NY Times -- Chefs' New Goal: Looking Dinner in the Eye

[Guest guest]

Ms. Murphy

visited the piglets weekly, starting the day after their birth, and

accompanied them to the slaughterhouse before serving them in a dinner

that was called a Celebration of the Life of a Pig.

 

is this some monty python skit?

 

it's hard to believe that this sort of thing isn't some

horridly ultra cynical joke...but it's not. i've heard folks talking

recently about wanting to hunt and kill their own food because they

feel like they have gotten " too removed " from the source of

their food.

 

i'm convinced that meat eaters are addicted to their prey like

drug addicts, and can justify it so easily because there is no social

stigma attached (in general).

 

blake

[Guest guest]

Meat-eaters getting to know their prey, or killing it themselves,

was glorified in a way by the most popular food writer around, Michael

Pollan, in The Omnivore's Dilemma. It's " fashionable " for

foodies to meet their meat. Pollan is a witty speaker and a great

popularizer, but I think people who hear him may get carried away by

the way he speaks and writes, and don't see all the holes in his story

(or the moral vacuum), and don't really think about what he's saying.

All they retain is, this guy knows what he's talking about, and he

killed a boar, so let's all go out and do that.

 

A brilliant review of the book, which the reviewer calls " a

record of the gourmet's ongoing failure to think in moral terms, "

is at http://www.powells.com/n/216/atl/review/2007_08_28

 

Carol Adams has also had interesting things to say about these

kinds of things in The Sexual Politics of Meat.

 

 

At 10:02 PM -0700 5/24/08, Blake Wilson wrote:

Ms. Murphy visited the piglets weekly, starting the day after

their birth, and accompanied them to the slaughterhouse before serving

them in a dinner that was called a Celebration of the Life of a

Pig.

 

is this some monty python skit?

 

it's hard to believe that this sort of thing isn't some horridly

ultra cynical joke...but it's not. i've heard folks talking recently

about wanting to hunt and kill their own food because they feel like

they have gotten " too removed " from the source of their

food.

 

i'm convinced that meat eaters are addicted to their prey like

drug addicts, and can justify it so easily because there is no social

stigma attached (in general).

 

blake