June 9, 2012

Why would any meat-eater criticize someone for eating a roasted pig fetus?

Some people are shocked that Nigella Lawson said: "When I was in Spain, they aborted a pig for me and roasted the foetus. Soooo good.”

If women have a right to abort a human fetus, but killing a born human being is an extremely serious crime, and if we kill born animals for food all the time, and very few of us call that murder, why would extracting a pig fetus and using it for food be a problem at all?

54 comments:

Kirby Olson said...

Meat is murder. Even the left can recognize this is wrong when done to pigs, because they ARE pigs.

Geoff Matthews said...

Maybe they're pro-life, so there is no inconsistency with abortion?
People can eat beef but object to veal, because of the 'cute' factor.

TosaGuy said...

"Celebrity" chefs can jump the shark anytime now.

Anonymous said...

Well, we eat eggs don't we? Some farm eggs are probably fertilized. However, it does somehow seem gross eating mammal fetus.

rhhardin said...

Radio Taipei, in a Chinese cooking series, started out by saying the Chinese and Western ideas of edibility differ considerably.

Stilton Cheeseright said...

People are nuts. The most rational of them are most often not restrained by any need to make sense.

dbp said...

The critics of Ms. Lawson are against any eating of animals. They focus on things like this for the same reason as pro-life groups do partial birth abortion.

I think the idea is to get the other side to concede a right in rare and extreme situations and then use that as leverage to further their agenda.

Synova said...

Eggs.

Just saying...

Pianoman said...

Because that's different. And besides, shut up.

Synova said...

I won't say that I'd eat some of the weirder stuff, but intellectually, if it isn't alive and suffering, it takes a whole lot to trigger "ew" for me.

Human colostrum products, fine. Sperm products, ew. Eat your baby's placenta, if you must, lots of creatures do.

Just don't invite me for dinner.

Fetal pig?

Must be tasty.

Pig usually is.

Synova said...

I'll eat bugs, but part of being civilized is learning how to disguise your food. No little feet please.

Anonymous said...

Shrimp have antennae, ew. Too insect like. Besides I'm allergic.

Crimso said...

Sounds like the perfect guilt-free way for a pro-choice vegetarian to enjoy some meat.

SteveR said...

The mother pig did not have a "choice" which is the only important thing.

Sorun said...

Gross. I'm still trying to get over all the little bunnies those goddamn hawks killed.

Anonymous said...

...why would extracting a pig fetus and using it for food be a problem at all?

It begs the question, why would extracting a human fetus and using it for food be a problem?

Sustainability and all that. Feeding the poor, etc. Maybe we could feed baby hawks with human fetus meat.

Or is it easy to swallow a camel to allow a woman to kill the human fetus, but hard to swallow the gnat of using its remains efficiently?

See how we've blown a crater in our moral thinking?

Michelle Dulak Thomson said...

I am reminded of the way people were grossed out that Hamid Karzai's hat was made of fetal lambskin.

People, fetal pigs were the stuff of ninth-grade biology classes when I was in ninth grade. What, you can dissect one, but don't you dare eat it, because that would be sick?

Donna B. said...

freshly laid egg = yes, balut = no. Young, fattened calf or pig = yes, skinny, bony fetus = no.

There's a reason Hansel was being held in the feed lot.

Sorun said...

People, fetal pigs were the stuff of ninth-grade biology classes when I was in ninth grade.

I remember that smell! Now I'm even more grossed out than before.

Synova said...

Spider rolls.

Tempura soft shell blue crabs rolled up in the middle of a sushi roll.

Crunchy.

rcommal said...

Michelle Dulak Thomson beat me to it with her comment about dissecting fetal pigs in H.S. freshman biology. Exactly!

rcommal said...

Synova. You just my mouth water. Spider rolls. Want.

ddh said...

Culture (including religion) determines what is acceptable to eat and what is too gross to swallow.

Practicing Spanish Catholics have no problem aborting pig fetuses and eating them. The French have no problem eating snails. The Chinese eat insects, jellyfish, and scorpions. On the other hand, almost all Americans think eating animals that we keep as pets (cats, dogs, and horses) is unspeakable.

Paco Wové said...

No little feet please.

I had some sauteed crickets once. Not bad, but the legs did get caught in my teeth.

traditionalguy said...

Shrimp and lobster are both crustacians which are arthropods descended from the oldest cambrian explosian of complex life as trilobites. They are the spiders of the sea.

Something has been eating on them for 530,000,000 years. So I guess we can eat on them too.

Darwin believers still are puzzled how that happened.

Molly said...

Responding to Kirby Olson at 1: eating plants is also murder. (Google "plants feel pain" "plants communicate".)

wyo sis said...

Suddenly I'm NOT hungry.
Macaroni and cheese tonight.

Michael K said...

Pretty serious ick factor there.

Reminds me of the great movie from the 70s, "Mondo Cane." One segment of the film was showing food being purchased by Asians, including live snakes, etc.

The theme music was nominated for an Academy Award. At the ceremony it was sung by the producer's wife. Great performance.

Lots of ick factors in the movie.

iowantwo said...

