So, as I was eating some not-particularly-great shrimp just now, I had the thought: Would an animal be upset if it realized it would not be very tasty? That it, if the animal were looking down from animal heaven and saw me eating it, would it be sad to know I wasn't really enjoying the food?
Which brings me to another random thought. In the whole scheme of things, does it mean that the animal's life wasn't as worthwhile as another animal because it wasn't nearly as tasty? Say, the cow that became hamburger at McDonald's. Would it be jealous of a cow that turned into filet mignon? And what if it was the same cow, only parts of it were sent to different places. Would that make the cow happy or not?
And that leads me to my final point. Am I really appreciating the life that was taken so I could have something to eat? Do I take time—as many Native American cultures do—to thank that animal for becoming a delectable pork chop? Or do I just eat and never take time to appreciate that my food was once an animal? Or would I rather just avoid that thought altogether because it is rather sad to think of it being slaughtered?
What do you think?
P.S. I warned you it was random.
I think you've seen All Dogs Go to Heaven one too many times, Michelle. *shakes head and laughs*
ReplyDeleteI have a Kenyan friend who says he used to clean the chickens and calm them before he'd kill them, which is a contrast to the way we kill chickens and also to the voodoo he threatens to do to the parking inspector with a dead chicken. He thinks everything needs to be calm before they die or the meat isn't as good. Your prawns were obviously stressed. Maybe they came from that market I once went to in HK where a man sat casually on the street with a pair of scissors snipping the heads off frogs.
ReplyDeleterandom, yeah. maybe the shrimp is looking down from animal heaven saying, "See? What was the point? I hope you choke on my tail."
ReplyDelete