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...

parent singular

what is disturbing about the fact that lambs are eaten. Bearing in mind that they live in a farming community. And interesting that the decision to send the lamb to slaughter was made in June and it's only made the papers now.......

I bet it was the mother of some PFB who's just started in reception that kicked up a fuss..and whose child think that milk and meat comes from the supermarket.

Dittany: if you are a vegetarian or vegan then your viewpoint is perfectly understandable, but it doesn't seem like the one parent who is making a fuss about this is promoting the vegan cause.
For meat-eaters, there is a big difference between humane rearing of meat and its humane dispatch, and deliberate cruelty to animals (ie the infliction of unecessary pain for pleasure).

you've linked to the DM??????????

SOrry SGB I would go one step futher re if you are a vegetarian or vegan then your viewpoint is perfectly understandable.

Vegan yes not vege

Oh dear, poor headmistress. Now she'sgoing to be slated as a heartless bitch for not wanting to give in to a bunch of snivelling fuckwits who think that media bullying is the way to solve disputes.
What's the betting the objectors are all recent arrivals in the country? Sobbing over the sheep while wolfing down a dodgy kebab?

We lived in the country until a couple of years ago. Our children bottle fed our neighbours lambs and then ate them. We ate our own chickens. When next door slaughtered a bullock, we bought a lot of it for the freezer and the kids (and us) liked having "Calum Bolognaise" or "Calum Stew"

It's life and death. If you eat meat, then you should know where it comes from.

My dd1 now goes fishing with her Grandpa and knows how to dispatch a salmon or trout, and then how to gut it! She's 9, and I'm glad she gets exposed to this sort of thing - so she doesn't grow up all squeamish like me!

Do we know if the kids get to witness it?

Dittany - I switched to the third person because I started that sentence talking about the children whose mums worked there going down & eating their tea there & I never did that.

As I said, it was just over the road from my house & I would go over after my tea to see my friends whose mums did work there. At the time I remember being startled when a turkey suddenly started flapping but I accepted the assurance of the pluckers that it couldn't feel anything - I was about 7 or 8 at the time and inclined to believe anything an adult told me.

Can you imagine? "Well, we have a very special assembly today, children. You all remember Marcus, don't you?... Mr Watson - fetch the circular saw. Reception, you may want to move back a little in case you get a bit messy."

What a ridiculious fuss about absolutely nothing. Kidnapping the sheep to save it? What about every other flaming sheep in the country? Or pig? And I dread to think what happened to the bullocks who vanished from the field next door the other day...

starts to brown the mince

We used to have a couple of cows in the field at the back of our house when I was little. They'd come over to scratch their chins on our garden wall, we'd pat their heads, get to know them, see the calf growing up... then every summer the cows and calves would be off. I really missed them.

My mum used to call them Kate and Sidney, the wretch!

DD would vote for killing it - she'd know that eventually it was going to become meat and that there would be new young animals coming along to replace him. She'd want to make sure he'd had a good life but that would be it.

A fuss about nothing although the media attention may get the sheep a stay of execution.

The only thing I'd say in favour of keeping it would be that it was a mistake to give him a name. That makes him more of a pet than a project.

That headteacher is really strange and makes me feel really uneasy. If my kids were in this school I'd take them out in a heartbeat. She seems to have a hidden agenda to me supported by the comment that she would 'make sausages out of the pigs given half the chance'. Something about that phrase suggests to me that the kids probably didn't have much choice in the matter.

Wonder why she isn't going to make them witness the 'event' given that she wants them to learn "the whole cycle", does she know they would probably change their mind?

but they couldn't keep it anyway - you need acres and acres of grass to keep sheep. Anyone remember when Gordon Ramsey had those two lambs - he had to keep moving them in order to get them enough grass. So if it wasn't slaughtered what would happen to it? It's been newtered so it can't be a stud, so it's destined to do... what exactly for the rest of its life?

Seems there are now plenty of volunteers willing to take it in a give it a 'pardon'....

Gosh that headteacher has really given me the willies

*
SolidGoldBrass!

Have you really said that????

"What's the betting the objectors are all recent arrivals in the country? Sobbing over the sheep while wolfing down a dodgy kebab?"

Very nice, polite and informed comment

I took it to mean "the countryside". People who have just arrived in "the country", from "the town", and don't understand rural life.

(Not immigrants just arrived "in the country"!)

I also assumed she meant "recent arrivals in the country[side, from the town]" rather than "recent arrivals in the country [from suspicious foreign places]".

Lol Orangefish, I must have missed the plaque on the way in that says we all have to be "nice and polite" but I agree, townies moved to the country, nothing more sinster meant IMO!

I also took it to me country(side) not nation