So, I have a touchy stomach as most Americans, but I am also a pacific islander and have gutted fish many times while in Palau. I once dated someone who found eating shrimp with a head difficult as it "had eyes looking back at me." It definitely is good we have an FDA (and the equivalent in many countries) that keep food clean, but people need to remember and realize the food they eat was alive, interacted with other living things, and like figs, even grew because of them.
I'm not sure if there is a remedy (or really, if it's such a bad reaction many including myself have that it requires any remedy), I guess it's just good to be aware.
Pretty sure that if it convenience stores started hanging the head of the animal you are buying body parts of just over those (e.g. by law) the amount of vegetarians would increase 10 times or more, some of those people who would likely convert know this, for them anything that helps them avoid thinking about meat as recently living beings is a feature not a bug.
I think it's mostly habit, I remember seeing lamb's heads at the butcher when I was a kid[0] and found it a bit unsettling but that did not prevent me from enjoying lamb chops.
The more we become detached from thinking of meat as animals the harder the impact of realizing it again could be, but if it became normalized people would just stop being shocked quickly.
I thought it was this way in English because the wealthy aristocrats (Norman invaders) spoke French, so they used the French words for the meat on their plates (beef, lamb, pork, etc) while the poor peasants who raised the animals called them by their Anglo-Saxon Germanic names (cow, sheep, pig, etc.)
I know that 'beef' is derived from the french word 'boef', but isn't lamb simply the juvenile form of a sheep?
I was under the impression that 'lamb' meat was from a juvenile sheep, and 'sheep meat' would be from an adult animal, or is 'lamb' the general term for sheep meat in english?
Mutton is the term for meat from a mature sheep, but it is rarely sold outside of halal and speciality butchers in the UK these days, which is a pity as it's better for stews.
Lamb is meat from a young sheep - raised to be eaten young.
Mutton is meat from an older sheep, generally from sheep no longer good for wool production, too old to bear lambs, etc.
Mutton is a relative rarity outside the farm gate in shops and city butchers .. in an economic sense as soon as a sheep is big enough and well fed enough to be sold on to super market chains, why invest further time in that animal?
Unless, of course, wool production and| lamb production (ie. older ewes and some rams).
Almost all of them. English doesn’t because the word for the animal is Germanic from Old English (pig, cow, sheep) and the word for the meat is from Norman French (pork from porc, beef from boeuf, mutton from mouton).
While this is the case for almost all animals and their meat in Japanese, oddly enough lamb meat is ラム肉 ramu-niku, where ramu is loaned from English "lamb". The animal is 羊 hitsuji, but while 羊肉 youniku is possible, you'd rarely if ever use that in speech (and I had to look up the onyomi reading!).
That said, lamb is quite rare in Japan, it's eaten primarily up north in Hokkaido.
> if it convenience stores started hanging the head of the animal you are buying body parts of just over those (e.g. by law) the amount of vegetarians would increase 10 times
If Apple store started hanging pictures of mine workers who produced the rare earth materials that went into the phone and living conditions of the minimum wage factory workers in Vietnam who assembled the phone their sales would go down alot.
Not because of empathy though, people know that and don’t give a single one. It would be simply a bad advertisement, as if Apple started talking about sshfs, open source and other geeky topics in their presentations. It would simply become unluxury.
For a similar reason people prefer packaged meat and frozen fish at a supermarket and avoid non-ventilated rooms with piles of meat and fish, because the smell is undelicate and associates with lower standards.
Pretty sure top CEOs would feel irritated as well if they had to watch and listen about their wagies’ unembellished life conditions for an hour everyday.
We are much more selfish than ignorant. I’d say most people aren’t ignorant at all. They are just okay with it as long as it stays away.
Ever been to Vietnam or any other country in SE Asia? They literally hang livestock (usually a goat or pieces of cow) out on the open road as an advertisement to come eat at a restaurant or buy meat from a vendor. Go to any wet market and you'll see every kind of animal laid out in pieces on tables covered in flies and whatever else...
Not in the Balkans, people love spit roasted lamb, the spits goes through the mouth, you can even get the head served on a plate. Living in the country side, nothing gets wasted, my folks would eat beef tongue, chicken soup would have chicken feet in it, and so on.
I wouldn't count of it, the cultural and historical context is pretty different with Asians (if this experiment was done in America), and even pretty different in general; I don't think it would reduce more than 50% of meat eaters but close, we have seen strong graphics work in other context like cigarette boxes so it's not rare to be unable to "get use to it".
This does not apply to large swaths of Asia, which comprises the majority of the world’s population. Which societies, cultures, or regions do you mean, exactly?
Pretty common practice in butcher shops in the Middle East, Central Asia, Iran, China, South East Asia and Japan. India is an exception, although some places in meatloving states such as the Southern states still do that.
There is no beter sign that the meat you buy is fresh so. And, in thay regard, propably better for everyone involved, including the animal, than meat sold pre-packed in supermarkets, where the animals led short, miserable lives in some agro-industrial "farm".
Shops in my Indian hometown and in England regularly do this with buffalo heads, ox heads, goat heads, etc. People buy those at a premium to make specific delicacies.
Ah for God's sake. I am an inveterate carnivore, but every day I learn how badly we torture animals in the name of mass production. I certainly dislike buying meat and fish from a supermarket, instead of the small family farms I usually get it from.
> Eyestalk ablation is currently prohibited in Europe for organic production.
I believe you should buy the most ethically raised/sourced meat you can afford and to not judge those who can’t afford the price of such high standards for raising livestock.
There was no judgment towards the meat buyer in my comment at all. The issue I have is with big factory farming, optimising for cost over every other metric.
Access to healthy and ethical food consumption does have a economic/class line drawn around it but that doesn't mean that a person who is decrying what should be considered substandard sourcing and production of food is mocking the plight of those who can't afford it (and often don't even have access to it).
I'm not sure if there is a remedy (or really, if it's such a bad reaction many including myself have that it requires any remedy), I guess it's just good to be aware.