A German beef-selling website is offering clients the bizarre option of choosing how their favorite breed of cow gets slaughtered.
mycow.de, a beef-selling web-store owned by a company based in the northeastern German state of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania is all about offering customers choices. They allow people to choose from various breeds of cattle, like the succulent Angus, or the delicious Galloway, and even to order steaks from specific farms they own in the German countryside. But the weirdest think is they actually let people decide how they want their cow slaughtered. That sounds kind of sick, right? Well I thought so too, but apparently the guys at mycow.de have an explanation for making this choice possible for their customers.
The cows can either be killed traditionally in a slaughterhouse, or directly in the field, while grazing. The latter is considered more humane, and supposedly makes the beef tastier, because the animal isn’t subdued to stress in the final moments of his life. The road to the slaughterhouse is considered extremely unpleasant for cows, and the surging level of adrenaline in their system is said to toughen up the meat. “This is a much more gentle slaughtering process,” website operator Suzanne Marx told The Local, adding that the meat they sell comes from “happier cows”.
Apparently few farmers use the field-killing method these days, because it’s more expensive and difficult to perform. It basically requires someone stunning the cow and quickly shooting it while it’s carelessly grazing, and then rushing it to the slaughterhouse. A 5-kg packet of bio-beef from mycow.de starts at $100.
Marx claims there is a limit to how much clients want to know about the cows they eat, and the website doesn’t allow them to get to know or select a specific cow for slaughter. Now that would really be creepy…
