=
×

Julian Cope presents Head Heritage

Head To Head
Log In
Register
The Modern Antiquarian Forum »
Living Heritage Threat
Log In to post a reply
141 messages
Topic View: Flat | Threaded
Howburn Digger
Howburn Digger
986 posts

Re: Elephants & tigers & hens & other Tory targets
Nov 15, 2010, 21:31
No offence taken for any possible misunderstandings. I feel strongly as do many people that the closure of local abbatoirs was the wrong thing to do. This centralisation causes nothing but distress, discomfort, inconvenience and cost. After the Foot & Mouth Carnage perpetrated by the Labour Government, they then set about centralising and closing down the local abbatiors, then as a country we started dealing in real industrial scale transportation and slaughter, where Ford Production-Line techniques are applied. This system fosters poor attitudes to animals and incidents as you describe. There wouldn't need to be thousands more abbatiors, a doubling or tripling of current numbers would suffice and keep maximum transportation down to twenty miles or so (in most of Scotland that is, I have no idea of what England would need).
Farmers cannot initiate this change. We have successive governments who are increasingly centralising power of all sorts (they have just decided to take every Local Authority School in England and Wales under the control of Whitehall). If they could have just one big abbatior for the whole of the UK somewhere in Norfolk run by seasonal shifts of eastern european student labour, I think they would - it would be much more "efficient". I belive that many New labour Politicians fostered completely idiotic attitudes to the countryside. I recall back then that in the same week as the Labour Government announced they were not going to count the civilians death figures in Iraq, they informed us that three foxes had been killed in England that weekend. I wept.
Yes farming is a business and farmers have to make pragmatic decisions once animals get too old, infirm or unproductive. But I have to tell you this story Vivid and while it is anecdotal, it is indicative of many farmers and their livestock. On the farm where I live, are two ancient old Fresians (sisters) who are fantastic foster mums. Because some calfs cannot suckle from their own mums (due to infected teats, a twin and not enough milk or whatever), they are taken to Betsy or Daisy. The pair are delightful (in their late teens!) and walk to the gate from the field when called, make their way to the shed, suckle the calf, return to the field when they are finished and moo loudly to get the gate opened for them. The farmer says that "Their mither was guid at gein' oot a sook tae" ("Their mother was good at giving others a suckle as well"). These guys often know not just their animals but their animal's family history, pedigree and temperaments.
I dont eat cheap supermarket meat any more. I eat less meat than ever, all of it from the local butcher from locally bred and reared cattle ( I cannot eat lamb, not after the first year we spent here at lambing time... the sheds actually smell of lamb). I have a freezer full of trout and pike fillets which more people should go out and catch and eat, rather than buying shed-reared chicken and beef processed in Eastern Europe or China and stuffed with additional trans-fats to bulk it up.
I've probably rattled on enough too. I suppose my parting shot is eat less meat and what you do eat make it locally reared meat from a local abbatior, sold in your local butcher. Keep your money local.
In reply to:
Re: Elephants & tigers & hens & other Tory targets (vivid)		 Replies:
Re: Elephants & tigers & hens & other Tory targets (vivid)
Re: Elephants & tigers & hens & other Tory targets (drewbhoy)
Topic Outline:
The Modern Antiquarian Forum Index