Hello and welcome to The Compost Bin. I'm Compostwoman and I live with my family in rural Herefordshire. We have nearly four acres of garden and woodland, all managed organically and to Permaculture principles, which we share with Chickens, Cats and assorted wildlife. We also grow a lot of our own food, run courses in all sorts of things and make a lot of compost!

I am a Master Composter and have spent more than a decade as a volunteer Community Compost adviser with Garden Organic and my local Council.
I'm a self employed Environmental Educator so I run workshops and events where I talk about compost, veg growing, chicken keeping, cooking, preserving and sustainable living. I also run crafts workshops and Forest School/outdoor play sessions in our wood.

We try to live a more self sufficient lifestyle here, as best we can, while still having a comfortable life and lots of fun.


To learn more about us click on the About Compostwoman tab and remember to click on the photos to make them full size!


Tuesday, 8 January 2008

Come ON everybody...just say NO!!!

To factory farmed chickens or pigs or whatever!

3.4 million people watched the first instalment of Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall's Chicken Out! programme last night on C4.... and all the people I have spoken to about it today are either

a) disgusted that chickens are reared in those crapmed conditions...and are going to switch to free range chicken eggs and meat or

b) already knew, eat free range/organic meat and eggs and hope more people will now do so or

c) have decided to go vegetarian as a result.

I watched Hugh...not surprised by what I saw BUT so glad he is doing this!!

I then watched "Kill it, cook it , eat it" on BBC 3 at 10.30...last night was 8 week old suckling piglets being slaughtered and cooked and eaten.

I have NO problems with the way these piglets were raised ..or the manner in which they were slaughtered..it all looked very good to me.

I did have a problem? ( not sure of what word to use here?) with them being so young...I would prefer to eat meat which has had a decent both quality AND quantity of life...

BUT I was truly revolted by the feature from Spain showing Sows in farrowing crates feeding piglets for 3 weeks , who were then taken away and slaughtered in a much less "kind" manner!! Effectively these were "veal" piglets...raised on sows milk alone and slaughtered at a very young age so as to have white meat, like veal does.

These 3 week old piglets were stunned , their throat slit and then they were thrown in a pile in a bin with all the other piglets to bleed out. It was, to my mind, cruel and disrespectful of a animal to treat it in such a manner.

I eat meat, but I want it to have had a happy life and a (as far as is possible) quick, stressless, painless death. I would NOT eat piglets reared and killed like that.

3 comments:

  1. Two people at my husband's work will only eat free range from now on. Multiply that tiny number by many many workplaces across the country and change must be inevitable!

    Hurrah!

    ReplyDelete
  2. I am in the lucky position of rearing my own free range chickens (for meat and eggs), but I appreciate I am in the minority. I have been so surprised (and disgusted) by the response to this campaign ie the large numbers of people who just don't seem to care what animals have to suffer to fulfil our eating requirements.

    Karen, Wiggly Wigglers

    ReplyDelete
  3. I am afraid there will always be people who just DON'T CARE

    Sad but true...but its the people who would CARE if they just were shown the way their meat is reared.

    I have heard several intersting conversations in he last 2 days about people changing the way they shop as a result!!

    ReplyDelete

Hello! Thank you for reading my blog and for commenting. I try to reply as quickly as I can and I really appreciate your interest in my life and doings here in The Compost Bin.

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