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"Meat Labels Hope To Lure The Sensitive Carnivore"


clayrae

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I do support compassion and kindness and a good life for all things and all that stuff, but sometimes I think things are getting just a little bit out of control. "Animal compassionate" meat at Whole Foods.

How does chopping something’s head off and roasting it on a spit translate into “animal compassionate”?? (I’m a carnivore, just for the record) A good friend recently wrote the following on his blog which seems appropriate here:

Paper or Plastic by Soren Narnia.

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I do support compassion and kindness and a good life for all things and all that stuff, but sometimes I think things are getting just a little bit out of control. "Animal compassionate" meat at Whole Foods.

How does chopping something’s head off and roasting it on a spit translate into “animal compassionate”??

It means that the animals are raised humanely and (I think) slaughtered humanely. I'd rather eat a pig that was allowed to run around outside, and oink, and walllow (happy as a pig in...) than one raised in a cage and sent to a slaughterhouse. Polyface has been doing this kind of thing for years.
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It means that the animals are raised humanely and (I think) slaughtered humanely. I'd rather eat a pig that was allowed to run around outside, and oink, and walllow (happy as a pig in...) than one raised in a cage and sent to a slaughterhouse. Polyface has been doing this kind of thing for years.

Yes, I understand (that was sarcasm there.)

What I am reacting to is the fact that it seems like we are trying to divorce ourselves from the fact that, if we are eating meat, we are eating a once living thing that is now dead. No matter how compassionate or caring or whatever it is, a spade is a spade…

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What I am reacting to is the fact that it seems like we are trying to divorce ourselves from the fact that, if we are eating meat, we are eating a once living thing that is now dead. No matter how compassionate or caring or whatever it is, a spade is a spade…
Oh, I dunno, I think there's long been a need to make nice with it, starting when the first homo sapiens felt the need to thank the animal's spirit for its "sacrifice" before digging in to the venison.
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My non-baby-animal-eating, animal-loving friend, Mrs. S., has the opposite view (and it's her view so don't yell at me :) )...

She thinks it is more cruel to give an animal a nice life and then kill it. In other words, if an animal is miserable in a cage or crowded conditions, killing it is putting it out of its misery.

But, in her defense, if she was not married to her meat-loving, adventuresome-foodie husband, she would be a vegetarian.

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Ah ha, another oxymoron. Right up there with "jumbo shrimp" and "lightly killed."
I beg to differ. Merriam-Webster defines humane as "marked by compassion, sympathy, or consideration for humans or animals". If you're going to kill something, you can do it without regard to the pain and suffering it goes through (inhumane) or try to ease it's death as much as possible (humane).

I believe you can extend that thinking to the manner in which the animal is raised. I'm not suggesting that all cows be treated like Wagyu cattle (though I'd love to be reincarnated as one!). But there is a level of decency that humans should treat lesser beings with, even those destined for the dining room table.

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I beg to differ. Merriam-Webster defines humane as "marked by compassion, sympathy, or consideration for humans or animals". If you're going to kill something, you can do it without regard to the pain and suffering it goes through (inhumane) or try to ease it's death as much as possible (humane).

I believe you can extend that thinking to the manner in which the animal is raised. I'm not suggesting that all cows be treated like Wagyu cattle (though I'd love to be reincarnated as one!). But there is a level of decency that humans should treat lesser beings with, even those destined for the dining room table.

I agree -- as a consumer and a self-confessed meatatarian, I'd be very willing to pay a bit more to buy meat/poultry/etc that got to bound about in a field and then got a quick axe as opposed to a death more akin to "The Jungle".

Right now, I convince myself that it's okay for me to eat meat because ALL animals have a field to themselves, get lots of good $ex and then die (willingly) when they want to commit themselves to the table. I don't want any of you to tell me differently. :)

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Ah ha, another oxymoron. Right up there with "jumbo shrimp" and "lightly killed."

Do fish count? I'm thinking about the last time I was at Great wall and the fish guy, having failed to stun the fish suffient to lay it out on the scale with side of a chefs knife, stomped the fish's head with his boot before scaling and gutting the unfortunate creature. Not quite as gruesome as seeing the live eels half-decapetated -- apparently some customers just like to get the "nose" cut off, but not exactly "lightly killed" either.

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Do fish count? I'm thinking about the last time I was at Great wall and the fish guy, having failed to stun the fish suffient to lay it out on the scale with side of a chefs knife, stomped the fish's head with his boot before scaling and gutting the unfortunate creature. Not quite as gruesome as seeing the live eels half-decapetated -- apparently some customers just like to get the "nose" cut off, but not exactly "lightly killed" either.
Too funny- but I think it's pretty obvious that people's attitudes toward animals exist along a continuum. Fish are gross looking when alive to a lot of people, but a cute yitto calf's eyes are so big and human-like.
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For double the price, it's not really worth it.

But, if I may play the devil's advocate, let me ask you this: would you rather die by crucifixion or lethal injection? Would you rather be nailed to a cross for days or weeks, while passersby throw stones at you and/or stabbed you, eventually to die either by dehydration or by suffocation from your muscles being unable to hold your body up any longer, or would you rather get a quick shot in the arm? The whole point of the guillotene was that people came to believe that capital punishment should be about ending a life, not about horrific suffering.

