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I would look into the eyes of every lamb I killed. Scott Barbour/Getty Images
I buried Robin Hood in his favourite place, the little paddock beside the Dulas. Across the brook, a blackbird sang requiem. Maid Marian was there, of course. She was, after all, his number-one wife. I shed no tears; I’d done my crying when the local vet, Peter Jinman, had informed me there was no hope. Robin Hood had irreversible anaemia due to a semi-tropical disease. The incomprehensible incongruity of it all was part of the hurt: the Dulas wanders its way in very English Herefordshire.
I liked him. And I think he liked me. There were times when he would deign to let me rub him under his chin as he stood four-square, head jutting forward. He was imperious, as if conscious of the glorious history attached to his kind. Ryeland sheep: first bred in the fifteenth century by the monks of Leominster Priory. Robin Hood was not just a sheep in a Welsh Marches paddock. He had ancestry — breeding, you might say.
It is odd how little most of us know about sheep, given how deeply entrenched they are in our culture. The Greek astrological sign Aries is a ram. In nursery rhymes, “Mary had a little lamb”, and “Baa-baa black sheep” was asked if he had any wool. On the screen Aardman’s Shaun the Sheep has gambolled about entertaining families for decades. On Easter cards lambs are no less frolicsome each passing year.
Those same little lambikins get slaughtered before they are a year old. On the supermarket shelf they are reduced to abstract, packaged commodities. To cope with this glaring contradiction — Little Gambolling Lamb in Field v. Big Rack of Lamb in the Oven — we downplay sheep’s intelligence and individuality. Hence the traducing expression “to be a sheep”, meaning to be a dumb, passive follower. Even a man as sensitive and attuned to nature as George Orwell made the sheep in Animal Farm the stupidest of the stupid, who go from mindlessly chanting “Four legs good, two legs bad” to “Two legs good, four legs bad”. When it comes to sheep, then, we suffer what psychologists call cognitive dissonance.
Or we blank the treatment we give them. Once upon a time, sheep were always raised outside in the fresh air, in a system that would, in today’s terminology, be called “extensive”, even “organic”. More than ten million sheep are now stuck in factory farms worldwide; sheep are also used extensively in biomedical research. About 24,000 are used annually for a range of purposes, from the study of Huntington’s disease and heart conditions to orthopaedics, organ transplants and genetic research (including cloning). There was a time when sheep were used in Argentina as fuel, their bodies thrown into furnaces. Like logs.
My family began farming them 800 years ago. Since I started, 25 years ago, I have learned that sheep are curious things. And sheep farming is a curious old business, where one can become attached to, loving, even, of animals raised for sale, for the pot. That has always been the case. As the Old Testament, which knew a thing or two about shepherding, tells it in II Samuel:
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SubscribeThank you for this. I also raise sheep (just for myself and to breed) here in California. They are more intelligent than they are commonly given credit for (I always liked the book Babe), but they are also extreme herd animals who will, under stress, behave like lemmings. I like my sheep, but I will still eat lambs.
The author’s point about factory slaughter is completely accurate though. I never understood the Muslim/ Jewish preoccupation with Halal/ Kosher slaughter methods until I started slaughtering my own chickens. Now I do understand it. It matters how you kill something that you’re going to eat. And the only way to know it was done well is to see it done or do it yourself.
“Now I understand it.” The greatest and wise saying we should all strive to say.
Good points, fellow Californian. It is how beasts are slaughtered, not the fact that they are eaten. Abbatoirs ironically are anything but hygienic! Feed lots are bad, too, which one intuitively knows after having to drive past one. The article resonated with the traditional American Indian attitude of hommage to game. It is entirely appropriate to give thanks for the life of the animal as you tuck in.
As in so many other areas, we domesticated humans have moved too far away from our natural origins. I understand vegetarians or vegans if they claim that animal farming can be cruel, because as described in the article, it really is. But mass animal husbandry is different from a rancher who knows every individual member of his flock and does the killing himself or is at least present for it. So why don’t we do that?
Weirdly, we like to believe that taking away the dignity of something somehow makes us better and brings progress, because we are breaking down barriers nobody had dared to overstep. And by that, we irrevocably forget the value of boundaries and keeping something holy. We really believe that by defiling everything and leaving nothing as sacred, we somehow make ourselves more sacred and place ourselves at the top of the world’s hierarchy. Concurrently, we lose sense of how small we really are, we forget to be mindful of our own mortality and completely lose sight of what it means to live. Living in the moment used to mean awareness, presence and appreciation for what you have, nowadays it’s just another excuse for more mindless consumption.
