Willing to Kill? Or at Least to Watch the Killing?
Should you be willing to kill what you eat? Is this a precondition for eating meat?
Monica Eng doesn’t just ruminate about this but actually turns up to watch cattle, pigs, chicken, and fish killed and even kills her own crabs. Here’s the link to “morality bites.”
It’s an interesting tour, or perhaps pilgrimage would be a better word. And I was intrigued to discover that the author isn’t the only one. There’s actually a small but growing “watch the killing” movement catered to by smaller slaughter houses and organic farmers.
The more that I think about it the more the pilgrimage seems the right word. To obtain forgiveness for having eaten meat, you go on a long and arduous journey and end up participating in the sacrifice.
I’ve been trying to figure out where I stand on this. I’m an unrepentant meat eater. I grew up having known a fair bit of the protein I ate in its living form. The butcher’s shop proudly displayed the whole carcass with its prize badge as best of the show next to it. So just by happenstance, killing and eating were always connected in my mind.
But if it hadn’t been that way? If I’d only known meat as plastic-wrapped, pre-cut muscle meat, no faces, no innards?
Is sacrificial tourism or pilgrimage a desirable or necessary condition for eating meat? I’m not sure. If you have clear ideas about this, I’d love to hear about them.
Yes, I do have clear ideas on this one.
Showing up to watch the killing of an animal one intends to eat should not be a prerequisite. Why?
Because for one thing morality can not be legislated. Therefore to create a movement where one part of a thing (a rather shocking part) is displayed as being the end-all of the understanding of that thing in a moral sense makes for a rather flimsy extravagance of a gesture – and of course the gesture is meant to give a certain predestined (and perhaps somewhat self-righteous?) meaning.
It is meant to say Ouch! This hurts! It hurts me and it hurts the poor animal! I will feel the pain along with the thing I intend to dine upon!
Well, okay, yes. All well and good. But to turn this into a notion of something-that-must-be-done turns the entire thing into a theatrical ritual – and one, of course – that mostly will be indulged in by those who have the time and money to dip their toes in, in this fashion.
It really is the highest compliment of all to what one eats – to be willing to get one’s fingernails dirty. But at this distance can the understanding really be obtained?
Rather than show up for a one-trick pony show, it might provide for a more thorough understanding of all this for the interested foodie to actually live on a subsistence farm (which so many farms are). And on a subsistence farm that has not been purchased with the profits from a mid-life career change or with a trust fund, but rather on one where the land that has come down through the family is the sole option for survival of the family, basically.
Only then, I believe, will one get a thorough understanding of the link that leads back from the meat on the plate to the animal to the soil of the farm. It is not just a process of death handed out at a sad dirty stockyard. It is also figuring out how to grow the hay to feed the animals . . . how to build the fences . . . it is also birthing in season, and animal husbandry of basic sorts, and vet care that costs hard cold cash . . . and it is the beauty of the animals in the fields. And it is finding a way to pay the mortgage on the land when there is no other means of support aside from the animal that will end up on someone’s plate. This process will be a more fulsome one than merely showing up for the horror show to take it all in (that little part of it) then to feel that is “it” – that all is known by just that bit of it all.
I’ve killed a few things to eat them. Lots of fish – and strangely enough after having children I do not like to go fishing and kill fish anymore. I can’t explain that, but do muse on it. A few birds – my Italian MIL wanted to share the knowledge that had been handed down to her from her mother. No cattle, but I have been to livestock auctions and known the farmers who sold their cattle at these grim tiny country auction houses . . . and I have nothing but respect for the process, though it is terribly harsh in many ways.
Sacrificial tourism. No. Don’t make a Disney World out of this. It is not that simple.
I don’t know if you have to see a slaughter but I think it’s good to now that you’re eating something that was alive. I can’t stand it when people make faces when offered offal or rabbit or something they don’t see wrapped in plastic with a hidden paper diaper. They often make some remark, like, “how can you eat that!” when I have to say, “How can you not? You killed it. You might as well eat the whole thing.” I’ve even seen people freak out when a small fish arrives whole to eat.
