Meat! It's delicious, but is it ethical? Does it matter where it comes from or not? Are you a filthy baby animal murderer when you eat lamb or veal?
Discuss! (feel free to copy paste a bit from the disco board)
Debate club: MEAT!
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Mr. Johnson
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Mr. Johnson
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You're doing it wrong Joose! They're hypothetical questions.
But let's throw some fuel on the fire to make it more interesting.
I think we should eat less meat.
I'm not saying we should all turn vegetarian (
), but nowadays it seems as if it doesn't really matter what we're eating, as long as it has 'MEAT' on the package, people 'll eat it. My grandma always tells me lots of stories about the old days, as grandmas do, and explained to me that in the 30's and the 40's you didn't really have butchers*, people simply kept pigs at home and when they got old enough (veal and baby pork were uncommon during those days) they slaughtered a pig and that was enough to get them through a few months. cows were kept by farmers for milk, and when they got too old they used the meat for stew, as it was too old to use for steaks (which were, again, uncommon). Furthermore, the animals' health went above everything, as without animals the farmers had no income. It was so that when my grandmother or one of her siblings got sick, they were told to sleep it off but when a cow got sick they send someone on a bicycle 20 km to the next town to get the vet.
But I digress. What I'm trying to say is that now that the number of people has exploded, we lost our touch with nature and care no longer where our products come from. Ehm, actually that wasn't what I was trying to say either, it seems I'm not very good at debating.
Let's try again.
In our household we always eat organic food, this is not because we're posh hippies but because my mum used to work for a large organic shop which had it's own butchery. And I know that when I get my own house and will no longer be able to afford organic meat, it'll be hard for me as quite frankly it's infinitely better than most injected with colour, flavour and water-meat that cheaper stores and butchers sell (not that all non-organic butchers are bad, mind, but it can be hard to find a good one). And unlike other meat, I know where this meat comes from, and know that the animals are treated well and are fed properly and accordingly. If organic meat would suddenly drop in price, and more people would be able to afford it, the farmer would be forced to purchase more animals, give them cheaper food, and their quality of living would decline. It is my opinion that this would greatly influence the taste of the meat. Therefore, if we ate less meat, non-organic farmers would have to purchase less animals, be able to afford better food and could provide them with enough space. So by eating less meat, we might be able to improve not only the quality of living for the animals, but also the taste of our meat.
*It should be noted that my grandmother lived on a large farm in the countryside, they probably had butchers in the cities.
But let's throw some fuel on the fire to make it more interesting.
I think we should eat less meat.
I'm not saying we should all turn vegetarian (
), but nowadays it seems as if it doesn't really matter what we're eating, as long as it has 'MEAT' on the package, people 'll eat it. My grandma always tells me lots of stories about the old days, as grandmas do, and explained to me that in the 30's and the 40's you didn't really have butchers*, people simply kept pigs at home and when they got old enough (veal and baby pork were uncommon during those days) they slaughtered a pig and that was enough to get them through a few months. cows were kept by farmers for milk, and when they got too old they used the meat for stew, as it was too old to use for steaks (which were, again, uncommon). Furthermore, the animals' health went above everything, as without animals the farmers had no income. It was so that when my grandmother or one of her siblings got sick, they were told to sleep it off but when a cow got sick they send someone on a bicycle 20 km to the next town to get the vet. But I digress. What I'm trying to say is that now that the number of people has exploded, we lost our touch with nature and care no longer where our products come from. Ehm, actually that wasn't what I was trying to say either, it seems I'm not very good at debating.
Let's try again.
In our household we always eat organic food, this is not because we're posh hippies but because my mum used to work for a large organic shop which had it's own butchery. And I know that when I get my own house and will no longer be able to afford organic meat, it'll be hard for me as quite frankly it's infinitely better than most injected with colour, flavour and water-meat that cheaper stores and butchers sell (not that all non-organic butchers are bad, mind, but it can be hard to find a good one). And unlike other meat, I know where this meat comes from, and know that the animals are treated well and are fed properly and accordingly. If organic meat would suddenly drop in price, and more people would be able to afford it, the farmer would be forced to purchase more animals, give them cheaper food, and their quality of living would decline. It is my opinion that this would greatly influence the taste of the meat. Therefore, if we ate less meat, non-organic farmers would have to purchase less animals, be able to afford better food and could provide them with enough space. So by eating less meat, we might be able to improve not only the quality of living for the animals, but also the taste of our meat.
*It should be noted that my grandmother lived on a large farm in the countryside, they probably had butchers in the cities.
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mrbobbins
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And looking at it on a global scale eating less meat could have a hugely beneficial impact on the environment and our ability to feed the world!
