'Being Gordon Ramsay' featuring dead pig!

[paloma7]

Ffs! I'm just watching this Netflix show about Gordon Ramsay and his opening of a new restaurant with amazing views in the city. I'm not interested in him particularly, but thought I might go to this 'Lucky Cat' just for the views over London, if and whenever it opens.

BUT - then there is a scene where he is consulting with his head chef about the menu and there is a whole dead baby suckling pig on a plate. They are talking about making this a restaurant feature, requiring two chefs who carve it at your table.

AIBU to think this is obscene? Yes, I'm vegetarian, but I think even most meat eaters would balk at this?

If I were in his restaurant and that was going at the the next table, I would leave. Wtf is wrong with humans?

Why is it grotesque to celebrate the entire animal?

You don't have to care what I think of you. I haven't suggested you should. I just find it really sad that some people don't give a shit if animals are treated inhumanely in abbatoirs ( or elsewhere). I wouldn't expect people that think that way would care what anyone ( family, friend or stranger), think of them. Why would I??

Fair enough.

the whole spectacle of celebrating the animal’s death is what is grotesque.

But we celebrate a humans life at death with funerals.

Yes we don’t eat the humans but it’s to celebrate life. We celebrate what the human did. We celebrate what the animal gives us.

Doubt it

Id rather not have a plant based diet

Most farmed animals have unnaturally short lives as they are slaughtered at the point where their potential further growth does not justify the cost of keeping them. But the inflated prices GR charges could definitely absorb the cost of giving these animals a bit more of a life.

lol, okay? You can doubt it all you want, I guess.

It was a small, rural private school in the nineties. We had chickens, rabbits and various other school animals, and a black pig named Sage. Years 5/6 were allowed to feed the pig (it was considered a huge honour) and when she reached about 18 months of age she was taken off to be slaughtered, and served on bonfire night, alongside lots of other local foods.

Exactly. To me, it seems much less grotesque to eat suckling pig than to only ever eat plastic wrapped bacon or chops from Tesco.

Missing the point when I’m not suggesting a carcass can suffer. I’m talking about the attitude behind turning a dead body into entertainment. Something can be dead and still be treated in a way that feels disrespectful or gratuitous. We generally believe bodies deserve a basic level of dignity even after death. You rarely see a beloved poodle positioned as a table centrepiece with flowers in its eyes. It’s about what we consider acceptable to display. The performative element is callous, and frankly a bit tacky.

No wouldn't bother me. I know that meat comes from animals having to die. To not be comfortable with a dead cooked pig in front of me would make me a hypocrite. Have always loved going for hog roast events in restaurants. Normal for a meat eater.

What you see as entertainment, others see as celebration.

I find it much, much less disrespectful to display an animal in its' entirety than to reduce it to a bunch of plastic wrapped body parts on a supermarket shelf.

There used to be a bit of a fashion for taxidermy of dead pets.

Why shouldn’t meat be used as a centrepiece of a meal? It’s been that way in very many cultures for centuries.

The animal didn’t give us anything. We took the animal’s life from them. The difference at a funeral is that the human‘s body hasn’t been put up as entertainment for people to gawp at.

I taught my children how to slaughter, pluck, clean and cook our poultry at primary/ just before primary age.

We live on a farm and eat meat in our family and I specifically wanted to show the life cycle to avoid them failing to associate real animals with meat.

If my child wanted to be vegetarian they would have my support without question. As it happens, none of them do.

It gave us food from its body. So we thank and celebrate the animal.

People who eat meat and actually respect the animal for its meat feel that the animal gave something.

Though that’s more commonly seen in hunter / farmer families and those that live near them rather than those who just pop to Tesco in the middle of a city enjoying their avocado on toast.

It’s no more entertainment than a funeral is.

I’d be offended, it’s a baby on a plate, it’s obscene to me. The name ‘suckling’, i.e. breastfeeding just makes it all the more disgusting. But then I’m a lifelong vegetarian and vegan 15 years + person who thinks all meat is morally wrong. And eating babies of any sentient species is just sick. I agree OP.

I’ll never understand the cognitive dissonance of meat eaters. They feel like a different species to me.

Oh and animals don’t ‘give’ themselves for people to eat like some twee little fantasy people have - they are brutally killed against their will. And terrified whilst it happens until being stunned. And often abused in the process by mentally disturbed slaughterhouse workers. It is not a nice death.

We generally believe bodies deserve a basic level of dignity even after death

Only the human dead! But come on, dignity and respect doesn't generally extend to an animal carcass! A beloved pet, maybe, but not livestock killed for eating.

I wouldn't want to see it as a vegetarian but I can get behind people knowing where their meat comes from. I'll bet most kids think meat is just grown somewhere or appears magically in the supermarket. If kids are learning that the meat their parents are feeding them is exactly the same as the farmyard animals they just petted earlier then it's a good bit of education.

Sounds like a horror movie plot. Poor sage ☹️

If anyone is so sensitive a meat eater that they 'balk' at the reminder that their dinner used to be alive, they shouldn't be eating meat at all, IMO

As an ex vegetarian and vegan, I think it's best not to hide the origins of meats.

All of the sanitised packaging makes it too easy to avoid thinking about what we're eating.

I love animals, especially sheep. If we didn't eat sheep then we wouldn't get to see the sheep in the fields.....

The animal absolutely did not give anything. Its life was taken away