Ramsay and his Pigs.

I love Gordon Ramsay, but seriously, seriously, he doesn't have the right sort of personality for raising livestock.  (For American watchers of The F-Word, SPOILER ALERT.)  The turkeys were bad enough---I didn't watch the slaughter part---but pigs are different.  Pigs are smarter than dogs and too much like pets.  And in the episode I just saw, Ramsay was definitely getting too fond of Trinny and Susannah.

I think he did the right thing by not pulling his punches  As it turns out, PETA specifically wrote to ask him to show the whole abattoir experience so viewers would understand what the animal endures in the process of becoming someone's breakfast bacon or Easter ham. 

I do think he's probably taken the "this is where food comes from" concept as far as it needs to go.  He really needs to get a pet.  A pet pig would be good---one designed for petting and not for the table. 

[quote begins from Independent Online, "Ramsay Reduced to Tears as Pigs Go Under Knife" by Guy Adams, 9 August 2007]

yViewers of The F-Word will see Ramsay moved almost to tears, as he watches the Berkshire sows, Trinny and Susannah, go under the slaughterman's knife.

Looking pale and shaken, the Glaswegian chef sees the 24-month-old pigs stunned by an electric shock to the brain, before being shackled by the hind legs and hoisted to the ceiling. Their throats are then unceremoniously slit.

Ramsay's grisly ordeal does not end there. During the sequence - which will go out after the 9pm watershed - the dead pigs begin "gurgling" as blood pours out of their bodies, and kicking due to an apparent nervous reaction.

He then watches as the bodies of Trinny and Susannah - named after the television fashion gurus Trinny Woodall and Susannah Constantine - are put into a scalding tank. They are later shaved and disembowelled, and hung in a meat store.

Ramsay, who had never visited an abattoir, struggles to describe his feelings. "Not pleasant," he says. "The whole operation is extraordinary. Quite emotional really. I felt sick as a fucking dog in there. Next I will think of something really nice to cook with them. But it's not a nice experience."

During the series, Ramsay has been shown fattening up the pigs in the garden of his home in Wandsworth, London. Next week, he will feed them to diners in a Chelsea restaurant created for the programme. The decision to screen graphic footage of the slaughter process has met with the approval of the animal rights group People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (Peta), which lobbies against the meat and farming industries.

Last week, Peta wrote to Ramsay urging him not to "censor" footage of the moment of slaughter.

A spokesman said: "Paul McCartney once said that if slaughterhouses had glass walls, everyone would be vegetarian. If The F-Word slaughter turns out to be as graphic and gory as we hear it is, then these animals' deaths will not have been completely in vain, since they will turn many compassionate people into vegetarians."

[quote ends (emphasis added)]

I will not be watching this part of the show, and I will certainly not be watching the clip.  If you need to see it to understand the suffering we inflict to get our food, you can find it here at You Tube.

There were apparently a number of complaints from members of the public.  Even so.

This IS where food comes from, people.  Deal with it or change your feeding habits.

On another point, I was interested that both articles cited here referred to Gordon Ramsay as a "tough guy."  Are they kidding me?  He might be a hard-ass in the kitchen and poor (according to me) motivational skills---I think if you make people feel as if they're failing, it's as likely to make them give up as try harder---but the reason I like him is that you can clearly see, even in Hell's Kitchen, that at a personal level his heart is as soft as butter.  And not American butter, but British butter, which isn't kept in the fridge.   You just have to watch him with his children.   

Comments

[Vendita Giubotti Belstaff]

I'd be interested in hearing. The TOS seems rather clear that it is not unless expressly approved by Amazon. I guess if the library got it in writing then they would be ok.