Plants do feel pain, it took a veterinarian to prove it to me

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-zfzT7QfLZc

edutcher said...

So do Bourdain and the scrumptious Nigella get along?

(apparently they're in pre-production to do a series together)

In the article, she says his quote of her is inaccurate, that she's never done such a thing.

Carnifex said...

I get it, this is one of those PETA posts that equate the life of a person, unborn or not, to the life of an animal. It's people who actually equate the 2 kind of lead me to believe they might be right, but not in the way they mean. That is a slippery slope that leads to atrocities like the "Polish Death Camps".

Ps.

Someone queue the Soylent Green reference.

Carnifex said...

@traditionalguy

It doesn't take a lot to confuse a Darwinist.

Creationist: God came along and imbued inanimate matter with the spark of life

Darwinist: No he didn't! The process is purely scientific! The entire chemical process that occurs for a cell to exist, survive, and reproduce, all the millions of combinations needed to create a cell, all occurred spontainiously. At the same time. In the right order. Sort of like if you had the entire space shuttle in a large box, in pieces, and shook it, long enough, the pieces would fall together, in the right order, to build it. See? No need for a make believe deity!

Creationist: And you call ME crazy?

David said...

Why?

Because it's yucky.

And Pigs are people too.

Pigs are vegetarians. They know eating meat is bad for the planet and bad for your health and bad for the animal being eaten. That's why pigs are vegetarians.

[some information is imparted]

(Oh. Really? Pigs aren't vegetarians? Are you sure? Oh. Oh my.)

It's still yucky.

PeterJ said...

It disgusts, disturbs us (some of us anyway). And (I think) our reaction to killing our unborn humans should be similar. Though such a reaction is suppressed by those need very much to justify abortion.

PeterJ said...

eekorth

MadisonMan said...

PETA is outraged?

What are the odds that something like that would happen!

AlanKH said...

Fetal pig tissue is used for dental bone grafting. being a recipient of such puts me on the PETA and al-Qaeda enemies lists.

Mark said...

"Sounds like the perfect guilt-free way for a pro-choice vegetarian to enjoy some meat."

Only if the momma pig was under the age of consent, and had come in without the approval or even knowledge of the hogs who raised her.

Synova said...

"Pigs are vegetarians. They know eating meat is bad for the planet and bad for your health and bad for the animal being eaten. That's why pigs are vegetarians."

Um...

I've seen sows eat dead piglets so... no.

Synova said...

In any case, our food taboos are generally learned. Left to our own devices we humans are among the best generalist omnivores. This is why we're so successful as a species.

Anything organic is fair-game, including stuff that is marginally poisonous.

Dustin said...

"Crimso said...

Sounds like the perfect guilt-free way for a pro-choice vegetarian to enjoy some meat."

bwahahahaha

DEEBEE said...

Because, in the penumbra of the Bill of Rights iI see a right to publically preen

Joe Biden, America's Putin said...

If we had to butcher our own meals, I submit there would be a lot more vegetarians.

gerry said...

People refuse to eat veal also because of the way veal is raised. Free-range veal is a great alternative to calves chained into cramped stalls.

gerry said...

The French have no problem eating snails.

I ate escargot once. It was not great escargot, I admit (very small snails).

I decided that any future cravings for escargot could be fulfilled by sinus congestion.

Synova said...

"If we had to butcher our own meals, I submit there would be a lot more vegetarians"

Not so.

Because when we did butcher our own meals, we weren't vegetarian. It was all very matter-of-fact. Normal.

It's entirely the fact that we're removed from our food by such a great distance that, when we get a glimpse of the process, that people freak out.

Saint Croix said...

One of the pro-life criticisms of abortion is "Would you eat a fetus?" This freaks people out. They hate that question. So they hear "fetus" and it freaks them out. It overrides everything else.

You have to understand that pro-choice ideology is built on repression and denial. People do not talk about their abortions. Abortion is private because abortion is bad. And all this repression leads to little time bombs that go off every once in a while.

twp said...

Were the sow's "reproductive rights" observed?

Sean D Sorrentino said...

@Kirby Olson: If "Meat is Murder," are eggs rape?

Ed said...

"I decided that any future cravings for escargot could be fulfilled by sinus congestion. "

My last job was as a cook in a pretty nice restaurant. All the cooks referred to escargots as "snots".

Dick Stanley said...

Bird embryos, served in the broken shell, are considered an appetizer in parts of Asia, including Viet Nam.

Dale Weeks said...

The reason I still eat meat is that I work at not thinking about it too much. To each, his/her own, but I could see myself going vegan simply because of the "ewwww" factor.

R.C. said...

Of course it's inconsistent.

The only logically consistent approach is to consider the value of a living organism according to the kind of thing it's going to be if you don't take positive action against it.

Oh. But that'd mean outlawing abortion. Can't have that.

So people prefer to hold illogical and inconsistent views, and say crap like, "Truth is overrated."

No, dear. It just tells you uncomfortable things about yourself.

Sigivald said...

Because it's an aesthetic "squick" reaction, not logical.

Like almost all food-puritanism is, one way or another.