“If lobsters looked like puppies, people could never drop them into boiling water while they're still alive. But instead, they look like science fiction monsters, so it's OK.”
-George Carlin
With planning for July 4th, today I got to thinking about hot dogs. Then I started thinking about what is actually in a hot dog. If you don't know, you don't want to. You probably wouldn’t even want to know what that skin stuff is (OK, pig intestine).
We're more or less spared the transition of the meat products we eat from the animals they once were. We know where a pork chop comes from, but somehow we ignore the more gruesome of the details as Porky gets turned into bacon. On Food Network's "Unwrapped", segment that featured hot dog making started with cuts of pork. How did the pigs get to that point? If you really want to know, you could read "A Day No Pigs Would Die" by Robert Peck, in which there are many days where pigs did in fact die.
Being spared these details is probably a good thing. It at least lets the consumers retain some sense of their innocence, or at least an ignorant bliss. As children we have lighthearted images of farm life, given to us by petting zoos and Saturday morning cartoons. It never occurs to us that most of those animals are there being raised to be eaten one day.
Again, this is probably a good thing. It's disheartening to think of Bambi as venison or Chicken Little as a Chicken McNugget. My dad said he went hunting only once and shot a bunny. After seeing it he felt so guilty he never went again (of course, this guilt must only have applied to fluffy bunnies, as he routinely salted slugs, waged a BB gun assault on all feline trespassers which entered the yard, and taught his oldest son how to gut a fish).
I'm not saying that I'm going vegetarian. I'm very much a meat and potatoes kind-a guy, but admittedly I also did not make the mental connection between Betsy the Cow and last night's steak. Potatoes are feeling-less, but if they really ran around and looked like Mr. Potatohead would we feel guilty about eating the little guys au gratin?
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