Jamie Oliver

[sunflower68]

I haven't seen today's press but heard on the news about a pic of Jamie Oliver slitting the throat of a sheep. Is the hoo ha about the picture being in the press (which is pretty gross) or just about what he did? I can't think any carnivore can be upset about him doing what thousands of abbatoir-workers do every day. Were they saying it is an inhumane way of killing the sheep?

[ianess]

You can always guarantee a good sensible debate when andy hughes gets involved. Welcome back....where have you been hiding?
Kids get more than enough exposure to "blood and guts" reality these days, and some of the worst programmes are the national news bulletins, but I must agree that the whole thing was unnecessary and at the very least potentially upsetting. If the animal had been stunned beforehand then maybe Jamie Oliver could have come over as being a more sensitive being. As it is he has probably gone down in the opinion of many people.

[Artemis]

Well I can't say I agree with dear old Andie's view at all. We kill animals to eat them. How we kill them is mainly immaterial. The fact is we kill them to eat. The earlier children realise this the better. The Jamie Oliver programme had the Italian father explaining to his very young daughter exactly what they were doing, good for him. Far too much mollycoddling nowadays of society to children. Children desire knowledge, their brains soak it up and then it won't become too much of a shock in life when they find out that the Macdonalds Hamburger they so love came from the moo moo they saw on a Sunday outing.

[andy hughes]

Hello spinchimp - yes, of course children have seen, and partaken in the slaughter of animals. But that's not the same as a child seeing such a thing on TV, without warning.

If you have animals for food, and slaughter themyourself, and yur children see it, then they grow up accepting that this is part of life, which of course, it is. The point i am making is that this does not equate with beaming the image of a lamb having its throat cut into the TV's of millions of people who may, as smudge pointed out, have missed the advance warning.

My point concerns not the action, but the time and media with which it is conveyed to its audience. Some children in other countis grow up with guns, shooting soliders that oppose their culture - for them it's a natrual way of life. That doesn't make it OK to beam that into the nation's TV sets, "because it happens".

I repeat - line drawing anyone?

[joko]

I think the problem with children is, ok some have witnessed it all their lives and never been shrouded from so therefore are not upset by it, (farmers, country folk etc) but others (city kids and the very young) have been shrouded and don't know that the little fluffy baa-lamb in the field ends up slaughtered and on their plate.

Perhaps that was the first time they'd come across this notion, that we don't live in harmony with all the lovely bunnies etc, we kill them and eat them - and the parents felt it was a bit too much for juniors first experience of this side of life. Their parents really should have told them sooner and eased them into the idea gently.

Also people seem to be using the word 'children' as a blanket term, but remember children can be aged from 1 to 16 - a huge difference. A 13 year old would view things very differently from a 5 year old.

I am a veggie by the way and I think a lot of meat-eaters, refuse to acknowledge what happens to the animals prior to their sunday roast. Its a comfort zone that they don't like to leave or be forced to deal with.

It's like a horse with blinkers - what it doesn't see, doesn't bother it...but if it does see something it doesn't like, it rears up...

[joko]

By the way, as a child (about 7- 8-ish i think) i was swimming in a lake and came face to face with a dead fish - I was upset and shocked.

Years later (age 26) my boyfriend had a fish tank, one day, one died, and was floating on the surface - as the one on the lake was - I freaked! Took me ages to realise why... I have no other phobias or fears, I am not squeamish and would love to do a sky dive or swim with sharks... so the fear and shock can have an odd affect

[El D]

I'm afraid I still don't agree andy - surely the very point that a cookery show involving meat is now completely detached from the necessary process of the actual killing of the animal illustrates how far most people like to distance themselves from real life. If, for instance, I was watching a documentary on said country where youngsters fought each other, there was a warning at the bginning of the show, and in exploring certain social elements of the country they showed pictures of said youths fighting, should I then be offended by the content? Am I interested in the real scenario or do I want a sanitised version inherently detached from real life? Cooking dead animals involves killing them. Killing animals is part of life - why is this fact so disturbing? Why is the laughably inevitable cycle of life and death so disturbing to so many people? I fail to understand why it merits discussion and representation only after 9pm. Killing animals is part of the culinary process - I maintain any cookery show looking at the culture behind food would be justified in showing this - at 9am or 9pm.