The Adventures of Baby Arthur

by Lincoln

After writing the post about Paco the Fish, I felt a little guilty... maybe I was being a bit insensitive about Paco. OK, so maybe I felt guilty for about 30 seconds. After I came across an blog post on ParentDish about a school that was planning to slaughter a pet lamb to sell the meat, I found myself in full fledged meat activist mode! I love to eat all kinds of meat and I am not ashamed to admit it. (Sorry PETA!)

As a proud meat eater, it would be easy to write off these PETA types as having too much time on their hands. However, I can respect their views because I believe our disagreement is largely cultural. We live in a "I'll take my meat only if it's wrapped in cellophane with nary a thought of where it comes from" type of society. Yes, this may be the same society that I was born and raised in, but with immigrant parents, I've spent many summers in the 3rd world and witnessed enough chicken slaughtering, whole pig roasting, fish cleaning, snake gutting and frog skinning to recognize good food while it's still alive! Actually, you can see all of that for yourself in Chinatown too. (Well, maybe not the snakes.)

It's not like I can't relate with the poor children who are about to have their pet lamb for dinner. When I was about 8 years old, my aunt bought two cute little duck chicks. All of the kids thought they were pets and we all treated them as such. The elders never discouraged our attachment either. As time passed, the ducks grew bigger and the elders finally unveiled their sinister plans to roast the ducks for dinner. All of the kids were livid and no amount of begging had any effect! In the end, we all refused to eat a single bite.

While this may have been an upsetting experience for me at the time, one of the memories that has stuck with me throughout the years is the golden, crispy looking skin and the succulent aroma that floated out of the oven when I stole a peak in. As the elders ate, they only half heartedly asked if I would try some because the roast duck they were eating was probably the best roast duck EVER!!

Yes, I agree that the Lydd Primary School teachers could have been more sensitive and not encouraged the children to treat the lamb like a pet. However, at the end of the day, people come first and we homo-sapiens are happily on top of the food chain. Meat comes from animals.

I believe we can respect life on this earth while also doing what we need to do, like eat!

PS: That's a link to the complete of works of James Herriott, which I really enjoyed. It's a story about a country veterinarian in England. Animals, both farm and pet, are respected within the cycle of life.

Labels: miscellaneous