A few nice animals facts images I found:
butchery
Image by the|G|™
butchery
these are subjects that are often extremely devisive and can lead to, at best, heated debate, or at worst simplistic insults.
i do hope we can remain above the latter.
these are issues that interest me very much, so after some thought i decided to upload this work.
meat.
i am only too aware of the hideous cruelty the 'meat' industry is capable of. yet i still eat meat.
we have developed several levels of comfortable 'dislocation' between ourselves and those processes that need take place before we can consume meat as food.
i am very interested in these processes of moral and conceptual 'dislocation' that seem to have taken place during the post industrial revolution period. dislocations that have been furthered to positively ludicrous levels with the advent of 20th century communication systems and the advent of modern advertising [cartoon animals advertising meat products, chicken 'nibbles' made in the shape of chickens].
the picture i have uploaded is that of a rabbit killed by a car.
it was killed on the route of my daily walk.
it had not been present as i walked out, and was laying there as i walked back.
it had been dead no longer than an hour.
i see many things killed by farm vehicles and cars, my walk is through [to a very great extent] farming country, it is almost wholly rural.
this particular dead rabbit made me stop. not, initially, to take a picture, but to consider a concept.
could i remove the several layers of distance between myself and the meat i consume?
i stood over the rabbit and asked myself if i could pick this creature up, take it the few hundred metres to my home, skin it, butcher it, and eat it.
if not for any other reason than a conceptual excersise. or possibly a moral one. a personal one.
after some thought. i could not. i walked on.
the distance between the post industrial 'modern' meat eater and the process of slaughter and butchery is so vast, is so far removed, we can respond without profound disbelief when faced with 'cartoon' animals selling butchered versions of their real world counterparts.
we can respond without moral discomfort to logos and graphics portraying smiling animated creatures that actually seem to 'wish' to offer themselves to us as food.
we can respond in this ambivalent way because we eat our meat without undergoing the exceptionally tangled and convoluted moral work that would be involved in rearing, slaughtering and butchering our own meat [should we wish to eat it].
that this 'moral' question be one that is ignored by many in the 'meat' industry [by choice or plain ignorance] is a tangential issue.
at the core, this discourse distills to a question:
if no commercial meat was available to you tomorrow, would you be able, with good conscience; to rear, [or hunt], slaughter and butcher meat for you own consumption?
meat that is alive before you in the form of an animal, that you kill, that you slaughter. meat that dies at your hand.
meat that does not arrive at your table in a bun.
could you kill your evening meal?
my disclaimers/apologia:
i spent five years as a strict vegetarian.
i don't expect any karmic brownie points for that at all. though the thought of me being five years 'better' than an omnivore interests me for different reasons.
i have hunted, very briefly. i am not proud of that fact. i prefer the playstation [though of course, i still eat meat!].
i used to enjoy fishing, which is hunting. i used to put my catches back in the water. occasionally i would take trout for a friend who liked to eat them.
often, i am uncomfortable with the fact that i eat 'factory' produced meat.
unfortunately i do not have the financial means to buy 'organic' [sic]. example - uncooked chicken £2.50 sterling | organic chicken £13 sterling. the 'organic' scam is worthy of investigation.
i am not saying *all* organic meat is a search for profit.
however, 'trends' will always lead the unscrupulous to act.
an objective moral framework is an impossibility when dealing with this issue.
do play nicely.
the very best to all who look. and comment.
begin.
the|G|™
Taking care of the animals
Image by mattkoltermann
Many of the pets here did, in fact, had known owners who were evacuated from New Orleans and surrounding parishes but we're able to bring them to where they were going.
Random cow anatomy fact
Image by sisterbeer
