Shocking though it is, this photo is actually one of the main reasons I travel. I relish the opportunity to explore other cultures. At its most wondrous, immersing myself in another community enhances my view of the world. At its worst, this experience can be upsetting or offensive. I find the rewards of the former vastly outweigh the risks of the latter.
I heard the grinding whirr of the hoist bringing up a heavy cargo from the deck of a boat below. Curious, I walked onto the pier for a closer look. I couldn’t tell what I was seeing at first. When the reality of the gutted deer hit me, my first reaction was horror, and then, to snap it. After I took the photo I thought, Who’s going to want to look at that? For me the pic dramatically captures a fragment of culture I’m not ordinarily exposed to. It has forced me since the moment I saw it to consider what it is that upsets me. As I worked through my own feelings, I decided it was an opportunity for discussion and asked for comments on fb. Aside from the expected yucks and dislikes, I got thoughtful responses from Deb Garrity who said “I had a similar visual experience in college, and have never eaten venison. Learned about calves and also quit veal.” I too have been through my own pick-and-choose way of dealing with being a meat-eater. But John Groves hit closer to my current mark when he said, “I think many of us would rethink eating meat if we had to go to the slaughter houses to buy it. The distribution network for meat is such that we are “protected” from seeing this on a daily basis. I am sure these animals were “harvested” for the meat, but not a pretty site.”
Several years ago I made a concerted attempt to become a vegetarian. Medical literature is replete with the risks of meat, and I had a nagging, though still uninformed at the time, view of animal slaughter, though it did not come from the up-close-and-personal aspects of killing and cleaning game. My dad was a hunter and we were pretty poor early on, so we most definitely consumed everything he carried home. I have eaten lots of critters including rabbit, pheasant, and squirrel, yes squirrel, and I absolutely love venison. Actually, I love all of it. In fact the vegetarian thing lasted for about a month, and was almost a total failure for me. I am a carnivore through and through. I just do not feel good without meat. In fact there is evidence there may be a genetic basis for ancient diets affecting our current health—in other words for what I physically felt. Just this week the Anchorage newspaper described a gene in northern native people—a gene that does not break down body fat, and that is presumed to have developed as a protective thing for populations that needed to carry and preserve fat through cold weather, but which threatens newborns by making them unable to use body stores appropriately if they get sick. As a result all newborns in Alaska are going to be tested for this gene. My physical relationship with meat tells me my ancestors were surely hunters more than gatherers. But I digress.
I read everything I could find in my vegetarian days to gin up the strength to persevere. (I’d recommend Jonathan Saffron Foer’s, Eating Animals –excellent read.) I learned much about factory farming, hormone and antibiotic abuse, and the sentience of cows, pigs, and even chickens. Over time I have come to believe that how we treat animals from birth to death in our mission to bring cheap food to market is an abomination, and a sad reflection of our inhumanity. While I still cannot claim to be a vegetarian, I can report that we eat much less meat in our family, we waste almost none of it anymore, and we try to buy happy animals when possible (which is more possible in the Midwest, than in many other places). This meat is much more expensive that what can be had at Kroger, but that helps us to conserve and value it. I don’t see myself ever being able to do without a Thanksgiving turkey, or a great burger or steak, not to mention the world’s biggest obstacle to veganism—bacon. But I can say that each time I look at those deer hanging, eviscerated, from a hook, I am grateful that they lived free in the wild since birth, were taken mercifully and quickly in their native habitats, and will be consumed down to their hooves by people who will appreciate every bite.