Facebook's billionaire founder Mark Zuckerberg has taken up a new "personal challenge" to turn "vegetarian" in an unusual way, by eating meat that he has slaughtered.
"This year, my personal challenge is around being thankful for the food I have to eat," Zuckerberg said.
"I have basically become a vegetarian since the only meat I am eating is from animals I have killed myself," he wrote in an email to Fortune magazine.
The 27-year-old billionaire took on the dietary regime as he believes that many people forget that a living being has to die for them to eat meat.
On May 4, Zuckerberg shared a note to the 847 friends on his private Facebook page, "I just killed a pig and a goat."
His first kill was a lobster, which he killed by boiling and said it was a difficult move, emotionally.
However, when he took a bite of the lobster, he had an entirely different feeling.
"The most interesting thing was how special it felt to eat it after having not eaten any seafood or meat in a while."
Terming it as "a good experience", Facebook CEO said that he is eating lot healthier foods now.
"I have learned a lot about sustainable farming and raising of animals. It's easy to take the food we eat for granted when we can eat good things every day," he was quoted by the magazine.
Zuckerberg said he got this kill-to-eat idea last year at a pig roast party when people told him that even though they loved eating pork, they really did not want to think about the fact that the pig was once alive.
"That just seemed irresponsible to me. I do not have an issue with anything people choose to eat, but I do think they should take responsibility and be thankful for what they eat rather than trying to ignore where it came from," he said.
A Silicon Valley chef Jesse Cool, who lives in Palo Alto, eight houses away from Zuckerberg's place introduced him to local farmers and coached him on killing his first chicken, pig, and goat, according to Fortune.
"He cut the throat of the goat with a knife, which is the most kind way to do it," Cool said.
Zuckerberg and his long-time girlfriend Priscilla Chan have been cooking what he slaughters.
He had posted a photo on his social-network site Facebook of a chicken that he had cut, along with a list of the dishes he made from it.
Zuckerberg said since he spends almost all of his time building Facebook, these personal challenges are all things he would not normally have the chance to do if he did not take the time out.
In 2009 the Harvard dropout, who is known for his trademark hoodie, t-shirt and jeans, wore a tie every day and last year he took up the challenge to learn Chinese.