"They feel debased by this confrontation. Meat from the store in cardboard trays wrapped in plastic, meat with tidy price stickers and labels, that meat is food, is flank steak, chuck roast, ground round. None of it is labeled, "Cut from the shoulder of a large dead animal in a snowy field at night". There is nothing to remind them that the hide was pulled away from the flesh while it was still warm, and the steam rose into the night to the greedy waiting stars. They do not want to remember that they are predators. Carnivores. They'd rather eat the flabby muscles of an animal raised hock-deep in its own shit, castrated and injected and inspected, a smack in the head to fell it, a large white room to chill it, humming machines to cut it into neat slices. De-animalized meat."
- Megan Lindholm* (Cloven Hooves)
* If you're even remotely into SF&F, you have got to read all the books she's written as Robin Hobb.
15.4.09
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4 comments:
That's exactly my attitude to meat. If I think about where it came from, I can't eat it.
And that's why I'm vegetarian.
I should like this author to meet more people like me. I eat meat and I am not queasy at all. When I was a child, I went to the butcher's with my father and watched mincemeat being made and pieces being cut. I was particularly fascinated by entire goats hanging from hooks on the ceiling. I was also at hand to watch the wages of a shoot being prepared. Whenever I have lived near a butcher's or a farm, I have gone and bought my meat there picking the pieces I want, cut the way I prefer. And I suspect there are a lot of people like me.
Generalising is, in general, never a good idea.
The Bride:
Ya, I remember your post about it.
Shyam:
And why I suspect many others are, too.
Shefaly:
Well, context I guess. The narrator was referring to her sisters who preferred to paint their nails rather than help out.
Also, that was the point, I think. If one wants to eat meat, one should accept all the gore. One doesn't have to necessarily hunt it down, but at least be prepared to see it for what it is. Don't behave as if those sausages were plucked off a tree. So if anything, you would get her approval.
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