It’s the waste that I find offensive.
Thanks both of you. Steve, I agree that eating the whole thing is important, both because of waste (though in the US that is dealt with by exporting the unmentionable parts to places that like them) but because they can be super-delicious.
Karen, I think we are on the same side on all this. Boutique farms and sacrificial tourism are not a very appealing combination.
I’m hoping others will jump in. I’d really like to try to extract a list of arguments and analyse them.
Well, when “willing to kill” or “watching the kill” are framed within the context of sacrificial tourism and pilgrimage, then no. It also gives a religious mood or tone that’s personally irrelevant and unappealing to me.
“…a growing number of foodies and chefs are embracing the challenge as a political, environmental and moral exercise.”
It seems so twee and masturbatory to me.
If the core question is “How do you teach people to not be wasteful with precious food commodities?” or “How do you provide a lesson plan that ensures a full appreciation of what it is that we eat?” then naturally the boutique farms with the sacrificial tourism would seem to be an answer on the surface. But what a simple answer. Too simple, really, to stand the test of any deep prodding. It’s like the A without the B and C to follow. What the B and C would be I can’t imagine at the moment, but that may be because I believe that there are sorts of people who do feel connection to certain things and act in ways which demonstrate that care – then there are those who don’t care and won’t demonstrate care no matter what lessons they are given – then there are those who do care and who would demonstrate that care if they could afford to. That’s a biggie – being able to afford it. Many people are so caught up in the clutter of trying to survive on a day-to-day basis (even in our comparatively well-to-do society) that this stuff is way out of their zone of sight, and will remain so. It is moot to them.
The plastic wrapped meat is so completely hands-off, of course, as to make the food seem as if it may as well be lab meat. And of course the boneless skinless chicken breasts sold all wrapped up may as well be lab meat for the flavor they provide, aside from the emotional or ethical context.
There’s also the fact that we’re so used to seeing “blood and gore and guts and veins in my teeth” (as Arlo Guthrie wrote) on television and in movies, whether or not we change the channel quickly or not. Anyone who looks at this thing who wishes to make it something in the far emotional distance easily has the built-in tools to do so ready to competently use.
It has the air of circus freak-show about it, this watching the killing thing. And I’m not sure that anybody through time has developed empathy or deeper understanding through paying admission for that variety of experience.
Actually Roald Dahl’s short story “Pig” just came to mind.
Perfect. Admittedly I find much more meaning in a short story of this sort by someone like Dahl than I can find in these sorts of ideas presented in the form you showed us in the linked article above, Rachel – which is the form which seems to be plastered everywhere – it’s almost as if the idea itself were designed to be made into a cute little magazine article that would quickly sell to a solid upscale market.
This is the sort of idea that keeps freelance writers in fits of joy.
Anyway. Dahl’s “The Pig” can be found online, read-aloud as a morality piece by a vegetarian lady with a boring teacherly voice that will help one take a nap if one is so inclined.
Better to get the book or to find it at the library and read it straight-up.
One thing that occurs to me reading Ji-Young and Karen’s comments is that human executions used to be public until not all that long ago. Many appeared to have gone for the entertainment.
I will eagerly look out for Dahl’s “The Pig” next time I am in the United States.
I’m still struggling, though, to understand why I don’t find this an answer to getting in touch with where our food comes from.
I don’t think that getting in touch with where our food comes from can be achieved through occasional visits or a staged, one-off slaughter. Watching an animal killed is just one aspect of how that animal became a part of the food chain. Visiting a farm during harvest season doesn’t teach us about farming. It’s like changing channels on the television or turning it off after watching a show. We go back to our urban environments and the architecture of the modern world that’s very far from the source of food.
I think these kinds of activities are a reflection of how alienated some Americans feel from “nature”. I don’t think it’s so much about getting in touch with where our food comes from.
