I just finished watching Fast Food Nation. Do not watch this movie meat lovers! You will be disgusted beyond belief....
I like my steak very rare and juicy, but I guess now I could saw I like it rare and juicy with a side of feces...
The Momma Ho is coming back onto town tonight and she's gonna makes steak for dinner and for the first time in my life, I am going to say no thank you.
If you are a veggie go ahead and watch the movie, you might really enjoy the scenes of the kill floor where the cows are being skinned and dissected. Skinned cow-head with eyeballs intact anyone? How about some cow kidney? This is the movie to watch!
I am so disturbed... good movie, but so so gross. Makes me think about what I'm putting in my body....
I saw that movie and from what I remember it was pretty good. In terms of if we had to kill to eat would we? See that is a trick question really. If slaughter houses where to close and the way we had to eat meat was to go out to farm or find and an animal walking the streets and go kill it, I think most people wouldn't be able to do that. I think most people might puke a few times trying to do that. Eating and killing is natural. But see in this country at least we are so removed from it, we couldn't do it. Yes some people do go to butchers and see the end product. But most people go and buy bread and meat and ice cream all at the same place. Yes you buy beef and know it is from a cow (I'm sure some people might not now that). and you can get different kinds of beef (think lean vs. non lean) but no one really goes up and thinks about the cow and if it died happy and if it was treated well, beef is just what they are going to fry out on the grill.
(e:leetee) I do get how you don't get why we eat a cow and have a Cat as a pet. I will admit that it is kinda strange. Not to mention that different cultures have different pets and animals that you can't kill and religions also. Hey some place they eat dog. When things really get weird is when someone on a farm has animals they raise and then have to slaugter them. I have heard that sometimes if they get like a favorite pig then they will keep that one a live and kill the others. I would think you would have to keep some of the animals alive just for breeding.
I have to disagree Leetee. Removing factors like time, and use of utilities, there wouldn't be any fewer meat eaters if we butchered our own animals. Civilization is founded on an agrarian/pastoral base. People butchered animals they raised from birth for thousands of years.
The problem with our food supply is that it is way too centralized, particularly with animals and their products. In grade school, we learn about slave ships where humanity was packed shoulder to shoulder in suffocating ship quarters. We learned that many of them died from disease. We do the same to the animals we eat. Driving down California from San Fransisco to Los Angeles I saw miles and miles of cows packed shoulder to shoulder on grassless fields. The difference is that we have engineered antibiotics to keep animals alive in unlivable conditions. It is no different with plant crops. Miles of corn does not exist in nature, yet our farms engineer this through petro-fertilizers, crop engineering, and pesticides.
Smaller, local, decentralized farms with a variety of crops and species requires much less intervention and, ultimately, fewer chemicals that end up in our bodies. That means that certain meat will be more expensive, but that means that all meats will be better tasting, more healthy, and without the massive carbon footprint.
To end on a personal note, I have no moral problem eating a cat.
i've not seen the film. but i get grossed out super easily.
you're so right, (e:joshua), eating meat does mean butchering animals. and i have thought for many years now that if we had to kill the animals ourselves, a lot more people would consider being a vegetarian.
i know i am a freak about this, but when i found out what meat was, i just could not fathom eating it and could not see the moral difference between my cat and a cow.
now that i know i don't eat shit, too... well, i am comforted by that thought. thanks, (e:lilho).
its not just that... people die so we can eat meat and people are exploited. i guess i thought even though its gross there wasn't any shit in the meat i eat... but the people who are processing this stuff aren't even trained right... i want to live on a farm now.
It's shock value, meant to freak people out. Our culture is so sheltered from where our food comes from that actually introducing people to how their food is produced is almost like reverse culture shock. Eating meat means butchering animals, and some people can't handle that. I don't really think there is a statement to make about this otherwise... it is what it is.