My sister still calls herself a vegetarian, even though she eats plenty of fish, occasionally chicken or turkey, and several times a year makes an exception for bacon.

A pretend vegetarian for sure.

I've never seen a fish, chicken, turkey or bacon grow on a plant.

But I guess it's a harmless fantasy.

Reminds me of a huge argument I once witnessed between a fisherman and a man who was killing and gutting a duck, preparing to cook it. The fisherman objected to him killing a helpless animal while the duck hunter pointed out the dozen or so fish he was cutting the heads off and preparing to grill himself. The duck hunter had a good point in that animal rights people only seem to defend animals that are cute and fuzzy with big expressive eyes and wagging tails but could care less about animals they perceived as ugly such as spiders, fish, rodents, etc. This went on for an hour and almost ended up in a fist fight.

Later on I used the argument against a vegetarian by pointing out the hundreds of squashed bugs on her windshield and grill of her car. "Well, I don't eat them." was her reply.

"Oh yes you do," I pointed out.

____________________

an agricultural reality that we too often ignore: the untold number of sentient animals killed to grow and harvest edible crops. Farmers routinely unleash an arsenal of agricultural weaponry upon unquestionably sentient “pests”—squirrels, rabbits, mice, moles, voles, deer, wolves, and coyote—who compete for cultivated calories. Come harvest time, combines and harvesters unavoidably shred millions of self-aware critters who creep among the crops.

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/nonpro...egans-eat-bugs/

True story -- when I lived in NYC in the 90s I used to often eat lunch in restaurants in Chinatown. One day I went into one of my regular places and ordered pork lo mein. The guy who took my order said there would be a "wait," and when I said how long he said about half-an-hour. A few minutes later someone led a small pig on a rope into the restaurant, past the cashier and into the kitchen in back. And about half-an-hour later I had pork lo mein.

That seems like some fast butchery to me, since I know nothing of how to butcher anything.
It seems like a risky move, to walk a person's food past them, right in the restaurant. A lot of people would have had a fit. No noises from the back, huh? That supports the idea that the kill was quick and painless. I don't think it would be possible to have it where you couldn't hear it. Pigs are loud. I'll bet that was some fresh tasting pork.

I really am one generation away from food on the hoof. My aunt was a farmer while I was growing up, she eventually stopped to devote herself to starting a full-time charcuterie business. I always knew where the meat came from, and even remember going to an isolated valley once where elderly friends of the family lived, to help them butcher a couple of sheep. I think I was about ten.

Mum, and her sister and brother, however, who actually grew up on the farm, had an amazingly pragmatic outlook on it all; they knew even as little children that the soft, cuddly kittens they played with would be drowned weeks later. This was natural to them!

Just one generation later, I've never killed or butchered anything bigger than a fish.

Lobster in restaurants are kept in a tank, alive. I think some restaurants keep live fish too. For the bigger animals, I think it's a problem of logistics, not morals or ethics. I guess if it was possible to hold live beef right in the restaurant, we'd do it. Cuz here, it's a question of freshness, it's a selling point. A meshwi (meshoui, mechoui, méchoui) is done with an animal that was alive in the morning, killed and emptied of its entrails, then cooked whole on a spit (minus the entrails) over several hours through the day before the feast, however a quick search reveals the word is also used to describe a one-person meal. From Wiki: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M%C3%A9choui I went to one when I was young, it was a pig rather than a sheep or lamb. If anything, that was the least processed meat I've ever eaten, next to a duck a friend and I "hunted" with pellet guns and cooked over a fire while we were camping. I remember feeling a bit squeamish about the whole duck thing, but then that was a new experience for me. Now that I think about it, I can't see what else I'd have eaten besides that duck, if I'd had to forage or hunt for my food. So I guess I'd have had to get over my disdain for it. Luckily, I came back to civilization and started eating all kinds of crap for years after that. The problem never popped up again, til I went low-carb, then I had to re-think the whole thing for the first time. I mean, I didn't actually have to think it through, but I did cuz the problem surfaced on an academic level, i.e. debate and I do love a good debate don't I.

So, on the one hand, we got this whole ethics/morals thing going, and on the other we got the health/freshness/processed thing going too. Here's a thought, the apparent ethical/moral dilemma exists only as long as we don't face it directly. When we do, it's resolved by necessity, not by argument. Do we eat, or do we starve?

Re the pig in the restaurant -- you're probably right, it seems unlikely that it would be turned into lunch that fast. Maybe it was someone's pet and they brought it in to glean from leftover veggies. It was just a funny coincidence and still pretty earthy to be so brazen about livestock in a busy restaurant.