On being removed from our food sources

[radial]

Your steak is still alive when you eat it?

No, they seem to be pretty dead already when I buy them. 

[redkitty]

I have said before that if I had to kill my own meat, I would be a vegetarian. Actually, my DH would have no problem killing animals to eat. They raised chickens when he was growing up and killed/clean/processed it themselves. The only other animals they raised were rabbits and those were sold as meat pins (sp?) assuming the rabbit won the contest. He grew up on a working farm (but not animal farm...corn, wheat, beans...what else does one grow in Ohio..) The first time I ever met DH he told me about how they killed chickens. Not sure why he thought that would impress me (it didn't, it grossed me out.) My BIL used to raise a calf every year for meat. I am not sure when he stopped doing it, but he now "owns"a  pig farm (he owns the barn and takes care of the pigs, but doesn't technically own the pigs.)

Though my kids haven't seen an animal butchered (I have not either), I do make sure they know that their meat comes from dead animals. But I admit that I need the psychological distance between me and the meat I eat.

[Natasha]

I think yes, we are too removed from our food sources. And not just the animals' deaths, but their living conditions and also the people picking our fruits and vegetables, and the meat packers. We don't want to know all the bad stuff that gets us good quality food at cheap prices... we're willfully naive.

We raised chickens and rabbits growing up, and briefly had a milk cow and a couple of calves that we butchered. My sister and I both had to help; she's vegetarian now and I'm not. I'm not against eating meat but I think it made me more aware of the animal's life, if that makes sense. It's not their death that bothers me--we all die at some point--it's that they experience comfort and discomfort just like me, and I would prefer that they have a decent life. But when I see the wrapped meat in the grocery store and one package is $5 and the other is $15, my morals slip.

[picote]

I grew up a lot like CRB (go figure). We weren't a real working farm, but raised much of our own food, including chickens and lamb and sold lamb to the local Muslim community. We were one of the only places the lamb could be butchered correctly--talk about an education as a young child!

I think about this a lot as we're raising our own child now. Her childhood will be a lot different--this is one of the things I want to be sure she's exposed to.

[hally]

I  have caught, killed and cleaned my own fish. Does that count?

[Suesquatch]

We have a retired hen home.  I ain't killing my own food.