Please help me understand meat eaters not wanting to process a chicken!

[thedollysmama]

Get this:
I can process chickens all day long, no problem, but when it comes to rabbits I choke. Once something is dead, rabbit, sheep, etc, I have no problem leaping in and cleaning, skinning, whatever. Funny, and I totally understand my issue with sheep (they are my pets in addition to having other functions in my life).
Thank heavens for broomsticking, which makes butchering chickens SO easy!

Thedollysmama

 

[pbjls]

my boys prefer processing day over the daily chores of feeding and watering the animals. my oldest son(now21) can take a bird from the plucker and remove the feet, head, neck,and loosen the crop. remove oil gland, open above the vent(with carcass on its back) and pull open. remove all offal, seperate out heart, liver and gizzard, rinse the carcass, and put it in the chill tank. less than 50 seconds.

we routinely process 100 birds before lunch.

 

[Elke Beck]

Pbjls, 50 seconds! Wow! Do you rent your son out? Because in about another month I have 14 chicks that could use the 50 second treatment!

I think that it is not just the Disney stuff and the impersonalizing of our meat that causes this issue. Most people have resistance to killing programmed into them. This works for us as a species because I do not kill the person who blocked traffic on my way to work today, or the many, many other people who annoy me. (What can I say? I do not suffer fools gladly.) For most people, this resistance to killing carries over to animals. In fact, we often tend to give people who enjoy killing too much the "hairy eyeball," and avoid them.

My mother was born during the Great Depression, and they kept chickens and pigeons so that the family had a protein source handy at all times. My grandfather used to buy a turkey, tie it's feet to the clothesline and cut the head off --that was how they got Thanksgiving dinner. Even though this was how she was raised, my mother will not kill animals, and refuses to have anything to do with the chickens that I raise to eat. She gets upset if I offer to tell her which bird is which, but she never had store bought meat when she was growing up. Of course, as long as I don't let on who is who, she loves to eat my chickens. So I kill and clean the chickens, and my mother brags to her friends about our home grown chickens as long as she doesn't have to do the dirty deed.

I think this is a complicated issue. Many of the people who become upset about slaughtering animals have a genuine, strong emotional reaction. They are not just being weak or ducking a nasty chore. Having someone become sick or causing them to suffer emotional trauma just to get a piece of fried chicken is not right.

The reason that I raise meat birds is I get the pleasure of knowing that my chickens had a really chicken life, and a heavy heart when I send them to the "cone of silence." I know it may sound strange, but both are important parts of the process for me. But, my mother has given me understanding and respect for those who find the process to be too much for them.

 

[pbjls]

he moved to baltimore not to long ago. I miss him, but will miss him more when the first butcher date arrives. I can do it in less than two minutes.

I prefer killing to eviserating(sp). that might make me odd, but I do it right and quick and that keeps the process moving.

 

[warmheart]

Yes, the issue is complicated. I no longer eat factory farmed meat, but would be pleased to eat a happy, healthy, non-broiler, ranger-type chicken who had lived a free range life outdoors.... if someone else would kill & process it. I am extremely grateful to those who are able to kill and process meat. I make no apologies, however, for being too tender-hearted to do so myself. The world needs matter-of-fact, practical-minded go-getters who can humanely kill so that we may eat meat. The world also needs sensitive, high-empathy people to nurture, listen, and provide the softer measures of care that we all need at times. We're all somewhere along this spectrum.

 

[cuppycake]

I feel like there is a huge and unacceptable disconnect between people and their food. Somehow we've gone from valuing and appreciating our food to thinking that it is dangerous, dirty and just plain "yucky." I guess Joel Salatin says it best “The average person is still under the aberrant delusion that food should be somebody else's responsibility until I'm ready to eat it.”

 

[Elke Beck]

Warmheart,

For you there may be a hard and fast line between having the determination to be able to kill a chicken and being warm, empathetic and nuturing, but that is not true for others. Stereotyping is what got us into this mess, and we, as a race and a society, need to start just accepting people as they are instead of slapping labels on them. "You can kill a chicken, so you are matter-of-fact and practical!" "You can't bring yourself to kill a chicken so you are sensitive and highly empathetic!" I think human beings are far more complex than that, and we all nedd to be allowed the space for that complexity instead of being to crammed into boxes and having the parts that don't fit lopped off.

I apologize for the rant, but I see this far too often in my work. I work for an agency that provides programs and services for people with disabilities, and I have seen that the "good" stereotypes are just as damaging and limiting as the "bad" stereotypes.

Everyone! If you can kill chickens, you are okay. If you cannot kill chickens, you are okay.

 

[hungry]

For a lot of people it's just experience and exposure.

I grew up in a metro area of about 18 million humans. The only animals I had any contact with were pets and zoo animals. There was no hunting, no farming, not even any vegetable gardening among people I knew. The closest I ever came to killing, cleaning, and eating my own food was the few times I went fishing... but that was a handful of times over 30 years. I had no opportunity to be exposed to processing animals, so I have no idea what it's really about.

I'm a very open-minded person and since I now live in a very different part of the world (somewhat rural Texas, population 1400), I've been seriously considering getting some meat rabbits, or meat chickens, or even somewhat larger animals...but I honestly don't know what my real reaction would be and I don't have a "mentor" to guide me through the process. Similarly, I would now love to go hunting, I've even gone so far as to take a hunter safety course and learn some basic hunting skills (marksmanship mainly), and I've bought licenses, but I have not even tried to actually hunt because I don't know enough about how and I don't have a "mentor" to show me the ropes. I circle closer every year but it's small steps and learning little things that seem trivial only AFTER I know them.

People raised doing things (whether hunting, killing their own meat animals, or programming a computer) have no idea what a barrier, "never having even seen it done," is for an outsider. Add defensiveness and any sort of squeamishness and most people will reinforce those barriers, turning "uncomfortable" into "wrong."

 

[gg706]

The process of teaching my children it is OK to butcher your own food is somewhat why I want to engage in the whole process. Even though I grew up on a farm, we did not butcher our own meat. So I have not been exposed to much of the process. I also am also out on a "limb" by myself.....

 

[warmheart]

Elke Beck, as you explained better than I, one attribute isn't mutually exclusive to the other.

Eating meat and killing it oneself is clearly simple to some, and more complex to others. Knowing where our meat comes from, and especially how the animals have lived, takes precedence for me personally over needing to be able to kill the chickens myself. As I mentioned, I'm grateful that there are those who can do this.