Our distant relationship with where meat comes from is one of the most bizarre things about humans. Especially next to our psychopathic relationship with our own pets.
I've seen people freak out with disgust because there's a tiny feather or some dirt in their carton of eggs. Or disgusted by the hanging, swinging corpses behind the butcher when they go to order something that's sliced off the corpse.
Hah! I used to give away my surplus eggs when we had too many. Once I asked a co-worker if he wanted any more since I figured he had used up the last dozen I gave him. He laughed and said "no thanks. The wife complained that they were muddy and probably weren't pasteurized and how did we know they were safe to eat. I told her that they were from free range chickens that just went outside and got muddy feet when they were looking for food, but she wasn't having it."
So that's my anecdote: give away delicious eggs (the taste really is night and day different from supermarket eggs) and people complain that they don't look like the ones in the supermarket!
Right now I have a basket of eggs on my kitchen counter ranging from spotlessly clean to 40% mud covered and some with a fair amount of chickenshit on them. It's all good: having this many eggs is an excuse to come up with new uses for them. Made a batch of lemon bars (filling is mostly eggs and lemon juice/zest) and they were awesome.
Interestingly enough, rural people (and earlier generations) with a closer relationship with their meat source and who see animals being slaughtered regularly (although perhaps not on industrial scales) seem to be more okay with it and see it as part of how life works.
I guess being distant from it creates more (theoretical) passion for animals, because you just haven't developed this "emotional immunity" due to everyday exposure as our ancestors did, and so you "humanize" them more.
My point is: pushing people to be more in contact with swinging pigs and feathers (especially in childhood) won't make them less likely to want to eat meat, it will just make them desensitized and used to it.
It's the other way around for me. I raise my own chickens and rabbits for meat because it allows me to make sure the animals had a quality of life that surpasses industrial farming by quite a lot. The chickens also keep the back yard fairly free of bugs and flies while they ignore pollinating insects like bees and bumblebees.
I eat less meat now since I don't really want to eat meat from the store anymore. Not only is the animals treated well (apart from the obvious killing part), but the quality of the meat is much higher, and obviously it's much fresher.
I heard some super markets put a feather or two on purpose in the package to make it look more authentic. I often find one or two (I live in Germany). But they’re usually clean.
There are quite a few (relatively) famous pigs on Instagram.
Try suggesting to someone that maybe they should be turned into bacon this Christmas. I'm not talking about vegans, but regular meat-eating people. Study reaction.
If you (the general You) are one of the people who would have an adverse reaction to the idea of eating a beloved pig from Instagram, but you eat meat otherwise, examine and consider carefully your preferences and opinions. Same thing if you feel outraged at the fate of Cecil the Lion or at the thought of other people eating dogs for example.
There is a contradiction there. Look at it carefully. Try to generalize that to other living things, for example humans.
Unless you mean that you don't find the pigs on Instagram entertaining, I don't see your point. Clearly there is no grave shortage of food pigs if you're eating one, so the marginal benifit of having a few extra food pigs is much less than the benefit of using those few pigs for entertainment. Kind of like how it's better to use marble for statues or architecture than for landfill, because there's plenty of landfill rock already available.
Our distant relationship with where meat comes from is one of the most bizarre things about humans. Especially next to our psychopathic relationship with our own pets.
I've seen people freak out with disgust because there's a tiny feather or some dirt in their carton of eggs. Or disgusted by the hanging, swinging corpses behind the butcher when they go to order something that's sliced off the corpse.