If you buy meat from the store, how the heck do you think it got there

[ohiofarmgirl]

you said it. i was very fortunate that my grandfather taught me how to butcher when i was very young. i worked with him in his little country store - and i was the only 4th grader who could do secondary butcher cuts!

i feel bad for the folks who's grandmothers think cooking thanksgiving dinner is going out to eat - i'm so grateful for my grandmother for teaching from day one. who is going to teach those kids? very sad.

and yep - most folks are so far from being able to take care of themselves. not sure what they'd do. we initially got a lot of mean looks when we started farming - and a lot of teasing (from adults!) but now they are all coming around asking us questions about how to get started. so i'm hopeful.

but i still get so many people who have said who can you DO that (butcher our own) and how they could NEVER do that! (insert shrieking here)

i just smile and nod and say - oh yes you could.

one thing i'm excited about is how many people are suddenly interested in gardening. now i'm pretty sure they are going to figure out how much work it is.. but at least they are trying. my grocery bill this week - $50 and $35 of that was dog food (3 big dogs and yes i supplement).

and yes - its a very nice life. i've done both (high consumerism and farming) and this is much better.

 

[farmin'chick]

"my buddy who started me farming has taught his boys from day one where food comes from - they called their first pigs 'Breakfast, Lunch, and Dinner"

Yes...I'm looking for 2 feeder piglets whose names will be Bacon and Porkchop....

The meat chicks are too numerous to have individual names -- except for Mr. Peepers, who may manage to avoid the headsman's axe if he is wiley.

 

[WalkingWolf]

farmin'chick :

"my buddy who started me farming has taught his boys from day one where food comes from - they called their first pigs 'Breakfast, Lunch, and Dinner"

Yes...I'm looking for 2 feeder piglets whose names will be Bacon and Porkchop....

The meat chicks are too numerous to have individual names -- except for Mr. Peepers, who may manage to avoid the headsman's axe if he is wiley.

https://www.backyardchickens.com/forum/uploads/27943_or_a_dozen.jpg

I name all my meat chicks "Stew"...​

 

[dbjay417]

its crazy how detached from such a basic fact of life people are.

Humans have been killing animals for sustenance since before they were even technically human, or if you prefer, since creation. Suddenly in the last 30 years killing your own food has become heinous and unfathomable.

The best thing in my opinion is to show them commercial meat birds at a factory farm, suffering in tiny cages with broken bones and raw featherless skin among their own filth and fallen kin, and then show them your birds, who are hopefully not kept in the same conditions.

To most people the methods we consider humane, are still too graphic for their tastes, so sell it with the living conditions before the slaughter.

Death is death, the idea that we can make it more "humane" is really just for our own conscience, more than the suffering of the chicken, but happy chickens in a spacious pen vs sickly birds stuffed into dark cages, thats a comparison that might speak to people.

be sure to tell them that its even worse at the egg farms because they cull thousands of male chicks, and then stick the hens in tiny cages where they live for about two years and are then themselves culled.

 

[Chicken Fruit]

I think a lot of it too is that people give death too much credit. Everything dies. And to most people its only a phase into eternity. Or into nothing. Either way its just death. JUST DEATH.

That sounds horrific in itself. But its certainly given too much credit.

 

[dbjay417]

thats true. Some treat death like something unnatural and extraordinary.

There is also this severely unrealistic habit of projecting human characteristics on to animals. Its hard not to, i admit, some times i give my animals credit for being intelligent, when its really just some clever instinctual habit. Animals are animals though. I've seen chickens with pretty bad injuries, going about their lives eating and drinking and fraternizing. That same injury would send a human being into shock, and where the chicken heals with some antibiotic ointment, the human being would require surgery lest they die of infection.

I dont know how the chickens nervous system works, but judging by their reaction to injury I'd say that they do not feel pain the way people do. They have much worse reactions to fever.

 

[AHappychick]

Quote:
If you have ever had the nuggets from some fast food places I believe it is actually recycled cardboard.

I am not even sure they are that!! lol Fast food scares me always has wont touch the stuff.

As for the meat that was born headless and already packaged, well I had 8 meaties processes yesterday and was touching everything up in the kitchen, and vacume sealing. I made sure to tell my sister and best friend to go into the living room and they understood. They are both a little upset lol they understand it but they just prefer pretending like it just comes that way from the store. I a going to watch them very closely at the next chicken meal to see if they eat it lol I have noticed that my sister barely eats my chicken already and it is delish

 

[Chicken Fruit]

Quote:
Animals feel pain to the same level as people- science seems to support it. The difference is that animals have no fear or dread. They have instinctual drive to survive and further their species, but not the dread of dying, or fear while in pain.

I know this is true because having gone through labor- a particular rough and marathon labor (37.5 hours labor, 6 hours pushing) the pain was no worse than any other pain I'd been through simply for the reason that I didn't have fear of it. The moments when I did lose my grasp on serenity the pain was intolerable.

Fear is something animals dont know. Or rather, dread. Not in the sense that we understand it and are effected by it.

Case in point- cows chewing their cud on the killing floor.

 

[dbjay417]

but even different individuals have higher or lower thresholds for pain though. Like all other human perceptions, its subject to variation from one person to the next for any number of reasons.

 

[Chicken Fruit]

Tis true. The level of dread is also based on the individuals understanding and reason.

I still think though that people have pain thresholds based on their fear. The more a person fears pain, or the cause and outcome of pain the lower their ability to handle it is. And visa versa.

Abused animals are a good example of how that might apply in that world. Two identical animals- one exposed to poor treatment with an understanding of pain and its out comes and causes would be more panicked than the other who did not.