45. Hog Roast
...being some thoughts on meat eating, and what the eaten might get out of it. .
I am not a vegetarian. I did have a go at it once, in the 1990s. I had read an article about how world hunger could be abolished if we restricted ourselves to plant based foodstuffs rather than use so much of it to fatten animals up to eat them. It is a wasteful process. The article made the claim that at the height of the famine that prompted Bob Geldof to set up Live Aid, stricken African countries were exporting grain to feed chickens for westerners such as ourselves, so that we could enjoy our McNuggets, and chicken dinners.
Although my vegetarianism didn’t actually spring from a deep love of animals, I did knock around with a few people who were heavily into the animal rights movement, and their influence probably had a bit to do with it. Eventually though, my social circle changed and the lure of the bacon sandwich, Sunday dinner and full English Breakfast won me back to the omnivorous lifestyle,
Not that I am totally oblivious to the plight of the animal kingdom. If I can buy meat from sustainably raised creatures, then I will make that choice. I will always pay a bit more for free range eggs too. Particularly after Compassion in Word Farming sent me a video on battery hens to use in my science teacher role. I showed it to a class full of teenage lads who all decided to insist on free range after watching it.
But I have to admit that I pick at the edges of the ethics of meat eating and leave the bits that I don’t like about it on the side of my plate.
Like a lot of people, I don’t like being confronted with the realities of my diet. If I had to hunt down and slaughter every animal that I ate any of I would become vegetarian in an instant. Even if I didn’t have to hunt it down, I was once filled with horror and remorse after running over a butterfly with a lawnmower.1 Top that Philip Larkin!
Shortly afterwards, I was confronted by a whole pig, skewered over a barbecue on another lawn at a summer wedding party. I have to admit that roast pork sandwiches are delicious, but to eat them whilst standing next to the carcass from which the meat was hewn, a smouldering corpse, almost the same size and shape of a small human being, it does seem a bit much.2
Perhaps the pig in question had been sustainably raised in a cruelty free environment. Perhaps it had frolicked in open fields and had a fantastic life, as happy as a pig that doesn’t have to spend its life wallowing in its own shit unless it really wants to. Perhaps it was completely unaware of its impending slaughter right up until the painless end of a pleasant existence, but it looked a bit too much like a victim of a medieval execution to make all that seem probable.
Here’s a question - Is it worse for a hundred people at a wedding to enjoy the meat of a single pig than for one person to eat a prawn curry, for which a whole community of prawns, maybe the equivalent of a small village, has been wiped out? Is there something about the size of the creature concerned, or the number of creatures slaughtered? Is it something to do with its potential for conscious thought? I have heard the argument that it is wrong to eat any creature with eyes. Is this partly because eyes are the window to the soul and any creature with eyes is viewed more sympathetically by the average human being? What about compound eyes? Is it more moral to eat insects than mammals? My gut feeling is that it probably is, but that it is also more disgusting. and I ate a couple of cheese and onion flavoured crickets once. They’ll never catch on as long as potatoes are in plentiful supply.
Hog Roast was one of my first attempts at poetry as an adult. I wrote it soon after East Yorkshire Stinks of Shit. Perhaps I was already developing themes that I would continue to explore for years to come. This was perhaps the first one that had some cod science, or science fiction at its heart. On the other hand, maybe it has truth at its heart. After all - people do say that you are what you eat.
Hog Roast
I must admit that I’ve had better days Trotting, truffling Snorting, snuffling I used to have cloven hooves I used to have a curly tail I used to have a sty of my own Lovers! Piglets! I used to enjoy the simple pleasures Eating, Sleeping Farting For crying out loud! Look at me now What am I reduced to? A sideshow Skewered and scorched Sliced for sandwiches - Apple sauce? - I Don’t mind if I do! Mind you I Mustn’t grumble Chin up Keep on smiling I’ll survive No, really I will survive I’ll live on in all those who munch on my mortal remains Ingesting the messages stored deep within my DNA Unlocking Decoding Assimilating Incorporating Replicating and reproducing You, my new host A little less human A little more porcine A little less you A little more me Evolve? I don’t mind if I do!
It was a cabbage white, and I broke its wings, I looked at it flapping helplessly for a moment and then ran it over again, to “put it out of its misery”, a split second decision, which was observed by my eldest stepson, Kev and his mate out of an upstairs window. They hadn’t seen the prologue and mercilessly ragged me as a butterfly killer afterwards, compounding my guilty feelings.
Doth he protest too much? Is this the same person who in his youth entertained revellers after a hog roast by prancing about wearing the rib cage over his head, like a cowl? Well actually yes - but this was the student, skinhead version of myself, who, as usual, had drank far too much and was desperate to impress anyone with whatever outrageous prank he could think up, in order to prevent them ever finding out what he was really like, deep down.
The poem makes so much sense with the article and indeed one's thoughts about such things. I have hopped camps three times. Bacon sandwich - that's the one that'll call like a sireeen. I've never attempted verse on the matter but neither have I danced with a ribhat, impressive as that sounds. But the grist or gristle rather is knawed thoughtfully and entertainingly. Humour is probably the best approach for such a subject. And well cooked too - the raw stuff is where the animals are. They're cold killers with their 'show it the pan' talk. Crozzle me crisp.