Oh Dear - Hold Onto Your Breakfast

[Mosaic]

An article in the news about feeding pigs and chickens on mashed maggots.

http://www.foodmanufacture.co.uk/Supply-Chain/Insect-feedstock-for-pigs-chicken-and-fish-production

Now I know if left to forage both these animals will eat anything including poo and each other, but this article touched my 'I can never eat maggots knowingly' nerve.

How will I know whether what I'm buying has been fed on (stops to go and puke)

[Mosaic]

Eccles - that's exactly how chickadees should spend their lives.

If you google 'hennery piggery' you'll find out about another way hens and pigs performed household waste digestion, before ending up on the table... but the hens at least were free to roam the area

It's th thought of a confined animal effectively being force-fed a diet mainly made of yuk that turns me. Or as I heard a young lady describe it recently, 'makes me suet drop'.

[ummmm]

And my cats eat spiders and flies (although I don't eat cats, as far as I know)

[Mosaic]

Umm - on the butcher's slab, with head, tail and paws removed, cat and rabbit are eerily similar. I expect many a one has been eaten unknowingly.
I couldn't fancy ragout of moggy but a rabbit terrine hots the spot nicely.

[ummmm]

Tried rabbit once and hated it. At the time I did have four evil rabbits though....

[-SharonA-]

I had rabbit once in Spain and it was delish! But feeding chickens mashed maggots, it makes it harder to eat knowing what the chickens have eaten.

[Mick-the-Miller]

What's the problem - it's all digested protein, and pretty good protein at that!

It's just converting one form of protein, which we wouldn't fancy eating directly, into another form that is aesthetically acceptable - seems perfectly acceptable to me!

[Mosaic]

Mick, by the same argument, grinding up dead chicks and feeding them to the hens is fine. Which it is, as far as protein goes. But I feel the issue goes further than that - it seems a ghastly reflection on animals being viewed as industrial units, and treated purely as a mouth and a bottom that gets converted into prime cuts after X number of weeks.