Makes me hungry.

Funny story about my oldest son: Whenever we go to our local children's museum and he sees the young chickens walking around in their small enclosure, I tell him to say "Hi chickens," but he instead always just yells "Yummy!"

I really want to instill an understanding and appreciation in my children for the origin of their food, especially the breathing kind. Growing up, I guess it always seemed to me like technology had gotten us to the point we could manufacture all our food.

I don't know what would be a good age to show my sons live animals being slaughtered and butchered.

Show them how they're warehoused at Tyson lucky, much more cruelty there than a yard bird scratching-free all her life then snapping that neck...Eggs are better than their meat anyhow, the liver being the best part.

Raise 'em, then decide if you want to eat 'em after removing their feathers and dressing them.....Rabbits are way easier and you can always add fat to Mr. Tablebunny with oils, stuffing, etc.

Chickens. The girls are for eggs, and the boys for alarm clocks.

Yardbirds crack me up....love how no matter what you do with em, they never seem to give any fuck at all....

The magic of the vestibulo-ocular reflex in action.

So what is this ad saying exactly? Mercedes-Benz have replaced car suspension with chicken necks?

This was clip was directed by a friend of mine. *promote the *quality work!

Boosting this quality contribution up in the Hot Listing - declared quality by maatc.

Promoting this video back to the front page; last published Tuesday, September 24th, 2013 6:04am PDT - promote requested by maatc.

I grew up on a farm, and like many/most such kids, went through the experience of having "pet" chickens, pigs, and even a cow or two that ended up on our plates. I think that the key is to explain verbally that such animals are being raised to be food, and then using your best judgement about when they are ready to see something small get slaughtered and butchered.

For me, it was when I was about 6. We had an old rooster (we mostly had chickens for eggs, this fella was a 1-off), and I was a few feet away when my dad held it down and hacked off its head with a hatchet. Got to watch it run around headless, etc. Then I had to help (a little) in the plucking and processing. If you don't regularly do those things, you don't know the little tricks and they take FOREVER. We put way more hours and dollars of toil and effort into plucking, skinning, and preparing that old chicken than it would have cost to buy 10 whole rotisseried chickens from KFC or something. And he was too old to really provide good meat. BUT - I learned something and appreciated the food more, which was the point.

Later in life I was involved with the raising of pigs and cows for meat. I helped feed them every day, and then would help get them into a trailer and deliver them to the meat locker when it was time for them to be slaughtered and butchered. I didn't witness that in person, but I was old enough to fill in the gaps between putting that animal in the trailer and then eating a steak or pork chops a few days later. I think that if my parents had wanted me to have the experience of actually seeing the slaughter, the locker would have easily obliged. Not sure if the same would be true today.


OK, I've been rambling but I'll throw one more thing out there. Now I'm living in Thailand, where a lot of food is purchased in small farmer's market kinds of places, and some is slaughtered and prepared right in front of your very eyes. I love eating fresh Tilapia fish here (the "farm"-raised and frozen fish back in the US always tasted like algae to me, but the fish here don't have that taste at all) and they are alive in tanks when you order one at a market in Thailand. Within 45 seconds, they will pull out a fish of your selection, smack it on the head with a blunt instrument to kill it, rasp off the scales, gut it, put some slices into the sides for even cooking, and hand it to you in a bag to be cooked at home. Sometimes they flop around in the bag a bit (not alive, just muscles unwinding/relaxing) like a headless chicken. I think that will be a similar growing experience for my daughter that she'd be able to witness at a much earlier age. Then maybe when she's 5-6 like I was we'll watch a chicken get the axe.

That's a fascinating read, Dan. Thanks for taking the time to detail all that for us. It's also helpful with some ideas about how and when I might want to reveal the truth about our food to him.

@lucky760

I don't think it's a good idea to only think of animals as food. I've always thought it was really tacky when someone is like "dur hur hur bacon" when they see a live pig. They have thoughts and feelings and are relatively intelligent animals. It was often that we would have to bring piglets into the house for various reason and they were like puppies. Affectionate little puppies that followed you around.

I learned to help butcher animals at a relatively young age and there was always a separation of what the animal was when it was living and the meat. There is some abstract difference between meat and the living animal. Maybe being exposed at an early age helped me understand that.

Not saying you should shelter a child as to where their food comes from but teach them to also respect animals while they are alive. Teach them that they are not an object quite yet and to care about how they are being treated until their death.

Totally fair and valid point.

To be clear, I don't encourage my son to consider a living chicken to be food that walks. In most all human beings there's an automatic distinction between how you consider a living creature versus a butchered/cooked carcass. I would imagine only a psychopath might have trouble naturally making that distinction.

As my son knows nothing about butchering animals, my assumption is he's just made an association between the words "chicken" and "yummy" based on hearing them together at dinners past. Hmm... Now I'm wondering if he really does look at living chickens as upright, mobile food. I hope he's no psychopath.

I'll have to sleep on that.

I think that's a normal thing for a child that young. He's not old enough to grasp all the details. For all he knows, that cute chicken magically turns into dinner.

I love you guys. Commercial about German automobile suspensions turns into stories about humane animal euthanasia.

http://www.joelapompe.net/2013/09/24/chicken-test-fuji-mercedes-ogilvy-jungvonmatt/