir down the street from them in rural Ontario, my dad saw a truckload of cattle going there when he was walking the dog one day. One of the cows looked him in the face and he didn't eat meat for about 2 months.
It better not look like an animal or I can't eat it.
They say if slaughterhouses had glass walls, we would all turn vegetarians pretty darn quick... which was a side-point of this post, really ;-)
tried veggieism once.
Became severley anemic.
I am a meat eater. Period paragraph. Boo!
Becoming wholely veggie-loving is something I toy with a lot.
Hunting, for the sake of feeding the family, is huge in my neck of the woods. There are people who swear by shooting one or two elk or deer and using all the parts and feeding their family for a year.
I fall squarely in the camp where if I was forced to kill/find my own food I would die. I just can't stomach the thought of killing something, and I would definitely accidentally eat something poisonous.
I think if you are going to eat the animal and use it wisely then hunt away, just as I don't really have a problem with wearing fur as long as it was dispatched humanely. Rare that I know.
I am not going to stop eating meat any time soon, but I choose my supplier according to how well they look after the creatures in their care...and I don't think I would have a problem killing something myself if my kids were hungry either.
Thought provoking stuff TD!
Yeah, not a big fan of hunting or guns. Waste or not, I am glad I didnt grow up in Little House on the Prairie days or I'd been the first vegetarian.
Myself, nothing wrong with eating meat... it's just today's farming practices that make me ill :-(
Katie, I think hunting down a deer to feed your family for a few months is way better than contributing to the deaths of X number of cows, calves, pigs, chickens etc... cuz they suffer a short lifetime of hell before dying for our dinner plates. At least the deer have a big yard and free will before becoming steaks...
Sian, I look forward to the day I can choose where I buy my meat from. In the city... it's all garbage, pretty much.
Daring, you'd have looked cute in a pinafore dress! *grin*
Every day there is a guy selling little bunnies, gerbils and turtles on my sidewalk...for food, not pets. The Chinese like their meat fresh, they expect to buy it and have it killed right in front of them to ensure freshness. I just want to start a bunny rescue in my apartment. :)
P.S. this is also how we will all die from bird flu once it figures out how to transmit from human to human. ;)
Is there less food waste in China though? From what you see and hear, I mean!
(poor bunnies)
*myself protects her 2 turtles and 2 hammies from the Chinese*
I heart this blog entry
Hey fellow keeter-lover, good to see you finally! How've you been? :-)
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