Beef with personality

[ellarien]

"Is this someone I know?" I asked, as the thick slab of steak went into the pan.

"Yes, this is Sammy," my host replied.

Sammy was the brown steer who lived out in the paddock behind the house for nearly two years, fed on grain and wilted broccoli, coming to an understanding with Buddy the burro, running in parallel with the children on the other side of the fence. Smaller and shyer than his companion T-bone when they both arrived as six-month-olds, he grew big and sturdy in the end, even fat, but surprisingly fast-moving and light on his hooves.

I'm a city girl; it wasn't quite the first time for me, but I'm still a little ambivalent about eating an animal I've been introduced to. Still, at least I knew Sammy had a pretty good life, and was pampered up to the day he went to the slaughterhouse. And the steak was delicious.

Comments

[zingerella.livejournal.com]

See, I'm a vegetarian, and I find that far less disgusting than the notion of commercially factory-farmed, force-fed, nameless meat-food.

Sammy was a meat animal, raised to be somone's meal. Just because he's not a meal I choose to eat doesn't mean you shouldn't enjoy the meat.

(If I could be assured that all the meat I ate led happy pre-slaughterhouse lives, grazing more or less freely, and not pumped full of growth hormones and unnatural foodstuffs, I might be a less resolute vegetarian.)

[ellarien]

There is that. It would be nice to think that every animal I eat had such a good life.