Plan B Forum

I haven't always been the type of person who will catch a spider in my house and release it outdoors rather than kill it but I have been for quite a while. As I've aged I find that I seem to be overly concerned with the lives of animals and insects that I once thought of nothing more than a nuisance.

I used to catch stray cats and take them to the local SPCA after tiring of seeing the cats regularly passing through my yard or sleeping out there. For many years I had an old lady as a next door neighbor who fed feral cats and many of them made themselves at home in my backyard. Eventually I made connections with a couple local 'cat rescue' people and they would come pick the cats and/or kittens and try to domesticate them and find homes for them.

But that's not what this post is about. I'm talking about how nowadays I think I might care too much about animals for my own good. I was thinking the other day that if I lived out in the country and was forced to live off whatever I could plant and eat or kill and eat, I'd never eat meat again. I could raise chickens for eggs but I could never kill a chicken to eat it - or a hog or a steer or a lamb.

Am I a typical 21st century man? Do I need to turn in my manly guy designation card? I could no longer bring myself to shoot a deer, rabbit, raccoon or squirrel and gulp... eat it. Actually, I never did or could do that.

When I see a package of meat at a grocery store, as in pork chops, I no longer see a potential nice meal. I see a sliced portion of a pig that some large meat company with highly paid executives fed in a crowded pen until the pig got fat enough and eligible to be slaughtered, exsanguinated, hung, sliced and who knows what else before being sold for people to heat and eat.

From what I've heard, pigs are smart and can even make great pets. How could anyone do all the above to a potentially great pet even if it was for a person's own survival?

What's wrong with me? Have I become less of a man? Have I become vegansexual? I eat chicken and fish but those things don't look like a chicken or fish when I eat them. I'm conflicted.

I don't understand how anyone can shoot deer and get all excited about it. A lot of men (and probably women and other designated genders) even pose for a picture next to a deer's (or other animal's) dead carcass to post online and then later they or someone else will most likely butcher the deer and some humans will eventually eat some of it.

I'm feeling confused about my place in life. I think my ability to stay alive depends too much on what's on sale at Safeway.

Just thinking out loud...err.... in print...

Those are the sorts of thoughts that lead to vegetarianism, or even worse ...gulp... veganism. Go order steak tartare NOW, and smear it all over your face!!!

My BIL has a small hobby farm. This fall we will be getting half a pig (we bought and paid for it’s upkeep). But then again my spider policy has been “if you stay out of reach you can live there but if you get to close I will kill you in whatever manner is easily at hand that doesn’t require me to directly touch you with absolutely no regard to how cruel it may be.

I've caught a live turkey at a farm, kept it and fed it for several days and then killed it and ate it but I don't think I could do it again. And I've caught and eaten plenty of fish - 30 minutes from the end of the line to the plate - without compunction. But I know what you mean about seeing bits of dead animal at the supermarket and being turned off. Very often (maybe 4 or 5 times a week) we eat a totally vegetarian meal and I do not feel short changed. I'm pretty sure I could go vegetarian with no problem.

Farm raised here. All of the little bulls I bucket fed eventually became meat in the freezer. I was bothered by it then. I cannot abide buying eggs that are for sale along the roads around here due to collecting and eating eggs that hada hint of chicken poop on them. We butchered hogs. They were killed by a bullet to the head. I am haunted by their horrific squealing when the bullet hit. I still eat bacon but in the back of my mind are the memories. I am fairly certain that I could not go back to that way of life. (It’s also too damned much work.) I once hit a duck on the road on my way to work. I sobbed all the way there. I unfriended a woman I had been friends with since high school because she quite unnecessarily killed a snake and bragged about it online. I absolutely hate trophy hunters. I am sure they come back as cockroaches in their next life.

No Joe I don’t think your increase in compassion makes you any less a man-quite the opposite in fact. Perhaps your destiny lies in becoming a crazy old cat gentleman.

Just because you personally cannot kill, butcher, and process an animal for food is no sign of a loss of manliness.  It has been a very long time since a 'man' had to be adept in all forms of living — providing shelter, providing clothing, providing food ... or in the more modern world, repairing and maintaining the countless hundreds of other items in our everyday lives.

And let's just assume that you COULD kill and butcher a cow or hog, or go out and kill a deer or bear for food.  That's a helluvalot of meat for a single person or even a family, so a large portion of said animal could eventually become waste.  Even the indigenous peoples of the plains, when they hunted buffalo, shared the resulting meat across the whole tribe/village.

That's why we have contractors to build houses, mechanics to fix cars, garment workers to provide us with clothing — and yes, farmers and butchers to provide us with meat — and this has been the case with human existence for millennia.  They have their skills and you have yours, and you have nothing to be ashamed of.

-"BB"-

In our household, as a rule we put spiders and insects back outside, but we do still kill flies, mosquitos, and invasive species like the spotted lantern fly. Other than that, anything that's already living outdoors can keep doing so. We have gone off mammal flesh pretty much entirely due to both the treatment of the animals themselves and the environmental degradation caused by mass production and factory farming, especially of beef and pork. We raise chickens and eat their eggs; I have had to kill several due to disease or injury -- certainly not a task I take any joy from, but sometimes it has to be done as a matter of mercy for the chooks. I feel far less compunction about killing and eating fish and birds than I do mammals, and when I go to the grocery store I actively avoid the meat cases. If I had to, I suppose I could kill and eat a chicken, but I'd prefer it not be one I've known personally.

ETA:

While I would be just fine without a cow or pig meal ever again, I do admit to retaining a fondness for lamb. If it were to go on sale for a sufficiently low price I might even be tempted to buy some. Apparently my moral fiber has some ... er ... flexibility.

I have gone off eating animals a few times in the past but am currently omnivorous.

I do feel a lot of guilt about eating animals sourced from the grocery store. I grew up around farm animals, as my uncles both had hobby farms and my grandparents had a few turkey farms in Massachusetts and Rhode Island when I was very young, plus I am descended on my mother’s side from generations of farmers. My experience of animal husbandry was of animals treated with care and affection until the day of execution- so there was mitigation in knowing their lives, which only existed at all so they could be butchered to feed us, were basically good ones until the end. Factory farming techniques create an altogether different reality for the many billions of animals raised and butchered yearly globally to feed humans. In the last few years I have reduced my consumption of meat and purchased most of it from a local meat service that sources all the meat from local New England farmers who farm in that old way - but the per pound price is very high to compensate. Every cut comes wrapped and labeled with the farmer’s name and farm location and customers are welcome to reach out to learn more about the farm practices.

Even if I became a plant based eater again - and I’m very open to that idea, am presently working on emptying the freezer and have skipped my last several shares from Walden - I still have a dog who requires a largely meat based diet for optimal health. So I will struggle always with the ethical concerns, and I’m glad at least that I am the sort of person who does have those struggles where so many others are callous and indifferent about the fates of other sentient creatures.

If anyone has suggestions for substitutes for protein in my curries that will hold up well to the amount of simmering required to get a good meld on the sauce, I’d love to hear them. Something besides chick peas.

I do hold out great hope for the future of lab engineered meats.

Joe, have some bacon and this way of thinking will quickly fade.

Long Run wrote: ↑

Sat Oct 02, 2021 12:51 am

Joe, have some bacon and this way of thinking will quickly fade.

Funny you mention bacon. Are people still putting that on everything? Anyway, I haven't had bacon in decades. I've always thought of it as a decadent food. I suppose that means that for myself I could accurately describe bacon as a decade don't food.