Ann Bledsoe
Well-known member
Your mom is a wise woman!
I've always felt that the biggest problem our farmers faces is that kids grow up thinking that food just "grows" right there in the grocery store.
Some parents even think it will traumatize their children to find out that meat comes from animals.
I had a mother real mad at me a few years ago -- in the course of a visit I ended up telling her 5 year old daughter that hamburgers come from cows, ham comes from pigs, chicken nuggets come from chickens, and eggs come from chicken butts. The child became vegetarian -- for a whole 5 days, the pull of those chickens nuggets and Happy Meals got the better of her!
People don't realize though that children will accept all these things as a matter of course (without trauma), IF they are exposed to it from an early age. Even my 3 year old grandson understands that some of our animals will be food.
Now we don't kill/butcher in front of the young ones and we don't kill animals that the kids are overly attached to or view as pets, but they still know that particular animals end up on the table, and they don't have a problem with it.
I can remember back to when I was 9 years old and didn't know that meat came from animals. Dad gave me a newborn orphan piglet to bottleraise, and several months later I came home from school one day to find my pet gone and a bunch of pork in the freezer.
Now THAT was traumatizing!
But I got over it. It wouldn't have been such a big deal if Dad had said right from the start that we were going to butcher that pig, but he allowed and even encouraged me to treat it like a pet.
I'm sure that incident shaped my thinking. I have no problem at all with butchering animals that are raised to be meat, but a PET won't be butchered.
AnnB
I've always felt that the biggest problem our farmers faces is that kids grow up thinking that food just "grows" right there in the grocery store.
Some parents even think it will traumatize their children to find out that meat comes from animals.
I had a mother real mad at me a few years ago -- in the course of a visit I ended up telling her 5 year old daughter that hamburgers come from cows, ham comes from pigs, chicken nuggets come from chickens, and eggs come from chicken butts. The child became vegetarian -- for a whole 5 days, the pull of those chickens nuggets and Happy Meals got the better of her!
People don't realize though that children will accept all these things as a matter of course (without trauma), IF they are exposed to it from an early age. Even my 3 year old grandson understands that some of our animals will be food.
Now we don't kill/butcher in front of the young ones and we don't kill animals that the kids are overly attached to or view as pets, but they still know that particular animals end up on the table, and they don't have a problem with it.
I can remember back to when I was 9 years old and didn't know that meat came from animals. Dad gave me a newborn orphan piglet to bottleraise, and several months later I came home from school one day to find my pet gone and a bunch of pork in the freezer.
Now THAT was traumatizing!
But I got over it. It wouldn't have been such a big deal if Dad had said right from the start that we were going to butcher that pig, but he allowed and even encouraged me to treat it like a pet.
I'm sure that incident shaped my thinking. I have no problem at all with butchering animals that are raised to be meat, but a PET won't be butchered.
AnnB
jls":2agedhm9 said:mom(retired school teacher) lamenteing the lack of common sense stated "not enough people have to twist the necks on their own sunday dinners any more". I don't think there is a big veggie following in Ethiopia