parents outraged that school pet lamb is to be slaughtered

[wannaBe]

here

Think the head has the right idea tbh, although not quite sure how my ds would react...

Bacon - they said it would be raffeled to raise funds to buy pigs which would then be slaughtered when the time comes.

It is a great lesson in food, business economics, the local economy/trade.... and more I am sure.

She is just being a knob IMHO!

I am veggie too and I think it is fair enough.
Of course children should know where meat comes from and what is involved. I let ds eat meat (though I don't cook it - you eat what the chep makes in this house) and he knows where it comes from.

Ok so the kids are fine with it (in general) and the parents aren't

I would love my children to go to a school like that.

Romney Marsh is sheep country. If people don't know about eating lamb there they bloody well should do.

On The Matthew Wright Show this morning, a woman who said she was a mother from the school in question, phoned in and said that the majority of the parents were in favour of the slaughter of the lamb/sheep.
There is a very -bored- vocal minority.

dailymailnamechanger is spot on, I think.

Its not even a lamb its a 3 year old wether

if they wanted to eat it they shouldn't have blimmin well called it marcus! aw look at it's little face

I think the children should have been prepared for this from the start, not made to vote about it afterwards. Surely, most farmers know from the start that they are raising certain animals for slaughter and other animals for pets: they don't suddenly sit down and have a family vote about whether they're going to send the cow or the pony to slaughter?

My dcs would have been fine with eating an animal if they had known from the start that this was its destiny. Though I do know farmers who have given up keeping a family pig because it has become too much like a family pet.

Cory do we know whether they knew before or not?

School should be a place where children learn about the real world.

On a farm, lambs are born and slaughtered so that we can eat the meat. It is not possible to dress it up any other way.

IMO there is way to much faffing with the "sensibilities" of young kids these days.

Hmm

I see value in lerning about the food chain etc

also, my school ahd a farm and the slaughterinng went almost unnoticed as the only kids who ahd that much farm time were farming famillies anyway.

Hoever- at the same time, my Mum is child of a farmer and always remembers the day her pet rabbit was served to her; its the only childhood memory I can recall her ever passing on.

I'd e disinclined tbh

They voted to send the sheep to market so that they could raise another one.

There were children on radion5 this morning from the school saying that they had known all about the project from the beginning.

The parent spokeswoman sounds like an idiot with too much time on her hands. She was asked wither she gave her children chicken nuggets and she said yes - and knew about the animal welfare issues around the chickens involved. But she said that the children were too young to be told where their food comes from! Her child is 8.

seems like they handled it fine, then

parent spokeswoman certainly sounds completely bonkers

i don't suppose the chicken nuggets she served them was once the family chicken, gerald.

She sounds like a proper numpty. If the children and parents were properly briefed at the start of the project then three cheers for the head teacher!

Not watched the clip, but wonder of the "complaining parent" also happened to be the mother of the one child who voted against the slaughter .

My ds is 9 and is currently on the Eco Committe and is hoping to get on to the Pupil Council (elections next week!). I am sure he would be more than capable of voting in favour of selling the lamb for meat - esepcailly as it would allow them to build their wee business. He already watches The F-word and Hugh Fearnley-eats-it-all and has seen on those programmes where meat comes from.

I think the pimrary school sounds excellent and it is great that the children are learning about the food chain.

im quite sure they are going to handle the subject carefully so i wouldn't have an issue with it at all.

they presumably serve meat at school and its good that children learn where their food comes from.
i think that we as a society are so used to vacuum packed foods that it is seen as disposable.
If wee underswtood more about what goes into getting our food onto our plates and we had more respect for it, then maybe there would be less people with issues around food. be that anorexia or obesity.

SEA so you think it is better that it is some nameless chilcken come from god knows where, treated god knows how?

They were never pets, it was a working farm project, choosing to see them that way is a choice you can make but not a sensible one if your child is one of the ones at the school.

I live on the edge of the Romney Marsh. When my boys were at the village school I'd say 80% of the dc there were children of farmer/farm workers.
At junior school age, lots are expected to take part in lambing, fruit picking etc and are very matter of fact about it all. I can't quite believe someone has bothered to make a fuss about this.

no but why did they name it then?

Because they only had 3, they had them for a long time, it makes it easier to identify which animal you are talking about and they are children - who tend to like to name things.

Giving it a name did not cross any boundaries in terms of the ultimate use of the animal. If they had not named it the kids would probably still have come up with a name to use between them and, FWIW it is just as possible to become attached to "BoySheep" as it is to "Marvin" or whatever else, a word becomes a name over time when applied with affection.

i think naming it would have affecting me as a child if they'd suddenly told me marcus had been sent away to be turned into chops. suppose that's my problem.

From expereience if you dont name them they become One, Two and Three anyway and thats a name in itself when you've had them 3 years.

Ok my mn is not updating at the moment unless I post so sorry for all my xposts etc.

I read somewhere else they had called it Market that slowly became Marcus. The others are probably called Ourlunch and Tothebutchers

SEA, that is the point, they were not suddenly told marcus was off to market, they knew that from the beginning. MArcus was never going anywhere else and everyone was aware of that.

I do agree that, if it had come out of the blue, a sudden change of plan like that could be a bad idea (again depending on how it was done) but seeing as they were all prepared for it then I simply cannot see a problem here!

My 6yo DS would absolutely have voted for it to go to slaughter - he loves animals but also understands where meat comes from and the difference between pets and farm animals. I am not sure voting was such a great idea but perhaps it was done to show the child version of the vocal minority that it was a minority?