[Sca-cooks] Re:humanely slaughtering animals

[Angie Malone]

For about 20 years we were subsistence farmers and had animals we
slaughtered and ate.  Chickens, beef, pork, turkeys and geese and rabbits.

We never ate the geese they were mom's pets.  I can remember a Tom turkey
that was so big and  overweight that he was cutting the hens when he tried
to do his job.  My Dad ended up slaughtering him and we ate him.  He was 35
pounds at least.  He wouldn't fit in the oven so Mom ended up splitting
him.  It was so good though.

We were able to compartmentalize which animals were going to be killed for
food and which ones were pets.  Although I was not allowed to see the beef
killed.  My Dad shot them, he was an expert marksman so there were no
mistakes on that.  A friend who was a butcher came and helped him.

I got 'accosted' by a vegan who was in our eating party at Friendly's once
when the waitress brought my liver and onions.  The vegan wanted to know
what it was and when I said it was liver and onions.  She went off and
said, "If you had to kill it yourself you wouldn't be eating that."  My
response was, "Not true, I've seen, made friends with, feed, etc animals I
have killed, skinned and ate."

Then she said, "I bet you wouldn't eat your dog", and I said, "No, she has
too much fat, and she is a pet, not a food item"

Then when I had her about ready to explode I asked, "How can you eat
plants?, there have been numerous studies that have shown that plants have
feelings too.  You plan music and sometimes plants grow, sometime they die,
etc."  She didn't really have an answer for that.

I don't mind people's choice of whether or not they eat meat.  I get
extremely annoyed when they try to push their values onto me.  I wish I had
time, etc to keep raising my own meat.  What you buy in the store is pretty
awful compared to what you can raise yourself if you have land to do
it.  Which I do, just not the energy.

	Angeline