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For double the price, it's not really worth it.

But, if I may play the devil's advocate, let me ask you this: would you rather die by crucifixion or lethal injection? Would you rather be nailed to a cross for days or weeks, while passersby throw stones at you and/or stabbed you, eventually to die either by dehydration or by suffocation from your muscles being unable to hold your body up any longer, or would you rather get a quick shot in the arm? The whole point of the guillotene was that people came to believe that capital punishment should be about ending a life, not about horrific suffering.

My stigmata is starting to act up again :)

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i would gladly pay a small premium for meats that were "just tickled to death."
I've heard about people with that fetish. :)

Seriously, I don't think you have to pay THAT much of a premium for humanely raised/slaughtered meat, as long as you're willing to put in a little personal effort. Smith Meadows (who are at several area farmers markets) have free-range beef, pork, and lamb at prices lower than most WFs. Porterhouses are $11.99/lb, brisket is $6.99/lb, leg of lamb is $8.99 lb, etc. I'm sure most butchers at the farmers markets offer similar product at similar prices.

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Just out of curiosity, do people consider the way that the regular grocery store stuff is slaughtered something other than humane. I think they give them a quick shot to the brain with a pneumatic bolt. That ought to put the lights out real quick.
The only problem I have with it is that the factory lines in the plants of the big boys move so fast that a miss or an insufficiently on target shot is not too uncommon.

My bigger problem with the big factories is the amount of time that the cattle spend on overcrowded feedlots eating artificially enhanced and engineered food pellets.

Not that I'm fascistic about it. I don't kid myself that the meat I buy at Snider's doesn't come from the same factories as the stuff at Costco.

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Just out of curiosity, do people consider the way that the regular grocery store stuff is slaughtered something other than humane. I think they give them a quick shot to the brain with a pneumatic bolt. That ought to put the lights out real quick.
I've always heard the same, but I've also heard it's not quite that easy. I think a lot of people care about how the animal was kept before it gets the electroshock therapy. And there have been stories about how often such "therapy" is botched.
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Just out of curiosity, do people consider the way that the regular grocery store stuff is slaughtered something other than humane. I think they give them a quick shot to the brain with a pneumatic bolt. That ought to put the lights out real quick.

I think it's the treatment up until the lights go out that draws the ire of anti-cruelty folk, what with the crowded feedlots, loathsome diets and so on. Once the cows reach the abbatoir, it seems that it's the humans who work there that get the short end of the stick -- to my mind a more compelling argument for ethical beef that whatever happens to the cattle.

Kosher slaughter, done poorly, can be a little off-putting. Especially when combined with agribusiness practices (surprise).

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loathsome diets
So say you. Here is what Wikipedia says they eat at the feedlot:
diet which may be made up of hay, corn, sorghum, various other grains, by-products of food processing, such as sugar beet waste, molasses, soybean meal, or cottonseed meal, and minerals. In the American northwest and Canada, barley, low grade durum wheat, chick peas (garbanzo beans), oats and occasionally potatoes are used as feed.
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Just out of curiosity, do people consider the way that the regular grocery store stuff is slaughtered something other than humane. I think they give them a quick shot to the brain with a pneumatic bolt. That ought to put the lights out real quick.
As an example, allow me to quote from Matthew Scully's book, Dominion, about the pig slaughtering process:

-------------------------------------------------

At 16,000 kills per eight-hour shift in the Tar Heel plant, 2,000 per hour and 33 every minute, all of this done by tansient, unskilled labourers, there are mistakes...."Does it ever happen that hog's aren't properly stunned?"

"All the time," Price laughed. "Because if you're killing 16,000 hots a shift, those guys aren't going to all them hogs all the time. Some hogs come out kicking and raising hell."

"Is kicking the only sign that they're not stunned properly?"

"Running across the table of floor isn't a good sign neither. See, they use this four-pronged stunner. And if you don't hit that hog precisely, that hogs runs across the table."

...As Mr Price explained, they have to be chased and beaten. There are beatings? "That's all the time. You get a stubborn hog that doesn't want to go, employees can get to beating that hog all they want to. They use a shackle, a pipe, anything they can get their hands on." The pigs are then downed and shacked alive, as he described it, hanging by the ankle bracelet as they move down the production line. Often, we learn, they still can't be killed because they're still moving and flailing. So they are dropped alive into the scalding tank. A hidden camera at one Iowa plant recently captured this scene, the hogs still squealing and kicking as they are lowered into the water."

---------------------------------------------------------------

First of all, don't get me wrong. I'm no PETA-loving vegan. I order the tete de veau and boudin rouge everytime I go to Restaurant Kolumbia. And the guy who wrote this book, isn't some bleeding-heart liberal. He served as specal assistant and senior speechwriter to G.W. Bush. The desire for decency isn't just for lilly-livered wimps. It can (and should) be for all intelligent and thoughtful people.

I promse - I swear - this is the last time I hop on this soapbox. I'm guessing people want to enjoy their food and not be preached to. And I respect that. So I'll shut up now. :)

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Anyone who thinks the "humanely raised" animals are killed any differently than the generic feedlot animal is deluding themselves. It's exactly the same process; it's being done in the same or a similar facility. They're just not running them down the line quite as quickly, so they can take a little more care to make sure that the stunning took.

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