There's a discussion going on at another blog I follow about the ethics of posting a photo of an animal's hooves after it's been slaughtered, as part of a discussion on local meat. Eating meat is, of course, the larger issue, and what's causing the controversy. Being carnivore is something I still wrestle with. I went many years being a vegetarian, but have eventually come to the conclusion that the predator/prey cycle is so built into the planet and its own health, as well as the health of our bodies, that it is what is is.
If you look in the Book of Genesis, there are no references to slaughtering or eating of animals in the Garden of Eden. It states that Adam and Eve ate of the fruit of the trees. I take this to mean that in Eden -- the idealistic world -- everything Man needed came from the fruits of the trees.
But as the saying goes, we live in a "fallen" world, and so the uncomfortable process of animal slaughter is part of our human history.
The fact is that if everyone ate vegan, the planet's ecosystem would be ruined due to over-tillage. Soy and grains are especially hard on soil and land. The best and most natural fertilizer for vegetarian crops is animal manure, which requires keeping animals in one place in order to take advantage of it. And if you keep animals, they are going to reproduce. Cows do not produce milk without giving birth first...chickens must reproduce in order to make more hens, and some roosters will be part of any clutch of chicks. So even if you only drink milk and eat eggs, you still are left with the issue of what to do with the superfluous male offspring -- the bull calf and the young rooster, as they will not produce neither eggs nor milk for you, and you don't need more than one of each on any rural block. Nature is overly repetitious with males, and at some point culling them seems an inevitability, in any community or on any farm.
Which brings me to the blog I was reading. "Today I get to watch a cow die," was stated in the post, and later on, there was a graphic image of severed cow's hooves posted. Was it too sensationalistic? I say yes. Some of what seems to be going on these days is that people are so excited to be pasturing and slaughtering their own livestock that they seem to actually believe the animal is OK with being a part of the whole, wonderful process. "I get to watch a cow die" sounded like, "I get to see Justin Beiber in concert." Whaaat? Why all the excitement and joy?
Make no mistake about it: When any mammal dies, that is not what it would choose, if it were given the choice. So when people make comments like, "I think Annie The Pig would be proud to see everyone enjoying her meat so much at our Harvest Party," that is complete and utter bullshit. Annie would have voted to not be killed, if given the choice, the same as you or I would. (And don't even get me started on why in the world we gave Annie a name in the first place, like she was a household pet.) Not that there's any kind of higher level thinking going on with the average farm animal, but there is the will and the desire to live, which is ingrained in every animal's brain stem, us included. Saying the animals is "proud" to be in your freezer is just more anthropomorphic nonsense from an already too-anthropomorphic generation.
If we are going to cull, butcher, slaughter animals (you pick the term) lets be honest about what it is. We're not "harvesting" them like we would a carrot or ear of corn. We're ending the life of something that has a brain, a heart, two eyes and likes to lay in the sun and enjoy its morning breakfast. Culling animals is, in my opinion, necessary to the balance of life of our planet. Slaughter is uncomfortable and sad. It's not a cause for cheering (unless you're currently starving) or overly sappy and sentimental calls of how "sacred" the whole thing is. It's bloody and its primitive. And it's magical thinking that the animal somehow understands this is all a part of life and is OK with being shot and having its throat slit to bleed it out.
It's part of living in a fallen world. No one loves a good pasture-raised steak more than me, but I don't fool myself for a minute that it came to be either willingly or painlessly on the part of the cow, once alive, and now dead and in my freezer.
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