http://www.dw.com/en/swiss-butchers-near-basel-publicly-slaughter-pigs-to-revive-tradition/a-41159010
So many modern people have a disconnect between the animals they eat for their enjoyment and the suffering they endure. I'm sure this pig lived and died better than those in the meat industry. That said, when I was about the age of those kids in the photo I was at a party where they slaughtered a pig and it stuck with me.
I've read before that the actual reason why eating pork was taboo in the Abrahamic religions wasn't based on hygiene but was because the pig's characteristics are a bit too close to human.
Quote from: littleman on October 29, 2017, 06:19:38 PM
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.
Quote from: littleman on October 29, 2017, 06:19:38 PM
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.
That "category violations" concept is interesting. I never thought of food in that way but I could see how people could see eating oddball animals as dangerous, like it would expose them to a type of black magic. Good thing the ancient Hebrews didn't have platypus swimming around the Jordan river.
>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.
>meat eaters who would rather not think about it
Bingo! That's the American Way.
I live in a Big Pork and Big Chicken mass animal farming area. What goes on in an industrial-scale pig parlor or chicken shed is worse than the actual slaughtering. A human subjected to the same treatment would consider death to be a blessing.
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.
After my grandfather retired from being a professional hunting guide because of the Depression, he raised my mom on a small, 50-acre farm. She was always extremely empathetic and I think she really had a tough, almost traumatic, time coping with the business-as-usual aspect of killing animals for food. My dad grew up on a very large farm. 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.
On my dad's farm, I know from stories that the hog killing, butchering, salting, rendering, etc. went on for days and involved hired 'specialists' (an elderly black man who could kill a big, dangerous boar with a single blow of a hammer between the eyes, for example) and lots of hands and household staff.
It was a big deal for the family, large or small farm.
>>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.
Quote from: drcool on October 31, 2017, 12:48:49 AM
I would love it if elementary schools had required field trips to farms for a butchering. Not of course the big factory farms
I would say both actually. That general sentiment is the idea behind the "pizza farms" where they grow all the ingredients for pizza. I read an interview with the person who started the first one and he said the idea came to him when talking to kids and realizing that most kids didn't know which ingredients in a pepperoni pizza were animal and which were vegetable.
>>field trips
I think about this often. I had a great fourth grade teacher, and I still remember those field trips. We did not go to a butcher, but we did go to a hydropower plant, wastewater treatment plant, water treatment plant, a large-scale commercial bakery, a dairy farm and a couple of others. I think most of what I learned about basic infrastructure came from those trips. To this day, that is the only time I've been in a city-scale water treatment plant.
>> 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.
>> on the table an hour later
As I've said, this mildly traumatized my mother even though she grew up in what would best be described as *very* rural, Depression Era farm (no electricity) with meat supply supplemented by hunting. She certainly wasn't a snowflake nor would the lifestyle of her times allow helicoptering --just the opposite.
Those who have traveled with us know that Louise is the poster child for the Meat-Eaters-Who-Would-Rather-Not-Think-About-It group. Though she was raised in the city suburbs, there was a _constant_ supply of wild game & fish in her household, so there was plenty of cleaning and butchering in her childhood.
Young Me has field-dressed wounded Mourning Doves with my bare hands (8 or 9 on the Barbaric Scale) but I could only do it in an emergency now. Same for butchering a deer/rabbit/squirrel.
>>Pizza
Brilliant! Then take them on a tour: Chicken Nuggets: from Egg to Happy Meal. That ought to do it.
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
When i was about 10 i watched a doc where tribesmen were killing a pig by repeatedly spearing it with only the speartip going in, about 6 tribesmen, that really stuck with me (no pun intended!).
I've been veggy since the age of 7 (apart from the odd bacon butty when hungover :/) and factory-farming is the one that pisses me off, this wasn't cruel it was just public.
>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
>>Fake meat and seafood
I tried one of the new fake burgers a while back just to see how it was. It looked a lot more like ground beef than the traditional veggie burgers, it was oddly juicy, and it had the texture that could somewhat remind you of ground beef. But it still tasted terrible until it was drowned in condiments and toppings. http://completecarnivore.com/beyond-meat-can-meatless-burger-actually-good/ is the review of it I wrote up.
That said it was much, much closer to real meat than most of the alternative burgers I have tasted. I would never choose one in lieu of a real burger but if a vegan invited me over and this was what they served I could cover it in enough stuff to make it palatable.
