Only squirrels for you, Smoky

Flatcoat Kaleb fetches dinner. Photo by Sara... on Flickr.

If there were a club around here like San Francisco's Bull Moose Hunting Society, I'd sign up in a heartbeat. Here's how they roll:

The Bull Moose Hunting Society, a hunting club and wild game cooperative based in San Francisco, connects “city folk eager to gain intimacy with the capture and slaughter of the animals they eat.” The society helps soft-fingered newbies through the hunting license process, advises on equipment purchases (including a rifle), and teaches how to track and shoot game, clean a carcass in the field, and butcher meat in the kitchen. Members don’t have to hunt to eat the wild game, either: modeled on systems of raw milk distribution, the Bull Moose meat share means that if members go out to hunt on the weekend (for which they pay extra), everyone else gets a cut of the kill. [Source: The Ethicurean.]

Hogs, we haz them here in California, and wild hogs are what the Bull Moose Society hunts. Also [as I've mentioned before]: there is no better locavore than a good hunter. From a great little essay in the NY Times:

[I]t might be better to relabel [game meat] as free-range, grass-fed, organic, locally produced, locally harvested, sustainable, native, low-stress, low-impact, humanely slaughtered meat. [Source]

Kudos to the SF Chronicle site for publishing the original article on the Bull Moose crew. Can't help but wonder what the comments will look like. No, seriously. Nothing like a whompin' economic downturn to make hunting for dinner a bit more, well, palatable.

I've always been OK with ethical hunting. When I was a kid one of my favorite authors was Ernest Thompson Seton, who wrote in one of his stories: "No wild animal dies of old age. Its life has soon or late a tragic end." And how tragic: eaten alive by predators; dead of starvation, or heat, or drowning or parasite infestation; killed by infection after an injury — no wild animal dies of old age. I think of this whenever I hear an animal-rights proponent say that "our goal is to end animal suffering."

No, it isn't.

I think the goal of animal rights extremists is to sever as completely as possible the relationship between people and nature: to take nature off our radar, so that when we visualize "animal suffering" we won't think of tarantula hawks or Battle at Kruger, we'll think only of puppy mills and factory farms. Puppy mills and factory farms are Very Bad Things, but no reason to look at nature and attempt to remove humans from the equation. I don't think it's a coincidence that the people most familiar with wilderness and wild animals tend not to be vegetarians. And many of the people who know and love nature best are hunters.

I should clarify that trophy hunting has always creeped me out. And idiots and drunks blasting away at anything that moves? Pass the barf bag. But note: factory farms damage the environment a bazillion times more than modern-day trophy hunters and fools with guns. And I hate when a dog-killing PETA type calls someone a murderer for shooting an elk each autumn to feed his family. I'll say it again: if you want "free-range, grass-fed, organic, locally produced, locally harvested, sustainable, native, low-stress, low-impact, humanely slaughtered meat," then you should think about hunting that meat for yourself, and respect those who already take the trouble.

Like all local product, it takes on a significance. You need to learn to cook it well because one of your friends got up on a cold cold morning and went out, shot this animal, then hauled it back to the truck on his own back (or in the case of Shannon, on her own back).

And so, you learn a new skill. You make a few mistakes, but you ask around, you get recipes from people, and a couple of years into it, the concept of making tacos from ground antelope instead of ground beef has become so ordinary that you’re startled when your friends back in that city you left are shocked that you’re cooking with game.[Source]

Say it with me: free-range, grass-fed, organic, locally produced, locally harvested, sustainable, native, low-stress, low-impact, humanely slaughtered meat.

Related posts:
Living Small in Montana: What’s in your freezer? [A fave from The Ethicurean]
Food safety posts from this blog

The following blogs include posts on hunting:
Hunter Angler Gardener Cook
NorCal Cazadora
The Hog Blog
Operation Delta Duck
Terrierman
Home Range
Querencia
Logcabineer
Regal Vizsla
Chiendogblog

Where avocados come from

Pauma Valley, CA: Carol and Bill Steed's avocado groves.

They come from beautiful SoCal and the beautiful Central Coast, and just thinking about the Pauma Valley and good fresh guacamole [with cilantro!] makes me feel better [cough, sniffle].

Visit Avocado Central here to learn more about the best fruit ever. And how about a delicious avocado shake? Nectar of the gods, and good for what ails you, believe me. Just look at it...!

