Just over 2 years ago now I wrote this post discussing the various reasons why I’d given up eating meat. The cruelty, the environmental impact etc etc. Now, anyone who has read the latest issue of The Idler will know the secret we had been keeping until it’s publication… Andy and I have both eaten meat in the last year. Several times now in fact, and in no way by accident like we often did while we were away. No, indeed, this was fully intentional devouring of charred flesh.

What has happened?

Well a number of things really. Firstly we spent several months travelling around the UK WWOOFing with the intention of picking up hints and tips for gardening our way to self sufficiency at some undefined point in the future. Along these travels we saw animals kept in the respectful way they should be, children being brought up knowing exactly where their food came from, including the explicit gory details of the animals’ execution (which, by the way, didn’t seem to upset them in the slightest), we also thought a lot during that time about whether or not a strict vegetarian diet for the UK to feed itself was really possible. Can all those hills used for grazing sheep really be turned over to efficient veg production? No.

So, to cut a long story short, on one of our final WWOOFing stops our hosts offered us meat, and we ate it. First it was rabbit. By this time this was a relatively simple choice. The rabbits had spent their entire lives running around the fields surrounding the farm we were sat in. They led the ultimate free range lifestyle. They were not pumped full of drugs. They were not farmed intensively.  They did not suffer from unnatural diseases as a result of the way they were kept. They weren’t subjected to high levels of stress as they were not transported miles in cramped conditions to meet their fate at an abattoir. They were just rabbits, doing what rabbits do. Then one unexpected second they were no longer rabbit. They were, literally dead meat. Charged with the crime of feasting on the wrong vegetables and  too much frolicking they were shot just when they weren’t looking.

So that was the rabbit. It had wrangled it’s way out of our reasons for not eating meat and ended up in a very tasty rabbit and orange stew. Next came the pig.

But this is “Egg But No Bacon!”

I know, but this is what has happened, and it’s time I let the truth out. It was at the same farm we’d eaten the rabbit. On a return visit we walked into the kitchen to find our host salting bacon. “These are our pigs!” she said rubbing salt into the skin. It was all so matter of fact. To be sure they has been upset. We’d heard several of our WWOOF hosts tell us stories of the first time they killed their pigs. How sad they’d felt, for days even. Grown men crying. This is what responsibility feels like. But along with the tears comes a respect for the animal you could never have buying it shrink wrapped in a supermarket.

So they gave us the choice again. They were planning a roast for dinner. Did we want some? This seemed a step up from the rabbit somehow. I’m not sure why. I think it’s just the scale of it. Pigs are the size of a person. They look at you. They run over to you when you come to feed them scraps. They have personalities. They make odd noises. They are hysterically funny. So this was the choice. Did we want to eat another living being? Something that had lost it’s life only to end up here on the table covered in salt to be sliced, fried and served with an egg? Was this what we wanted?

After some deliberation we both decided to go for it. I’m not sure whether it was a full acceptance of the proposal that it is ok to eat living things, after 4 years of thinking I still don’t feel like I know enough to make a fully honest decision on that. This was more a taking of an opportunity. An experiment if you like. How would it feel to eat an animal that we know had been raised and killed in a way that we thought was acceptable?

So how did it feel? Honestly it was odd at first. I cautiously took a slice of meat from the carving dish and put in on my plate beside the usual pile of potatoes, carrots and peas. I kept looking at it, pushing it around my plate, preferring at first to eat the potatoes. Then, when I thought no one was looking (why?!) I quickly cut a piece, popped it in my mouth and chewed it up. Blimey it was tasty!

This meat was a million miles from the pork I’d given up. It seems like over time we’ve been conned into accepting dry flavourless meat. This home reared meat was completely different. So succulent, and the crackling was something else! So I had the results of my experiment. The dead pig proved everything I had suspected. Badly reared animals result not just in suffering for them, but also the actual flavour of the meat suffers.

So where does this leave me now? Am I destined to return to a diet of frozen chops, chicken fillets and Big Macs? No way. The original arguments still stand. In fact they have if anything been strengthened by these experiences. The intensive animal farmed in entirely unacceptable. I am more convinced than ever of this.

I can’t take on the supermarkets, but for myself my next step is to take as much responsibility as I can for any meat I eat. A neighbour recently brought around a rabbit and taught me how to skin and gut it. Soon I may go out shooting with him. We have bought a quarter of a pig from the farm we worked at. We bought into the pig when it was just weeks old. Beccy and Tony have raised the pig for us in a way we are happy with, and in a few weeks from now we will go to collect it, chopped and bagged up for the freezer. I imagine this quarter of a pig will last us a long time. But in preparation for when it does run out, maybe we should get our own pigs.

So “Egg But No Bacon”, will you be changing your name to “Bacon and Eggs”?

No. Well, at least not for the moment. There is a difficulty with this kind of ethical eating that I’m not sure how to deal with. People know now that we eat meat. What will happen if I go to someone’s house for dinner, or somewhere else I am not absolutely sure of the origin of the meat? I can’t say I’m not vegetarian but I won’t eat your meat. Well maybe I should if I feel strongly enough, it’s just something about it doesn’t sit right. It is guaranteed to turn people against you and anything you have to say before you’ve even began.

We need a new way of talking about meat eating. There is something about saying to people “I am a Vegetarian” that I was never comfortable with. To be honest I think it’s a meaningless term. As I see things you can not BE a Vegetarian, you are just a person and you choose not to eat meat. It is not part of your essential state of being. By saying you are a vegetarian it takes away responsibility and the need to think. If you say, “I can’t eat this because I am a vegetarian”, it doesn’t really mean anything, it is not an explanation. What is happening is that you won’t eat it because for some reason you choose not to.

To clarify and explain why I think the distinction is important I suggest that the opposite is also true. You don’t eat meat because you are a meat eater (or not vegetarian). You eat meat because you choose to. And with that choice comes the responsibility of thinking about what you are doing. Every time you eat a dead animal you take responsibility for how that animal has been kept. By eating the meat you are saying you accept responsibility for the death of the animal and that you approve of the conditions it has been kept in.

It is up to you what those conditions are.