Could You Kill To Eat?

[sunny-dave]

An interesting question which this thread sort of wandered towards :

http://www.theanswerbank.co.uk/News/Question1377438-4.html


If we can avoid the argument about 'enjoying the kill', could you actually kill an animal to eat its meat?

I don't mean if you were starving, I mean just as part of your normal diet.

My own view is that everyone that eats meat should have to go on a visit to an abattoir, just once, to understand the process.

If you can't do that, then are you a hypocrite?

Should you be forced to be a vegetarian?


I'm very uneasy about the use of a proxy just to protect you from something difficult/unpleasant and wonder if that can lead to a rather disconnected attitude to life (both human and animal).

If you are prepared to have someone kill and prepare an animal on your behalf, then I think it is important that you understand what is being done. I've been there, seen it and (whilst it isn't my ideal way of spending a morning) I think it was a valuable experience.

[mazie]

I would, I think I might starve though :0(

[Frank97]

I've shot and ate rabbits before, so yes, I could!

[ummmm]

No, I really couldn't kill an animal.

I know how animals are killed, I don't see why not being able to kill one myself makes me a hypocrite.

I can't even gut a fish without heaving.

I could easily live without meat....but not fish/seafood.

[Mamyalynne]

I wouldn't kill to eat as just part of my diet,only if I or my family were very hungry.

I have visited an abattoir so don't consider myself a hypocrite.


Forced to be a vegetarian - No.

We use 'proxies'in everyday life all the time, they are people employed to do a job we either cannot or do not want to do.

[Baldric]

Yes, I could. I grew up in a rural location about a ½ mile from the local Slaughterhouse, (as it was in those days) my Grandfather used to help out there at busy times, and I was taken there once or twice to understand what went on, nothing was glorified, just explained factually.
If you want to eat meat it is a process that has to be undertaken.

[kvalidir]

Yes I have no problem killing things to eat, skinning and cooking them, and I agree in an ideal world people ought to be closer to what they eat. I actually knew of a teenager (13) who honestly didn't realise that chicken you buy in the supermarket were the same things as chickens that run around the farmyard. When you are that uneducated and disconnected from something you can't truly appreciate its life and death and thus it desensitises you to not just that but the cycle of living feeling and dying generally.

[Zacs-Master]

I went to see how black pudding was made when I was about 8 (a school friend's dad was a butcher). I still love meat, although it did take me about 30 years until I could eat the stuff.

As for killing to eat when not starving, no I doubt I could which seems hypocritical but I put it down to conditioning.

[2sp_]

I could kill an animal to eat. Not my dog or the pet rigg lamb I still have lurking from last year though. But other livestock, yes.

I do get that a lot of people just are not comfortable with killing for themselves, but choose to let abattoirs and butchers do that for them.

[andy-hughes]

I do concede that I am a hypocrite in that I eat meat, and prefer not to think how it got to me.

I am not sure i could kill an animal unless I was starving, in which case I think most people could and would, vegetarians and vegans excepted.

[ummmm]

When my dad was a young man they used to slaughter their own pigs over a tin bath. The blood would be collected for someone to make black pudding, the butcher would butcher it and take his share...

My dad never did manage to see an animal be slaughtered without getting sick.

[Jeza]

I could not kill to eat. My eating is bad at the best of times so to kill first is a definite no.

[ummmm]

Divebuddy....years back I started a thread how how cruelly seafood was treated. They empty a catch onto the boat deck and then kick it about like it has no feelings. Fish not have feelings or a 3 second memory is a myth.

[gness]

I'm a bit undecided about this, Dave....I grew up where we ate what we reared, killed and grew......it was normal for me then.

I don't know if I could do it now but does that make me a hypocrite ......hmmm? I don't know...though the little meat I do eat is from a good, researched source.

Mind you I was happy to have my children's teeth pulled or filled by proxy even though I'm sure I could have done it.....x

[EcclesCake]

I have no problem with killing animals for food. I was thoroughly lambasted for once mentioning that I was planning on shooting the burgeoning squirrel population in my garden and eating my quarry, to this day I don't understand why my stance was considered cruel.

[2sp_]

I don't think being unable or unwilling to kill something to eat is being any more hypocritical than me being unwilling to work in a sewer but still flushing my loo.

;-)

[DTCwordfan]

I've killed ( shooting grouse, pheasant, partridge) and I've been to an abbatoir, the first time when I was 18 to pick up a side of beef for the family restaurant, the folk in there singing, "All things bright and beautiful, all creatures great and small." I suspect that this was standard treatment for all visitors.

[pixie373]

I agree with 2sp. Sometimes, I could kill for chocolate.

[woofgang]

There are many things that people want done but cannot bring themselves to do or even watch done...caring for an elderly relative with dementia, and doing very personal care for loved ones springs to mind. Are we saying that those people should not be allowed to avoid those jobs either?