Both in The Shameless Carnivore and in an article I read earlier in the July issue of Gourmet (yeah, I'm pretty behind on my magazine reading and I only catch up when I don't find books I want at the library), there have been stories about participating or watching the slaughter of an animal.
In The Shameless Carnivore, the author travels to help out on a small farm to butcher a young calf, Ernie. The author (and his friend) help the farmer to clean the skin off and then cut and clean the different cuts. He's reflective as he leaves the farm, headed home with fresh packages of meat. He mentioned the respect for the animal and the care of the farmer. This one calf will feed his family for the year. (Or maybe half the year. That part is fuzzy to me, but the point is that it's a significant amount of time.)
In the Gourmet article, the author lives in NYC and goes to a Halal butcher where they have all live animals and they butcher to order. They watch as their goat is slaughtered. Again with the care and respect for the animal.
As someone who has never seen an animal slaughtered -- and I'm not sure if I could -- this makes me pause and think about how we never really need to connect the meat that we buy at the store to the animal who provided it. It's like the old adage in reference to ham and eggs: the chicken was involved, but the ham was committed.
Combined with a lot of reading about how more heritage breeds are being carefully raised and prepared for market in the "old" method of knowing where your meat has come from and how it was raised, I guess it really makes me think about trying to stop eating the mass-produced normally-available commercial meat in most supermarkets. I don't want my chickens to be raised in tiny little cages, specifically bred to have large chicken breasts. I don't want cattle who are fed mixture of animal by-products or left to stand in a feed lot for the last three months of its life to fatten on corn that its little tummy can't handle so that it will have marbling.
The true test of this mentality always comes out when I'm actually at the market. Or even at a restaurant. Do you try to make a stand and only eat the meat that you know is grown without antibiotics, growth hormones, vegetarian-only diets? Could we do that in Atlanta? I guess I don't know.
As a side note to my last post, the High Museum will have Xian's terra cotta soldiers on exhibit at the end of the year. Since I'm not really sure if I'll ever make it to Xian myself, I'll have to stop by and see them. And to see Mei Lan, our "baby" panda. Our pandas are done with their ten year loan next fall, so if the contract isn't renegotiated, they are on a plane back to China. I love pandas, so I'll make an effort to check out our zoo before then.
No comments:
Post a Comment