When I was a sophomore in high school, I got a job at a butcher shop. It was a family-owned butcher shop, and I still visit them to say hi when I am home, and I harbor no ill will about the place. I cleaned up after the slaughter of animals, I made hot dogs, I cleaned meat grinders, I seasoned and hung hams and bacons (the place won best bacon in the country year after year), and I cleaned meat saws and bloody white cutting boards. It was kind of gross at times but I worked there for four or five years, including during summers when I was home from college.
Still after a few months working there, I stopped eating beef and pork. I just couldn't stomach it after a while. The smell, the blood, the sounds of the animals. I mean, I have lots of pretty gross stories, like how the cows continue to move around on the meat hooks for a few hours after they are slaughtered, or how pigs smelled so bad after they are slaughtered that I sometimes vomited. So, from 1993 on, it was just poultry for me.
When I returned after my first year of college, my job became cleaning out the chicken pans. I was still eating chicken at the point, but these nasty birds became just too much for me. So, I became a strict vegetarian in 1996. It was actually a New Year's Resolution, but it wasn't a big deal because I was eating so little chicken by that point anyway. But I haven't eaten meat since 1996.
My reasons were only partly because of animal rights, if at all - mostly I just thought meat was gross. I mean, I read a few books and did some research about the treatment of animals on factory farms and in slaughterhouses, but the decision had already been made. I never was big on meat (heck, I remember putting ketchup on steak when I was little, and smothering hamburgers with mustard), then saw the process of making it was gross, and decided I didn't want to be a part of it anymore.
Most people who know me don't even know I'm a vegetarian. (I'm not a real one anymore, though - I've eaten fish for a few years. Because I feel like they have no soul.) I am not judgemental about it, and while I passionately believe that I shouldn't be eating meat, I know it does no good to try to force these beliefs - especially since they go against such ingrained customs - on others.
But I have always thought that everyone who eats meat should spend some time in a slaughterhouse. Now, it looks like we have a chance. This is horrible, and makes me really glad I'm not a part of it. It's not a radical group like PETA, but the Human Society... and this is the hidden camera that led to the beef recall in CA. These guys should all be locked up just like Michael Vick:
A Poem For Sunday
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“2047 Grace Street” by Christian Wiman: But the world is more often refuge
than evidence, comfort and covert for the flinching will, rather than the
sharp ...
23 minutes ago
3 comments:
You should Michael Pollan's The Omnivore's Dilemma a read. He touches on the treatment of animals at slaughter houses and the facilities that they are kept in before slaughter. The book makes you think about every aspect of our daily food and brings in a lot of environmental and health reason as well.
Thanks for posting this. I'm pretty exactly the same kind of vegetarian you are (in terms of what I eat, and in terms of not "proselytizing"). But I think that it's good for people to give this area some thought. Most people probably wouldn't be comfortable witnessing what goes on in slaughterhouses. Just from being brought up this way, not through fault of their own, most people just have a total separation between what they eat, and how it got there. But it's a pretty horrific thing to find out, if you bother to explore.
I also think that, aside from what it's doing to the animals, working in this kind of environment isn't good for any person either. Aside from the abusive people in this video, the average slaughterhouse worker is going to become completely desensitized to violence and the pain of other creatures. How could they not? I read a study somewhere (I'll see if I can find it), that the workers actually have a higher rate of domestic and child abuse than other groups, which isn't that surprising. Getting rid of these kind of super violent, killing-machine conditions would be good for everyone and everything.
WHAT !?!?!? Does that mean no kiszka at your parties?
OK...I'm one of those who respects animals yet is jealously proud of our species having made its way to the top of the food chain. I think the Inuit attitude toward eating meat is a good one. Revering and honoring the animal for sustaining us...although they have some less than flattering things to say about eating meat that has not been free to roam and was taken in the struggle of the hunt. I also think we should be informed about this stuff. I USED to show my kids a real cool web flash animation during the ecology unit www.themeatrix.com It was cute but informative. Unfortunately the distric's ham-handed (hey, that's actually a pun if you have seen the site!)web filter blocks the site.
My brief stint of riding with a large animal vet was a real eye-opener. Until then, I had equated the life of a vet with that of my dad. When we went to the stockyards to look at downers it seemed surreal to see Dr. Ingmire discussing the animal not as a patient to be made well, as we had with horses and the baby eland, but rather what cuts of meat would be salvagable.
I think, due to Mad Cow, that practice is no longer supposed to be used, primarily due to the monetary costs of testing each downer to prove they don't have the spongiform encephalopathy prion. In fact, I think it was that, rather than the inhumane treatment of live animals, that prompted the recall.
-The Chaplain
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