I wasn't promoting her, just found her life story interesting; I have an
eclectic mind and find a lot of things interesting.

I thought it was ironic that someone with autism, who has difficulty
understanding human emotions and interactions, cared more about the
sufferings of animals than many people with presumably "normal" brain
functioning.

Personally, I don't eat red meat; I eat chicken and seafood on occasion,
when in a social situation. I grew up Pennsylvania Dutch, with an aunt and
uncle who farmed the old-fashioned way. Every year we would help them
butcher a steer and 2 or 3 hogs, and spend days making sausage, ham,
scrapple, bacon, lard, etc. I know exactly what is involved in taking a
large mammal and reducing it to dinner on the table. I agree wholeheartedly
that small, humane farming operations are far preferable to factory farming.
Perhaps the pendulum is starting to swing back in that direction.

This is not all that far afield from gardening---bone meal doesn't just
appear on the store shelves magically.

Sue

Zone 6, Southcentral PA


"Pat Meadows" wrote in message
...
On Tue, 05 Aug 2003 00:06:27 GMT, "SugarChile"
wrote:

Some of you may be interested in this article by Dr. Temple Grandin, an
autistic woman who has made a career of designing more humane
slaughterhouses. It's long, but fascinating.
http://www.grandin.com/inc/visual.thinking.html


We're really getting way afield .... but there's a basic
disconnect to her, to my way of thinking. It's creepy,
weird ... IMHO.

Her guiding principle seems to be: "I care about animals,
therefore I'll spend my career finding better, gentler ways
to kill them." An analogy would be a concentration camp
commandant thinking of kinder, gentler ways to kill people -
maybe gas ovens.

It seems to me that people who truly care about animals
don't spend their careers finding ways to kill them - not
even gentler ways.

I think Jan's attitude about doing their own killing is
responsible and humane. The cows will have a decent life
and a decent death. Everything's got to die sometime, but I
object to the USA's more usual way of raising and killing
livestock.

Pat