Where our meat comes from

Home by chance on a Wednesday night, I happened to come across an ad for a TV program that looked interesting. I decided to see if the show would deliver what it promised, and BOY, did it ever.

I'm not really one for cooking, and much prefer a simple meal to a fancy occasion with more cutlery than I know what to do with. Well actually - I do know what to do with the cutlery, I simply choose not to use that much cutlery and to go for simple, easy and non-pretentious.

I’m also not a big meat eater. This comes partly from personal preference, partly from religious reasons, and partly from living a good few years without the money to afford meat as a regular part of my diet. I'm not a strict vegetarian, however when given the choice do prefer non-meat to meat.

The TV show was a cooking show that took celebrities along to the places their food comes from. Tonight’s show saw two celebrities visit an organic farm, a deer-breeding facility where they fed and petted two gorgeous little animals they nicknamed Bambi, and go deer hunting with professional hunters. The vegetable garden part was very interesting, however the deer killing was just plain cruel. The hunt itself was unsuccessful so at least there were no shoot-and-kill pictures, however there were shots of a young deer being skinned, gutted and cut up at a local butchers’. Ouch.

For me, dealing with the before and after of the meat – first there was a cute animal that was being bottle-fed and cuddled, then there was a dead animal being skinned and gutted, the head being cut off – that was the part that hit me the hardest. I had anticipated this, and as the ads for the show explained what would happen, the before and after is mostly why I wanted to watch this show.

In this day and age it is too easy to simply walk into a supermarket and buy everything you need, not knowing where something comes from or how it is made. We need to remember that meat does not appear in stores magically, it comes from animals who are killed so that we can gobble them up.

Children these days might still know that milk comes from cows, however when they start telling me that regular milk comes from white cows and chocolate milk from brown cows, that’s when I start to get worried. And before you ask - yes this is an example from real life.

I wanted to be confronted with the reality of where my food comes from, and this show definitely did that. It also grossed me out immensely, however as a big part of the show seems to be about the shock value, it was an expected grossing out and therefore accepted. Still.... eeeeuuuuuwwwww yuck!

The celebs on the show found that seeing the young deer being killed and having to actually help skin and gut the animal gave them a lot more respect for the food they eat, and suggested that children should go through a similar process before sitting down to their burger and fries.

I'm not sure that subjecting children to these nighmare-ish images is the way to go, however do agree that we, humans, need a reminder of where our food comes from every now and then. As for me - I'm glad I'm not a big meat-eater. Very glad.