How One Former Vegan Learned To Embrace Butchering

[The Straight Story]

How One Former Vegan Learned To Embrace Butchering

...

For 24-year-old Andrew Plotsky of Washington, D.C., that meant leaving his job as a barista in a snobby coffee shop to learn the process of raising an animal, slaughtering it and butchering it for a meal.

...

The former vegan went to Vashon Island., Wa. to learn the butcher trade from Brandon and Lauren Sheard. His goal was to document the process for about a week and half. He ended up staying for two years.

"I had been preparing myself intellectually for years," he says. "The immediacy of taking life was difficult at first. It's still something I'm figuring out how to rationalize."

..

By killing the animal himself, Plotsky says he strengthens his bond to that animal, as well as the food it provides, the ground it lived on, and the family and friends he shares the meal with.

http://www.npr.org/blogs/thesalt/

[Xipe Totec]

1. I still remember, as a child of ten...

My father arriving from the field with a baby goat in the back of the truck, handing me the goat and a bucket, to go across the street to our neighbor who would butcher the goat and place it's meat in the bucket, keeping the pelt as payment for his services. I have, from a tender age always been aware, of where the meat at our table has come from.

[Warpy]

4. My gentle granny would go into the back yard

pick an old hen past her egg laying prime or a rooster who'd just gotten obnoxious and twirl them around by the head. When they'd stop moving, she'd pin them up on a clothesline and snip off the heads. They'd then drain into the garden.

So yeah, I knew where her ambrosial chicken dinners came from, too.

It's always seemed bizarre to buy bits and pieces that bore no resemblance to the original animal in shrink wrap in a supermarket. That bizarreness is what kept me a veg head for years.

[trof]

6. Did we have the same granny?

Mine did the same thing.

[handmade34]

2. good read

there is a real sense of life when you live the entire process...my story is his reverse... I taught homesteading years ago and at a point grew weary of killing animals and became a vegetarian...

I am now preparing myself to become a pig farmer again when I can get land (but with no thoughts of eating meat)

[newfie11]

5. Me too

We still own a farm ( crops) but killing the animals at this point in our lives we don't do. If we needed to then yes we would but it is easier to buy a beef from a neighbor that goes to the slaughter house and we are not attached to it.

This has not always been the case. Years ago when our children were living at home we did butcher chickens, steers.

[provis99]

3. a vegan barrista who's in spiritual touch with the animals.

I'll bet he's a Buddhist and wears Birkenstocks, too.

[Honeycombe8]

7. Disgusting. And what a hypocrite.

If he had been a vegan for ethical reasons, he wouldn't have "embraced" killing animals to "strengthen his bond" with the animal.

If someone is philosophically against something, then that's it. That is an idea in the core of one's being that doesn't change.

If you become a vegan, OTOH, because it seemed like a good idea, or for health reasons, or because it's cool, or because a lot of people you know seem to do that, then it's easy to "embrace" killing animals.

I come from a long line of farmers, which included the regular killing of animals. I have never personally killed an animal. I am not a vegan, but I have given up eating all meats except poultry and fish. I hope to be able to give up poultry. I gave up those meats years ago for ethical reasons. Those reasons still exist and cannot change. Much like I decided years ago that racism was bad, even though I was surrounded by it in the deep south, raised with it, taught to think it was natural and maybe even God-ordained. As a child, I noticed its existence and its effects, and I decided that it was a bad thing. Nothing can change my mind, becauses it's based on a philosophy and ethics.

To change your mind and think it's okay for animals or people to suffer or be harmed is something I can't understand. To NEVER think that way in the first place, I can understand. Most people do and believe whatever they are taught and raised with.

Visit a slaughterhouse. Or watch a documentary about the animal business. You'll never eat veal again. Ever.

[MineralMan]

8. Hunting and fishing serve a similar purpose for many.

Killing a deer, field dressing it, skinning it, and butchering it affords the hunter a relationship with the venison he or she eats. It certainly had that effect on me. Each time I ate venison from my deer, I was reminded of the process of getting that meat to the table.

Same thing with fishing. These days, I fish with a catch and release philosophy, and I no longer hunt, but the connection is still there.

Back in the 1950s, our fifth grade field trip was to a slaughterhouse, where we followed a steer through the process of going from a living creature to sides of beef hanging in the cooler. Thirty 11 year olds were introduced to the realities of the process. Nobody barfed. Everyone watched. I can't imagine a public school doing such a thing today. More's the pity.

[flvegan]

9. Some animals are more important than others.

Were this a story taped from inside the walls of a jail after speaking with a former vegan that learned to embrace being a serial killer, the outrage would be unreal.

But then, we're all hypocrites in one way or another I guess.

[The Straight Story]

10. So killing animals = killing humans?

Should we arrest and detain animals that kill each other?

Would create a lot of new police work/jobs. Probably see more than a few stories where a wolf is tasered for not following orders to cease/desist and put his hands up.

[flvegan]

11. Typical kneejerk reaction.

I've always found that bit kind of funny about folks.

[nobodyspecial]

12. But isn't this the exact type of response you wanted

when you compared killing animals for sustenance to killing humans for some sort of perverted fun. I guess if the serial killer was also a cannibal...

Lucky you. You get to score two judgement points. You are such a superior being.

And yes, human life IS more important than animals -- not that I advocate their mistreatment in any way.