From Chef to Slaughterman? The Ethics of Serving Meat

Posted by Guru

January 20, 2008

Check out this excerpt from The New York Times last week:

LAST Friday, in front of 4 million television viewers and a studio audience, the chef Jamie Oliver killed a chicken. Having recently obtained a United Kingdom slaughterman’s license, Mr. Oliver staged a “gala dinner,” in fact a kind of avian snuff film, to awaken British consumers to the high costs of cheap chicken.

“A chicken is a living thing, an animal with a life cycle, and we shouldn’t expect it will cost less than a pint of beer in a pub,” he said Monday in an interview.

According to the Times, Oliver isn’t alone in his concern about the origin of the pork chops, beef tenderloin, or roast duckling that comes out of his kitchen. Well-known chefs in the U.K. and U.S. alike have begun to take more interest in the life (and death) of the animals that eventually become our dinner.

Michael Pollen’s recent book The Omnivore’s Dilemna, is a terrific, in-depth look at this topic, recounting the author’s exploration into the “natural history of four meals”. From visiting a feedlot and slaughterhouse to working as a farmhand for a week on Polyface Farm (a “beyond organic” family farm), Pollen researches the main ingredients in each of his four meals before eating them to compare the flavor.

As consumer interest in the source of foods increases, all chefs, especially those interested in starting a fine-dining establishment, will need to think about where their chicken breasts originated.

Source:

“Chef’s New Goal: Looking Dinner in the Eye”, The New York Times