Cinco de Mayo 1 - swine flu 0. Aguacate and mescal recipe here.

Eject, Porkins!

Guess which city "introduced a broad series of public health measures to contain the flu within two days of the first reported cases"? More here.

From the swine flu H1N1/2009 front, here are several links that may prove of interest. The first is Swine flu: the overreaction overreaction, from the most excellent public health blog Effect Measure. Excerpt:

The irony is that the overreaction backlash will be more severe the more successful the public health measures are. If, for example, the virus peters out this spring because transmission was interrupted long enough for environmental conditions (whatever they are) to tip the balance against viral spread, CDC and local health officials will be accused of over reacting. It's another example of the adage, "When public health works, nothing happens." On the other hand, if local officials do nothing and things get worse, they will be accused of being slow.

It's not just the current reputation of local officials that concern me, however. If this virus does wane with the summer months (something we expect to happen), it's current mildness and its disappearance may lead citizens and decision makers back into the kind of reckless disregard of public health facts that has produced our current weak and brittle health infrastructure. But flu season will come again next fall, and it would be no scientific surprise if this strain is part of flu's repertoire.

And from the Orange Satan comes H1N1: Why Do Schools Close, And When Do They Open? Money quote:

[I]mplementation likely needs to be early enough to preclude the initial steep upslope in case numbers. That's the answer to "but there's only one case! Why are we doing this?" If you wait for "the steep upslope", it's too late to matter.

Meanwhile, to the north, come reports of the first pig cases:

There is much concern that pigs infected with this H1N1 might become infected with a dangerous influenza virus from fowl, like the H5N1 that causes avian influenza, leading to a dangerous superbug. But [Christopher] Olsen [a swine influenza researcher at the School of Veterinary Medicine at the University of Wisconsin, Madison] says this is unlikely on large hog farms. "Most modern swine production facilities are single species. The days of a small farmer having pigs and fowl and other animals all mixing together is really unusual in terms of modern commercial swine. My opinion is modern swine facilities have better biosecurity than old-time farms."

I'd add some thoughts of my own, but I've been sick all weekend and am currently coughing up a lung, so maybe tomorrow or whenever. I'm not sick enough for it to be H1N1. I'm not sick enough for it to be H1N1. I'm not sick enough...

Related:
H5N1 - News and Resources about Avian and Swine Flu [H/T: Effect Measure]
The Swine. Influenza in Mexico City [H/T: H5N1]
Intersections [Daniel Hernandez in el D.F.]
Smithfield, you’re forked now: Photos of Granjas Carroll de Mexico pork factory are sickening, even with no flu connection [The Ethicurean]

Factory farmed pork safer than free range? In a pig's eye

Maybe you saw the NY Times op-ed by James E. McWilliams, author of Just Food: How Locavores Are Endangering the Future of Food and How We Can Truly Eat Responsibly.

"[S]cientists have found that free-range pork can be more likely than caged pork to carry dangerous bacteria and parasites," warns Professor McWilliams:

Free range is not necessarily natural. And neither is its taste. In fact, free range is like piggy day care, a thoughtfully arranged system designed to meet the needs of consumers who despise industrial agriculture and adore the idea of wildness.

To equate the highly controlled grazing of pigs with wild animals in a state of nature is to insult the essence of nature, domestication and wild pigs.

I wasn't under the impression that anyone was equating wild pigs with domestic pigs raised in a free range environment. But if McWilliams is suggesting that the choice is between the very real horrors [moral and environmental] of factory farms and "piggy day care," I'll vote for "day care," thanks. For anyone truly hell-bent on insulting pigs and domestication and the essence of nature, factory farming is the way to go.

And those dire warnings about "dangerous bacteria and parasites"? Marion Nestle to the rescue:

The study on which McWilliams based his op-ed is published in Foodborne Pathogens and Disease. The investigators actually measured "seropositivity" (antibodies) in the pigs' blood. But the presence of antibodies does not necessarily mean that the animals--or their meat--are infected. It means that the free-range pigs were exposed to the organisms at some point and developed immunity to them. The industrial pigs were not exposed and did not develop immunity to these microorganisms. But you would never know that from reading the op-ed. How come?

Guess who paid for the study? The National Pork Board, of course.

Read all about it here: "Sponsored Science" Strikes Again, by Marion Nestle at the Atlantic Food Channel blog.

