You can tell I have a 2 year old because everthing is baby chicks or baby kittens…but anyway 2 weeks ago we bought 5 chicks at the market to fatten up over 3 or 4 months, to then eat. Organically reared chickens…tasty dinners for the meat eaters. However, the chicks came with feed which has something nasty in it as it says you can’t eat the chickens within 6 days of them having eaten the feed…just a reminder of the dodgy practices in the meat industry. At least we will know what these ones have eaten, their food miles will be low and they will have been treated and killed respectfully.
Welcoming the chicks in to their new home
Baby Chick
Unfortunately something got in to their pen and took one last night so we are down to 4, but Matt is currently securing the enclosure so it won’t get seconds.
How do you kill respectfully? That just doesn’t stack up to me. You kill, or you respect life in animal form as well as human, and you don’t kill. I am not anti meat eaters, each to their own, but I don’t think you can have it both ways, that you kill and you respect.
We all have to make our own ethical choices, and although there is a bit of variation here on the farm, we do generally all agree that we want to live more locally, more naturally and have greater control over what we eat, but within the natural cycles of life.
This includes eating seasonal fresh organic produce that we have grown ourselves. It also includes raising our own meat (if we want to eat it) and making sure that meat has lived as comfortably and happily as we are able to make them, with access to healthy food, clean water, dry warm (or cool) shelter, and companionship of their own species. And, when the time comes to kill them, we have a responsibility to minimise any suffering experienced.
And it means working to increase the diversity of wildlife here, not seperate to but integral to our food growing activities. Domestic animals can play an important role in this system, turning bugs and seeds and greens into nitrogen-rich plant food, and meat, that in turn will feed them and us, and which having passed through us will again become nutritious plant food, to grow food plants and wild diversity, which in turn feeds them and us, to produce more fertile manure, to feed the plants, that in turn will feed them and us….. and so on, and so on.
This is more than sustainable, as the soil is deliberately improved, as trees grow, as diversity abounds, as water catchment improves, as wildlife takes advantage of our perceived safe haven, as predators move in to take advantage of the increased animal wildlife.
We are all part of that natural cycle. To my mind, humanity’s greatest crime was to ever see himself as something seperate from that cycle, and an immense modern folly is to attempt to live ‘without killing’ while the greatest death machines that ever walked this planet (corporations) practise totalitarian agriculture, and push entire species to extinction to bring food to our plates.
I am taking responsibility for my food and for the impact of my food. I do it with respect. I kill it with respect, be it a chicken or a cabbage. And I do it with consideration for the overall health, vitality and diversity of the whole ecosystem here.
And thank you for encouraging me to think again on all of this.
Thanks Andy, I couldn’t have put it so well myself but I agree.
Thanks for posting Liz as I certainly respect your opinion, but personally feel that you can hold respect for animals in their killing as well as their living. I don’t actually eat meat myself but know what preparation my partner went through, and the community here went through before we killed a duck for christmas dinner. Not only the meticulous research as to the ‘best’ way to do it in terms of minimising suffering, but the inner thanks we gave for that life. Me and my 2 year old always thank the chickens when we collect the eggs to eat!
I also know that my impact (suffering) generally on people/things/animals has lessened since moving to the quinta as I consume less and live in my locality more (e.g. food miles).
And anyone reading this should know that people with all sorts of views on this subject from vegans to fruitarians to raw fooders to carnivores – are all welcome here on the quinta…we find we have more in common than our differences…we might just go about things/what we eat differently but our goals of a more sustainable lifestyle and happier healthier planet are largely the same.