'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?

I’m a lapsed vegetarian (was vegetarian for decades). I bloody love suckling pig!

I’m not squeamish at all about it. It wouldn’t bother me in the slightest.

You have to order it in advance though at Gordon’s, you can’t just turn up and have it. So you aren’t likely to stumble across it on your table.

I mean that there will be enough milk for the rest. I suspect that there might be starvation issues otherwise.

The one time that I saw the piglet appearing on the dinner table, I don't think that it was any smaller than the rest of them. I do recall that when I yelled on my great-aunt because the sow was in trouble, it was because one of the piglets was stuck.

Much to my astonishment, Great-Aunt (bent double with osteoporosis) leapt over the dyke round the pigsty and quickly ensured that the piglet cleared and the rest could be born.

I twice went off bacon and pork when visiting the family. That was the second time. The first time was when I was eleven and I heard adult pigs being slaughtered for a wedding.

The thing is that - certainly at that time - apart from bread from the bakery, they only ate what they produced in the village. That was pork, chickens, turkeys, fruit, tomatoes, paprika and cucumber. Nothing else. (I believe that the next village over the hill had sheep and lambs.) For some reason, they didn't grow potatoes then.

The first time we were there, we were there for six weeks, the whole of the summer holiday. By the time we got home to Scotland I'd lost a tremendous amount of weight - by legs were like sticks and my parents were very worried about me. (Yes, I'd also been traumatised by seeing my aunty plucking one of the hens I'd been feeding.)

I had a discussion about it in an online language class one time and - according to the teachers "Ah yes...All our children from the city share that trauma when they visit the countryside."

As a non-proselitysing vegetarian, I can’t help thinking that If people consume dead animals for food, they have already made the decision that animals’ lives are not sacrosanct. Why should it matter to them. therefore, whether the animal is displayed whole, or cut up into pieces and trussed in cellophane prior to consumption? In fact, the latter had less dignity about it, if anything. I don’t get why a whole dead body would be any more offensive than slices of the body, to either vegetarians or meat-eaters.

"But that is not what the thread is about. The thread is about the grotesque (in my view) spectacle of a baby pig, its eyes stuffed with flowers, in a restaurant because to many people - including meat eaters - this is totally unnecessary and repugnant."

What I don't get is: The pig is dead. What's the difference between serving it whole in a grandiose, theatrical manner, and carving it up in the kitchen and bringing the meat out on plates?

Is the issue that a suckling pig has been killed for meat, or is the issue just that you don't want to look at a whole cooked pig? The former is about personal ethics (understandable whether one agrees or disagrees), but the latter is just you being squeamish.

And everyone has different tolerances for what might make them feel squeamish, depending on the culture they've grown up in.

And that's fine for you because you a culture, a tradition, a civilisation onto yourself, as we all are. I live in SW France which has always been slaughterhouse heaven ; yet in Western Europe there is also a tradition if you will of questioning the ethics or meat eating

I can sympathise - I was traumatised by my country relatives drowning their cat’s kittens as they didn’t have the concept of neutering 😢

How do you how a lot of meat eater will feel/think?

Ice been to lots of hog roast and no one has run off screaming 🙄

As someone who grew up and lives rurally, I totally understand.

At my children's rural primary school, at least half the children grew up on farms, raised pigs, or went wild pig or deer hunting, or fowl shooting with their families from a very young age, so it was pretty normal to them. And even the ones who didn't do that had loads of friends who did, so it was still fairly normalised.

I can imagine a few children being a bit sad about it, but when they know that's what's happening from the start then they're more prepared, and you can focus on teaching them about looking after an animal ethically, and being respectful and kind towards the animals you rear so you know they had a happy life.

So along as meat is looking pretty in a supermarket all is ok? i am a meat eater and know meant comes from animals why on earth is this news op?

You might as well go the whole hog (pun intended!)

I'm not always a fan of puns but this was very apt!

