If I was the pig on the picture I wouldn’t complain at
all; a relaxed place to spend my days, plenty of food and attention of happy
little children and no pressure to perform at all. Unfortunately most pigs live
a completely different life.
Have you ever considered where you daily/weekly piece of
meat is coming from? Most of us (still) don’t eat meat from their own
‘backyard’ (read: grown within a certain distance from our homes). Which will
in most cases mean that the meat you eat is bought at the supermarket. Or are
you brave enough to visit the butcher regularly?
Some butchers are still in close contact with the farmers
which grow the animals they later sell as steak, sausages or cutlets. This Dutch butcher even fed two pigs in his own backyard. Some female clients fell
in love with them and decided to buy the pigs alive when they heard the butcher
wanted to bring them to the slaughterhouse. You can discuss whether this was
the best choice to do.
When you go shopping it is highly probable that you
choose for the highest quality for the highest price. Most people look for a
good balance between price and quality. A balance in which the quality is as
high as possible and the price the lowest. This will satisfy you because you
will enjoy your meal and have some money left to spend on other things which
you think are more important than your food.
Pigs are animals which like to walk around, cool down in
the mud and love to eat our food leftovers. The pigs owned by the butcher could
enjoy all these advantages because only then the butcher was sure the meat they
would produce would be from a special quality. So the pigs are happy in their live,
the butcher in his shop and the clients in their kitchen.
But this butcher becomes more and more unique. Pigs and
other animals we like to eat are disappearing further and further away from our
lives. We don’t seem to want to know how our schnitzel has lived when it was still able to walk around. Like the
woman showed when they bought the pigs from the Dutch butcher. As long as we
pay a reasonable (low) price we don’t care how and where it’s grown. We just
want to be sure it’s safe and tastes a certain way.
How strange if you realize that we like to grow our own
fruit and vegetables in our garden. And we want to be sure that our food from
the supermarket is safe and preferably organic. Then why are we so afraid to
think of some cute animals - which could have a good life as a farmer takes
extra care of them - being killed to be on our plate one day. Well, I’ll tell
you something. All your meat was once walking around, hopefully breathing some
fresh air and enjoying the environment they lived in. Only you haven’t accepted
this.
