Do you sell live rabbits, jackson? Do you know the people you're selling to are going to kill them humanely? I'm fine with people raising and killing their own meat but it becomes a little more gray to me when people sell animals to be killed by other people because unless you somewhat know the people you're selling to how can you be sure they're going to kill them humanely? What if they feed them live to snakes, use them as live bait, let other pets "hunt" them?
Also if you send them to an actual market to be sold live to whoever buys them I would imagine they're scared and stressed and maybe not handled and cared for properly. I do know of people on farming forums that sell live "meat animals" to people and I know they make sure the people they're selling to are humane about it. So it's not always a bad thing. But generally it's not something I feel good about because usually there's that unknown factor in how they're slaughtered.
Most people on farming forums either raise meat rabbits to eat themselves or for their pet dog/snake/whatever to eat or it's a case of 'I want to breed and sell rabbits for show because I'm dedicated and passionate about keeping breeds pure and healthy and the ones that don't fit conformation I'm going to either sell as pets, eat myself, or sell for meat'. Which is much more ok in my eyes than just willy nilly selling meat rabbits to whoever will buy them for some money. But I guess even if you yourself do do that yours are probably kept much better than many rabbits raised for meat...the tiny little 2 by 2 foot cages that are totally bare of any toys/furnishing and have a grate bottom that a lot of meat rabbits are kept in 24/7 is just awful.
So yeah...I dunno, it's really a gray area for me. And I could be totally wrong in my assumptions of how/who you send rabbits to slaughter so if that's the case I apologize
This is the view the UK has with rabbit meat, a lot of supermarkets are stopping stocking pet food containing it now. Fortunately don't find it for sale in the meat isles very often or outside independent butchers, still hard to prove whether it's wild shot or domestic raised.
http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/world-news/shocking-images-show-horrific-cruelty-6510449
There does seem to be a perception in the UK though that rabbit meat is common in the US and that's really not the case. I've seen it brought up on this forum several times before and it's always baffling to me because it's definitely way more common and more socially acceptable in the UK to eat rabbits. That was one of the first things I noticed when joining this forum.
There's the 'how could you eat a fluffy little bunny rabbit' thought process with most people over here which I think is helped by the fact that the majority keeps rabbits indoors here so they're very much seen as pets/part of the family. I've never heard people joke about eating rabbits (the rabbit stew/pie jokes that RU folks say they get a lot from family/friends/colleagues) and I've also never seen rabbit meat sold at supermarkets. I've never seen it in cat/dog food either.
Honestly I can't see why it matters though. Why are rabbits more important than, say, chickens? I strongly believe that no species is worth more than another. IMO people that are so emotionally disattached to "farm animals" are just...odd. I can't understand it. I don't have to keep an animal as a pet to understand that they're intelligent, living breathing animals all with their own individual personalities.
Even people on this forum though have said they were shocked to find how smart and full of character rabbits were when they got their first rabbits and I'm just like why? What were you expecting? :? I mean I could understand if it was more like 'wow I didn't know rabbits would follow you around the house like a puppy dog' or 'I never knew that rabbits had all these little quirks about them like xyz' etcetc, more specific things. I've had that with animals too - of course you never truly know what a species is like until you've keep them yourself or spent a lot of time interacting with them. It just bothers me when there's a tone of surprise or incredulity at their intelligence/character, as if they thought they were just emotionless meat machines.