"Comprehensive referenced report on the unsustainability of our increasing meat consumption and current intensive animal farming methods for human health and the economy, the environment and farmed animals"
"Comprehensive referenced report on the unsustainability of our increasing meat consumption and current intensive animal farming methods for human health and the economy, the environment and farmed animals"
This is all i have to say.
[media]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=thfK58rNeIY[/media]
[media]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=thfK58rNeIY[/media]
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The Shutting Downs
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I'd say people are geting too removed from where thier food comes from.
Kids not knowing that a cow=beef, or people not wanting to look at the pig roasting away as its too cruel, but will still eat it.
I'm good friends with a falconer, and have been with him when he has flown the birds many a time and watched then take out a bunny in one go, it is fascinating to watch, but when he did a public display there was outcry at the hawk killing a 'dummy' bunny (fur covered sandbag) as 'cruel'.
But I digress.
The problem is that meat is very cheap to buy in supermarkets, addled with stuff to make it cheaper and often ends up cheaper that veggies.
In my house we have cut the meat back and added fillers more of late, we are lucky enough to have a farm nearby who do good meat, and you see the animals in the field on the way in. Slightly more expensive, but you just add more veg/pasta/rice to make the meal.
Kids not knowing that a cow=beef, or people not wanting to look at the pig roasting away as its too cruel, but will still eat it.
I'm good friends with a falconer, and have been with him when he has flown the birds many a time and watched then take out a bunny in one go, it is fascinating to watch, but when he did a public display there was outcry at the hawk killing a 'dummy' bunny (fur covered sandbag) as 'cruel'.
But I digress.
The problem is that meat is very cheap to buy in supermarkets, addled with stuff to make it cheaper and often ends up cheaper that veggies.
In my house we have cut the meat back and added fillers more of late, we are lucky enough to have a farm nearby who do good meat, and you see the animals in the field on the way in. Slightly more expensive, but you just add more veg/pasta/rice to make the meal.
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Dr. kitteny berk
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Being a <s>fatty</s> foodie, and not rich, I'm kinda on the fence about meat.
I like the meat I eat to be decent quality, from animals that've been treated well.
However, there's no way in hell I can afford to buy organic meat all the time.
I tend to give chicken all the hate, as it's versatile and a good source of protein, also the flavour doesn't suffer that badly really, especially not when used as an ingredient, rather than a major part (like, say, in a roast)
So yeah, I buy crappy chicken, because I can afford to, and they're fairly stupid beasts, so I give them less consideration.
Pigs I give a bit more money to, as decent bacon is so much better than cheap bacon, otherwise, I generally stick to the crappy cuts, like belly and hocks, as they're really tasty and cheap, so I can afford to spend the pennies on slightly better stuff.
Cows, on the other hand, they're worth my money, the bits worth eating are expensive, and are horrible if the cow hasn't been kept well.
I go to the market for steaks, choose the bits I want, and pay for them happily, as they're often the main part of the meal.
Actually, having just been shopping, I spent:
£10 on
700g Steak mince x2
500g Chicken breasts
£2.40 on chicken legs
£8 on bacon (dry cured)
£30 on everything else.
Tomorrow I'll nip to the market and likely spend a tenner on a steak.
TL;DR: The more important the meat is in a meal, the more money I spend on it. and chickens are cunts, they can suffer a bit.
I like the meat I eat to be decent quality, from animals that've been treated well.
However, there's no way in hell I can afford to buy organic meat all the time.
I tend to give chicken all the hate, as it's versatile and a good source of protein, also the flavour doesn't suffer that badly really, especially not when used as an ingredient, rather than a major part (like, say, in a roast)
So yeah, I buy crappy chicken, because I can afford to, and they're fairly stupid beasts, so I give them less consideration.
Pigs I give a bit more money to, as decent bacon is so much better than cheap bacon, otherwise, I generally stick to the crappy cuts, like belly and hocks, as they're really tasty and cheap, so I can afford to spend the pennies on slightly better stuff.
Cows, on the other hand, they're worth my money, the bits worth eating are expensive, and are horrible if the cow hasn't been kept well.
I go to the market for steaks, choose the bits I want, and pay for them happily, as they're often the main part of the meal.
Actually, having just been shopping, I spent:
£10 on
700g Steak mince x2
500g Chicken breasts
£2.40 on chicken legs
£8 on bacon (dry cured)
£30 on everything else.
Tomorrow I'll nip to the market and likely spend a tenner on a steak.
TL;DR: The more important the meat is in a meal, the more money I spend on it. and chickens are cunts, they can suffer a bit.
