Complexity of Meat

The next step in the current urban homesteading trend is raising animals for meat. Several cities and towns have started to look at bylaws surrounding the issue as urban farmers want to step up from eggs to something more — whether chickens, geese, rabbits, goats, or other smaller food animals. Locally, one former city counsellor expressed an interest in amending our bylaws to include a provision for keeping goats for dairy, but not food. It is still illegal to slaughter any animal in the City of Victoria¹.

A recent Slate article, “Farmer Groupies and Chicken Coddlers,” that frames urban homesteading as a nostalgia-inspired movement², has an interesting take on slaughtering those animals,

These unsettled DIYers are operating in a particularly weird moral environment, caught between ideal and reality. On the one hand, there’s the locavore lust for authenticity that promises that slaughtering your own food will be an adventure in self-discovery. On the other hand, we have developed a complex ethical and emotional connection with animals that makes us really uncomfortable with their pain, even if we tell ourselves it’s less than if the animal had spent its life in a factory farm.

That “weird moral environment” is why I’ve said flat out to Mike that in the post-apocalyptic world, I will be a vegetarian because I cannot imagine killing, let alone preparing the animal for food. Even now, I can’t eat food that has a face (e.g. fish with the head still attached) or even resembles its original form too closely (e.g. cornish game hens).  I also have trouble getting past the cultural bias against insects/larvae and similar. Other than that, I’m much more flexible than I was as a child. I would say without hesitation that among family (parents & sibling) I have the broadest palate but it pales in comparison to Mike’s. Still, I consider myself an omnivore. Plus I really like meat.

Recently, a friend announced she would be learning how to slaughter chickens because “feeding ourselves as naturally and in as few industrial steps as possible” is a priority for her and her family. I reacted almost vicerally — just reading it made my stomach lurch as I thought back to my childhood. We had backyard chickens for many years when I was a kid but after successive raccoon attacks the remainder were stressed and no longer producing so my father slaughtered them. I watched from what I thought was a safe distance but the image of the legendary headless chicken is etched permanently on my brain.

Of course, I didn’t have the option of choosing to be a vegetarian, like my daughter has — as a kid, we ate what was in front of us or we didn’t eat. It’s been frustrating at times to accomodate Kiddo’s choice because while she is unwilling to eat meat, she looks the other way with things like gravy and soup stock. She is also picky about vegetables and legumes so she ends up with a lot more soy in her diet than I’d like. At least she eats fish… but not with heads attached.

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¹ See City of Victoria ByLaw 11-044: Animal Control; while it does not specifically outlaw slaughtering, it requires care and veterinary intervention where necessary. I have heard from several urban chicken keepers that they take their chickens to other municipalities when it is time for them to be killed.

² This suggestion deserves it’s own retort in a separate post.