My views are apparently more subversive than I had thought.
There is a bit of a hullabaloo going on in my town over sheep. Actually it is more complicated than that.
Apparently someone is raising a few sheep in their back yard. I believe this is illegal. Apparently one of the sheep was slaughtered. I don't believe there is a law against slaughtering animals on your property, only against keeping farm animals as pets.
What strikes me about the situation is the moral outrage, the quivering voices, the tearful hysteria, the sense by thy neighbors that they have been violated by having this animal killed in their neighborhood. Why not object to the presence of sheep in the first place? There was no mention of any complaints about the presence of the sheep. Are the neighbors more upset that the sheep in question was slaughtered outside in full view of the neighbors or the fact that it was raised and slaughtered (presumably to be consumed by its owners)at all. Would they have objected less if the sheep had been dragged indoors to be slaughtered, perhaps in the bathroom?
The objection was that the slaughter was carried out "in broad daylight". That the sheep was hung from the basketball hoop in the backyard so that the blood could drain (except for the use of the basketball hoop, a fairly traditional technique). That neighborhood children might see the carcas.
Yes, small American children who think meat comes packaged in a grocery store would probably be upset at seeing an animal being killed for food, and I am not convinced that I would want them to watch, but this could be a teaching opportunity. It is not innately harmful for children to know that meat comes from animals, or how these animals are slaughtered.
I don't live on a farm, and there are reasons I might prefer that my neighbors did not slaughter sheep in their backyards. But I see this more as an unpleasant annoyance than as something about which I would feel moral outrage. After all, this is the purpose of the zoning laws. But did anyone file a complaint about the presence of the sheep? Or did they just think they were pets? Did the owners of the sheep even realize that they were not allowed to keep sheep? My neighbor used to have chickens. They were pets. Unfortunately the local fox population solved the problem before any neighbors could complain.
And have we grown so complacent and so distant from the origins of our food that we think meat comes only wrapped in plastic? Are we so squeemish that we cannot bear to face the idea that the food on our plate was a living breathing animal not so long ago? And yes, I am well aware that watching an animal being slaughtered is not necessarily a pretty sight, but it doesn't hurt us to realize and even think about where our food comes from.
I think I was more shocked by the tone of the outrage, that a group of citizens feel a crime has been committed against them because a neighbor killed his sheep to feed his family.
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3 responses to “A clash of cultures”
It does seem like they had their chance to complain long before the re-purposing of the basketball hoop. It sounds pretty typical, though. Would these people have complained if someone had shot a deer, brought it home and hung it from the basketball hoop, or would that have been just a good, red-blooded American tradition? Maybe it’s all the pet/food dichotomy. I have to say I agree with your viewpoint, and I imagine those that aren’t wringing their hands probably do as well.
Not too long ago an immigrant in a neighboring town slaughtered a goat in his yard, to similar great outrage. Yet people demand fresh, organic meat. Go figure. I personally am a near-vegetarian because my father dressed a deer in our garage when I was young and I couldn’t bear it. But if you eat meat, don’t deny where it came from.
We seem to live parallel lives on opposite coasts.
I have been thinking and reading about growing food close to home. In City Life, Witold Rybczynski wrote that American homes in cities had larger yards than European homes because so many Americans grew their own food in their backyards. This was in the 19th century! How did we go from small scale farmers and victory gardeners to barons of acres of kentucky bluegrass monoculture?
In LA, there is a clash of cultures, too. This one is about too many roosters in south LA.
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-rooster25-2008may25,0,4480585.story?track=rss
There is a class of cultures working here.
I know of an anglo woman who kept chickens for eggs. She lives in a townhouse in a planned community (Irvine) so I guess she was skirting CC&Rs and perhaps also the laws.