Having brought up my vegetarian past in yesterday’s column, I was probably sensitized to issues around eating meat. I was preparing dinner for Luna the Big Dog™ this evening. I had purchased some rotisserie chicken at Costco on Monday, and was putting some on top of Luna’s dinner, when I happened to glance out and see our flock of chickens scratching in the pasture with the sheep behind them.
Now, we aren’t raising chickens (or sheep) for meat. It was still discordant to look out and see our chickens running around and realizing that I was putting dead chickens on my dog’s dinner. I have killed, dressed, and eaten a lot of my own food early in my life, so it isn’t squeamishness, but I do easily develop relationships with any creature that seems to be thinking. HA accuses me of trying to make pets out of our livestock.
I don’t think that it’s particularly ingenuous to just pay a butcher to prepare your meat and not to acknowledge that the shrink-wrapped hamburger meat didn’t come from a living, breathing cow. I’m no longer vegetarian, though my diet is definitely more plant-based. I think there is merit in struggling a bit with the question of how our food gets to our plate.
—2p