Saying Goodbye to Commercial Meat

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