Thinking about your food: a school grows and kills its own turkeys - and the ramifications

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I don't know how many schools in Australia operate like the Arthur Morgan School, in North Carolina, USA.  I found this article about growing and killing your own turkeys for Thanksgiving - and the ramifications of this decision - of great interest.

The issue of raising and killing animals, for those at Arthur Morgan School, turned into controversy, discussion, in-school politicisation and became "a rich experiential tool"  to teach children about ethics, economics, health, and the environment.

What I took from my reading of the article was how deeply the students and school community thought about their food - and the violence that is attached to eating animals for their meat.


I know there are people in Australia working in schools to turn attention towards food - not least of whom is Stephanie Alexander through her Kitchen Garden Foundation.  I don't know whether there is in-school experience of raising animals for food except for the sort of program similar to Ironbark, which is part of St Peter's Lutheran College. My daughter had a wonderful term at Ironbark when she was at St Peter's. 

Do Tucker Lovers know of Australian schools where this is happening?  

If animals are being raised, what occurs in regard to slaughtering the animals for food?  How is this handled?  Is there the same level of discussion about killing and violent death as has occurred within the Arthur Morgan School community?


As someone who wants people to think more about 

• what they eat
• where it comes from
• how it is produced
• how it comes to store and table, and 
• the ethics involved in all of this 

I would be interested to hear of the experiences of others.  Just drop me a line at misseaglesnetwork(at)gmail(dot)com.