[Buddha-l] on eating meat

[Jim Peavler]

On Oct 18, 2005, at 8:03 PM, Stephen Hodge wrote:

> Dear Alberto,
>
>> At night we often see deer crossing roads and sometimes people run 
>> over them, accidentally, of course. Why should there be anything 
>> wrong about eating that meat?
> I agree with you -- if one really wants to eat meat, then fresh 
> road-kill would be acceptable.  Myself, I just don't want to eat meat 
> anyway -- the aesthetics don't appeal too much besides all the other 
> factors.
>
Where I live people in financial straights are allowed to get licenses 
that allow them to remove dead game animals from roadways. (Otherwise 
the department of wildlife removes them and turns them into food for 
carnivores, I understand.) The intention, of course, was to make free 
meat available to them. However, road-kill seldom has very much, if 
any, decent meat to eat. Impact with automobiles and trucks usually 
bruises and breaks the animal  in such  way as to force offal into the 
blood vessels throughout, or the bruising and internal bleeding alone 
is enough to make the meat not only undesirable but downright dangerous 
to eat.

It would seem that if you want to eat decent meat the best thing to do 
is to pick it out of dumpsters behind good restaurants.