There’s an interesting story today about a school in London where the children helped rear a lamb from birth, then voted 13-1 to send him to the slaughterhouse.
He was part of a farm set up for the kids to help them learn the very important and very overlooked question of where our food comes from.
I think this is the most fantastically awesome thing I have read this week.
Marcus the lamb, in happier days…
Don’t get me wrong – I’d prefer it if little Marcus the lamb at least got to see out his first full year of life, and at most got to live a full and pampered life, but this is an important lesson I think everyone should be made to go through. If you want to eat meat, you really should understand where it comes from.
Growing up I was reared on the ‘meat and three veg’ diet. I never questioned how the food got to me; as far as I was concerned, chops came from the shop, on styrofoam trays, wrapped in plastic. I made no connection between the meat I ate, and the little baby cows and lambs I saw frolicking in the fields.
This is probably going to sound naff, but around the age of 16 or 17 (late in life, I admit), I had an epiphany while eating my obligatory chop for dinner – I suddenly tasted blood and nothing else, and in front of my eyes as clear as the 80’s wallpaper in the dining room, saw a cow with a chop-sized chunk out of its side.
Then it was just a matter of connect-the-dots.
My last meal of meat was silverside (my most hated of all the meat creations). I finished it, and turned to my mum to proclaim I was becoming vegetarian. I had had enough. I realised I only ever liked the taste of meat when it was masked by something else – a nice full bolognaise, or mushroom sauce, or a mound of mashed potato. Meat, by itself, was disgusting.
In my university years, I read more into the production of meat, joining animal rights newsgroups online, speaking to like-minded people, discovering the whole dirty secrets within the meat industry. My stance became ethical – I wanted to pull myself out of the meat production-line, reduce demand by one. Whatever impact it had, it was a kinder soul I found myself imbibed with.
Any argument on this goes round and round – yes, I still wear leather; yes, as of recently I’ve started eating the occasional fish due to health reasons (and now call myself a vegequarian); yes, I’m aware that even the shampoos I use may have animal products in them, but I’ve reduced demand for eating meat by one. My god, the stories I could tell. Cement, chemicals, hormones, cruelty – I won’t get into it. I don’t deny anyone the choice to eat meat if they so desire.
I’m not vegan, but by not consuming red or white meat I’ve at least reduced demand by one, and I’m happy with that. I can only make decisions for myself. Everyone else needs to sort themselves out personally.
I won’t get into the argument on fish but to say that my decision to eat fish is partly eastern religion-based: fish have less of a developed nervous system, and therefore slightly less of a karmic imprint (but one, nonetheless).
So this story really makes me smile. Parents are spitting and demanding the principal be lynched in front of a leering spitting vitriol-spewing crowd, but how many of them sit down to eat their pork, and lamb, and beef every night?
The hypocrisy is rife. “How dare you expose our children… to the… truth… about where the food they put in their mouths and therefore nourish their spirit, comes from…”
Give me a break. Let the kiddies know and understand, and make their own decision based on the full facts. Let them not become hypocrites like the rest of us.
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