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...

For clarity: Yes, I definitely meant 'townies' not 'people who were not born in the UK'. But with the addition of the kebab comment (by which I meant people who eat junk food and get sentimental over animals without connecting the two) I can see how some people might have got the wrong end of the stick.
Sorry about that. I am the woman who put the cunt in countryside today...

I knew what you meant too though technically I'm a townie born and bred

I used to visit family friends who lived on a Farm. One year Rosemary the pig was born. We watched her grow. On one visit, we fed her one morning, then she fed us the next. My sister was horrified, but is still a meat eater 20 years on.

Its a completely natural thing. I had a lot of farming relatives and spent a lot of time with them when young-I can't remember ever not knowing that the animals were kept for food. If we were having chicken for dinner my aunt went out and killed one. My children have always know which animal provides which food. The countryside is a working environment-it isn't a Disney theme park!
I get mine from a farm shop so that I know it had a happy life and was humanely killed. The nicest lamb I ever ate was one that I knew the name of. They are part of the food chain.
(It might have been a good idea not to name it.)

When my DB was in France for 6 months, they would go round to french exchange's GPs on a Sunday, spend the morning playing with the cute bunnies, and then eat them for dinner - he doesn't appear to be irrecovably scarred.

I think they should have decided what the lamb was for before they got it and not named it if it wasn't a pet. Years ago my school(secondary) had a farm -animals were killed for food. It is a shame that everyone is so far removed from the food source that they don't have any understanding of farming these days.

I'm in favour of this - children should know the realities. & Marcus is a lucky chap, relatively speaking: he's had a good innings for a lamb bred for meat & been well-treated.

(I'm a vegetarian btw...well, OK, I'm a fishocrite).

But but but.

If this was ds's school - he's 5 - I'm quite sure that he would be utterly beside himself. In the last few months one much-loved cat's been killed on the road, another put down, & his granddad's dying. He's very exercised at the moment with 'But WHY do people/animals have to die?'

He wouldn't be able to accept that Marcus didn't have to die, but hey ho, chop chop.

So I have a certain amount of sympathy with the parent sticking her beak in - she probably does have a genuinely distraught dd.

I think it's fabulous the head has set up this farm.

Even if the lamb (sheep) isn't slaughtered, at least it's made the pupils consider what meat actually is.

So if it's not to be killed and sold as meat to make more money to buy new animals, they will eithr have to go with out or find money form somewhere else. I guess this was well presented to the school council.

children should know where livestock come from.the food on their plates was alive and bred for food.

this sanitised world were lamb is cling wrapped and packaged in supermarket but people dont like to think of the process of rearing and killing to eat

great idea. should do a city farm model.

I have visited an abattoir as a teen and it isn't horrific. Yes, animals die but it didn't affect me in anyway, I still eat meat

I think the head is doing a great job, we sometimes blinker and mollycoddle our kids today, some is for very good reason but some isn't (thinking about the childhood of old thread)

My son became very attached to a runner bean he grew once and he named it, still cooked and ate it though

DS1 and DS2 wanted to know what happens to Grandads cattle and sheep when they are sold at market (he is a farmer). I told them the sheep and cattle go to the abbatoir. I told them what happens and showed them a YouTube video of a bullock (neutered male cattle) being stunned with a bolt gun and prepared for butchering. I did not show the bleeding or anything else but they were fascinated and DS2 went and told his class all about it.

Agree with bacon all children should know where and how food is produced and processed before it arrives in the supermarket. Many children in farming communities are really quite close to it at home so it is not surprising they voted this way.

I think they should all know where it comes from rather than neatly packaged in supermarkets. I watched my aunt kill turkeys at Christmas and pluck them as a child-that is why she kept turkeys! It was quick and clean-I don't think I watched more than one but it wasn't distressing in anyway, and it has never put me off turkey.
I love the fact that the countryside is full of animals-I don't want them all killed and just a few kept in farm parks while we cover the land in polytunnels.
I would also like someone to tell me-if we all became vegetarian -so that we didn't kill sheep and cattle-what will dogs and cats do for food? (bearing in mind that no farmer is going to keep an animal to die of old age-he couldn't afford it-or the vets bills).

Sounds like a good school with a good project.

I think everyone should know where food comes from. Otherwise you end up like my friend who can't touch raw meat. Id don't see the problem, kids need to learn!

DP went on a program called kill it cook it eat it where he watched a pig being killed. He still eats meat, and we would love to keep our own animals for food (bit impractical in our rented semi though )

My sister told me off the other day for feeding rabbit stew to my 2yo DD. I think it is vital that she knows where food comes from. I really don't understand why you wouldn't tell kids from birth. If you leave it late you end up with vegetarians on your hands. (If you want to be veggie because of animal welfare or whatever, good luck to you, but most kids are just doing it because they are squeamish, and that is just silly)

Children are more unsentimental than we think sometimes.I grew up on a farm and plucked fowl before Christmas.My dd's know what happens to the lambs they bottle feed and accept it.It has never been a problem.

They have both seen me bring home pheasants,dd2 has helped pluck them and knows that they have been shot for us to eat.They also happily eat woodpigeon,have caught crayfish and cooked them and are very keen for dh to shoot a rabbit for tea.If they decide to become veggie in future,that is their decision to make,but they seem confirmed carnivores and if I serve up a meal without meat or fish,they want to know why they are eating 'vegetarian food'.

My dd's would be very jealous of your rabbit stew lissieglitter.

no, but my pet's a cat and I doubt he would taste very nice. And he's only a kitten, barely a scrap of meat on those bones atm.

At best, you'd get a pair of gloves for a doll.

No I am not going to eat my pet cat Dittany, not least of all because I don't think cat makes very good eating. Seriously though, the cats are part of our every day lives, I can't ever imagine developing a relationship with livestock. Ultimately, sheep, cows, pigs, chickens are livestock.

I have considered getting a turkey this year. I'd have no qualms taking it to be slaughtered for the Xmas dinner, nor would I have any problem telling the children what was going to happen. Suppose it's whether or not you'd classify the turkey as livestock or as a pet?

I think it is a bit of a misnomer to call this sheep (and if it really was three, then it is not a lamb, that's just being used by the media to make people think he's sweet and cuddly) a pet. Pets live in your house and sit on your lap and are a part of your family. Sheep live in fields and are really pretty boring once they get past the spring lamb sort of phase. This scheme is described as a school farm, and farm animals are bred for slaughter. I don't think giving the animals names is either here nor there - the animals that Gordon Ramsey's children helped raise were named, and his kids accepted their fate and ate them too.

My parents place is next to a sheep farm, and the children there are totally matter of fact about the fact that they send their lambs to slaughter (even the ones they hand rear) and when my children play with them they are too. They look with interest at the heap of dead lambs that didn't make it, or the ones that have been killed and eaten by foxes in the fields, and accept it as totally normal. Which it is. I really don't see why people get so bothered about the whole thing. Humans have been breeding animals to eat for thousands of years.

The story has just been on Sky and it was followed by a news story about a woman growing her own pigs in her back garden and people learning to butcher their own meat. It also said that people are keen to understand where their food is coming from.

Interesting juxtaposing of stories I thought.

I and my children much prefer eating our chickens. We know how much space they had, how much and what food, how long they lived and how they were culled. Much prefer to know that I'm eating Violet than a carcass bought from a shop, origins unknown.