When you read the news that 800,000 chickens have been slaughtered in Victoria in a bid to curb an outbreak of avian flu , what’s your first thought: Poor little chooks didn’t live long enough to be killed later, or I’d better run and buy eggs lest they become as scarce as bog roll during COVID? No matter how big a carnivore you are, the mass slaughter of animals surely still tugs at the heartstrings. It’s often said that if we had to kill the animals ourselves, there would be far more vegetarians. We appease our empty consciences and full tummies by insisting the animals we eat and the produce they provide aren’t mistreated before we remind them who’s top of the food chain.
Free-range socialising precedes the roasting. Credit: Jessica Shapiro Providores sense we want to know more about the ethical origin of our food, so are working to provide us with chirpy diary entries regarding what ends up on our plates. Poultry, meat and fish companies increasingly love to include a cosy story in their product details so that we’re almost down there on the farm with them or stretched across a hay bale or swimming like fresh, cold salmon in the icy fjords of Norway.
I noticed this while prepping a meal lately. There were lots of things that should have upset me more, like the state of world politics, US gun laws, flammable cladding on high-rise buildings ..
. yet it was the plastic label on the chicken that was thawing on our kitchen bench that undid me. It read: “Our choo.