I can see them doing a better job of replicating shrimp, fish, and other seafood than beef. Seems like the texture and flavor would be easier to replicate.
Quote from: rcjordan on November 01, 2017, 05:56:33 PM
>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
They better watch it, 99% of all Soya is now GM. Quorn is good, just mycoprotein.
'flexitarians' - oh dear ...
Quote from: gm66 on November 02, 2017, 11:54:18 AM
Quorn is good, just mycoprotein.
I was just eating some last night and thinking I wanted to know more about it nutritionally (amino acid profile). Haven't looked into it yet, but I like the "cutlets."
Personally, I don't care if my fake "meat" tastes like meat (actually, I tend to prefer veggie burgers that are more "veggie" and less "burger"). So that's not one of my criteria. I really like Quorn. Whether it tastes like chicken, I couldn't say, since I haven't eaten chicken in 35 years and *never* liked it. I ate it when my mom made me.
I like some of the Morning Star burgers, too bad they are full of sodium.
Never heard of Quorn.
I don't care if it comes from mycoprotein, but some do.
http://www.foodsafetynews.com/2017/09/quorn-agrees-to-change-labels-to-reveal-main-ingredient-is-mold/
>too bad they are full of sodium.
I am not sure if you are still doing keto, but sodium tends to be more of a friend when you are under 30 grams of carbs a day. You're probably not eating them while low carbing, though it looks like it would be possible as they seem to be about 10 carbs each.
Quotethey thought "mycoprotein" was made from "mushrooms, truffles and morels."
QuoteQuorn's packaging describes mycoprotein as "mushroom in origin" and a "small, unassuming member of the mushroom family," when according to fungus experts, Quorn's vat-grown fungus is only distantly related to mushrooms.
Which is slightly amusing (not the people going to the emergency room part) because I didn't look that closely at the package and I assume it was made from some vat-grown fungus that was not a mushroom, in part because I generally dislike mushrooms, but actually do like Quorn.
This does highlight a problem for all the fake meats though: there is a basic market problem
- they are pricier now than real meat, so people on a budget are not going there
- they aren't meat, so people who like meat and have no issue with eating it aren't going there
- they are highly processed food, so people who want a more whole foods diet aren't going there (describes a very large number of vegetarians)
Who's left? The small set of vegans who eat Oreos and all manner of crap, but won't eat animal products. And in the case of Quorn, which has some egg in it, they lose even that market.
Which brings us back to local farmers raising pigs sustainably and butchering them in the public square (which would make meat super expensive, BTW, something not yet mentioned)
>>which would make meat super expensive
Most of the time I still eat standard grocery store/butcher shop meat. It is fine and does the job. But if I want a really good steak or high quality brisket or ribs there is definitely a taste and quality difference if you buy from a good source. Snake River Farms and Crowd Cow are two of my favorites. Every piece of meat I have had from Snake River Farms has been amazing. Yeah, you will spend a LOT more than you would at the grocery store but you can definitely taste the quality. A nice, prime ribeye will run $40 where they are only $11 at my local butcher.
But places like Snake River and Crowd Cow are definitely much more sustainable than the huge factory farms and I can see meat production shifting back toward smaller operations like that. Those places aren't quite to the level of butchering in the public square but they are much smaller and much more sustainable operations. Yeah, it will require people to eat less meat overall but the meat they do eat will be much higher quality.
Quote from: drcool on November 02, 2017, 06:23:36 PM
Yeah, you will spend a LOT more than you would at the grocery store
A friend grew up in a household where they had tight budgets and did some subsistence farming to stay afloat. They had cattle and every year would slaughter a steer. When he was 16, he was invited to a friend's house and they served some sort of meat. John asked "What kind of meat is this?"
His friend said, "Hello. That's steak." John thought they were pulling his leg. Store meat (factory farmed store meat) tasted so different from the beef he was raised on, he couldn't believe it was the same animal. In the years I've told that story, a few other people who were raised similarly confirmed that was their experience as well when they first had factory-raised, grain-fed beef.
>> tasted so different from the beef he was raised on
My grandfather and my uncles raised Hereford cattle and it is a rare thing these days to encounter a cut of meat as flavourful as what they produced.
The beasts that were intended for family freezers would get special feeding for several weeks before slaughter. I don't remember what that consisted of, though.