New Haven Independent

posted by: robn on February 1, 2012  11:13am

:-)~

I want in.

posted by: mary on February 1, 2012  11:24am

that all looks pretty beige and nasty

posted by: Threefifths on February 1, 2012  11:34am

Wow nothing Vegan.

posted by: Bob on February 1, 2012  12:29pm

@ threefifths: I believe the word “game” in the term “game dinner” means a hunted for food. By all means, if you can hunt for kale or chick peas, let me know.

posted by: Noteworthy on February 1, 2012  12:34pm

hmmmm Carnivores Unite! Wish I would have known about this feast.

posted by: HhE on February 1, 2012  1:00pm

Me too, robn, me too.

Is a kleeper enough yacht to join?

http://www.klepperamerica.com/duble_aerius_ii_545.html

posted by: Edward_H on February 1, 2012  1:30pm

Nice spread! Some really interesting stuff there.

Threefifths: I think there are some flowers around the Duck liver pate. Began and I am sure they were locally grown!

posted by: truthbetold on February 1, 2012  2:59pm

Looks like I have to stop purchasing “Swords into Plowshares” Honey. Is it the same Vincent Kay?

Buying Vincent Kay’s honey(now that I know he is a carnivorous murderer)is like paying taxes to a federal government that kills innocent children all around the world.

I can’t support that.

posted by: Threefifths on February 1, 2012  3:04pm

posted by: Bob on February 1, 2012 11:29am
@ threefifths: I believe the word “game” in the term “game dinner” means a hunted for food. By all means, if you can hunt for kale or chick peas, let me know.

You forgot the Horses.

Slaughter of Horses Goes On, Just Not in U.S.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/24/us/Horse-Slaughter-Stopped-in-United-States-Moves-Across-Borders.html?_r=1&pagewanted=all

posted by: Funky Chicken on February 1, 2012  3:24pm

Thank you for publishing this story I find it interesting and enjoyable to read. Please keep them coming!

FC

posted by: HhE on February 1, 2012  4:14pm

I believe hunting for veg is foraging.  In HhE’s world, chicken is a vegetable.

Dead horses make good shoes and glue.  Fido is hungry.

I almost bought some “Swords into Plowshares”  honey just the other day, but thought it might be too hippy for me.  My mistake.

posted by: Lisa on February 1, 2012  8:05pm

Gee, wish I’d known. I live nearby. They should publicize more w/ the neighboring areas, maybe via aldermen and block watch lists, local community mtgs email lists? I would ahem come and donated.

posted by: dogsaregood on February 2, 2012  10:13am

the game dinner is sustainable dining at it’s core. all produce is from local farms and the game that is caught is from the surrounding area. no one should be penalized for actually living a real sustainable lifestyle. it is a true community experience that supports locally harvested food, and a different take on where your meat and fish can come from…...truly local.

posted by: sailing on February 2, 2012  10:31am

I hope there was plenty of good reading material in the bathrooms afterward, and the next day.  All that meat and fat takes a long time to digest.

posted by: nhteaparty on February 2, 2012  10:46am

Cool stuff.  Venison jerky is tasty stuff.  I love the idea of harvesting local game for food. 

I doubt you could harvest enough wild vegetables to make even one vegan meal.  There just isn’t enough around and between poison mushrooms, hemlock, poison berries, etc… I don’t know if I’d trust someone other than myself to gather them.

posted by: MRM on February 2, 2012  11:24am

More mid-70’s, yawn-worthy comments from three-fifths here (with a couple of other additions).  I would venture to guess that Vincent Kay, along with most other folks at this dinner are far more connected with the natural world and its cycles than most vegans are.  I am sure there are exceptions, but for the most part, I find that the stories of folks who “turned veg(an/atarian)” after hunting and/or witnessing the slaughter of domestic animals don’t achieve much beyond disconnecting themselves from processes that occur every single day (and not only in CAFOs, which I am not advocating for here, although I am sure the threefifths will post 6 or 7 articles about salmonella outbreaks in Wal-mart eggs).  So, if you believe that Vincent Kay, or any other hunter choosing to spend an entire Saturday in the woods, being completely quiet, learning the rhythms of nature to kill a deer and a few pheasants is somehow akin to dropping bombs from airplanes on civilians - your thinking seems woefully clouded. Everything must feed on death, even plants, which, along with lots of other crawling things would positively feast on our dead bodies did we not pump them so full of embalming chemicals.  To attempt to calculate an overall reduction in death and harm on the part of the rational human quickly becomes a statistical impossibility.

