h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I am not a hand wringing animal liber! I am gratefull for your experience, you know your stuff. I am a vegan who has no qualms about what other people eat, (it's not going down my neck). I prepare and cook meat. I do believe that people should be more conscious of the source of their food. A long shot I know, but I think everyone that eats meat or dairy should know what you know. It upsets me that animals are treated like shit but I'm clean. I wish I could change the world, but I cant. I do what I do for me

Well that's funny caraboocj, I just replied to your posting and by now you have probably read it.
As you can tell by the 'nick' I'm an Australian and while the vast majority of Aussies live in the major cities and have no connection with the 'Bush' (i.e The country) I actually do.
This isn't meant to sound smug (but I bet it does) but I do know where our meat comes from and in a lot of cases I know of the abject fear and almost horror(in a viewing sense) that is implicit in the production line slaughter of living animals.

I don't have a problem with the eating of such, just a nagging suspicion that people would eat less slaughtered stock if they saw with their own eyes what happens in an abattoir. It would and does make you think about that cut of prime fillet steak in the butcher's window or nice leg of lamb.

Watch a lamb being slaughtered (and slaughter in it's original meaning, there is no shame in it as an action, as a descriptive ) and then decide whether you need to eat such a thing.

It's all relevant, it is something that your average consumer does not face on a moral level at all. I will give you an instance that is extant to this conversation.

I've just got home from a days fishing on the beach here where I live and I've had a successful day. I have my legal bag limit of allowable fish. I've measured each one as I've caught it and then decided whether to keep it or not and when I've made the decision, I have then to cut the fish's throat and break it's neck...I feel the life depart from this [?] thing and watch as it's nervous system pumps out the last of it's blood on the sand.
This helps with it's eating quality later on and I have also put this/these fish out of their predicament very quickly and as humanly as I can.
Now I am very, very close to the things I eat in this respect and I find my self questioning the need for killing a particular fish. It's getting all Zen on me, I find my self stopping as I encounter waves of philosophical intersections relating to this subject.
Should I be questioning this action and reaction that I find my self doing? Or just smile and take the plaudits given by many for my skill in catching these things (and it is indeed a skill learnt over many decades) ?

I'm sorry for the long windiness of this reply (I've actually cut it short, mercifully I'm sure your saying )) but it touches a part of me this debate about how we eat and I don't think that your average city dweller has really thought about where that scrumptious dish from their preferred eatery has come from.
I'm sure it would make them frown if they saw and experienced the beginnings of their meal from it's very genesis.

OK, I'm hopping off my speakers chair...please forgive me this indulgence

cheers