Character in Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy and live a la carte entree at Milliways the restaurant at the end of the universe. Fat and orangish pink with a snout like a pig in the BBC TV production.

Pitches various cuts of its anatomy as different dishes causing Arthur Dent to say "Does this creature actually want us to eat him?". Expresses disgust as this particular cow is the result of 'thousands of years of development to create a creature that actually wants to be eaten'.

On my mind lately as an ethical animal must ultimately make some decision about the eating of other animals. Recent network news stories of workers venting thier rage on chickens, stories of veal being produced by nailing calves hooves to floors and the like force one to confront the matter.

The basic issue is one of compassion. Clearly at some level of the animal kingdom it makes no sense to have compassion since there isn't enough of a nervous system there to be reasonably compassionate about. Insects and crustaceans, things with just a few or relatively few ganglia offer no problem.

To be sure efforts like those of Temple Grandin can produce killing procedures which are as humane as possible, at least as in the case of Burger King after negative publicity on the conditions in thier suppliers' slaughter houses. However one can hardly assume that those conditions exist in general.

Birds, lizards, small mammals, seem to be a gray area, but to be safe, in view of the uncertainty of production conditions, both with respect to the issue above and food safety, I'm limiting myself to seafood and dairy products as far as animal protein is concerned, pending further consideration.