Poor Little Billy

So we had a great talk about foraging and how and what we eat ad some how we got on the topic of eating animals with a face. This has to be my absolute LEAST FAVORITE topic because I am a HUGE animal lover. I try to keep myself distant from what  i am eating and just thinking that it is food, this is life. But someone brought the good point of how we don't think of animals as living beings but just another object that we eat.
It made me think now what if I ate my dogs that I have grown an attachment to for dinner. And then I was freaking out. I couldn't imagine even killing them let alone eating them.

#1 Because the culture that we live in sees dogs and cats as more of pets or part of the family (but not to the extent that we treat them like humans) so its not acceptable to eat them.

 #2 Because I could never eat something that I have become so attached to. 

So this got me to thinking. How often do we as a culture distance ourselves form the food that we eat. When Ryle was talking about her experience killing a chicken she explained how that if she can eat it she should also be able to eat it. For some strange reason this made me think back to the book and movie my mother made my cousins and I read and watch as a kid, Charlotte's Web.

Now if you don't know the story I give you a quick summary.: 

Pigs are born. 

Dad wants to kill runt.

Girl saves runt and names it Wilbur

Wilbur finds out why pigs are on farms.

Befriends spider, Charlotte, who promises to save him.

And the rest you have to watch the movie for or read the book because I hate ruining endings, but here is a short clip.

Now what this clip does not show is the very next scene is her mother making bacon in the morning. As a child, i don't think I thought much of it. But really?!?! That is so messed up.

But it makes you think why do we not want to eat something but are fine with eating others. Why can frank the dalmation live and billy the goat die? And the only thing I can come up with is the disassociation from it. We don't give the animals we eat a name, a face, a relationship. Most of the time we don't even see them or what they went through. I bet if most of us had to kill what we eat we could not because when animals are in front of us they turn into this cute, little thing that we can just pet and love on, but what we fail to realize is......

ONE DAY BILLY GOTTA DIE!

I guess the mother said it best in the movie when she told her daughter, "It's a pig. Not a toy. Not a dog. Not a baby. Just a pig. And we need to start treating it like one." But are these animals any less than us where they just deserve to be slaughtered. Now I'm not saying don't kill the little piggies I need my bacon in the morning. But we just need to have more respect for what we eat. So yea one day Billy may die but we don't have to treat him like that for his whole life. Just have to remember that what we eat had a life to an d