A Moral Dilema

I like meat, good meat, from a mature grass or heather fed animal, that has had time to develop some muscle texture, some flavour and good marbling of fat through that muscle.

I like mutton (from a fella that’s been running around for five years with his nuts off), slowroasted, then finished off in a hot oven to crisp the fat (nothing worse than soggy, greasy meat). Forget gravy and sauces (only crap meat needs sauces and spices, good meat is capable of going solo, any accompaniment just detracts from the experience.

I like Beef, from a mature beast (none of your under 30 months shite), from a slow growing breed that gives good fatty marbled meat, well hung before it is jointed (about a month sounds right). Cook it blue, rare, medium or, well done, delicious!

You can send the battery rat chicken and M-dogburger processed shite to the bin. The stuff that comes in from Brazil, Thailand etc only competes on the basis of low standards.

Brazil in particular, has ranches where the land was never paid for, any indigenous people were forcibly displaced, prisoner labour can be used for a couple of dollars a day, and if they refuse to work, they can be shot. Residues of banned hormone growth promoters and drugs still keep being found, animal welfare is Zero and traceability is Zero.

How is that supposed to be fair competition with Europe’s over regulated agriculture?

But that is getting away from the point, which is, I am starting to become more and more vegetarian.

Yes, me, who has shot critters by the thousand!

Anyone who has kept animals knows that each animal has its’ own personality, forget what Descarte claimed, that only humans have “mind” and that animals are just automata.

Probably my biggest turning point was Bunny, a tiny baby wild rabbit that Patty found on the steps at work, she had fallen about 60 feet over a cliff onto concrete and had suffered an open fracture of a back leg.

We fed her on cows milk (actually a bad thing as all rabbits are lactose intolerant, all replacement milks give them the shites) and took her to the vets, where her leg was amputated.

I was off work at the time with glandular fever and nursing Bunny gave me some purpose. We got her two companion guinea pigs which I thought were both female (I got two for the price of one, because they were lousy) one had all of its hair chewed short, apart from a tuft on either side of its’ face, she got called Wart hog, the other was really wild to start with, and turned out to be male, he’s called Wild hog. The two supposedly domestic hogs were so wild, they made Bunny wild for a while.

Anyway, all have distinct personalities. Bunny is very placid. Her missing back leg means that she is not particularly mobile, this is compounded by a damaged front leg (received at the vets where she was supposedly being looked after, name of vet available on request!). She therefore spends a lot of time lying down, and is particularly good at cuddling up, either with us or the hogs.

It isn’t sentimentality, I can quote the references for the cognitive psychology and neurological basis for emotions, and even rattlesnakes are capable of motherly love, yes, emotions occur in the part of the brain that we share with reptiles!

So where does that leave me? Respecter of animals as individual beings and eater of good meat?

ps, I've just squashed two potentially malarial mosquitos, without moral qualm.