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HereComesPete
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Afraid I can't agree on the cheap chicken isn't much worse than the expensive stuff, the intense rearing of the cheap stuff makes it loose, fatty and rather bland. I do think chicken is ridiculously priced however and buy turkey a lot as it's better for you and the cost difference is as much as half the price.
Anyway - as Johnson wants debate and my brain needs a kick out of the fugue it's in, I went and read some stuff and grabbed some ideas, some of them are badly flawed, some of them are your typical naturalistic/moralistic fallacies and not one of them fully supports their argument. Still, here's a few -
Ethical? No, it's not. And yet yes it is. As we each hold differing standards of what we regard as ethical and apply indefinable words like 'good' and 'fair' to things we mark as ethical and use the antagonistic antonyms for things we don't then there is of course no absolute.
Does it matter where it comes from? No, because if you eat meat that's reared for the purpose of killing and consuming you condone all forms and methods of the industry.
Are you a filthy baby animal murderer when you eat lamb or veal? No, unless you happen to be the person who killed said lamb or calf before eating it, in which case yes. Veal has had a stigma attached to it in a few countries for quite some time. I blame the yanks, who fill their milk fed veal with antibiotics and other crap and get it wrong anyway. Lamb, not so much stigma. But looking back to the point above, surely your continued consumption of the reared for food meat allows and encourages these other types of meat to be produced.
As for what I think - I've worked as a slaughter man, a butcher and a chef. And in each of those jobs I've taken the time to try and minimise any suffering, maximise on quality and learn about the food I'm working with, but that's my nature. I can never sit still without getting a head full of questions.
I do of course selectively pick and choose what is ethical and what isn't. Crate veal, battery hens and gavage foie gras are to me unethical, but most other methods I see as okay. I also think all meat matters in terms of quality, but some brands take the piss with it too. Like the fact you can buy tiny little corn fed guinea fowl at close to sixty quid a kilogram, just because.
In terms of organic, as most countries allow a percentage of non-organic food to be in the food supplies of organic raised animals, it's kind of a lie. And all natural animal cake isn't organic because its processed, and grass isn't organic unless certified. As such the label 'organic' is mostly a con as far as I'm concerned. On the plus side you know the organic animal is more likely to have matured a bit more, to have had more room to move about and generally been 'looked after better'. And as for baby animal murderer, yes you are a murderer but most slaughterers do a better job than say a cat with a mouse. The fact that we rear, slaughter and destroy so much meat is a waste, especially given the starving Africans etc. But that is of course a whole other debate.
Bobbins - having worked in a meat factory I can indeed tell you its a tad unpleasant until you become inured to the job. The smell of hot blood and cooling body parts are very primal and it's hard to switch off to most of the time, but in the quantities its present and the environment you deal with it in jst makes it a bit more invasive on the nostrils and the mind.
/rather long post.
Anyway - as Johnson wants debate and my brain needs a kick out of the fugue it's in, I went and read some stuff and grabbed some ideas, some of them are badly flawed, some of them are your typical naturalistic/moralistic fallacies and not one of them fully supports their argument. Still, here's a few -
Ethical? No, it's not. And yet yes it is. As we each hold differing standards of what we regard as ethical and apply indefinable words like 'good' and 'fair' to things we mark as ethical and use the antagonistic antonyms for things we don't then there is of course no absolute.
Does it matter where it comes from? No, because if you eat meat that's reared for the purpose of killing and consuming you condone all forms and methods of the industry.
Are you a filthy baby animal murderer when you eat lamb or veal? No, unless you happen to be the person who killed said lamb or calf before eating it, in which case yes. Veal has had a stigma attached to it in a few countries for quite some time. I blame the yanks, who fill their milk fed veal with antibiotics and other crap and get it wrong anyway. Lamb, not so much stigma. But looking back to the point above, surely your continued consumption of the reared for food meat allows and encourages these other types of meat to be produced.
As for what I think - I've worked as a slaughter man, a butcher and a chef. And in each of those jobs I've taken the time to try and minimise any suffering, maximise on quality and learn about the food I'm working with, but that's my nature. I can never sit still without getting a head full of questions.
I do of course selectively pick and choose what is ethical and what isn't. Crate veal, battery hens and gavage foie gras are to me unethical, but most other methods I see as okay. I also think all meat matters in terms of quality, but some brands take the piss with it too. Like the fact you can buy tiny little corn fed guinea fowl at close to sixty quid a kilogram, just because.
