That revulsion is a result of imagining yourself as something other than animal. Our "civilizing" has created this fiction where we are not dependent on extinguishing life in order to live. Sure we're not hunkered down on our haunches ripping flesh with our teeth, but knives, forks, and saying grace are really just window dressing for what is at its heart a pretty gruesome business.

Pass the salt, please.

I'm not that evolved. Must. Have. Beef. or Pork. or Chicken. or Venison. or Elk. or Bison. or Fish. or Caribou. or Rabbit. or Squirrel.

Has anyone ever eaten horse meat? How was it?

Stringy.

I searched in vain for a pun, Dana.

Here's one.

'Maybe they should have taken the bridle off before they butchered it.'

How about

that was a spelling mistake, they were supposed to serve chevaux not cheveux

[Washington Hogwallop] I slaughtered this horse last Tuesday. I think it's startin' to turn. [/Washington Hogwallop]

When hungry, raw horse meat dipped in soy sauce is the best thing ever.

Thanks youse guys. I feel better now.

Was that ewes guys?

I've given this some thought. What I finally came up with was that: 1.) there is no possible way to live without hurting other animal species. and 2.) every living thing has to die eventually anyhow, so it might as well nourish another.

Silly though it sounds, my main impetus for avoiding vegetarianism/veganism comes from Steve Irwin. In an interview once he pointed out that although proponents of vegetarianism will say you use up more resources with meat animals than crops, many more species can live in the same space with the meat animals than the homogeneous area used for one crop. And then I read somewhere that millions of small animals are killed during the harvesting of crops -- mice, squirrels, voles, etc., anything that happens to be in the way, so how can you claim a mass-harvested vegetable crop to be more humane than, say, a professionally slaughtered cow?

So I'll enjoy my steak, thank you! I still would prefer to get my meat from local farms where they're grass-fed and treated well, vs. factory farms, but that's something I'm working on. Time and expense are factors.

Up till this fall though we did raise our own egg-laying chickens. But alas they have stopped laying; too old I guess. We're down to two out of an original six and may or may not repopulate the hen house; haven't decided yet! I can't stand a regular grocery-store white egg now, though!

I'm sorry but I can't agree with much of that. It sounds like you're ready to eat your pets and family when they're gone. I'm not sure I can liken accidental killings to deliberate slaughter either, we certainly don't do that in the human world.

It's a slippery slope! One minute you're killing voles in a field, the next minute you're eating your wife and family and there's not a DAMN THING YOU CAN DO ABOUT IT!

Sorry, but I'm that amoral. I'd never hurt Diz, and I'm pretty sure I'd never kill a family member. But if it came down to my survival, I'm I'd eat them when they're gone.

I'm all for ethical farming - I do what I can to support it. Animals raised for slaughter should live lives as natural as possible, and be transported and killed as humanely (if that's not a misnomer) as possible. Which means I completely support hunting where the animal is eaten, and disagree with intensive farming.

Oh and yes I've eaten horse too, when I was on an exchange programme in France. Chewy, is my only contribution. But then everything was peculiar and strange, and I was only 15. I fell completely for the countryside (especially for the Puy de Dome - extinct volcano), the village itself, medieaval and high on a hill, and the utter FRENCH-ness of it - the boulangerie, the abandoned vinyards on the way out of town, the boules and fountain at the centre, the mists and mellowness (okay, it was Autumn)

ROFL Undertoad -- this sounds a lot like something my Glenn Beck-watching husband would say. :rolleyes:

Nope, I personally would draw the line at anything that died on its own. But that's not to say it's morally wrong to eat deceased pets, just 'cause we wouldn't do it. If you grew up on a farm, you might become fond of your cows, pigs, chickens, goats. You might go out and pet them each morning, talk to them while you filled their feed troughs. But then when the time came, yes, you'd slaughter them and eat them. On a farm there can be a fine line between pets and livestock. You don't love them quite the same as you do a dog or cat, which makes it too emotionally heart-rending to dispatch them. (Of course sometimes it happens . . . and that "meat animal" ends up living a long happy life.) *I* could not do it. I mentioned the chickens in my previous post - they're about 4 years old and don't lay anymore, but I'm not going to eat them because I'm too "chicken" (ha ha) to kill one and dress it. I'm not a farm girl, but I know people who are, and I understand it. I don't love the chickens or anything - we never named them (couldn't tell them apart anyway) so if I gave them away to someone who was going to eat them, I wouldn't really care.

As far as the accidental killings - well, say you *know* that there are hundreds of mice, voles, etc. that live in your field, but you have to harvest the crops anyway. Is that really accidental?

There's only so much you can do. My husband's uncle once ran over a baby deer in his field while haying. Cut its leg off. Very sad. Of course being the kindhearted man he was, he took the deer, dressed its wound, put it in his shed and nursed it. That deer lived for two years in his shed as a pet. Was it happy, though? Probably not, really. Would have been far more humane to put down the deer and have baby deer for dinner.

I guess that's a digression -- but speaking of deer, we have umptyzillion of them around here of course. Too many. I dislike the idea of deer hunting, would never do it myself, but it absolutely *has* to be done because they are always overpopulated and will suffer if they are not thinned out. Would that happen if people didn't live in their spaces? Probably not -- but only because there would be plenty of natural predators for them instead, so therefore we have to become the predators.