Bespoke Butchery: When Locavores Go Wild

When I was in NYC this past May, my wonderful BFF told me about a very disturbing new trend in The City: bespoke butchery. The hottest, newest thing are restaurants who bring in cattle from more local spots and butcher them right in the basement. I recently saw a post by Erik Marcus on vegan.com that mentioned something equally as nauseating: butchery parties. People pay money to learn how to butcher their own meat. The Back Forty restaurant in NYC (one of the ones mentioned as part of the "bespoke butchery" trend) offered a class where people learn the delicate art of Porchetta 101: deboning a pig, leaving its head on, tying it up and roasting it. The pictures look like a really bad Nine Inch Nails video. And I thought those godawful sex toy parties were scary? Man, I'll take suburban housewives waving dildoes in my face over dismembering a pig any day. But hey, it was "locally and responsibly raised on a small farm." I'm sure that made the pig feel a hell of a lot better in the end. I don't think painting slaughter with pretty faux spiritual colors and dressing it up in the golden glow of "local and sustainable" makes it any more palatable. The best way to honor an animal is not to eat it from ears to hooves; the best way to honor an animal is to not kill it in the first place! Maybe I am just missing a hunting/butchering/killing gene.