Peep it

"NightPeeps by Melissa Harvey, Arlington. "I wanted to re - create the bleak urban landscape and the fluorescent light, and add a little pink and yellow," says Harvey, 44, a graphic designer for WETA who spent 45 hours over two weekends on the diorama."

"Peeps of Wrath"! "Bernard Peepoff: The Game Is Up"! "Peeptanamo Bay"! "Peepzilla!" Check out Peeps Show III at WashPo. The most excellent Dolittler offers more Peep sites and her own Peep medicine [my fave: Peep surgery]. Disclaimer: I have never, not once, eaten a Peep. They look almost as gross as kiwifruit, if you ask me.

"Taking the Lambs to Market"

Butcher shop in Pinole, California. "Clarence Faria's Uncle Manuel, owner, on the right."

Fragments of Maxine Kumin's Taking the Lambs to Market have appeared in a number of links recently: here, for instance, in a fine essay on sheep, local slaughterhouses, USDA inspections and small-farm economics by Bill Fosher.

So I thought I'd post the whole thing. From the collection Looking for Luck:

Taking the Lambs to Market

All due respect to the blood on his bandsaw,
table, hands and smock, Amos is an artist.

We bring him something living, breathed, furred
and meet it next in a bloodless sagittal section.

No matter how we may deplore his profession
all of us are eating, even Keats

who said, If a Sparrow come before my Window
I take part in its existence and pick
about the Gravel, but dined on mutton.

Amos, who custom cuts and double wraps
in white butcher paper whatever we named,
fed, scratched behind the ear, deserves our praise:

a decent man who blurs the line of sight
between our conscience and our appetite.

And one I've posted before and will no doubt post again: Meat, by Thom Gunn.

My brother saw a pig root in a field,
And saw too its whole lovely body yield
To this desire which deepened out of need
So that in wriggling through the mud and weed
To eat and dig were one athletic joy.
When we who are the overlords destroy
Our ranging vassals, we can therefore taste
The muscle of delighted interest
We make into ourselves, as formerly
Hurons digested human bravery.

Not much like this degraded meat — this meal
Of something, was it chicken, pork, or veal?
It tasted of the half-life that we raise
In high bright tombs which, days, and nights like days,
Murmur with nervous sound from cubicles
Where fed on treated slop the living cells
Expand within each creature forced to sit
Cramped with its boredom and its pile of shit
Till it is standard weight for roast or bacon
And terminated, and its place is taken.

To make this worth a meal you have to add
The succulent liberties it never had
Of leek, and pepper fruiting in its climb,
The redolent adventures dried in thyme
Whose branches creep and stiffen where they please,
Or rosemary that shakes in the world's breeze.

Good eats and good reads: on raising - and killing - lamb for dinner

Louise Erdrich looked at the northern tallgrass prairie and wrote:

I would be converted to a religion of grass. Sleep the winter away and rise headlong each spring. Sink deep roots. Conserve water. Respect and nourish your neighbors and never let trees gain the upper hand. Such are the tenets and dogmas. As for the practice — grow lush in order to be devoured or caressed, stiffen in sweet elegance, invent startling seeds — those also make sense. Bow beneath the arm of fire. Connect underground. Provide. Provide. Be lovely and do no harm.

Provide. Here is California farmer Andy Griffin, author of The Ladybug Letter, writing about "the karma of meat":

[C]ooking meat is the way nature allows us to eat grass. By profession I’m a vegetable farmer, but as a hobby I keep a flock of goats and sheep along with a tiny herd of Dexter cattle and I think of them collectively as my “meat garden.” My animals eat cull vegetables, like over-ripe tomatoes, under-ripe winter squash and deformed beets, but mostly they eat grass from the hillsides around my home that are too steep and dry for me to farm. Remember the Dust Bowl? One of the most profound and long-lasting catastrophes of the “dirty thirties” was that speculation in grain caused vast tracts of arid, marginal land in the western Great Plains to be ploughed down for wheat. When the drought came there was no turf to hold the soil down and it blew away. That land should have never been taken away from the Buffalo and the beef cattle.

"Cooking meat is the way nature allows us to eat grass."
Andy Griffin

And when Andy says "beef cattle" he isn't talking about the "karmically-challenged modern beef steer" fattened on corn in a feedlot. People, there's a reason Isaiah says in the Bible, "All flesh is grass." [A reason that has nothing to do with meat for dinner, but still.]

