Animal Welfare
A brief discussion at work today arose from the fact that there have been complaints to Ch4 about them showing Gordon Ramsey slaughter his Turkeys ready for Christmas. The news article didn't go into details about the nature of the complaints, but perhaps the complainants prefer not to think about where their food comes from and being confronted with the harsh reality was a bit much for them. Good. It occurred to me that animal welfare and the quality of the meat sold by supermarkets in this country would be greatly increased if by law you had to supply every meat product with three photos of the animal; one of it soon after birth, one of it during its adult life, and another of it being killed.For the majority of chickens sold in the UK then, they would be supplied with the following...
- A photo of the newly hatched chick passing along a conveyer belt in a factory.
- A photo of the chicken festering in agony on a pile of its own ammonia ridden shit, its atrophied legs too weak to bear its own weight, its "food" being provided by a tiny tube which it can barely reach, surrounded by thousands of other chickens all in the same predicament.
- A photo of the chicken hung up by its legs on a conveyor belt having it's throat slit by rotating knives (or having its throat slit by the human that is employed to finished the job in the case that the killing machine missed, as sometimes happens).
This might make people think "Hang on, I'm not sure that I want to buy a food item that has literally been stored in faeces. I'm going to buy this chicken instead, the one with a picture of it sitting in a field playing the guitar.".
Food for thought, so to speak.
2 Comments:
I have to admit that I gave a little chuckle when the turkeys did their little 'I'm being electrocuted' dance. Not that is is actually funny to see an animal die but it could have been funny if it was just doing a little jig....or am I just weird???
Everything Victoria buys is free-range and I agree with you in that people should think about where their food comes from. Maybe you could take it a little further by having people kill their own meat. I'm sure that would provide you with more fellow veggies. :-)
Not me though. Now where did I put my bolt gun?
You "gave a little chuckle"?? That's not weird, that's depraved.
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