In middle school I read the book Into the Wild and was astounded by Christopher McCandless’s ability to just let go of everything his parents wanted him to be and everything the country forced upon him ie: money, schooling, etc. During his time spent in the wild lands of Alaska, he shot and killed a moose and planned on butchering it and preserving it for later use, but the meat ended up being overtaken by maggots shortly after because he didn’t really know what he was doing. The idea of killing for the use of the meat and not for sport has always been fine with me, although I’ve always been afraid of being in situations like his, where the life would be wasted and not be used which is why I’ve never hunted or participated in challenging the status quo of buying meat at the supermarket. A couple days ago, Tony a neighbor of AislingQuoy rang Lyndal asking if we wanted a dead hare to butcher and eat that he had trapped and today asked if we wanted a possum. Had we not accepted his offer, he would have thrown the carcasses out into the field for the hawks to peck at until they disappear and although the animals were considered “pests” they wouldn’t have been put to use and the lives would have been wasted. Since I participated in the butchering and we were planning on eating them later on, I felt like the lives of the animals were being honored and not thrown away. The process is definitely not easy but taking a life like they do here and processing and eating them in the way they do is much more emotionally sustainable than eating some animal that for all we know could have been killed and treated in a much more awful way.
February 8, 2017 at 3:56 pm
Hey Madeline, Shani here.
Well, you’re talking about slaughtering animals, and I have opinions, so I thought I’d comment.
I’ve killed plenty of animals: chickens I’ve raised at work from their second day of life, ducks I’d never met until their slaughter day, quails that I just popped the heads off of, and a rooster I called Jumpin’ Jack ’cause he’d jump and attack your calves every time you’d turn your back on him. I’ve skinned some dead deer the neighbors got with their cars and pre-purchased shares of farm-raised pigs I knew to have a good life. In short it was all a very…taxing experience.
I’ve often wondered how far the animal’s quality of life goes in affecting the quality of their meat, and thus the nutritional qualities I’d accumulate from them. It’s the whole water experiment, you know the one- water undergoes a freezing process while various music genres are playing in the background. Supposedly ice crystals will form better when Bach is played, or the words “I love you” is said repeatedly, whereas death metal or repeatedly saying “I hate you” forms less impressive crystals. I’ve never tried the experiment. There’s another one in The Secret Life of Plants where electrodes or something are hooked up to different parts of the plant and the plants are exposed to kind words vs death threats. There were recorded, measurable responses given by the plants that were suggestive of the plants being conscious enough to sense danger.
All this said, if the pseudoscience is out there that emotions effect quality, are the emotions transmissible from food to eater? I don’t know, but I do know people who won’t eat meat, regardless of the quality of life, if I used the word “slaughter” or “murder” in the process of preparation because they fear they can receive the negative energy loaded in such words.
I’ve killed many animals. At the Organic Farm at Evergreen we give the chickens a great life, followed by one bad day. We don’t feed the chickens the night before so that they’ll be tired and easier to catch, and they won’t poop on us when we eviscerate them. Chickens are cannibalistic by nature and can smell blood. They know something is dying. Do they know it’s slaughter day? I’m not sure…
But would I go out and hunt if I had the chance? As ideal as that is, and instinctively beckoning, I’d have to say no. It’s the same thing as foraging and wild crafting. If a few people go out and trample in nature, that’s one thing. If everybody did it? Well, we’d have less nature than we do now. There’s not enough acreage for everybody to have a traditional farm, not unless we got rid of all the forests. Isn’t it my responsibility to grow and kill my own food and stop invading the nature I don’t live in?
I’m not sure, but there is something primal and satisfying in killing and eating the meat I’ve raised. Like I said, one bad day in a lifetime of excellence? If only my life could be so easy…pssh, when I die I’ll just be rotting in a box unavailable to cycle my nutrients throughout the food chain, completely disconnected from nature. I hope someone eats my thigh meat because I’ve worked very hard on that. In fact I’m hoping to be turned into compost. I think Seattle is working on a composting funeral facility. We’ll see.
Thanks for sharing. Good luck with your trap and competition~
Shani
February 15, 2017 at 10:27 pm
I think I know what you mean when you say their lives would have been wasted by being thrown in the field — and yet remember that the hawks would eat them, as you said, and they would provide many meals for many lives, just not human ones, and all the mineral and nutritive content of their bodies would recycle through the ecosystem. Truthfully, unless whoever consumes a meal is practicing humanure, I would argue a huge deficit in nutrients occurs when humans consume biomass or meat and the poop and piss get sent through septic or county systems rather than deposited on land somewhere 🙂