Mark Zuckerberg, the CEO, creator and founder of Facebook has decided that in order to square his morals with this table plate, he is no longer going to let others kill to put meat on his table.
So does that mean he's now a vegetarian or a vegan?
Nope. It means he's learning how to use a gun and a knife.
So far he has killed goats, pigs and chickens, and he may yet take up hunting.
Zuckerberg got the idea after some guests to his house winced at the sight of a whole pig being roasted on a grill. It seems some of his guests had no problem eating pig -- they just didn't want to cut off an obvious body part in order to make a sandwich.
Zukerberg thought this finicky disdain for getting dirty was nonsense, but he also realized that he too was pretty far removed from most of his own meals. He decided to change that. Rather than apologize for eating meat, he decided to take responsibility for the meat he consumed and pay attention to where it came from, how it lived, and how it died.
And how does he kill a goat? With a knife -- as goats are killed in the Old Testament and across most of the world to this day.
One part of killing his own meat has changed Zuckerberg's diet: along with eating more vegetables and fruit, he is also eating every part of the animals he kills. Chicken feet and necks are no longer tossed out, and neither are hearts and liver.
Zuckerberg's first kill: a lobster, which was boiled alive (which, by the way, is the most humane way to kill a lobster).
Look for howls of protest from the puppy-killers at PeTA. As for the rest of America, we salute you Mark Zuckerberg!
Now the only question is whether a small chain of "Kill-n-Grill Farms" is going to pop up around the nation, catering to others who want to embrace a DIY meat ethos.
A single bullet to the brain will kill a steer or pig, and that's more than enough meat for a year, while dressing out that steer or pig will provide a good job for local artisinal butchers who might also operate an ancillary meat-locker operation.
Business opportunity anyone?
- Related Posts:
** There Is No Skill to Killing
** The Omnivore's Dilemma
** The Omnivore's Delusion
** Wendell Berry's Pipe Dreams
** Organic and Local Farming by the Numbers
** Norman Borlaug, I Presume?
** Farming Like People are Hungry
** Damn Farm Mechanization!
** The Problem Is Not In Our Fields
** Magical Thinking
** Eggonomics
** Clucking, Cockfighting and Colonel Sanders
** Chicken Ethics Vs Chicken Aesthetics
** Will Passive Poultry Mean More Expensive Eggs?
** Green Cows Produce More White Milk
** Playing God With Milk Cows
** Making Hay and Losing Birds
6 comments:
I can't speak to other parts of the country but here in the pacific nw the DIY slaughter is a pretty established niche. Nearly monthly there is classes on backyard butchery in Seattle, Portland, or one of the surrounding bedroom communities.
On our own small dairy we had a surprising niche pop up about a decade ago when we discovered a serious demand from the DIY for our slaughter goats. Previously we'd send our weaned bucklings to auction and maybe see $15 a head if we were lucky. One day we were stopped by a gentleman looking for a goat "for a party" and asked if we were willing to let them do the butchering. We thought well sure, not a big deal and our own private halal market was born. Within two years we had no more animals to send to auction and we had other dairies sending us their kids to supply at $65-$80 a head and older buck goats at a premium. It was a win - win in so many ways.
"Kill-n-Grill Farms"
I like this. And if they can use the old-time methods of pasture for cows and table (store waste?) scrap for pigs?
Yum. I'm in.
(We found a 1/4 steer was more than enough beef for a two person household. We'd get a share of a pig, too.)
We get nearly all our meat from a close friend and neighbor with a small farm. The beef and pork we eat comes from animals that have names and regularly get handled and petted. Much of the chicken and fish we eat is caught and / or killed in our own back yard.
I am amazed by the number of people who think that I must feel terrible about this. I'd much rather eat an animal that I know lived a good (though maybe short - hey, nature can be a bitch) life and died a humane death than one that came from a hellhole like the factory farm up the road.
I suspect this is just a phase that this young, rich guy is going through and he'll be into something else before long. I wouldn't get too excited about it.
I am fine if Mark Zuckerberg gets into something else in a few months. I hardly expect him to become a professional butcher!
That said, I salute the fact that he has made a choice that neither life nor death will be a complete abtraction.
Wealth has nothing to do with making that choice.
Poor people have killed and butchered since the dawn of time, as have the middle class and the rich. This has nothing to do with money, but a great deal to do with intellectual curiousity, intellectual integrity, and intellectual fearlessness... and more than a little with not being lazy.
I find that most people who have never killed anything are terrified of death, imbuing to it both horror and cruelty.
Do a little of it (and get taught right) however, and you realize that the death offered by the farmer or the hunter is much preferred to the death offered by the hospital or the hospice. This is a lesson for life, and you do not need to slaughter much properly for the point to stick, and a respect to settle in -- not only for the animals that are the source of all meat, but also for the peole who raise these animals, and the people who slaugher, skin, pluck, gut, section and bone them.
Already, and for the rest of his life, Mark Zuckerberg will know more about the food he eats than 99% of the people he will sit at the table with. And yes, I am pretty excited about that, because life lessons of that scope are pretty rare, because people who are intellectually curious and fearless are pretty rare. Most people are like the Winklevoss twins -- they want to shop out the hard and dirty work and have everything wrapped in plastic and and delivered to their door. Mark Zuckerberg, to his credit, is making different choices and, as a consequence is smarter today than he was yesterday; a trait with will carry him throgh a more-than-interesting life.
P
And its also much more humane than the factory slaughter that most animals are subjected to. One bullet is a lot nicer than multiple strikes with a sledge hammer.
Good on ya.
Debi and the TX JRTs.
Post a Comment