Everything dies. If we are conscientious, the stock we raise will die with as little stress as possible after a comfortable life. And this beats being chased down and torn apart while still alive, or wasting away from injury and infection, or dying of some hideous parasite-borne condition on the African savannah, if you ask me. [Full disclosure: when an earnest vegan says, "I am someone who cares about preventing cruelty to animals," I want to say, "Dude -- like Battle at Kruger?"] As the man wrote, "No wild animal dies of old age."

All of this is by way of introducing some links to excellent posts on raising sheep [and other stock] for slaughter, and dinner.

First, from the always terrific Bill Fosher [owner/moderator of the Sheep Production Forum]: Honor thy meat.

I loved this:

Q: “How do you eat meat from animals you knew?”
A: “I don’t like to eat meat from an animal I didn’t know!"

True, true — the only lamb I used to eat, before free-range and grass-fed became trendy, was barbecued on a friend's ranch not long after being slaughtered. The person sitting across from me at the table could tell me everything about that individual lamb, from its grazing habits to the name of its great-grandma. I knew where that lamb came from and what care it received. Who do you ask about the shrink-wrapped ground beef at Whole Foods?


Ardi Gasna has been in my blog list forever, and back in April, California chef, sheep dairy owner and artisanal cheesemaker Rebecca King wrote about slaughtering lambs she'd raised:

I know some may find it morbid (although they themselves eat meat that someone else kills!), but I've discovered I actually enjoy slaughtering and butchering my own animals. There is a certain satisfaction in knowing that I was responsible for this animal from its birth until its death. I am also fascinated in the process by which a living thing becomes food that we eat. The lamb has been really delicious as well, some of the best I've ever had.

As it happens, Andy Griffin of Mariquita Farm and The Ladybug Letter has crossed paths with Rebecca and her sheep. Small blogosphere.

Farmer and Honest Meat blogger Rebecca Thistlewaite also has some words on lamb, specifically: "So the California raised grassfed lamb tasted better, but why does it cost so much more?" Read the rest in her post The Real Dirt on Lamb.

And what about the actual, you know, slaughter? How much easier it is for the animals when they are killed quickly at their own farm or ranch, without the stress caused by transport to a distant slaughterhouse! So why aren't there more MPUs?

That truck on the left is a mobile slaughterhouse, or MPU - Mobile Processing Unit. From The WSJ's Have Knife, Will Travel:

Scott Meyers of Sweet Grass Farm Beef [on Lopez Island, Washington] started raising Japanese Wagyu cattle on his grass pasture once the mobile unit was up and running. "It gave me access to the marketplace," he says. "Without that, I wouldn't have even considered" raising beef.

Mr. Meyers says the mobile unit offers his animals a "sublime" death because they avoid the stress of traveling long distances. Such care makes his beef taste better, he says, as he introduces part of his herd: "This one's Violet, here's Splits and Buttercup."

The Ethicurean has more on the Island Grown Farmers Cooperative here.

But that's Washington State. Are there any mobile rigs in California?

Sort of. Marissa Guggiana explains in Leading Lambs to Slaughter — In search of a kinder, gentler abbatoir:

Right now there are seven operating MPUs in the U.S., but none of them are in California. California’s lone MPU sits gathering dust in Monterey County. The MPU is operated by George Work, of Work Family Ranch. Work’s enthusiasm for the practicality of the MPU got it built, but it hasn’t been enough to overcome state and county bureaucracy, and a federal regulatory system that seems reluctant to change.
[...]
The general response from other meat processors, government workers, and members of the sustainability community to the MPU is a list of reasons why it does not work, has not worked, and will not work. Most of these focus on county regulations. For instance, in Washington, where [Bruce] Dunlop operates, he’s able to compost the non-edible remainders and return them to the pasture as fertilizer. In California this wouldn’t be tolerated. While each county has its legal peculiarities, there seems to be an overarching resistance rooted in a fear of decentralization, a fear that if we move outside the model of faster, cheaper, and more, we lose.

We'll see what happens once the new administration takes over, though I suspect MPUs are not high on the list of concerns at the moment.


Related posts from this blog, with much link goodness.

Hey, that'd be a good title for a book!

And finally, from one of the links above:

Keep in mind one of the oldest ways to get "free-range, grass-fed, organic, locally produced, locally harvested, sustainable, native, low-stress, low-impact, humanely slaughtered meat": by hunting it yourself.

