Roast suckling pig under heat lamp in Seattle; dressing fattened goose on a farm in France.
Pity the parsnip. Artificially germinated, forced to sprout in a furrow, nurtured (if you can call it that) in a bed of manure, raised with indifference, virtually ignored until it reaches market weight. Then it's thoughtlessly deracinated, mechanically decapitated, mercilessly skinned, and, in a final act of stultifying callousness, boiled alive.
Fruit and veg of other species fare no better. Corn is stripped from its parental cob. Parsley is hacked to death. Spinach is chopped and creamed, potatoes routinely whipped, pumpkins eviscerated, grain thrashed and flailed. Who's there to coddle and console a carrot? Provide foster-care for an orphaned banana? Instead, there's jubilation when cherries are doused in alcohol and set afire.
Think about this: by "harvesting" a string bean, we're kidnapping the plant's children. What does it do to our humanity, when, three times a day, we kill vegetables just to feed our voracious animal appetites?
Cruelty to vegetables is a serious concern, hidden from view because farming and gardening appear to be so natural, and questioning "nature's way" isn't politically correct. But lower taxes on farmland means higher taxes for the rest of our property. Plants require a lot of water, and water's not cheap.
Look it up: I'll bet farmers use more than their share of sunlight, too.
Posted by Ronald Holden at May 1, 2006 9:26 AM
The International Kitchen
Cooking school vacations in Italy, France & Spain.
Who links to me?
Ah, well, yes. That's blogs for you, self-tickling amusant without being planet-bettering instructif.[There's probably a church somewhere that says self-tickling is sinful.]
Why the pic of the fugly piglet? Because it was on the camera's memory card. Why no response yet to your insightful comments? Because I had a chance to make a couple of bucks tickling typewriter keys for other than personal amusement.
More seriously, I took offense to a comment on Seattlest.com that Tamara Murphy was somehow a bad person because she fed her hand-fed piglets to guests in her restaurant. How could she, the writer asked? "Pigs have feelings. too."
Hence my post about veggicide.
Don't understand why you have a picture of suckling pigs in an expose of vegetable abuse. Couldn't you have found one of a chef decapitating a carrot, or is that lack (inability to find such a snap)part of the conspiracy?
I think your satire would be stronger if you had first actually addressed the issue of proper animal handling (see my lengthy comment to your April 28, 2006 post, Bond: Liver let die?) What you have done instead is clever but trivializing, as veggies are not sentient beings of the same order as animals (I know, you'll have those who write in -- who's to say? Well, I say: it's f**** obvious, dudes). Also, the issue of taxation, use of water by farmers has nothing really to do with your satirical stance and should have been dropped, in my humble opinion.
So, my verdict: amusant, mais pas instructif.
Could it be considered "abortion" to slit the fertile green pea pod and run one's dagger-like fingernail down the line of offspring seedlings, unmercifully separating them from their mother?
And the terror felt by a young, naive, and impressionable ear of corn as its tassel is violently ripped from its warm uteral home. A liquid DNA substance oozing from the canal; cheating the next generation of life not lived. Shocking, just shocking. Film at 11:00.
Hi Ronald,
great post! That's why I have - after ten years -quit to be a vegetarian.
Posted by: Katrin at May 3, 2006 9:51 PMI so appreciate your expose! And do I have stories; I still can't thin a row of lettuce or harvest gorgeous, happy, healthy golden carrots in their beds. And when I slice unsuspecting potatoes in half with a spade when digging them, I tear up. But after raising chickens and watching even the most mild-tempered peck the lowest on their social scale nearly to death (along with other demonstrations of stupidity unworthy of a brain), I really have no trouble in (humanely) quickly severing their cortexes from their spinal cords, slitting their throats and hanging them from the feet to bleed out before plucking.
One last note: Have you ever been terrorized by a full-grown goose, shrieking and running toward you, razor-sharp bill snapping, not stopping even after you've made a panic leap into your house or car? Makes you understand that we are actually at the top of the food chain and why. Responsibly, but at the top. nonetheless.