Do you really think having centralized abattoirs is somehow necessary for hygiene, and that it improves the quality of a product? Well how do you think humanity has managed to survive before EU regulations? Are you sure they’re not just doing this to close all the small businesses and grant advantages to the large ones, that incidentally reduce farm animals to products to be harvested? Isn’t it weird that it’s always the argument of hygiene and safety that erodes the enjoyable aspects of daily life, and the freedoms that we have?
How did we survive? Often, not very well! It’s extraordinary how many people bang on about how wonderful the past was, despite all manner of robust evidence that it was very often far from it.
I’m perfectly open to scientific evidence on animal welfare, less so by soppy anthropogenic emoting. Have you seen how animals are slaughtered in countries like India? A lot of this stuff is the virtue signalling of the privileged wealthy, who can afford it.
I grew up on a farm and have slaughtered sheep to eat.
Modern westerners seem to think of farms as curated nature parks and petting zoos.
Another interesting and insightful article, blighted by a silly headline. Previous generations of my family kept sheep and some relatives of my generation still do. The sheep graze on moorland and hillsides and usually live a good while before slaughter. You can’t really grow crops on this land and it makes sense to keep sheep or goats. Left for a few years to reach adulthood, the mutton has a unique and remarkable flavour.
Try buying some (mutton that is). I’ve been looking for years and still haven’t found any
You’re right and it’s not easy to find. The animals I refer to above are reared for personal consumption and getting a joint for the freezer when I visit is a real treat. According to the slaughterhouse manager on Clarkson’s Farm, most mutton is sold to the curry restaurant market in the UK. You’ll never see it in a supermarket.
At the risk of sounding like a pretentious prat, I did have a good source at my local farmers’ market when I lived in the South East. They can be a good place to try, if you ignore all the urban green-welly brigade. Got to know the chap and was able to get wild venison and other game from him as he was a licensed game dealer as well as a farmer. He didn’t charge over the odds either.
My local butcher sells mutton and plenty locals eat it. All in a, very large city in Scotland. I don’t eat sheep, cows or may pigs. Don’t like tge taste but do buy and cook well hung and aged meat for family and friends and cook it too. Vegetarians need to realise the UK could not gfeed it’s populace with food grown at home if we were all vegetarian or vegan. Too many places can only grow animals.
Well we have to feed 8 billion people at prices which are affordable to them. Waiting many years to slaughter sheep on individual farms, without adequate hygiene, refrigeration or storage facilities, is unlikely to be consistent with that. British and Ireland is most suited to open air grass fed cattle and sheep farming and should generally esche more Carbon intensive store lots. But farmers can only do that if in some ways protected from competition from countries where more intensive high yield production is possible and encouraged. Little lambs are cute, and we should not be cruel to them. But our obligations to feed our own children nutritiously and affordably is of a higher order.
Perhaps the compromise between your view and the author’s is to think of meat an occasional luxury rather than a cheap source of calories.
Which is fine for me and for most subscribers here. But most of the world needs cheap calories. Improved general health and increased heights in recent generations in Europe and east Asia are strongly correlated with more meat consumption, compared to former times when meat was an occasional luxury for most.
It’s never been an occasional luxury for the wealthy. But now all of a sudden ordinary people can afford it they are asked to develop a particular sensibility.
I think that killing an animal for a human’s “occasional luxury” puts an exclamation mark on the hypocrisy.
If we didn’t eat them they would not exist..
Which is fine for me and for most subscribers here. But most of the world needs cheap calories. Improved general health and increased heights in recent generations in Europe and east Asia are strongly correlated with more meat consumption, compared to former times when meat was an occasional luxury for most.
Well, the steeply rising price of lamb IS making it a luxury now!
And where do we grow the amount of other food we would need to feed our population? Huge swathes of the UK are suitable only for growing animals, not grains, fruit and vegetables. Unless we cut our population right down, we as a nation will have to continue to fatm animals for food. Who tells young adults that most of them can’t have children?
Obviously the free market is an obserd idea that we have come to accept it as a natural phenomenon. It is not so. It is not even free as it is called. I will eat my portion of a kid or lamb this Easter shared in joy with friends and family. As for the slaughtering procedure that should definitely take into serious consideration the old ways of shepherds. The ministries of health could very easily adjust to the old ways, build a suitable control system, and enrich the old way(s) with new ideas. But the insane market is slaughtering us humans first, with the off balance profit war and is killing the political sanity with bribe and manipulation. As for the sheap, their destiny will remain as it goes until the political system comes to fundamental renewal. Thanks for the article, though I got confused from the title. Wishing you a Happy Easter..
