Welcome back to our investigations.
Is eating lamb natural and ethical? So far, we’ve looked at chicken, beef and pork and have discovered that they are not natural food for humans, and definitely are not ethical options.
Whenever some people see a lamb or a photo of one, they are overcome with a ‘cute attack’. But, strangely, some of these same people will happily buy a pack of lamb meat and eat it, apparently forgetting how cute the lamb was. I wonder how many people in the so-called civilised world would be willing to slaughter a lamb, in order to eat the meat.
Sheep facts:
- Sheep can recognise up to 50 sheep faces and remember them for two years and they can even recognise human faces
- Sheep wag their tails when you stroke them, just like dogs
- Half a billion sheep are killed annually for human food – that is 15 sheep per second
Investigation
Is it natural?
Can we (human primates, equipped only with our bodies and natural items such as rocks, sticks, soil, fire, etc) catch, prepare and eat lamb.
Did you know that sheep can run at about 30 mph (48 kph) and humans – well, Usain Bolt reached a top average speed of 23.3 mph. You do the math.
But, if you managed to catch one, then you would have to hold it still and then try to kill it using your sharpened stick or rock. No doubt, if you managed to get a young one, you would be able to do this – eventually. And then, trying to open the skin to get at the meat would present you with some difficulty.
Even cutting through raw meat takes a sharp knife and some strength. You can see here how to butcher a lamb carcase.
And, without a knife, assuming you managed to kill it and open the skin – how would you chew the meat, or tear it small enough to chew?
You might argue that primates like baboons catch and eat small animals, as in this video (extremely graphic!):
But, compare a baboon’s teeth with a human’s. You can see the size of baboon and chimpanzee teeth in this video:
Human primates are not equipped with the right teeth to be able to call lamb, or any similar animals, natural food.
Is it ethical?
a) Has it suffered the least harm?
As we said with chicken, even if you did manage to catch and restrain a lamb without causing it harm, you would have to kill it to eat it, which then makes it unethical.
b) Has it had the best life possible?
Lambs that live a completely natural life have the best life possible. But, even if they run semi-wild on farms in Australia and New Zealand, they still have to suffer various awful procedures such as mulesing, where a layer of skin is removed from the rear end of the sheep (without anaesthetic) to prevent flystrike. This video show what it looks like:
This is not ethical.
c) Is this food good for us?
Some say that eating red meat is good for us – blood group followers know that sheep is better for B blood types than beef. I expect that if the animal has been running wild and has not been filled with toxic hormones and other chemicals, lamb, as a food, is possibly beneficial, unless, of course, it is full of adrenaline from the stress of capture and being killed.
Adrenaline consumed in meat has adverse effects on human physiology. This excess can cause premature ageing, ADHD, faster heart rates, high blood pressure and aggression, among other symptoms.
Final verdict
Lamb or the meat from any other similar-sized animal is not natural food, unless it has been found already dead. And, even then, without the right sort of teeth, human primates would struggle to chew it.
And, it is not ethical to eat lamb unless it has been found dead due to natural causes and has lived wild since birth.
So, lamb is off the list.
What do you think?
Next post: Fish
Featured Image by Ben Kerckx from Pixabay
Natural Ethical Food 