[picture]

I think your sentiment encapsulates the hypocrisy of modern people where the systems have developed over thousands of years to further and further insulate us from all the less pretty aspects of life, to a point where we largely forget the fact that we shit and kill things for food and greed. Our meat comes pre-portioned on a polystyrene tray and wrapped under cellophane. Just abstract blocks of yummy protein. We also built garbage collection and sewer systems that lets most of us forget about the waste we produce. Out of sight, out of mind.

Humanely dispatching chicken is probably among the most mundane, natural, necessary, and arguably righteous aspects of what humans do to survive. While this part of the modern system is certainly not a "bad thing", I still think about my friend's opinion that everyone who eats meat should kill and process a living creature at least once in their life. If they can't handle it, then they shouldn't eat meat

[rurp]

Well said. I'll just add that even vegetarianism gets idealized as well. The farmers growing those crops do far worse things than humanely killing a chicken to vast amounts of wildlife that they perceive as pests.

[myroon5]

Vegetarianism also reduces crop farming since most crops aren't directly eaten by humans (especially in richer countries):

https://ourworldindata.org/land-use-diets

[MRPockets]

I don't think hypocrisy is really the best word. The GP's objection may be uninformed or out of line with reality, but it is (likely) the result of the very distance between food source and consumption that you are talking about; ignorance not hypocrisy.

I have had the opportunity to hunt twice in my life; both times I harvested a deer. I would happily do so again. But while I disagree with the sentiment of the GP, I do agree that there is something profound about killing an animal (for food or otherwise) such that talking about it nonchalantly can be startling.

I'm probably just nitpicking here.

[cco]

Perhaps expected, but I have similar feelings towards people that work at slaughterhouses. So I definitely can understand where GP is coming from.

But like you and the other poster said, killing an animal for food is a deeply ambivalent experience. For me at least.

[aucisson_masque]

All this kind of city people thinking goes out of the windows once you're very hungry.

Then you see everything as a piece of meat.