The feeling that we are out of touch with nature and lack “culture” seems to permeate a lot of American foodism. One example is the American who is more native than the native and is disappointed to see the Chuys of the world eating spaghetti. Or the industrialized foodie who gets his panties in a twist when a “traditional” recipe is “modernized” or adapted to another context. The hunt for the “real thing” and all that… cooking in clay tagines when the “natives” mostly use pressure cookers, etc…
When we first moved here about five years ago my son was given a two page questionnaire to fill out in his elementary school class. It was designed by one of the departments in the university as part of a research project (whether it was the ag department, the vets or the wildlife I can not remember) with a sociological slant. The questions were to collect data on how children thought of animals/killing of animals/eating of animals – of both the pet variety and the wild variety.
The questions were fairly simple: Would you kill a deer for food? Should people kill deer for food? Why or why not? Would you eat something that someone you knew had killed? etc etc.
I saw the questionnaire and was curious as to how my son answered the questions. He had a mixture of answers that was (naturally!) interesting to me. I asked him how his classmates had answered the questions (for this was also a class discussion) and he said that the majority of his classmates (children of university professors or other professions mostly, in this school) thought and the answers were mostly that they did not think deer should be killed for food etc and so on with a sense given that animals were more anthropomorphic to these kids than they were seen as a potential food – and with a deep disgust and horror at the idea of killing the animals for food.
I then asked him what his classmates at his last school (in a very rural area where most families relied on both hunting and farming of cattle) would have said. Would their answers have been different? Oh yes! he answered. Very very different. They did not see Bambi when they saw a deer – they saw food. Same with the cattle in the fields – and the rabbits, the woodchuck, the wild turkeys . . .
The idea of going to look at the final scene of the play – the finale – is a bit like saying one really knows someone after going on a date with them. Sorry, nope. You’ve got to marry someone to really know them.
But its a feather in a cap anyway, and an approach to something rather than a running away from it, this idea of sacrificial tourism. But it can not answer the question asked by the tourist in any full, real, or complete way.
Uh . . . not that most dates should resemble sacrificial tourism at a boutique farm.
Though they can at times.
Again, thanks Ji-Young and Karen. Ji-Young’s comments reminded me of a cartoon that I very much enjoyed a number of years ago. It showed a student protesting to a professor “I don’t care what Plato thought. I want to know what he felt.” It seems that for many getting in touch with where food comes from is an emotional rather than an intellectual challenge. The question is “How would I feel if I saw an animal slaughtered (or cooked a certain way)?” So there is much more interest in visceral experience than in actually understanding how the food system works. Does this seem right or am I mis-characterizing many of the ethical food activists?
Karen, what interesting answers to that survey. I think most children here in Mexico would be more like the rural children surveyed. Even if they don’t hear the village pig being slaughtered, the markets are full of very visible evidence of animals as meat. I think only the relatively well-to-do urban children whose parents regularly shop at Mega or Wal-Mart could escape it. Even there, trotters, heads and innards are much in evidence.
A couple of weeks ago I went to the baptism party for our accountant’s baby daughter (a lovely, happy occasion, by the way). All the 250 guests enthusiastically welcomed the appetizers of pickled pig’s trotters that preceded the main meal. And very delicious they were too.
Which is to say, I suppose, that there are many ways of coming to terms with what we eat.
“It seems that for many getting in touch with where food comes from is an emotional rather than an intellectual challenge.”
Yes.
I think this is what Petrini does so well, SF makes people feel good. He wraps up a “cause” with glamor and sensuousness that makes people feel good, feel “classy” (mantle of aristocracy). Throw in things like buycotting (“together we can make a better world through shopping”) and you have a very appealing package. It doesn’t make much sense economically , politically, scientifically or in terms of social justice. But that doesn’t matter to the feel good niche.
I think you’ve hit the nail on the head, Ji-Young. Thanks.
