I just watched Hugh's Chicken Run yesterday, which is a show about a guy who's trying to turn British people away from eating battery farmed chickens to eating free range ones for humanitarian reasons. Which makes me start thinking about all the other horrors that go on in farms and slaughter houses before we get some meat to eat.

OK, first let's talk about chicken.According to my estimation, for every chicken you eat, 2 to 3 chickens have to die. Notice that all chickens that we eat are female?(Why, actually?) So they only keep a few roosters as studs and the rest they cull. According to YiLyn (who I think watched a documentary on it as well) they way they do that is to put newly hatched male chicks onto a machine that crushes them to death. Besides that, female chickens which to not meet the target weight are culled as well because it is not financially beneficial to keep feeding a chicken that will not be worth selling.(which, according to Hugh, is by twisting their neck by hand, although I'm sure there are much faster and more gruesome ways of culling in other chicken farms) So, back to our 1 out of 3 theory, 1 chicken died because...well...you ate it. The second chicken died because it was male, and the 3rd one died because it was either underweight or died of disease or natural causes at the farm.

So, let's say you swore off eating chicken and ate fish. Let's say it was caught from the sea (battery farming philosophy is to jam the animals' living space to the point of suffocation, so by definition is already inhumane) Fish die by suffocation, i presume, when they are pulled out of the water. Which is comparatively humane. Unless of course it was one of those that was kept in (jam packed) water to keep it fresh, then slaughtered at the fish market. This way it might or might not be killed humanely. That depends if it was bashed on the head hard enough. If if wasn't it would probably be still flopping around after it's body was cut cleanly in 2, I'm sure you've seen some like that in the fish market.

OK, so screw fish, let's eat crustaceans or shellfish instead. But then if they were fresh, most likely you'd be doing the killing yourself by boiling them alive to perfect tenderness. And with smaller seafood like anchovies or prawns, it's pretty sad that you need to cook a couple dozen of them at one go to even notice they are there, even sadder if they are just boiled for stock and later thrown away. At least if you ate them they could be used to build a sliver or two of muscles in your body that might come in handy.

Let's skip shark fin and whale meat, that's too obvious.

And try not to eat too much cuttlefish, the preservatives are not good for you.

Maybe they more humane types of meat would be pigs, sheep, goats and cows (though I dunno about battery farmed ones) But at least one dead animal would feed you for weeks. Although I still don't see the point of suckling piglets. It's kind of depressing when you go to Chinese weddings and there's there's this little baby pig, or at least the skin, cut up and displayed like a sad piece of pelt and you're supposed to eat it. There isn't even any meat there. And it's not like it tastes spectacular. Plus it's artery blocking food.

Oh well...time to grow some taugeh in the garden and learn how to make char siu out of soya bean then. Oh yeah, and eggs, I dunno if they are humane either. Hearsay that big eggs are inhumane because it causes pain to the hen like giving birth to an extra large baby (means they are genetically modified* I guess). So...err...having a pet hen or two wouldn't hurt either. Chickens are nice to cuddle if that's any consolation. I vouch for that one.

*=Chihuahuas are custom bred until it is actually impossible for them to give birth naturally, their pups would get stuck in their birth canal;they all have caesareans.