I write this on the day where just 0.27% of the UK population voted to elect and put into office, our new Prime Minister. Nothing like “taking back control of our democracy” eh? (Voice-off: “And no, that’s NOTHING like it”). The swivel-eyed loons, those Brexit fire-starters, may just have well & truly fucked our country. Kindness, morality, honesty, compassion, decency; all have been taken behind the wall and neck-shot. And this catastrophe may well engulf this country even before the effects of climate warming — rushing towards us like a fleet of a driver-less freight trains & just as uncontrolled — burn up this planet.
But. BUT. In the meantime. Let’s be kind to each other (except the Nazis of course). And kinder to the animals and other parts of the eco-system that we share this planet with.
So, back to Shakespeare’s well known soliloquy, which starts out
Hath not a Jew eyes? Hath not a Jew hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions; fed with the same food, hurt with the same weapons, subject to the same diseases, healed by the same means, warmed and cooled by the same winter and summer as a Christian is? If you prick us, do we not bleed?
Substitute “pig” and “human” for “Jew” & “Christian” in this piece and it’s still truth. (We’ll gloss over the formers’ religious maniac aversion to pork meat — which choice, although incomprehensible, is completely fine by me. Keep all that tastiness for us sensible atheists after all.)
Pigs certainly do, bleed that is; and the act of killing them (which I’ve talked about at length here and here) needs to be as considered and pain-free as humanly possible. I’m currently reading about the rise of mobile, on-farm slaughter units in the US which will be explored in more detail in a later piece. This seems to be a hugely important move. It would work here in the UK. Since most of the small, local abattoirs have been closed, our animals now have to travel huge, stressful, distances to be killed. Moving this back to the farm, where they can be looked after right up until the last moment, is a kindness — and for you more mercenary types, better for the meat quality as well — and a process & improvement to the food supply chain that we need to get up & running here as soon as possible.
I found somewhere this rather lovely graphic description of the cuts of meat and how they differ between us, France & the US. “Three nations; divided by a common animal”.
And finally for today — as I need to go home and start drinking to try and blot out todays’ news — here’s this piece from someone who did get up close and personal at the death of a pig. It’s not a sight that you should ever get blasé about or indifferent to. It’s a necessary thing. So is resistance to Nazis. Love to you all at this time.
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