Some Pigs

Check out Honest Meat — a fine new blog I found via I Heart Farms. The author is Rebecca Thistlethwaite, and right now she is in the middle of three posts on CAFOs [confined animal feeding operations]: specifically, the pig factories of North Carolina's coastal plain.

I love bacon, but not so much that I can buy it in good conscience when pigs are factory-farmed and CAFOs are destroying the environment. Rebecca links to Waterkeeper Alliance's Rick Dove, who took the aerial photos for her posts, and who writes on the Waterkeeper site:

There are now approximately 2,500 industrial swine facilities raising 10,000,000 hogs in North Carolina's coastal plain. This is a radical change from conditions that existed prior to the mid-1980s. Then, there were approximately 24,000 family farmers raising a little over 2,000,000 hogs. Based upon a study of Dr. Mark Sobsey of the University of North Carolina that compared hog to human waste, these hogs are producing more fecal matter in Eastern North Carolina each day than is produced by all the citizens (combined) in North Carolina, California, Pennsylvania, New York, Texas, New Hampshire, and North Dakota. This incredible amount of fecal matter is constantly being flushed from the confinement buildings where these animals are kept under what are often grossly inhumane conditions. [Boldface mine.]

Rebecca writes:

This post is supposed to be about the human health problems with these huge hog factories. But if a hog farmer (or vertically-integrated pork corporation) will treat animals with complete disregard, how do you think they treat their human workers and neighbors?

[Like this, I imagine.] The Honest Meat sidebar is filled with books, farms, industry links and culinary sites. You'll find I Heart Farms, Honest Meat and other link goodness in the SHEEP, FARMS/RANCHES, GOOD EATS AND MORE section of this blog's right sidebar.

Now it's personal

Picante, pero sabroso: "Even dusted with ashes, red-hot serrano peppers seem to glow in the eerie light of the Day Fire." Photo by Les Dublin from The Ojai Garden [2006].

Torn from today's headlines:

July 9, 2008 -- The CDC today warned that people at high risk of severe cases of salmonella infection -- infants, the elderly, and people with weak immune systems -- should not eat raw jalapeno peppers or raw serrano peppers [!!!] because of the ongoing salmonella outbreak.

"Most serranos rate between 10,000 and 20,000 Scoville units," says Wikipedia. We do indeed.

Peppers may be bad for you, but high fructose corn syrup is filled with natural goodness. The Ethicurean fills us in:

Conveniently timed with the Corn Refiners Association’s multimillion-dollar campaign to sweeten consumers’ appetite for high fructose corn syrup, the FDA has reversed its position on whether HFCS an be labeled “natural,” reports Food Navigator yesterday. “HFCS, like table sugar and honey, is natural. It is made from corn, a natural grain product,” says Corn Refiners President Audrae Erickson in the association’s statement gloating about welcoming the government approval.

It's a "quality" sweetner! Right. Oh, what the hey — it not as if 57 million Americans have pre-diabetes or anything. Thanks to The Ethicurean for great reporting and valuable info, and ditto to Christie and Gina at Pet Connection for their ongoing coverage of our tax dollars at work.

Foie gras returns, non-stick never leaves (your bloodstream)

It's foie gras city. Chicago Tribune photo by Charles Cherney.

What can I say — the stuff's delicious. [It's even possible to produce foie gras without force-feeding the geese [ducks, on this side of the Atlantic] whose fatty livers wind up on the plate, according to farmers in Spain.] In any event, Chicago overturned its two-year ban on foie gras this week, to much gnashing of teeth on both sides of the debate.

"If I had to come back today as an American farm animal destined for the dinner table, I'd choose to be a Moulard duck raised for my fat liver in a heartbeat."

Chefs Anthony Bourdain and Michael Ruhlman sound off:

Ruhlman: In my opinion, the four farms that grow ducks for foie gras in this country -- especially the largest ones, in New York and California -- they ought to be made examples of by our legislators, not as places of animal torture, but rather as models of humane farming. Unlike factory hogs, which have their tails painfully cut off and never see the light of day before winding up as cheap grocery store pork, the billions of chickens that live packed wing to wing and live in their own ammonia-reeking waste, or the feed-lot antibiotic-laced beef -- if I had to come back today as an American farm animal destined for the dinner table, I'd choose to be a Moulard duck raised for my fat liver in a heartbeat.

Bourdain: Yes, it seems to me that the activists for whom the suffering of animals is unbearable, their lobbying against foie gras is not just bad time management, it's cynical time management.

