Thursday, November 17, 2005

Edible Kangaroos

Bloody hell I hate the meat industry. People feel squeamish and uncomfortable about eating kangaroo meat, so the meat industry's answer is what? To call it something else!
This was from a recent story on the ABC: "A competition is under way to rename kangaroo meat to boost sales in restaurants and supermarkets. ... to make it more palatable for Australian and overseas consumers. The kangaroo industry is worth $200 million a year but believes there is great potential to increase the market. Competition organiser Mel Nathan says she wants entrants to take it seriously and try not to be silly. "As I tell people, they're not allowed to come up with names like cyril, skippy, yummy, or road-kill..."
The meat industry has always been about as keen as the american military on creating euphamisms to make people feel nice and o'kay about being implicated in someone else's death. If something doesn't SOUND bad, then we can all just pretend nothing bad's happening. Maybe we should do the same with toddler meat and side-ribs of little ole' grannies!
Seriously, I think it's touching that humans occasionally decide that some animals are just too likeable to eat. It doesn't happen very often, so why can't they leave it alone.
It's seems bloody obvious to me that kangaroo should be called kangaroo. If people feel guilty eating kangaroo, then don't eat it! But if they do change the name, I think cyril is a good one.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

hear hear. i agree absolutely and complete. the western world....no, more correctly the anglo world, refuses to believe that they have to kill something to be able to eat it!! i ran into a new york girl once whom had eaten meat all her life and whom was aghast to learn that veal, which she loved dearly, was actually baby cow!?!? she even stopped eating it!!

butchers in asian actually have live animals in the shop. european butchers, particularly italian country ones, often have a stable out back in which they keep that animals which they will slaughter. a friend of mine's son always wants to tour the stable before/after shopping.



i know this isn't in line with Matthew's vegetarianism but in line with his line of thought...well, perhaps parallel-ish