Monday, July 14, 2008

Are you eating animal carcass?

I saw on yesterday's The Sunday Times, a recipe that called for the use of a "chicken carcass"

At first I thought it was a mistake, but it occurred more than once in the text, so it's not.

I checked up the meaning of this word. I guess in this case, it means "the body of a slaughtered animal after removal of the offal."

But this is not the most commonly used meaning of this word. In fact, the Longman Contemporary English dictionary I have did not have this entry. The listed meaning was "the dead body of an animal".

Actually, that's what meat really is: the dead body of an animal. Most people, however, refuse to recognize that. I think most people would find it revolting to think of eating meat as eating a carcass.

This is most commonly observed among the Westerners. They have no problem with fish fillets but find whole fish with their heads and eyes intact revolting. They have no problem with chicken parts or nuggets, but find whole slaughtered chicken with the head still attached revolting.

Most of the time, the meat people eat are "sanitized", cut into pieces or processed into something else, that distanced the link between the meat and the animal.

If people would recognized that the meat is really the dead body of a living animal, perhaps they would be less inclined to it.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Good words.