Yesterday I was standing in line waiting to buy some crayfish. I was talking to the woman in front of me and we were both watching one of the workers cook a crate of crayfish, that he then snap chilled and brought over to the counter to be bought by hungry locals. The woman and I were casually chatting about crayfish and favourite recipes, when I mentioned that I was buying live crays and that my husband was going to cook them himself. The woman looked me straight in the eye and icily said I hope they bite you!
She then proceeded to buy six good sized cooked crays and walked out the door.
It wasn’t until I arrived home and replayed the conversation in my head that the hypocrisy of the woman’s statement struck me. She was more than happy to buy cooked crayfish but was horrified by the fact that I was buying live crayfish. Her six crayfish had presumably been alive themselves only an hour previously. I wonder if when she ate them, they bit her?
Late yesterday afternoon I received a phone call from my daughter Veronica telling me that one of her ducks probably had a prolapsed cloaca. The duck was obviously distressed and was bleeding from her cloaca. In the course of our conversation we talked about the pain the duck must be in as well as the problems of the blood attracting predators overnight as well as the risk of the duck getting fly strike.
Veronica quickly killed the duck, dressed it out and then wrote about it on her blog.
We have become so divorced from the realities of where our food actually comes from in this western society of ours that sometimes I despair for our future. We are spoiled for choice and we shop in large supermarkets with the most disturbing thing being the incessant Christmas muzak. Children think that milk and eggs come from the fridge and we are never ever bothered by the thought that all those rows of plastic wrapped meat and all those bins full of frozen poultry were raised and then killed by someone somewhere.
As I am eating my Christmas dinner this year I will know exactly where the meat I am eating has come from and who has killed it for me because I will be eating roast duck at Veronica’s.
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Thanks, Kim. You are right and I guess we can’t eat meat, wear leather or fur and use products made from animal fats unless we are prepared to acknowledge what we put the creatures through to get the base ingredients. Most city dwellers have little idea about farming, myself included. You have provided more “food” for thought, that will no doubt feed the novel concept I told you about a while back.
Just a question – if meat is organic, does that only imply humane forming techniques, or is there some sort of regulation about the manner in which the animals are treated as well?
I have memories as a kid of the bathtub seemingly crawling with huge red spiders (interestingly crayfish are distantly related to spiders) as Mum, to make certain they were as fresh as possible, would buy them live then cook them.
Was recently watching River Cottage where he was trying to educate people about free range/organic vs battery/shed farming animals.
Interesting how a certain supermarket is getting around the ‘free range’ claim with bred free range labelling.
Huh!
It would be sick if you got joy from the animal’s death. But otherwise I’m not getting the whole story… makes me wonder what my “blind spot” is. I hope to be a considerate person even if I’m wrong, yk?? Wow.
If meat is labelled as Organic it implies that it has been raised in a chemical free environment. Labelling laws are tricky and producers are even trickier. Meat needs to be labelled as “free range” I am not sure about the regulations Watershedd.
As consumers we can change the way meat is produced in this country. Sow stalls are now going to be phased out in Tasmania. Primary Industries and Water minister Bryan Green has announced a ban on dry sow stalls in piggeries by 2017, with restrictions in place by 2014.
How rude!!!
Our local IGA is now stocking local organic beef and free range pork – yay! They’ve had free range eggs and chickens for quite a while but this is new. Yes, it is a bit dearer but not as much as I thought it would be. Once boy wonder has left home again I will buy less meat in general but all of it will be ethically raised.
Thanks again, Kim and Jayne. I certainly wasn’t aware of the “bred free” tag Coles use. Deceptive wording if ever I’ve seen it.
I found a site (http://www.featherandbone.com.au/delivery.html) for humanely raised and slaughtered meat products in Sydney. Will have to see what they have on offer.
what a silly woman!!
Yay Kim! What a good post. I have often worried, for my children’s sake, about their being divorced from reality. I breastfed them, but do they have any understanding that cow’s milk also comes out warm from the udder? I drank fresh milk like that as a child in Ireland, and I well remember my uncle letting 2-3 lobsters walk on the kitchen floor.
I think an understanding of where food actually comes from promotes an interest in quality (organic/good farming practices) and a sense of gratitude for what we have and to/for those involved in providing it (this is the whole point of saying grace before meals!).
Veronica did the only sensible thing she could.
Silly woman. What is the point of saying something like that? What would you have done, dropped the crays and said, “OMG, I’ve seen the light, hand me over some cooked ones now!”
Supermarkets are cold heartless places when it comes to animals as food. A lot of stuff now comes prepackaged with extraordinarily long use by dates. I’m astounded. Hams and bacon I can understand, since it’s either smoked or cured in some other fashion to keep longer, but marinated meats, ready to cook, tightly sealed in plastic with use by dates sometimes 10 days away? Mince, which is one of the things that tends to go “off” the quickest, has use by dates of up to a week.
I think all primary schools should have an addition to the curriculum, lessons in where food comes from, how it is grown and processed and why natural or organic methods are healthier.
I love lobster, hot as thermidore, or cold in salad, it’s yummy.
What a silly thing to say Kim!
Prof loves lobsters & when we’re in the US it’s a wonderful treat to have him cook them for us. He just has melted butter & good bread with his but I have to make an aioli for mine.
As someone said once, if slaughterhouses had glass walls, most of us would be vegetarians.
Personally I much prefer duck over chicken as a meat! Although this christmas we’ll be eating roast PEACOCK freshly killed and cooked from our farm 😀
Even with food, knowledge and humanity matters. The woman at the supermarket doesn’t get that at all!
Even with food, knowledge and humanity matters. The woman at the supermarket doesn’t get that at all!