Life of a Pig

I read an article, titled "Whole-hog reaction shows ou disconnect," by Hsiao-Ching Chou, the food editor of The Seattle Post-Intelligencer in which she responded to complaints from readers about another article run in that paper about a local chef. This chef, Tamara Murphy, was documenting the “Life of a Pig” dinner that she was planning. Her goal was to follow the life of the meat she was going to prepare at this dinner from the time it was born until it was in her kitchen. It seems some meat-eating readers complained that images of the cute, little piglets destined for this dinner were shown in the paper. Chou rightly asserted that, “hey, if you eat meat, you gotta face where it comes from.” Obviously, people don't want to think about where meat comes from.

The restaurant critic’s article on Tamara Murphy begins: "In 30 years as a restaurant chef, Tamara Murphy has "mindlessly" cut up thousands and thousands of pounds of meat.” The article explains how Murphy set out to be “mindful” of how this meat got to her kitchen. So, she set out to meet her meat. She chose pigs from a nearby farm that claims to raise animals humanely. (Had she chosen factory-farmed pigs—which she probably would not have been allowed near—this would have been a whole different story).

Murphy kept a blog about the lives, and eventual death, of “her” pigs. It is interesting to note that she chose to not watch them be killed (or at least that's what I understood from here writings), only to see their carcasses be cleaned at the slaughterhouse. She writes:

The fact is, I grew fond of these piglets. They were fun, smart, adorable and real. All along I knew what their purpose was, but can a compassionate person end any creatures life and not feel some pain? Intellectually, I get it. But, fortunately I don't spend all my time there. I knew that I could decide not to go to slaughter and that would be okay. But that didn't seem right to me. I wanted to know what feelings were going to come up for me and explore the whys. As a chef, and like most of us, I am removed from this part of the process and I wanted to see it through.

I am curious to know why she thinks the pigs’ “purpose” was to be killed and eaten. While, she is to be commended for adding mindfulness to the process, she still chose to have someone else do the dirty work for her. And, worst of all, she chose to ignore here feelings, and her conscience.

In a related note: I just subscribed to Satya, a magazine on vegetarianism, environmentalism, animal advocay, and social justice. The t-shirt that came with the subscription features the artwork by Claudette Silver shown on this post.

Update on Thursday, April 27, 2006 at 06:12PM by Joyatri

In thinking about "mindfullness" I recalled this essay, which appeared in the Toronto Star, entitled "Animals Not So Very Different From Us" and written by a Buddhist monk.