I agree with you Paloma - people are utterly vile

I can't decide how I feel about it...it seems a bit cruel to let the kids get attached though. I come from quite a rural background too, and my dad went shooting. There were always pheasants hanging up in the garage, dad would gut some birds in the kitchen sometimes. There would be pots on the stove full of entrails. Maybe why I became a vegetarian at 17 😆but I don't think even he would want to kill something I'd gotten attached to.

I remember raising lambs for 'Calf Club' (agricultural school days) two years in a row, who my siblings and I named and loved - but it was always understood that we were only raising them to adulthood, and they weren't permanent pets. So when they became hogget age, my older siblings' sheep would go off for slaughter and we ate them!

I was much younger when I took on the task, and perhaps my mother feared I would be more upset, so instead my sheep got sent away to 'live with other sheep on a proper farm' 😅 I suspect we may have got them back in the form of meat without me knowing!

I think it's quite normal and healthy to teach children to be respectful and caring towards animals, even if you do plan to eat them. Someone has to look after the animals we eat until they're slaughtered, after all, and ideally you'd hope they'd care enough about the animal as a living creature to be kind to it.

a suckling pin is seen as a celebration - it’s showing respect to the animal.

I'm a dyed-in-the-wool carnivore and would love to eat some suckling pig again, but to say that it's showing the animal respect is crazy talk.

Well, to be fair, lobsters can live for 10 - 40 years, so I would have thought, if you really care about animals you'd think that was far worse than killing a baby pig for food.
Most lobsters caught for food (from what I've just seen on Google) are aged between 5 and 7 years, surely it's worse to kill something older than it is to kill a baby pig that has been bred for that purpose?
I find it weird that a vegetarian as militant as you are about it would even go into a restaurant that serves meat. I'm surprised you'd even be married to a meat eater, to be honest!

In my best Homer Simpson voice...."mmmm...suckling pig 🤤🤤"

It didn’t feel remotely cruel to us - we all knew what was going to happen from day 1 and learnt how to raise her and care for her to give her the best life possible. I honestly don’t remember anyone getting upset about it - she wasn’t raised as a pet - the purpose of her being there was that she was being raised for meat.

Whole roast suckling pig is a classic dish for a large group of people. Do you feel the same about a whole roast turkey, or a whole poached salmon? It's just a hog roast on a smaller scale. I have no idea why you're so offended. Any diet-observant Jew or Muslim wouldn't eat in a random restaurant anyhow, as the kitchen would not conform to their kosher/halal rules.

This completely! I do not understand how otherwise decent people cannot use their intellect to question Carnism.

And once again, the correct term for animal corpse munchers is necrovore.

I know you're trying to be provocative, but it seems a little 'teen angst' to make up 'offensive' terminology as if you think it achieves something.

Yes, human meat eaters do eat animal corpses, which (for practicalities sake) we do not usually slaughter ourselves on the spot anymore, and that for nutritional value and hygiene, we usually cook.

Omnivore is the correct word for a human who eats meat, though, as they eat plant matter too. All carnivores eat dead animals, as while some might start eating them while they're still alive, at a certain point they're all chowing on a corpse. Carnivore just means 'flesh eater', which is accurate whether said flesh belongs to a live animal, or a dead one.

(As an aside, I thought necrovore sounded like a metal band name, and funnily enough, it was! ☠)

Don’t give up the day job

I'm vegetarian and this would not bother me. Is it the fact that it's whole or that it's a baby that worries you? Suckling pig is quite a well known delicacy and is served in lots of restaurants in parts of Spain.

I agree with you OP, I wouldn't like this either and it would ruin the enjoyment of my own meal.

At the end of the day it's not much more spectacle than other carvery, table or otherwise, rotisserie displays, peking duck in windows etc.
The only reason people have an issue is that it's what many would consider a cute animal.

Are the plants everybody eats not dead when they are consumed? Or is a boiled broccoli head magically alive somehow?