In terms of organic, as most countries allow a percentage of non-organic food to be in the food supplies of organic raised animals, it's kind of a lie. And all natural animal cake isn't organic because its processed, and grass isn't organic unless certified. As such the label 'organic' is mostly a con as far as I'm concerned. On the plus side you know the organic animal is more likely to have matured a bit more, to have had more room to move about and generally been 'looked after better'. And as for baby animal murderer, yes you are a murderer but most slaughterers do a better job than say a cat with a mouse. The fact that we rear, slaughter and destroy so much meat is a waste, especially given the starving Africans etc. But that is of course a whole other debate.
Bobbins - having worked in a meat factory I can indeed tell you its a tad unpleasant until you become inured to the job. The smell of hot blood and cooling body parts are very primal and it's hard to switch off to most of the time, but in the quantities its present and the environment you deal with it in jst makes it a bit more invasive on the nostrils and the mind.
/rather long post.
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Dr. kitteny berk
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I agree to a degree, kinda.HereComesPete wrote:Afraid I can't agree on the cheap chicken isn't much worse than the expensive stuff, the intense rearing of the cheap stuff makes it loose, fatty and rather bland. I do think chicken is ridiculously priced however and buy turkey a lot as it's better for you and the cost difference is as much as half the price.
Expensive chicken IMO is much better than cheap chicken.
But I don't find there's that much middle ground, It's not like steak where you get 10 options quality/cost wise.
What I should've said is I don't find that cheap chicken is considerably worse than normal priced chicken.
Once you get into the free range corn fed massaged by tamed kippers kinda stuff, there's a lot of difference and the quality/flavour is worth it if you're using it where you really want it to taste of chicken.
But for lumps of protein in some stuff, as far as I can tell, cheap fine.
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FatherJack
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Animals and Meat
I not only like to know, but like to think about the animal my meat has come from, specifically where in the animal so that I can work out how best to cook it, depending how much exercise that part of the body will have had.
I think there are actually more programmes which show how food is made these days than there used to be from things like Jimmy's Food Factory, through Britain's Really Disgusting Food to Kill It... and Jamie's Fowl Dinners - all perhaps a bit edu-light, but certainly more enlighting than the films of machines squirting chocolate into moulds that we used to get. I notice nature programmes don't shy away as much as they used to of animals killing each other either.
Organic
This seems to me a bit of all-encompassing nonsense, when what we should be focussing on is quality. Some organic vegatables are tasteless compared to their chemically-enhanced counterparts, whereas the very cheap chicken is often injected with water or worse.
I'm not a big fan of chicken anyway, but tend to buy turkey as an alternative to cheap chicken. Similarly I buy steak mince because it has less fat than regular beef mince - in both cases I'm getting more of the product I actually want (the meat) and less of the water/fat I don't. Decent bacon is worth buying for both of these reasons, the cheap stuff is full of water and streaky is best used when you want the fat to do a job for you, either basting something or making it very crispy.
I would love to buy all my produce from the farm shops dotted around Warwickshire, but not only is that prohibitively expensive it also requires a lot more effort in cooking to properly do it justice.
Killing animals
I'm not sure at what age I realised that lamb chops came from the cute fluffy things in the fields, but I don't remember it being a problem. As kids we often visited farms, two of my Mum's relations were farmers and we often stayed at guest houses based within farms on holiday, so was no stranger to being around animals. I did get a bit upset when we went to a cattle market, but that was more the way the shouty men so casually bartered over the animals there, some of which were on their final journey.
As for whether I could kill an animal, I don't know. I'm not opposed to snuffing out their existence for the greater good (my dinner) but I'd obviously need to be shown how to do it properly. Despite my formative years spent leaping around in haystacks and herding cows through gates, these days I'm a bit scared of all animals. My preferred method would be to shoot them from a safe distance and have someone else check that they won't come back to life again, but that's generally not a humane oft-used method. Seeing a professional make the kill and do the butchery though, yes that would be interesting - I suppose it might make me a little queasy to see it up close, but the transition from "living animal" to "just meat" in my head seems to happen very quickly when I've seen it on telly. I'd probably make quite an effective serial killer as I'm not nearly so scared of contact with people.
I not only like to know, but like to think about the animal my meat has come from, specifically where in the animal so that I can work out how best to cook it, depending how much exercise that part of the body will have had.
I think there are actually more programmes which show how food is made these days than there used to be from things like Jimmy's Food Factory, through Britain's Really Disgusting Food to Kill It... and Jamie's Fowl Dinners - all perhaps a bit edu-light, but certainly more enlighting than the films of machines squirting chocolate into moulds that we used to get. I notice nature programmes don't shy away as much as they used to of animals killing each other either.