The factory abattoirs are horrible. The paperwork and regulatory requirements for meat have increased in the U.K. with every outbreak of disease and we are now at the point where regulation has driven the local abattoirs that worked with farmers and animals out of business in favour of the factories that brutalise animals and workers. As usual with this Government we have heard not a peep about de-regulation or re-regulation to fix this.
I remember the slaughterhouses of old. Animals kept a long way from the killing sheds. Gentle men walking animals in one at a time to be killed humanely. I was 3 when I first went to the slaughterhouse with my great grandpa. I knew where the animals were born and raised and knew we ate meat. I then knew where the animals were killed. I went back and forth to the slaughterhouse all my childhood as bd into young adulthood as did my brothers abd duster and cousins. I am the only one who is verging on vegetarianism as I get older solely on the basis that I prefer the taste of homegrown veggies to shop bought meat. Still buy and cook it for family.
I concur regarding appropriately ethical animal husbandry.
However, I have no qualms – having been for some time on my grandfather’s farm in NZ – regarding the killing and eating of lamb and meat.
But now, I will no longer have lambs slaughtered for meat.
Tell that to the sea eagle photographed flying away high in the sky with a lamb in its talons.
After the foot and mouth debacle in UK I vowed I would never have another dead animal on my plate. And it has been so easy and healthy. When I see a lorry full of sheep on way to Abattoir I feel sick and in grief. It’s horrendous.
Foot and Mouth was horrendous. I was going through somewhat of a personal crisis at the time and the burning pyres and closed lands combined with my inner conflict to create a sort of semi-hell.
But one thing that came out of it was an internal debate as to whether it is was better to have lived, at least for a while, and then died, or never lived at all. I had and have no doubt it was better to have lived; and also that if we brought life into the world then we should look after it, and when the time came, slaughter humanely. Then eating meat somehow becomes a sign of respect and a common purpose.
So eat less meat, but make sure that that meat has come from proper husbandry, not from a factory farm, an animal jail.
I was a vegan for a few years after reading a very thought provocing book called “Eating Animals”. I then became a vegetarian and have been until very recently. I fell into the trap of thinking all non-animal food is healthy (I’m talking cooking from scratch every meal – no ready meals!). Unfortunately all those carbs from bread, rice, pasta, potatoes, oats, root vegetables (and beer) have made me pre-diabetic. Insulin resistance, from regular top ups of carbohydrates, leads to a slow painful death from just about any of our current chronic diseases. I’m not saying you can’t be vegan and avoid insulin resistance but eating much more fat and protein and eating minimal carbs is, I think, a more scientific way to avoid disease. I hate to think that I need to eat animals again after all these years but, for my particular metabolism, an occasional healthy grass fed steak is better than root vegetables and beans. I’ve also started fasting (or at least time restricted eating) to try to make my body sensitive to insulin again.
When I went totally without meat it didn’t occur to me that I could eat more carbs! It did make me widen my knowledge of cooking from places with a strong tradition of delicious food without meat. Mediterranean diet too is known to be the healthiest.
Increase fat by using olive oil liberally. It has been found to be the healthiest fat. And if you eat eggs cheese and fish, well I can’t see the problem. Except you just like carbs. I do too but just eat them sparingly as we all have to when we see how they pile on the pounds. We all remember how we could scoff biscuits and chocolate bars and cake when young and we miraculously burned it off.
And there are some great faux meat products now. It’s brilliant that veganism has become fashionable because the market has had to step up to the plate. As it were
Like the author, I too keep sheep. Like the author, I’ve studied their behaviour intently, only I come at it from a different perspective. I don’t project human emotions onto them like he does. This classic mistake is what lots of people do (though I’m surprised to see a fellow farmer do it). It’s often what turns people vegan, They think animals like sheep are a bit cuddly like us & they can think & rationalise like us.
The write says his sheep used to like him. That’s mistaken, they cannot like or dislike. There’s 2 reason they come close, firstly they’ve worked out he’s not a threat, the only defence sheep have is numbers, they are pretty defenceless, hence they’re really easily frightened.
Secondly he brings food, they’re happy to come for food. If you’ve no bucket they’re not interested. They don’t come to see you, they need food to survive.
I also spend a lot of my life caring for fostered children.