Further, your stomach is filled with acid for a few reasons - one of which is to digest complex strings of proteins, such as is found in meat.  Humans obviously are able to digest some plant matter - but try eating some raw wheat berries, or grass, or twigs.  As you have a single stomach, and a useless little appendage called an appendix in place of the huge cecums of actual herbivores, plant products might move things along, but only because you aren’t actually digesting them fully.  So, I can’t imagine why any of these folks would be spending any more or less time on the toilet than you or I.  One ought not read on the toilet anyhow, it causes problems with concentration.

posted by: mary on February 2, 2012  11:28am

There are so many edible plants in abundance here… purslane, dandelion, chicory, ramps, chives, grape leaves, grapes, berries, etc.  Obviously, this isn’t the season for them, but in spring & summer it’s easy to make a meal.

posted by: streever on February 2, 2012  1:02pm

3/5ths
apparently the planners of the meal forgot horses too—there is nothing on the menu which is horse or horse related.

What is the relevance that horses are slaughtered in the US and other nations to a “local hunt” dinner which does not include horses?

posted by: HhE on February 2, 2012  1:05pm

Thank you mary.  I would recommend being careful about dandelion leaves, as many people use herbicides on them.  I do not, but rather dig them up, rot and all.  Not only the leaves, which many people add to salads, but the root is edible. 

Ron Hood tells the story of a group of survival students; one guy came back to camp tried, brushed, and cut with a small lizard as dinner, and gal came back with an entire sack of plants, and she was no worse for it.

There is so many wonderful things to eat on this planet.

posted by: streever on February 2, 2012  2:02pm

MRM
Right on!

I love plants and eat them in abundance, but am irritated by the preachy push to eat solely plants, especially when it is made with neither relevance nor context to the original article.

I have entire days where I eat nothing but plants and some whole grains, without consuming an ounce of meat, but I’ve never identified myself as anything other than a hungry person who enjoys all types of food.

posted by: HhE on February 2, 2012  2:56pm

Well said MRM, albeit I find light reading on the throne agreable.

posted by: flax on February 2, 2012  11:53pm

MRM sounds smart n stuff, but we humans can make the choice to not kill (consciously; we will always step on bugs or scratch an itch caused by a weird skin parasite), but we have the choice to not strangle, stab, slaughter or shoot animals. It’s a very different mindset. I am sure there are hunters “in tune” with nature’s cycles or whatever, but I would be much more taken with someone who could go out to the woods for a day and just sit quietly to observe (without loading a gun and putting a pheasant in its sight). As for digestibility, I dunno. I think Nuts n Berries are where it’s at.

What makes many humans divine beings is their ability to choose a saintly lifestyle, and think, speak and act like a God. Master of their domain.

posted by: jay on February 3, 2012  12:47pm

3/5’s

try thinking in terms of trade-offs before condemning the lifted ban on horse slaughter. during the ban on horse slaughter, there was a increase in horse abandonment and horse neglect, and a decrease in the overall welfare of the horse population. a ban on slaughter doesn’t mean that every horse will live out their golden years on a farm in canada. banning activities causes unintended consequences, and in this case, those consequences took the form of more hardship on horses.

posted by: MRM on February 4, 2012  9:39am

flax,

I think what you propose sounds appealing on a surface level, but as I mention in the first post really just enters into a “harm-reduction” calculus which quickly becomes fraught with difficulty.  Firstly, it sets up a somewhat arbitrary rule of “conscious vs. unconscious” slaughter.  Slapping a bug is not a conscious act?  I think it is.  And second, it assumes another arbitrary hierarchy of beings.  A bug or parasite (or plant for that matter - plants are alive too!  Ever seen a cinquefoil recoil if you pull a leaf off of her?) are ok to snuff out, but a pig or deer is not?  Where does one draw a line? cuteness? like-ability?

As I mention above, even eating only plant life requires the acceptance of a fair amount of death.  Not simply the usual “thousands of small mammals are chopped up by combine harvesters every day” argument though.  Plants also need to eat, and if one has ever grown some type of plant life (not simply bought it from a farm market or store), it is apparent that you have a few choices for the delivery of essential nutrients needed by plants.  The first is to use blood, ground bone meal, and excrement from an animal source.  The second would be to use a synthetic fertilizer made from…fossil fuels!  You tell me which sounds more sustainable.  Also, I think that calculation of harm reduction gets ridiculous when one starts to try and figure out things like “how much harm am I causing by eating this bowl of cereal?”  and “would the harvest of these grains cause less or more harm to a fewer or greater number of beings than eating eggs and bacon?”  Along with this question comes one of: how many gophers are equal to one cow?  Is it acceptable for 35 gophers lives to be ended (chopped up in the blades of a harvester) because the net weight of their flesh would be less than a single cow?  How would one determine an acceptable determination of sentience in this way? The answers to these questions have been made out to be simple by veg-an/atarians, but are actually incredibly complex and probably realistically approach the utterly arcane.  I think a far simpler, and frankly more ethically consistent position is espoused by accepting that life feeds on other life in many ways, and to commit to keeping that in balance, which I think hunters perhaps do best.  Being a hunter myself I buy very little commercial meat, and when I do, the money I save allows me to purchase it from those raising and killing it by the highest standards.

