Care & Deceit

Animal husbandry is a tricky matter because it involves both care and deception.  Today I power-washed the shit out of the rabbit cages, quite literally.  I couldn’t help but ruminate on the fact that for the last month it has been me, the Evil Bunny Murderer, who cleaned urine and feces out of these cages, who fed the “little beasts” (as Anne calls them) first thing every morning and last thing before calling it a day.  I was the one who pulled out their nasty old straw and replaced it with new straw and who genuinely cared about the wellbeing of these critters every day.  I worried about them when I spent the night elsewhere. 

Of course, We the Keepers of Animals do all this work for our own benefit.  We make their lives comfortable and safe so that when the time comes, we can swoop in and be the predator.  The same goes for dairy animals.  We care for them throughout their lives, mate them with only the best possible partner, but the moment the kid is born, we take it away and bottle feed it, only to steal the milk from the lovely mother (that’s right folks, animals like humans must have a kid first before they begin lactating—crazy I know). 

So there it is, your double-edged sword.  As a meat eater, I have never had a moral problem with eating things that walked the earth or swam in the ocean.  I saw Food Inc. a few years ago and began to understand the terrible state of slaughterhouses and the facilities in which animals live.  Since then (and especially since moving to the farm) I've made an effort to know the source of my meat and what better way to do this than raise it in one's own backyard.  Rabbit is a great source of lean protein, they are natural prey and they reproduce--well, like rabbits.  Some individuals still take issue with harvesting meat from these animals because they are commonly seen as pets rather than livestock.  I can surely say I would rather take the lives of these animals, who lived in utter bliss up until then, than eat meat that comes from a factory hundreds of miles away.