Shall I Carve?

1333: 

Edited by CJ Tointon

How insidiously 'meat' creeps into the human 'norm'.  It's hardly even recognisable anymore as having once been an animal since it's usually only a small part of that animal.  A pork chop doesn’t remind you of a pig anymore than a roast leg of lamb reminds you of a baby sheep.  When you buy a dead, plucked chicken, it's almost whole, yet looks nothing like the live bird or even a dead version of the live bird! 
As a child, I remember looking at the carcass of a chicken trying to picture it alive.  But with its head, beak, feathers, spindly legs and claws missing, I just couldn’t see it.  But since none of these body parts were used for eating, they  had no part to play in the final 'item'.  They weren't part of the 'chicken' one was about to consume.  And there were no internal organs either, all of which had been scooped out beforehand (and sometimes came in a separate bag known as 'the giblets', although what one was meant to do with them I never understood)!

To a child this 'object' was nothing like an animal.  My image of the live chicken was so very different to this almost-whole body that I knew to be 'chicken' and this was sufficient to numb any emotional resistance to the eating-of-the-animal.  It was only later, with a much more developed sense of questioning the acceptable, that details were learnt, acted upon and I became Vegan.

As soon as the process of rearing, killing and butchering is understood (especially with larger animals) or as soon as one sees the whole of the dead animal's carcass being hauled into the butchers shop from a refrigerated delivery truck, then the animal behind the meat comes into much sharper focus.  Is it any wonder that these whole carcasses are no longer paraded in front of the public, or that the heads of pigs no longer appear in the windows of butchers shops?

When I realised what has to occur for a living animal to be turned into 'meat', I wanted to go and see for myself the inside of an abattoir.  It was difficult to get in, but with a few lies about organising a school visit, I was grudgingly shown through the meatworks.   And it was an unforgettable experience!! Today, some thirty years on, that visit would never be allowed to happen. Everything is meticulously hidden from view these days.  Nothing must be seen of the living actually dying.  It only takes one 'driven' ratbag (like me) who is incensed by the ugliness of seeing what happens to the living animal in its death throes, for that same ratbag to spread all sorts of information to impressionable minds, in order to help reduce the customer base of the Animal Industry.

With the advent of Animal Rights Activists, the Animal Industries are fighting back.  To counter our claims of cruelty and ugliness, a benign image is being carefully promoted to draw people to the meat counter.  In their advertising, they show the family seated for dinner with salivating smiles on the childrens' faces, eager for the Sunday roast.  There's an innocuous ritual to be performed.  The cook (usually the mother) ceremoniously hands the two-pronged fork and very sharp bladed knife to the father at the head of the table.  "Shall I carve?" he asks.  The meal is about to start.  With practised expertise, father carves thin, mouth-watering slices off the side of the chicken (or the leg of lamb or the side of beef) and carefully places each slither on the child's plate, as the good child looks on.  In this picture, everyone is smiling.  It's impossible to find anything upsetting here.

This is not a picture of blood-thirsty people or 'killers of animals'.  This is all kindness and generosity and family harmony.  No one would be tracing the steps back to the essential animal torture and murder that has made this picture possible - except the 'driven' ratbag!