Wild animals used for food

3.

In my local supermarket, at the meat counter, are some ‘wild’ products - notably kangaroo meat, for human consumption and for dog meat. I doubt if people really want to know what happens to these animals. These wild creatures are not farmed but shot, at night, in the glare of the hunters’ spotlights. Their young, too small to be useful, are bashed to death or left for predators. Perhaps these animals are killed to make income for the hunters but I suspect there’s some salacious pleasure derived from the brutality involved in this killing ‘sport’ itself.

Many years ago, people were far more in touch with how animal foods came to them. Long before we held ‘food animals’ captive, we hunted them for food. Back then it might have been essential for our own survival, but now it isn’t, we mostly hunt for recreation. My next door neighbor hangs his fishing rod over the sea wall to relax from his stressful job, as a chef. He’s an intelligent, kind man and probably never thinks for a moment that the fish he catches are sentient creatures who share with us very similar pain receptors and nervous system. He may not realize or want to know that the fish he hooks will slowly suffocate to death over a period of twenty or so minutes. He (like thousands of others) fishes for fun, unconcerned about how fish feel when hooked and hauled out of their world and left to die a slow death. As a chef he’s dealing with animals all the time, but his ‘working-animals’ are already dead. He doesn’t have to make any connection between the living creature and the body parts he uses. He simply cooks what his customers ask for (which is mostly meat, sea foods and rich dairy concoctions) without any thought of animals suffering or dying.