When others see things, they see only what is ostensible. A field, a field, the grass, the grass, the cow, the milk. No. I look further. For example, when others slap raw, pasty chickens, breast bulging and legs craning, into their trollies at the supermarket many will just see their economic purchase, and later their little boys and girls' beaks gaping wide for lashings of bronze meat and golden gravy. The dog would perhaps make a meal of the silver foil. Now of course I won't pretend they're oblivious to the true history of what they're buying, but when it comes down to getting the cheap whole bird when you're in a rush to leave the shop and the family are waiting hungry at home, who looks any further?
Well I do. What I see is firstly the colourless, beakless and souless bird cooped up in a rusted cage- the jagged metal woven like a hunting net. I then see the chicken struggling legs up (leg or breast?) as it breezes towards the terrifying swirling blade. The chicken swishes and thwaps and its feathers flash at the menacing contraption, but for all its efforts to escape it, it is reminded by the blood of his brothers that spurt out of their craggy neck wounds that this is the humane way to go. Many of the brethren are still squawking feebly, however- the machine may sever the jugular but seldom does it do it clean enough for a swift passing.
My mother has normally cut me off at this point- the notion that she could be plunged into boiling brine to separate her skin which is quite as flabby as an unrendered hen's from her flesh just as easily is enough to put her off the dinner which I fight the rights for in the first place. And then we would be in trouble; if the meal isn't eaten the chicken's packaging plastered with a proud, or as my father would say, smug, 'free range' sticker wouldn't remind us at what such good, morally structured people we were but how we wasted a good roast dinner last week. So I bite my tongue until it's needed to start mulching this shred of roasted poultry. Although, I scarcely needed to chew it; it was oh so tender the way mum cooks it. I was about to remind her that due to this being free range, we've saved electrictiy by the shorter cooking time because you do know, don't you, that the fat laced through a free range chicken conducts heat better than the lean sawdust of a factory bird? I resist again because mother was just biting into a roast potato, and the moment your incisors break the crunchy carapace to reveal blurringly soft potato is not a moment to be interrupted.
When the bird's scrawny carcass, as bare as a Scotchman's knee, is wheeled away to the bin I pipe up that the bones can be frozen to make excellent stock when the occasion demands but my mother dumps the thing into the green recycling and states, with a clipped upper lip, that bones are better served in developing countries to help compost develop- she finishes with the defiant and sarcastic rhetorical question of 'would you rather solve world hunger or have a good chicken soup?'. She beat me and perhaps her notion that what I was doing wasn't wholly making the slightest of differences was true, but as the mountain of 'free range' plastered plastic paraphernalia grew ever larger in the recycling bin, I knew I was doing the right thing nonetheless.
Haha- now I explain what this exercise has been about. I know I'm not much of a writer, but I felt that creating this character, an uppity little boy (or girl if you'd prefer to envision that) is a good way to present my view (or rather, not my view) about the tender subject of free range meat. Although this young character's self righteousness and vivid imagination does draw similarities with me, I'm afraid he's not me. When I can, I'll buy a free range chicken for Sunday lunch, I always prefer to buy free range eggs and if I'm lucky enough to have game, it must be free range for me, although on the whole I'll never be the person to live by free range organic matter. I'd love to be, don't get me wrong, and I have no illusions about the horrors contained in the livestock industry (although conditions have certainly been improving) but I'm afraid that the factory farmed meat is there to be bought, and if you can't afford double the price for the free range meat, then you simply can't buy it. I've had a factory farmed turkey for Christmas dinner two years in a row now and to me the taste isn't inferior and the far cheaper price tag makes it the only option for me. It's brutal but true. The factory farmed chicken may well be a martyr on top of a meal, but the meal is still there to be had and feeding must occur. I don't think any meat should be served with a side of guilt. All I feel is that you should know what you're eating, what the animal's life was like and why you're eating it. Think about it every time you buy and consume the meat, and never take it for granted, and if you're one of those who believes in not consuming meat at all then you don't need to me to tell you that vegetables alone can be just as exciting and delicious. My involtini got from my Uncle's recipe notes and Lorraine Pascale's showstopper of raised nut roast pie (coming soon) will be proof of this also.
