WOULD YOU LIKE FUR ON THAT?
A restaurant in Arizona is getting heat for serving burgers made out of lion meat. They claim it is in honor of World Cup being in Africa – I bet the lions are thrilled to be taking part (and seriously, why not just bring one of those annoying horns with everyone's meal instead of finding new animals to serve up as lunch??). Of course the restaurant says the lion meat is free range and hence, more humane (to whom exactly I’m not sure), which is no consolation to PETA, who is of course going apeshit and is supporting the death threats the restaurant is receiving.
Here is what never made sense to me about all this. As a society we freely eat chicken, quail, goose, lamb, cow, etc. That’s a pretty wide berth when it comes to the animals we have no problem killing and shoving down our throats. So then why is it not okay for people to eat something like a lion? I mean don’t get me wrong, I wouldn’t touch it - I’m a tofu and fish girl myself – but who decides what is deemed acceptable, and not only that, humane? If it’s free range, which I’ve always understood to mean better conditions for the animals, no hormones etc, it still means they’re getting the chop at the end of the week. Hence, I don’t think they give a toss if they’re in a cage or out in a field, they know they’re only being treated well so that they taste better. Don’t you just love humans: 'we’ll be nicer to you before we kill you!' Gee, some tradeoff.
Whether you’re getting eaten or not, seemingly comes down to the animal’s intellect – as far as I can tell anyway. If you’re super dumb with a brain the size of a pea, then you’re apparently screwed. Whenever I’ve posed this question to people - out of pure curiosity - about eating cow meat, I do get the ‘but cows are so dumb’ argument time and time again. Okay, they are. But they’re still alive, and capable of feeling pain, no? I mean it seriously sucks to be a cow. Although all this said, the intellect theory doesn’t wash when it comes to the pig, cause he’s a pretty smart creature from what I understand, messy as hell – which gives me anxiety and makes me want to clean his pen – but much smarter than a cow, and yet we still eat him. In fact perfectly cooked bacon to some is up there with world peace.
So then what are we left with exactly?? Farm raised animals are okay to kill, but if you’re out in the wild or in a zoo, you’re off limits? I bet there is a serious pow-wow going on in the Polar Bear cage at the zoo. ‘Look wild and mean, all of you, it’s our only shot.’ In some cultures all these rules of what is ‘acceptable’ go out the window as they have no problem eating horse, dolphin, ostrich, snake, dog, you name it. While it still grosses me out to NO end – which I suppose is hypocritical in itself - it does seem less hypocritical in terms of the justification.
I watched a documentary on the slaughter of dolphins in this area of Japan. It was barbaric, and one of those programs that made you convinced that humans were spawns of the devil. The kicker was, the meat of all these dolphins was essentially contaminated and riddled with mercury and yet they were still being killed and stocked on supermarket shelves – often being passed off as other things like shark and whale (cause I guess that’s acceptable over there too).
And then of course I thought of the poor cow again. Did I mention how much it SUCKS to be a cow. Because they’re dumb and not endangered, and don’t have celebrities fighting for their cause, they’re looking at a loooong hard road. God I hope I come back as a hyena in my next life. As far as I can determine, no one at the moment has any desire to fire up a hyena burger. Here's hoping it stays that way.