This blog entry isn’t meant to offend meat eaters, nor is it a plea for anyone to become vegetarian/vegan. Instead, this is a rant of why I feel squeamish/ignorant people should not be allowed to eat meat.
I started feeling this way after a dinner date in 2008 when the girl ordered prawns at a Thai restaurant in SoHo. She didn’t think twice making her decision. It was the second most expensive item on the menu and she was sure that’s what she wanted. Twenty minutes later, her prawns arrived and much to her discontent, the protein she chose had spotty little eyes staring at her instead of being served beheaded as she was accustomed to seeing similar dishes. Being a gentleman (and indifferent), I swapped my bowl of drunken noodles with her plate of prawns rather than watching her continue to look uncomfortable. She appreciated how easy going I was; while I detested her stupidity, made her pay for dinner, and never called her again.
I eat meat. In fact, I eat every kind of meat and consider myself adventurous when I travel and find myself eating odds & ends of animals (the parts which people in America generally discard). Nothing shocks me… I’ll try just about anything once.
I’m always aware when something I’m eating used to be alive. I’m aware of how the animal is raised and how it’s slaughtered. I’ve even personally killed chickens with my bare hands, plucked, cooked, & eaten them. It was somewhat eye-opening and uncomfortable, but it made me grow to respect all my food, especially when I chose to eat meat. The day that girl turned away a plate of prawns because the heads were still attached pissed me off more than I could ever put into words. She ordered a plate of dead seafood, she got a plate of dead seafood, but she was pissed off it wasn’t disguised to look like it wasn’t dead seafood. You all know people like her… Picky eaters who will eat a bacon cheeseburger, but pass on anything that doesn’t look familiar to them. Well, it’s one thing to have a discerning palette, it’s another to be a hypocrite.
Most Americans expect fish filleted so it’s boneless & easy to eat, shrimp shelled & de-veined upon purchase, and we insist that chicken (breaded, bagged, and flavored) stay in the freezer section of our grocery stores without spoiling for months. We buy it, eat it, and don’t give any consideration to what we’re eating. Then we get on Facebook and start complaining about ”animal cruelty” every single time we see a photo like this one showing how your bacon is raised, or a video like this one showing how chickens are processed (you should click on those links before continuing).
Being the fattest nation in the world is a direct result of the amount of meat (and processed foods) we consume and we’re the only country in the world that celebrates eating animal-based protein at every meal. Somehow, if we take a piece of beef, and tuck it between 2 pieces of bread, it mentally disguises the reality that an animal was essentially tortured to bring you that meal. If each and every one of us had to watch that animal grow up in feces-infested conditions up until the day it died, pull the trigger on the electrical jolt that’s shot into the cow’s brain to kill it, watch it get skinned, dismembered, then put it into a styrofoam + saran wrapped package in your supermarket, you’d probably have an entirely different opinion on the meat you consume. Some people would then go onto say, “Well, I won’t eat beef anymore because those animals are mis-treated” or “I don’t eat rabbit because they’re cute” – Seriously… If you ever uttered those words – that you wouldn’t eat a particular animal because it’s cute, fuck you.
America is easily the most apathetic country in the world when it comes to learning where its food comes from because companies spend fortunes trying to hide it. Well, I’m sorry if to tell you that animal products are commonly genetically & environmentally modified to grow disproportionately larger and raised on corn-based diets (instead of grass) to develop faster. Their mobility is limited, they suffer from bacterial infections + broken bones, and they aren’t happy for the duration of their lives. It’s a straightforward concept: Every animal that lands on your plate is treated equally as poorly as those links above (in fact, most are treated worse). If you are a meat eater, you’re directly responsible for the way animals in this country are treated. All that free-range stuff, or “animal welfare rating” on the packages is complete & utter bullshit. You’re a moron if you spend more money on a piece of meat because the package says the animal was treated better than the animal one shelf over… It wasn’t.
In every generation and culture, people have hunted or raised animals for specifically for consumption – a custom that’s lost in urban & suburban landscapes. They use every part of the animal’s meat, organs & intestines for food, bones for soup stocks, and hyde for clothing or textiles. The philosophy is that if the animal dies, it’d be disrespectful to let any part of that animal go to waste when it can be used. Globally, it’s rare to find people agnostic to where food/leather/fur is derived – yet somehow – my facebook newsfeed is flooded with people shocked by videos the pictures or videos above. Americans seem comfortable with the end results of animal-based products like their wallets or their favorite boots, but they’re in denial about origins of those everyday luxuries. In this modern era of civilization, we’ve abandoned the principals of eating what you kill, and the end result is a hypocritical outrage for animal rights because they’re not the ones who do the killing… As to say – “I could somehow do this job better, but I don’t want to get my hands dirty”
- If you’re not comfortable with the idea of killing, skinning, dismembering, and eating your own dinner, the simple solution is don’t eat meat at all. Having someone else do it for you doesn’t change the fact that it has to be done for you to enjoy your steak.
- If you try to pretend you’re not eating something that used to be alive because you’d feel guilty, don’t eat meat at all. It’s no different than feeling moral discomfort about anything else. There are people who survive happily on fruits, vegetables, and synthetic proteins. Eating animals has nothing to do with survival.
- If you don’t like the way a particular cut of meat looks because it’s not de-pussified/processed to a shape or form that makes it look like it isn’t a piece of flesh, grow up.
- If you get offended at all these animal cruelty pictures and videos, and think you could there’s some alternative to raise millions of animals humanely to feed the demand of the fattest nation in the world without them raising their own food, you’re delusional.
The scale in which we consume meat that requires this sort of treatment of animals. If all of us would consume meat at 1/4 the rate we currently do (i.e. the rate in which the rest of the world eats meat), locally sourced product could start to replace the need for grand-scale corporate slaughterhouses and such mistreatment of animals. Furthermore, if people could pass a simple aptitude test by understanding where meat comes from, perhaps by visiting a farm and slaughtering their own dinner to comprehend that an animal has to die in order for you to eat a particular meal, it would make you think twice about ordering meat on every occasion (or ever again). For your convenience, I’ve provided a video of the process from start to finish. If you can’t handle it, you shouldn’t be eating meat or styling a new pair of Timberlands.
Don’t be that person who gets turned off when you order food, and the waiter brings you your protein with the head is still attached, outraged that you were subjected to stare into the eyes of what you’re about to eat – you’re eating something that used to be alive. By ordering it, you’re signing an imaginary waiver that says you understand that this animal was killed so that you could eat it; either you’re comfortable with that or you aren’t.
Squeamish people in denial are pathetic and their hypocrisy is laughable. Simply don’t order meat if you can’t handle the reality.
