Meat.

So let’s talk about food for a moment. Specifically meat. I think it’s one of the food groups that we completely take for granted. Like where it comes from—oh sure we have a basic idea, animals are killed for it—but unless you are a hunter or a farmer, I don’t think it’s something we give much thought to. We just trundle through the aisles of the supermarket, picking over the lovely cellophane wrapped pink and red squares, raising our eyebrows at the increasing prices, looking for what’s on sale, what a particular recipe calls for, or what we feel like cooking. Some of us go a step further by shopping organic, patting ourselves on the back, feeling good about animals raised humanely…but are they killed humanely? Is that part of the organic process?

Unless you have been hunting, caught something, shot something, tied it to the roof of your car and brought it all home, how familiar are you with killing something? A story for you: my sister, driving home one evening saw a young doe along the side of the road. She’d been hit by a car, which presumably had just driven on not too worse for the encounter, while the doe lay heaving out her last breaths. My sister, ever the animal lover, pulled over and comforted the poor thing during its final moment on Earth. When the ordeal was over, she felt the best way to honour this majestic animal’s passing was to not leave it for the scavengers, but to take it home, cut it up for venison and cure the hide as a token of this intense learning experience. So that’s just what she did.

Two things left an indelible impression on me after she shared this story with me a few days after it had all occurred: First, ugh, how could she eat road kill?! And second, she remarked on how much hard work it had been stringing the animal up, bleeding it out, butchering it and disposing of that which could not be salvaged as food.

How many of us have seen a large animal bleed out? How many of us have been the one to break its neck, slit its throat, string it up, gut it…you get the idea. There is a huge part of the process almost all of us have never given a thought to, never mind participated in. How nice for it to arrive at our store in these lovely little pristine white packages with the clear window or wrapped tightly in butcher’s paper.

Now I am not a vegetarian, never have I entertained the desire to give up meat—I enjoy it way too much! I had some of my sister’s road kill venison stew and it was delicious. She used to be a Lacto-Ovo Vegetarian for over 10 years. Until one day she wasn’t. Funny story about that. It was the morning of a holiday—Christmas or Thanksgiving—and we woke to the glorious smell of coffee brewing and bacon frying. Mum and I were deep in our routine of quietly reviving over a cup of fresh java, Dad was yakking away and my sister came down, sat at the table and then yelled, “I can’t take it anymore!” and jammed a fistful of bacon in her mouth. That was the end of her meat shunning days.

Now to get to the “meat” of my post. We know, or choose to know, very little about how meat ends up on our table to be consumed. I myself have never killed anything. We are blissfully ignorant sitting at the top of the food chain, being good little consumers with a clear conscience. So my question to you, dear readers, is what if we weren’t? What if we were the food? How would our society change? How would we as individuals need to change if we were suddenly the meat being consumed?

I’d love to hear you sound off in the comments section below, or on my Facebook page dedicated to the novel. It’d be great if we can pick up and continue this discussion in my next blog post.

October 28, 2015 | Categories: Uncategorized | Tags: bacon, butcher, ed greenwood, hellmaw, humans as food, hunters hunted, hunting, mage red hat, meat, onder librum, road kill, we are the food | Leave a comment