Here’s what I discovered about sheep – that’s different from humans. They don’t have emotions like us. Most of the kids my wife & have cared for have been exposed to neglect violence & separation. That leaves its mark on them, usually permanently. They struggle to trust other humans, fear abandonment, further violence & disappointment.
Each year I wean the lambs (because I try to minimise the stress the bleating will last less than 24 hours – then they go back to eating grass like nothing’s happened, those lambs that hung around their mothers now just hang around with the other lambs & the mothers go back to being in a flock with the other mothers.
Each year I retain the best of my ewe lambs for future breeding. They’ll be re-introduced to the breeding flock where their mothers are, there won’t be a flicker of recognition.
Sheep don’t posses the faculties that humans do – that’s why its ok to raise them for food. We need to move away from silly stories that try to project human values onto them & instead discuss the ethics of how they’re raised etc.
Thank you for a moving and thought-provoking read for this life-long vegetarian.
The same can be said about every other animal that is eaten for food.
Perhaps there is a reason why their flesh is perfectly suitable for human consumption and quite tasty if prepared properly. But, I await the day it becomes illegal to eat them, like it will illegal to drive a car with a combustible engine. And when wild animals are charged with murder when they hunt their prey.
The last sentence is bizarre.
As I remember it, The sheeps’ chant in Animal Farm is changed from “four legs good, two legs bad” to “four legs good, two legs better.” Thank you though, Mr Lewis-Stempel, for correcting my notions about sheep. Thanks also, for the enlightening contribution to the debate on our relationship with the fellow creatures we nurture then kill and eat.
My impression was that most lambs are killed from around nine months of age onwards, and that they are almost fully grown sheep by this age? That the “spring lamb” touted at Easter was actually born the previous year?
I also love to see the older breeds as opposed to the multiple hybrids we see locally – usually including Texel these days. I also feel that talk of a switch to a plant-based diet ignores reality on the ground: our local boulder clay is rock-hard and almost unploughable by anything but the most powerful tractors. It is far better suited to growing grass (although produces good crops of wheat and oddly carrots once cultivated). I have no idea how cultivation was managed in the days of horses.
I haven’t eaten sheep in 40 years. And pork? Oh no, such an intelligent animal and farmed so cruelly. A steak twice a year maybe and it gives me no joy.
What a lovely ode to our woolly brethren
I most certainly am guilty of cognitive dissonance regarding lamb. I love to eat it, and they are the cutest little things, too. By far it’s the most flavor-packed meat out there.
Truly, from now on, I’m only going to eat lamb when I’m ready to splurge on some wonderful free range, grass fed New Zealand lamb which I know has been slaughtered humanely.
Thanks, and Happy Easter.
All NZ lamb is halal. So maybe not “slaughtered humanely”?
Exports to Middle East.
It’s cruel to kill a creature who has not lived long enough. It’s morally wrong.
Vegan and vegism is more common and vulgar then wearing polyester clothing and using the words toilet and settee…
Saving sheep from the stress of long journeys to industrial slaughterhouses with on farm killing is intuitively right to those who care for their livestock. Similarly a production cycle which is less intense, utilises native grass fed breeds, and avoids the forced growth and slaughter of juvenile animals appeals. But what is the product to be offered the consumer? Mutton and wool? and what are the practical solutions to hygienic meat production and carcass waste disposal on farm? These are questions that need answers if the the sort of comfortable nature friendly farming which Mr Lewis-Stempl advocates and which many find attractive as a sustainable basis for livestock farming’s future.
Simon Lait
Thanks for this – I’ve been uncomfortable eating lamb recently, and would very much prefer to eat sheep instead. You make a really good case – also about the slaughtering.
I have been trying to eat as much meat as possible and as little vegetables as possible in recent years deliberately to annoy people who spout sentimal pap like this and assert my rights to the The Roast Beef of Old England that comes with our liberties.
An article that resonates as we keep a couple of sheep to eat the grass in a paddock. They have an awareness but without language a very limited intelligence. Once it is fully understood that only language separates human intelligence from other primates I anticipate enormous pressure to ban meat. Notwithstanding that the evolution of humans has depended on them being at the top of a high protein food chain.
Actually I think the real problem for sheep is that once they stop being lambs (ie frisky and enquiring and intelligent) they have to spend all their time chewing not very nutritious grass
I’m pretty sure it is “Four legs good, two legs BETTER” not “Two legs good, four legs bad”. Napoleon was wily.
God save us… what next? I do hope the psychiatrists couch is comfortable…. I respect your unbridled freedom to express such views, if nothing else for peverse amusement