0 Comments
Two years ago I got up before dawn to witness one of my bulls being taken through the abattoir. I made a video of the spectacle, an extract from which was put on Youtube with the title “A Kiss Before Dying”. The title alludes to a moment when the bull appears to share a kiss with a cow a few moments before it’s taken to its fate.
It wasn’t a pleasant experience watching the bull being killed and then its blood being let and its innards removed. It wasn’t pleasant either seeing how desensitised that abattoir staff had become; how they appeared to enjoy the killing, how they cheered when its throat was cut. None of the gruesome bits were included in my video, but my PA, who did the editing, found the spectacle so appalling that she was put off eating meat for a year. At Gordon Ramsay’s Maze Grill in London I was offered an 8 oz Wagyu steak for £110. A lovely waitress came to my table holding a tray on which was laid out a selection of steaks and she tried to justify the high price of the Wagyu meat by saying that Wagyus received much more tender care than any other beef cattle, so much so that they were even given a daily massage. She spoke sincerely and probably had no idea that she was talking poppycock.
Double digging is deeply unfashionable now – the modern trend is to leave the soil alone and just apply a thin mulch of compost. That wasn’t the case when I started vegetable growing here 12 years ago, when I well remember losing a stone in weight as I nearly killed myself double digging our vegetable patch in our first autumn.
|
|