Ok, so I’m a few months late to this discussion but I wanted to offer some thoughts. As someone who has had the urge to make a pilgrimage I’ve been trying to figure out if this is enough and I too have been struck by the ubiquity of this story (I’d lump the growing popularity of offal in with this as well).
I agree with Karen that watching the last scene of the play is not really “knowing” your food in any robust way, but that seems to imply a very narrow range of what is going to count as politics when we’re talking about animal. Are we willing to be quite as critical if were talking about growing vegetables? It seems to be somewhat of an unreasonable standard to judge the appropriateness of a politics of food to suggest that “true” knowledge or understanding can only come from producing food in the context of survival. Yes, we live in the modern world (some might disagree, but that’s another argument), but we can’t go back to some sort of primitive existence can we?
I’m not sure if those foodies and chefs who are doing this are necessarily legislating it as much as interrogating their own personal moral codes and pushing themselves where they can. Perhaps the writing about it is where the situation gets a bit more dicey and where the masturbatory element starts to emerge, but I suppose I’d ask how else are we supposed to have a conversation about this topic.
The relationship between people and animals in the US (and probably much of Europe) is horrifying. And not just for the animals. Rachel I agree with you that the visceral reaction is perhaps not the same as understanding the operation of the food system, but in my mind that seems to imply the thinking and feeling aren’t on the same register, no? I certainly don’t think that disney-style agro-tourism / slaughterhouse operations are a very good idea. Commodifying death in this way is very troubling. But, given that slaughter is probably as close to the end of the meat supply chain as most of are going to get it seems that dismissing the visceral reaction as not good enough leads to the separation of thinking and feeling that I think are at the root of how we got here in the first place. (I don’t want to get into a discussion about ontology here, but this does touch on some fairly important ontological debates.)
Anyway, I’m curious to see where you take this Rachel.
Sasha, Thanks for the long and thoughtful comment which throws a lot of light on what is going on when people force themselves to watch the killing of animals.
I don’t think I am the only person who at the moment is very confused about how modern city dwellers can get more in touch with where their food comes from. I find myself in a lucky position having grown up on a working farm, and lived in rural areas in Nigeria and Mexico, so that it’s never been a problem for me. I even have problems imagining what it can be like to have no idea at all of farming.
And I’m not sure most of the proposed solutions–school gardens, farmers’ markets, or exposure to slaughter–are more than palliatives. In fact, I suspect they give an even more unrealistic view of the whole.
This is a rumination I’ll return to often.
Yes, that was a very interesting comment, Sasha.
As you note, there’s more philosophy in the question than at first meets the eye.
It’s not just about the food, as usual. The food is the mirror.
Is it something we eat that fits to a T the so-oft quoted phrase “You are what you eat” (?)
(I actually just saw a book with a chapter in it titled “You are Not what you Eat” which made me very happy. I wanted to read it but have to decide whether to spend the $130. for it which would leave me eating hot dogs and beans for the week but would it matter? It would prove that I am not the hot dogs and beans!)
Is food sacred?
Is it profane?
And if it is sacred (or if it has aspects about it that would lead us to think of it in this fashion) then who are we, when we consume it, kill it, cook it, heedlessly – in order to live?
If (as I just recently read in ‘Thousand Tables’ by Felipe Fernandez-Armesto) it is true that
the only objectively verifiable fact which sets our species apart from others is that we cannot successfully mate with them
. . . then where does that leave us as the species who thinks of themselves as above all other species?
I don’t know why but a Woody Allen line keeps coming to mind:
“Why does man kill? He kills for food. And not only food. Frequently there must be a beverage.”
That sort of ruins the idea of sanctity within the whole thing though.
Another that goes on hold for a bit because I need to think it through. I think the whole question of killing animals needs a separate thread but I already have lots of balls in the air (groan, don’t even think about the puns).
Okay, I’ll ignore the balls (momentarily anyway) but then will have to thank you for the last comment where you wrote ‘rumination’. :)