Billions of chickens, hogs and beef are being harmed -- that's carnage on a far vaster scale -- but big agribusiness is a difficult and powerful target. They don't get much bang for their buck, from a political standpoint. It's much easier to go for the small artisanal farmer with little resources and no lobbying group in D.C.

Read more from Ruhlman and Bourdain here.

And while I'm on the subject of food: how about those chemicals in non-stick cookware, eh? From The Ethicurean:

The study released last week also included some new and disturbing findings about the health effects of PFOA. Residents living near the DuPont plant who had high levels of PFOA in their bloodstreams tended to have lower levels of a protein that helps the body fight off bacteria and viruses. They also had reduced thyroid function. In kids, high levels of PFOA were associated with high cholesterol levels. Researchers fear this could lead to obesity and heart disease risk later in life … as if exposure to the rest of our dysfunctional food system wasn’t bad enough.

These impacts are scary not just because of what they’ve done to the workers and residents studied, but because PFOA appears to be one of the most “persistent” chemicals — chemicals that do not break down into less-harmful compounds over time — that scientists have come across. That means that the impacts they’re seeing now could be just the beginning. Here’s the Globe and Mail again:

In an ironic turn for chemicals that are used to make non-stick products… PFOA [and PFOS, a related chemical] have been found to have an extreme affinity to stick to living things and, once absorbed, are incredibly hard to shed, often taking decades to be excreted. “We’ve never seen them degrade under any relevant environmental conditions,” said Scott Mabury, a chemistry professor at the University of Toronto. “I often say they redefine persistence as we know it.”

Awesome.

It was not until May of 2000, 21 years after it first began testing workers, that 3M announced it was ceasing the use of PFOA. The reason? New tests had found it in the blood of people around the globe, including in places far from manufacturing facilities. Here’s 3M exec Charles Reich in the Washington Post the day after the recall: “The surprise wasn’t that it was in our workers — that’s something we’ve known for some time. It was a complete surprise that it was in the blood bank supplies” of the U.S., Japan, Europe, and China. Double awesome. And by the way, by “awesome,” I mean “mindblowingly terrifying.”

Great-grandmother's cast-iron cookware is starting to look real good.

Where meat comes from

Zumbagua market, Ecuador. Photo by Peter Menzel and Faith D’Aluisio.

Peter Menzel and Faith D’Aluisio "sat down to a meal with 30 families in 24 countries, photographing their one-week food intake and talking to them about food, dieting, and shopping habits for their 2005 book Hungry Planet." From the NY Times Freakonomics interview by Annika Mengisen:

Q: On this blog, we talked about the possibility of slaughterhouses breeding violent, even homicidal behavior in people. From what you’ve seen around the world, what’s your take on this?

From Peter: I would argue that this is not the case in developing countries (in people who work in slaughterhouses or in the general population). Meat is valued, prized, and sought after, and there is a lot of respect for animals, along with a complete realization and understanding of where meat comes from.

But in the first world (to a lesser extent in Europe) large commercial slaughterhouses do numb the workers who must perform the same grisly task for endless hours.

I photographed slaughterhouses around the U.S. a number of years ago and saw what goes on. Pigs, cows, chickens, turkeys: an endless deconstruction line. It’s inevitable under those circumstances that workers remove themselves mentally from their physical tasks.

A bigger concern might be the fact that many Americans have no clue where meat comes from: does it grow in these Styrofoam trays?

I do think if you eat meat, you should be aware that you are participating in the death of an animal. How far that awareness goes and whether it influences how much, how often, and what kinds of meat you consume is a responsibility as well.

And from Rebecca King of Ardi Gasna:

I almost forgot the other major activity I've been up to lately--slaughtering and butchering my lambs from last year. I had experience breaking down a lamb carcass from my kitchen days, but the killing and gutting was new. I never would have believed it, but I am actually a gun owner now! My mom gave me a .22 automatic that belonged to her first husband about 50 years ago, and I've used it to put the lambs down quickly before bleeding them. I know some may find it morbid (although they themselves eat meat that someone else kills!), but I've discovered I actually enjoy slaughtering and butchering my own animals. There is a certain satisfaction in knowing that I was responsible for this animal from its birth until its death. I am also fascinated in the process by which a living thing becomes food that we eat. The lamb has been really delicious as well, some of the best I've ever had. The friends and family I've shared it with seem to agree, too.