Downing
the last of my knock off as I left work the other day, my manager casually
enquired as to my plan for my days off.
‘We’ve got a new goat at home,’ I replied as I searched for my keys, ‘so
we’ll have to keep an eye on him until we can get him up to the farm. Sometimes the goats scream at the chickens
and freak them out a bit.’
My
workmates, sitting at the bar drinking, erupted into laughter. Confused, I looked around to see what was so
hilarious. Then it dawned on me. Farm animals had so seamlessly infiltrated
every corner of my existence, I had not once paused to consider the novelty of
it all. My life, to those receiving bite
sized chunks of it, was, well, funny.
If I were
to envision a year ago where I’d be now, an image of me, frustrated and sweaty,
chasing a flock of rebellious chickens around a Footscray garden while a lamb
bleated in the background, would not have been the first thought to come to
mind. And yet here we are. Farmers.
A novelty I guess, but it feels more normal to me than anything else
I’ve ever done.
The
theory behind it was always an ethical one.
Have you ever heard a vegetarian say that they would eat meat, if only they
had the means to raise and slaughter it themselves? I always felt that sentiment made a lot of
sense. Most vegos’ primary reason for
forgoing animal products is the horribly unethical way in which they are
housed, treated and eventually, killed.
They don’t want to participate in an industry that reduces animals to a
commodity. Tom and I did have the
means to give the animals that we would ultimately consume a happy life. So we went ahead and got started.
I’m
embarrassed to say I dragged my feet on giving up commercial meat. It was kind of like quitting smoking. I kept telling myself, ‘one more week, one
more week’, of pork rolls and Pho and chicken chips. But then we were driving home on the Hume one
day. We passed an enormous semi-trailer,
and it stank. I looked over and
froze. It was a scene I’d witnessed
before, but suddenly, for me, it had meaning.
Crammed into the truck with barely enough space to breath were
pigs. Pigs on their way to the slaughter
house. Frightened and confused, they
looked exactly like our doted upon Margaret and Grace. I looked at Tom, horrified, and said, ‘I’m
giving up commercial meat today.’
That was
a few months ago and I haven’t looked back.
I only miss pork rolls a bit, but it’s well worth it for how good I
feel. I hadn’t realized how guilty I was
feeling about eating mass-produced meat until I stopped. And felt, for the most part, relieved.
Most of
our animals are pets, rescued form various predicaments to be given a happy
life on our farm. We need only slaughter
one sheep or chicken a month to meet ours and our family’s needs, as we eat the
whole damn thing, nose to tail. The
slaughter is of course a confronting process, as it should be. We are no longer removed from the life, the
death of the animals that feed us. Being
so intimately involved in the death of the animal forces us to be mindful of
the sacrifice being made for the sake of ours and our family’s nourishment.
I know
that many people have reservations about our decision, and they are more than
warranted. Ironically, since giving up
commercial meat I have been on the receiving end of more than one veiled
lecture as to my choice to continue consuming it at all. I now know what my vegetarian friends are
talking about when they explain that they are often subject to criticism by
their vegan counterparts. I suppose
those people who have been selfless enough to forgo animal products entirely
consider full-meat eaters a ‘lost cause’.
I’ve included this caveat because I don’t want this blog to be
interpreted as preachy; I myself still spend time weighing up the morality of
our actions, and the only thing I can consistently come up with is that what
we’re doing now is a whole lot better than what we were doing before.
Likewise
I have spent a lot of time mulling over the ethics of our possible next step; creating
a local community in which we trade ‘ethical meat’ for other foods or
services. Is it good to allow more meat
eaters access to nurtured, happy animals, or is it problematic to slaughter
more animals than we really need to?
I’ll keep you posted on where we go with that one. xx
