I want to shower you with sugar lumps

[venta]

Just because I'm curious:

[Poll #1890457]

This is assuming witting consumption rather than burgers of dubious origins.

Comments

[snow-leopard.livejournal.com]

As a Vegetarian I am mostly bemused by this whole thing.
I would understand if people were upset about the whole being mislead / lied to thing - "It was described as beef but was actually horse", but mostly people seem to be upset by the whole "OMG I may have accidentally eaten horse" thing.
Why are people so willing to eat cows but not horses?
Is that not just bovineist? Or are most meat-eaters hypocrites?
Meh!

[venta.livejournal.com]

Well, indeed! Certainly the accepted wisdom seems to be that people in Britain won't eat horse because of the cute fwuffy pony-wonies, and that's what the news keeps banging on about. Responders here seem to divide more-or-less into "I don't eat meat" and "Eating horse is fine", so we're all obviously much more enlightened :)

Sadly, I think a lot of meat-eaters are hypocrites in various ways. I've known a number of people who eat meat but don't want their dinner to look too much like an animal. Or who want to eat meat, but don't want to know about the welfare of the animals, or how they're slaughtered, and so on because that's icky. Plus there's the way places like Korea are held up as "unelightened" or "cruel" because they eat dog... (From various things I've read, they acually can be quite cruel, but that's an animal welfare issue not a dog-specific thing.)

I eat meat, but think that comes with a bunch of obligations which require me to acknowledge that the slaughter of animals (some of whom may have been cute and fluffy) was involved in the creation of my nice lasagne.

[snow-leopard.livejournal.com]

I think you are right in that most people just don't think about what they are eating and how it got to their plate.
A number of people I know clearly have thought about this and are now of the "I will eat meat, but only if I feel the animal I am eating has been treated well". Two of my siblings have become pescetarians for similar reasons ( I guess fish just aren't cute enough to worry about!).

[venta.livejournal.com]

I'm not nearly as rigorous as some people I know, but I do try to avoid eating the sort of "cheap" meat dishes that imply that welfare probably wasn't a priority :(

I'm sure lots of people have different reasons for becoming pescetarians, but I do find it quite an unexpected choice. Fish definitely went for a poor evolutionary strategy when they decided not to be furry and lovable! A steak means one dead cow, and loads of people can eat from it. A bowl of prawns requires loads of deaths just to feed one person! So it never seems quite so obvious to me why lots of people think of fish/seafood as a sort of proto-vegetarian option. I think it's possible to buy some pretty un-ethically farmed prawns, too, if you're not careful...

[undyingking.livejournal.com]

Mm, I know a few people now who follow that principle (with greater or lesser rigour). There ought to be a word for it – can I suggest "fluffytarian"? Meaning "will eat animals as long as they had a nice life prior to the point of slaughter".

[ar-gemlad.livejournal.com]

Indeed. I'd be concerned that if horse-meat crept into a beefburger, somewhere along the line there has been some dodginess in sourcing, and that could mean dodgy abattoir practice. Therefore, the meat has not necessarily been subjected to stringent checks to make sure it is safe for human consumption.