The Core

So many modern people have a disconnect between the animals they eat for their enjoyment and the suffering they endure.  

It always bothers me when some "animal lover" accosts a hunter and says "how could you shoot an animal?" It's such a disconnect between the free and wild life that animal lived, with a short suffering at the end, compared to the endless pain and cruelty in factory farming. So hypocritical.

I actually knew a man in Switzerland who would be about 100 now and he was one of the last traditional butchers in French Switzerland. He was quite elderly but worked all the time, riding his motorcycle from farm to farm, because when small farmers had an animal to kill, the wanted Georges because he used the whole animal and had the best sausage. Little went to waste, which is another difference between a traditional butcher and the factory system.

I just don't get this protest. What this butcher is doing bothers me so much less cruel than what Purdue does or any of the industrial farming operations.

taboo in the Abrahamic religions wasn't based on hygiene but was because the pig's characteristics are a bit too close to human.

The hygiene explanation is fairly modern as I understand it. I doubt the "too close to human" one too.  That would not explain the prohibitions on shellfish.

One of the more compelling explanations, from Mary Douglass, is that the prohibitions cover "category violations." That is, in ancient thinking, fish have fins. Shellfish do not, and yet live in the water, so violate the category. For pigs I forget how it goes... something about a mismatch between their hooves and the type of animal they are, so they don't fit into Biblical categories of grazing animals or something like that.

This is a pretty good rundown: https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-anthropological-reason-Jews-do-not-eat-shellfish

I would point out that to a traditional Jew, all of these answers are "reductionist," attempting to explain away a sacred matter. For such a person, the reason would be that it was ordained by God. End of discussion.

>I just don't get this protest.

Yeah.  I am sure there are some true vegans who don't consume any animal products who would use this opportunity to further their cause.  Yet, I bet the bulk of people upset are meat eaters who would rather not think about it.  BTW, my 12 year old will not eat anything warm blooded, fish are OK and she'll eat eggs.  She's coming up on a year of eating this way.  In her attempt to find alternative protein sources she's even tried insects she bought in a Korean grocery store; I don't think she was a fan.

It's suburbanite syndrome. Everything is Nice in the suburbs. This is where the snowflakes grew up with helicopter parents. We are too many generations removed from our agricultural origins.

>>For both of them, time for the annual "hog killing" was ingrained in them as a big seasonal event even though they had lived in cities and towns for decades.

Growing up we had a small farm with a couple cows, a few pigs, chickens, rabbits, etc. I remember butchering day was one of my favorite days. My grandpa and a couple uncles would come over, we would kill the pigs and cows and hang them up from the barn, and go through the whole butchering process. We would of course chop the chickens heads off and pluck them. When we wanted rabbit for dinner we would go get one, snap its neck, skin and gut it, and it would be on the table an hour later.

I would love it if elementary schools had required field trips to farms for a butchering. Not of course the big factory farms but a small farm that does it "right". I think it would give everyone a better appreciation for their food.

And a dream of mine is to someday own a butcher shop/restaurant. I wouldn't necessarily want to raise or slaughter the animals (let the experts do that) but I would do all the breaking down of the animals and cooking. Probably about a 1% chance of that ever happening but it would be fun. 

>> better appreciation for their food.

I have raised and butchered chickens, and it does indeed give you more respect for the meat on your plate. It also made me a fanatic about making sure ALL leftovers got used.

Our kids participated on butchering day, and they concluded that if we did things right, death would happen so fast the chicken wouldn't have time to even get scared. I'm convinced the meat tastes better when there's no time for fear!

I used to joke that we composted all our food scraps, but we'd run them through the chickens first.

>> on the table an hour later

That's a big advantage of small livestock: you can keep them alive right until they're needed. A family that cooked a chicken or rabbit would have a reasonable chance to use it up while it was still fresh enough to be enjoyable. That's especially significant in times and places where refrigeration wasn't/isn't available.

Black pepper was worth a fortune in times past because it could disguise the taste of meat that was going "off", making your meat usable for an extra day or two.

Old but still current and they keep dissecting animals for the public to see:

Marius the giraffe killed at Copenhagen zoo despite worldwide protests
Young giraffe unsuitable for breeding was shot, dissected in public and then fed to lions despite offers of a new home
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/feb/09/marius-giraffe-killed-copenhagen-zoo-protests

>veggy since

Generation Z is creating a $5 billion market for fake meat and seafood

http://www.businessinsider.com/generation-z-is-eating-fake-meat-2017-10