Today a very proud Beatrice came marching down the stairs with very alive, yet crippled, mouse in her mouth. Somehow she had disabled the mouse’s back legs, so the poor thing could only drag itself around using it’s front feet. Yes, it was pretty horrible.
Worse though was our cat, who took a very disturbing glee in poking and tossing the mouse around; watching it suffer and squeak. We did quickly collect the little guy and put him out of his misery, but not before being reminded that cats are a truly nasty, evil, and sadistic breed. This was not about food or eating, it was about being cruel.
Which brings us around to the chasseurs, or hunters. They number about 1.3 million in France, roughly the same as in Canada, though France’s population is about 67 million to Canada’s 38 million.
Even though the number of chasseurs is reportedly declining, they still represent a group that politicians feel obliged to support. For example two years ago Emmanuel Macron decided to cut the price of a hunting licence in half.
I’ll admit that although I’ve always been a meat eater, I’ve never had the slightest interest in hunting. I just don’t see the point of it beyond some vague macho pride. And it’s not that I haven’t been around guns, and don’t even enjoy them, it’s just that going out and killing a wild animal seems somehow wrong to me.
And yes, I’ll admit that I can’t entirely reconcile that with accepting commercial farming and meat production.
I’m used to Canada where the whole process of creating the nice, clean cello-packed meats in the supermarket is pretty much hidden from the end consumer. Years ago my first wife Victoria toured a slaughterhouse in Toronto for a CBC radio project. The thing that sticks with me from that was less the treatment of the animals — which was not entirely pleasant, even though they were gassed to unconsciousness before being killed — but the impact that this must have on the people working there.
How can spending eight hours a day, five days a week killing animals not have significant impacts on your mental health?
Now we’re in France. I don’t know how animals are killed in French slaughterhouses, but I know that it’s a country that still has veal crates, and still produces foie gras, and still will sell you a rabbit or chicken with the head and eyes still attached - even in a supermarket.
And I’m left pondering whether it’s better for society as a whole to be one step removed from the violence of meat-eating, or if we should be forced each day to look into the face of our food and understand that it used be a happy, fuzzy creature.