Finally, go and spend a week trying to survive in the woods on nuts and berries.  The number of both that you would have to collect to even furnish yourself with a single meal would be enormous.  How about during this time of year?  I could feed myself on a single deer (eating organs and all) for that week.  Sure, foraging for one meal in cultural setting which provides easy access to mechanically condensed proteins and carbohydrates is reasonable to do eating only plants.  However, if we are talking about truly local, sustainable eating I think the above posters are right to point out that these guys have a corner on that.

posted by: streever on February 4, 2012  4:21pm

MRM
Increasingly well-said.

I think you bring up an absolutely essential point—where does one draw the line?

I think it is a shame that harm reduction is usually focused not on humanely treating animals which are raised for food, but on maintaining life for the subjectively speaking cutest animals.

I eat meat and would never try the complicated calculations required to determine what is more humane (35 gophers vs 1 cow), however, I make a serious attempt to buy meat that is coming from humane slaughter.

posted by: flax on February 5, 2012  12:16am

MRM + Streever,

I don’t buy it.
We live with what we are given.
There are people in the world who live on Breath alone.
It’s our culture to hunt, strip, gut, and consume, thinking we have to feed our family, when in actuality they will be taken care of if we put our complete trust in what Creation provides without our violent intervention.
A human could survive and thrive on water and 7 berries a day, but we don’t live like that here.

Also—This DISPLAY of meat is unethical. If one man, in the woods, with his family, chooses to strangle a deer to use its resources, that’s one thing, perhaps. But if he brings it home and throws a party and everyone rejoices as they fill their faces and guts to the brim that is another thing entirely. Let us not rejoice over the murder we commit on a daily basis.

All this is a symptom of how sick we all are, and completely deluded.

As a matter of principle, I choose not to engage in the slaughter of animals. Nor do I step on bugs or kill spiders intentionally. I have a choice.

posted by: Threefifths on February 5, 2012  3:47pm

posted by: jay on February 3, 2012 11:47am
3/5’s

try thinking in terms of trade-offs before condemning the lifted ban on horse slaughter. during the ban on horse slaughter, there was a increase in horse abandonment and horse neglect, and a decrease in the overall welfare of the horse population. a ban on slaughter doesn’t mean that every horse will live out their golden years on a farm in canada. banning activities causes unintended consequences, and in this case, those consequences took the form of more hardship on horses.

Should we do the same for people in nursing homes.

posted by: Threefifths on February 5, 2012  4:00pm

posted by: MRM on February 4, 2012 8:39am.

As I mention above, even eating only plant life requires the acceptance of a fair amount of death.  Not simply the usual “thousands

Not True.You cn do Plant cutting, also known as striking or cloning,and Propagating Plants from Stem Cuttings.

http://www.plant-care.com/1580-propagate-plants.html

Growing Plants from Your Groceries.

http://www.dinnergarden.org/specialPlants.html

Plants also need to eat, and if one has ever grown some type of plant life (not simply bought it from a farm market or store), it is apparent that you have a few choices for the delivery of essential nutrients needed by plants.  The first is to use blood, ground bone meal, and excrement from an animal source.  The second would be to use a synthetic fertilizer made from…fossil fuels!

Not true.Plants make their own food out of carbon dioxide from the air, water and energy taken form sunlight - by a process called photosynthesis.

Go Vegan.

posted by: jay on February 5, 2012  5:18pm

3/5ths

sorry, i thought you would acknowledge a difference between people and horses. but i’ll take the bait. i’m against the ban on euthanasia too.

posted by: HhE on February 7, 2012  12:09am

What an age, and what a place we live, that an article about an interesting social event becomes a debate about the ethics of meat, and horses.

Well, I don’t tell my Jewish friends they ought to put a fork to pork:  the only kosher rule I follow is no catfish.  I have vegetarian friends, and I don’t sneak hamburger into their veggie burgers.  Call it divine will or natural selection, but I have k9s for a reason, and that reason is tasty meat.

(As a very wise professor of mine said, leather is a renewable resource, nylon is not.)