Gun Geezer's "A New Anti" thread got me to thinking a bit, so I thought I'd share this story.
My elder daughter came to the decision to go vegetarian when she was 15. Wrote me a real nice letter telling me how she respected me for hunting to bring home the meat we ate, but she couldn't eat "factory farm" food. She asked me to read a couple of her books, which were pretty damning toward the factory-farm concept. I figured that there was no way I could force her to eat meat, but made sure she had some good references to follow to make sure she got proper nutrients from non-animal sources, and she did OK with it, and so did I.
Her stand made some sense to me. After all, I grew up on a family farm, we raised and butchered all our own (organic!) meat. I had (and still have) a great mistrust of corporate farming & food production, having seen how farming corporations had taken over all the family farms back in Saskatchewan where I grew up, and the proliferation of chemical treatment of animals (antibiotics, hormones, etc), so it wasn't a hard sell for me. I decided at that point I was not too old a dog to learn a new trick, so started buying our poultry and eggs from a local organic farmer. Pork, and a bit of beef, too. Venison was and is our main meat.
Elder daughter stayed vegetarian until she was about 23, then finally confessed she loves eating meat too much and is back to a full diet again... but she tries to eat locally grown/raised organic meats, and the game I send her. She won't turn down a nice rare ribeye at a good steakhouse, mind you!!
Now, my younger daughter never embraced the vegetarian lifestyle at all, even though her favorite foods tend to be starchy (mac & cheese, spaghetti, etc) and she eats SMALL meat portions, always has. But younger daughter loved going hunting & fishing with me since she was a little girl, could bait a hook and fillet a bluegill since she was knee-high to a grasshopper, and was pretty darn good with a .22 also.
But she never actually hunted until she went to college and took a Philosophy class (taught by a friend and hunting buddy of mine, as it happens) entitled "The Philosophy of Hunting and Fishing". She came home from school one fall break (sophomore year, IIRC) and announced, "Daddy, I want to learn how to kill things and eat them."
So now younger daughter kills things with great gusto (birds, mostly, but other small game, and will get her first deer one of these days), cleans the animals and cuts the meat. Cooks and eats it, too, but as I said, she eats small portions, so much of her meat goes to her big sister's house for consumption there.
I have no point to make at the end of this story, really. I raised my kids to know that the meat on their plates used to be living animals, and they have always respected that. They've grown into the adults they are, one a hunter and the other a meat-eater, and I respect the women they've become.
I guess a dad can't ask for anything better than that.
My elder daughter came to the decision to go vegetarian when she was 15. Wrote me a real nice letter telling me how she respected me for hunting to bring home the meat we ate, but she couldn't eat "factory farm" food. She asked me to read a couple of her books, which were pretty damning toward the factory-farm concept. I figured that there was no way I could force her to eat meat, but made sure she had some good references to follow to make sure she got proper nutrients from non-animal sources, and she did OK with it, and so did I.
Her stand made some sense to me. After all, I grew up on a family farm, we raised and butchered all our own (organic!) meat. I had (and still have) a great mistrust of corporate farming & food production, having seen how farming corporations had taken over all the family farms back in Saskatchewan where I grew up, and the proliferation of chemical treatment of animals (antibiotics, hormones, etc), so it wasn't a hard sell for me. I decided at that point I was not too old a dog to learn a new trick, so started buying our poultry and eggs from a local organic farmer. Pork, and a bit of beef, too. Venison was and is our main meat.
Elder daughter stayed vegetarian until she was about 23, then finally confessed she loves eating meat too much and is back to a full diet again... but she tries to eat locally grown/raised organic meats, and the game I send her. She won't turn down a nice rare ribeye at a good steakhouse, mind you!!
Now, my younger daughter never embraced the vegetarian lifestyle at all, even though her favorite foods tend to be starchy (mac & cheese, spaghetti, etc) and she eats SMALL meat portions, always has. But younger daughter loved going hunting & fishing with me since she was a little girl, could bait a hook and fillet a bluegill since she was knee-high to a grasshopper, and was pretty darn good with a .22 also.
But she never actually hunted until she went to college and took a Philosophy class (taught by a friend and hunting buddy of mine, as it happens) entitled "The Philosophy of Hunting and Fishing". She came home from school one fall break (sophomore year, IIRC) and announced, "Daddy, I want to learn how to kill things and eat them."
So now younger daughter kills things with great gusto (birds, mostly, but other small game, and will get her first deer one of these days), cleans the animals and cuts the meat. Cooks and eats it, too, but as I said, she eats small portions, so much of her meat goes to her big sister's house for consumption there.
I have no point to make at the end of this story, really. I raised my kids to know that the meat on their plates used to be living animals, and they have always respected that. They've grown into the adults they are, one a hunter and the other a meat-eater, and I respect the women they've become.
I guess a dad can't ask for anything better than that.