Organic
This seems to me a bit of all-encompassing nonsense, when what we should be focussing on is quality. Some organic vegatables are tasteless compared to their chemically-enhanced counterparts, whereas the very cheap chicken is often injected with water or worse.
I'm not a big fan of chicken anyway, but tend to buy turkey as an alternative to cheap chicken. Similarly I buy steak mince because it has less fat than regular beef mince - in both cases I'm getting more of the product I actually want (the meat) and less of the water/fat I don't. Decent bacon is worth buying for both of these reasons, the cheap stuff is full of water and streaky is best used when you want the fat to do a job for you, either basting something or making it very crispy.
I would love to buy all my produce from the farm shops dotted around Warwickshire, but not only is that prohibitively expensive it also requires a lot more effort in cooking to properly do it justice.
Killing animals
I'm not sure at what age I realised that lamb chops came from the cute fluffy things in the fields, but I don't remember it being a problem. As kids we often visited farms, two of my Mum's relations were farmers and we often stayed at guest houses based within farms on holiday, so was no stranger to being around animals. I did get a bit upset when we went to a cattle market, but that was more the way the shouty men so casually bartered over the animals there, some of which were on their final journey.
As for whether I could kill an animal, I don't know. I'm not opposed to snuffing out their existence for the greater good (my dinner) but I'd obviously need to be shown how to do it properly. Despite my formative years spent leaping around in haystacks and herding cows through gates, these days I'm a bit scared of all animals. My preferred method would be to shoot them from a safe distance and have someone else check that they won't come back to life again, but that's generally not a humane oft-used method. Seeing a professional make the kill and do the butchery though, yes that would be interesting - I suppose it might make me a little queasy to see it up close, but the transition from "living animal" to "just meat" in my head seems to happen very quickly when I've seen it on telly. I'd probably make quite an effective serial killer as I'm not nearly so scared of contact with people.
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The Shutting Downs
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Lamb - it's nice, but I also like mutton and would have it as prefrence, but most places won't rear the sheep until that age anymore as the profit margin is too low.
Again, the problems with meat come down to the market prices again. I have a load of 30 year old cook books that use all the cuts, but you can't get a lot of them commercially.
Again, the problems with meat come down to the market prices again. I have a load of 30 year old cook books that use all the cuts, but you can't get a lot of them commercially.
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randomgazz
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I'm not convinced on meat being an essential part of the diet - I was vegetarian until 18 and I could hardly be called stunted.
However, meat can be very very tasty.
Probably because of my background, I'll eat meat infrequently in the week but like my cheese I'd rather go without meat than eat cheap meat because of the big difference in taste.
However, meat can be very very tasty.
Probably because of my background, I'll eat meat infrequently in the week but like my cheese I'd rather go without meat than eat cheap meat because of the big difference in taste.
Nice work MJ, you've started rather an interesting discussion here (props to Lat for unwittingly starting it).
I agree that we should probably eat less meat. If for no other reason than that we seem to eat a hell of a lot of it. Sure, I like it, but I really think I eat more than I need to in order to enjoy a meal, and that it's making me fat. I also like pretty much all veg (yeah, even spinach and sprouts), so have no objection at all to eating more of it.
Also, I've noticed a few people eating turkey instead of chicken. It sounds like a good idea to me in theory, until I remember that I'm not very keen on the taste of turkey. Don't you turkey-eaters get that?
I agree that we should probably eat less meat. If for no other reason than that we seem to eat a hell of a lot of it. Sure, I like it, but I really think I eat more than I need to in order to enjoy a meal, and that it's making me fat. I also like pretty much all veg (yeah, even spinach and sprouts), so have no objection at all to eating more of it.
Also, I've noticed a few people eating turkey instead of chicken. It sounds like a good idea to me in theory, until I remember that I'm not very keen on the taste of turkey. Don't you turkey-eaters get that?
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Mr. Johnson
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HereComesPete
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FatherJack
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What I think of as "the taste of turkey" usually equates to the sometimes-dry slices of roasted turkey we used to get on Christmas Day, or the always-dry slices in sandwiches for most of the week afterwards.Dog Pants wrote:Also, I've noticed a few people eating turkey instead of chicken. It sounds like a good idea to me in theory, until I remember that I'm not very keen on the taste of turkey. Don't you turkey-eaters get that?
What I mostly use it for now is as the meat ingredient in a stir fry, or more occasionally pan fried as a whole breast in a similar method to how I do steak. In both cases the sauces I use, particularly at the very start of cooking flavour the meat enough that the meat really only differentiates itself from other meats in its texture. Beef, lamb and game have strong enough tastes to make a difference, but I find chicken, pork and turkey pretty interchangeable in a stir fry.