World Animal Protection Day was last week, which I only found out when a Swiss group brought a bunch of live animals to a busy square near my apartment. Specifically, they brought the exact number of animals that the average Swiss person eats in his or her lifetime. Eight cows, 33 pigs, 720 chickens, six sheep, two goats, 25 rabbits, four deer, 390 fish, and half of a horse (they brought a whole horse, but the average Swiss person eats half of one). Mind-boggling. And all I could imagine was a Swiss guy, with a crazed glint in his eye, charging into the animal pens and chomping on deer neck, goat leg, or pig butt.
There are vegetarians who don’t eat any meat, which means that somewhere out there, for every Swiss vegetarian, there is a Swiss carnivore who eats sixteen cows, 66 pigs, 1440 chickens, twelve sheep, four goats, 50 rabbits, eight deer, and a whole horse. Of course, these meats and their proportions are tailored to the Swiss palate (which apparently prefers to eat the entire petting zoo), so I wonder if it’s possible to cash in the deer, rabbits, goats, horse, and sheep for some extra pork? Chinese people don’t have (m)any dishes involving sheep or horse, but pork is an entirely different matter altogether…
I don’t eat five of those animals. Call me narrow-minded, but I’ve somehow got it stuck in my head that horses are transportation, rabbits are pets, sheep produce sweater-material, deer are Disney cartoons, and goats, well, they’re just weird things that you see on farms and don’t really know what they’re for. For me, eating those animals would feel about as natural as eating a bicycle, a cat, a cotton plant, the Little Mermaid, or a weird tractor-y thing that does something I don’t know about out in the fields.
One question I had was regarding the sheer quantity of meat involved. Assume that the average person starts his meat-eating career in earnest at the age of five, and that he eats until he dies at the age of 75 (let’s hope the person still has a decent set of teeth, so that he doesn’t have to drink goat meat shakes at the end). Assuming that he never dabbles in vegetarianism, this means that he eats more than ten chickens and five fish every year, that every five years, he eats more than half a cow, two pigs, and almost two rabbits, and that every fifteen years, he eats more than a whole sheep, almost half a goat, and almost a whole deer. If his wife is vegetarian, I guess he has to eat her share, too.
A second question I had was regarding the cows. Veal shows up in half the dishes served in Swiss restaurants, and it’s a mainstay of Swiss cuisine. Do those calves count towards the cow quota? Does eating one calf’s worth of veal count as eating a whole cow, since a calf grows up into a cow, or does it take several calves to add up to one cow, since calves weight so much less? Or did they just forget to bring calves along?
Another random factoid: the average Swiss person eats about 11 kilograms (24 pounds) of chocolate per year, or 770 kilos (1680 pounds) over the same 70-year period. The average cow weighs 550-680 kilos (1200-1500 pounds). So I guess we could say that the average Swiss person eats nine cows in his or her lifetime, one of which is made entirely out of chocolate.
Heading to Lisbon for a long weekend this week, in search of a last bit of summer before we head into the interminable grey of Zurich winters.
There are vegetarians who don’t eat any meat, which means that somewhere out there, for every Swiss vegetarian, there is a Swiss carnivore who eats sixteen cows, 66 pigs, 1440 chickens, twelve sheep, four goats, 50 rabbits, eight deer, and a whole horse. Of course, these meats and their proportions are tailored to the Swiss palate (which apparently prefers to eat the entire petting zoo), so I wonder if it’s possible to cash in the deer, rabbits, goats, horse, and sheep for some extra pork? Chinese people don’t have (m)any dishes involving sheep or horse, but pork is an entirely different matter altogether…
I don’t eat five of those animals. Call me narrow-minded, but I’ve somehow got it stuck in my head that horses are transportation, rabbits are pets, sheep produce sweater-material, deer are Disney cartoons, and goats, well, they’re just weird things that you see on farms and don’t really know what they’re for. For me, eating those animals would feel about as natural as eating a bicycle, a cat, a cotton plant, the Little Mermaid, or a weird tractor-y thing that does something I don’t know about out in the fields.
One question I had was regarding the sheer quantity of meat involved. Assume that the average person starts his meat-eating career in earnest at the age of five, and that he eats until he dies at the age of 75 (let’s hope the person still has a decent set of teeth, so that he doesn’t have to drink goat meat shakes at the end). Assuming that he never dabbles in vegetarianism, this means that he eats more than ten chickens and five fish every year, that every five years, he eats more than half a cow, two pigs, and almost two rabbits, and that every fifteen years, he eats more than a whole sheep, almost half a goat, and almost a whole deer. If his wife is vegetarian, I guess he has to eat her share, too.
A second question I had was regarding the cows. Veal shows up in half the dishes served in Swiss restaurants, and it’s a mainstay of Swiss cuisine. Do those calves count towards the cow quota? Does eating one calf’s worth of veal count as eating a whole cow, since a calf grows up into a cow, or does it take several calves to add up to one cow, since calves weight so much less? Or did they just forget to bring calves along?
Another random factoid: the average Swiss person eats about 11 kilograms (24 pounds) of chocolate per year, or 770 kilos (1680 pounds) over the same 70-year period. The average cow weighs 550-680 kilos (1200-1500 pounds). So I guess we could say that the average Swiss person eats nine cows in his or her lifetime, one of which is made entirely out of chocolate.
Heading to Lisbon for a long weekend this week, in search of a last bit of summer before we head into the interminable grey of Zurich winters.
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