I had the privilege of being visited by my friends Logan and Allysia last week. They are also vegan, and Allysia keeps a blog of her adventures at http://blog.happy-vegan.com. We had a couple of conversations about veganism, which prompted me to consider some of the positions that I hold with regards to the vegan diet and why I choose to eat that way.
My personal stance is straightforward. I eat a vegan diet because I disagree with the practices of the industry that provides meat and dairy products. I am not willing to lend financial support to animal abuse and excessive pollution. Outside of this, my views tend to diverge from those of many other vegans that I have met. I do not have a fundamental disagreement with eating meat in and of itself. My argument is with abuse and overconsumption.
If you eat average grocery store or fast food meat, you are in a small way complicit in the wholesale abuse of animals and the massive pollution that accompanies raising and slaughtering them. These practices continue because most people who consume mean never have to see what goes on behind those walls. But what if you had to participate in every step of the process? It’s a powerful thing, the ability to take a life for food. It seems to me that an education should include a demonstration on how to prepare an animal for consumption. We can’t all be hunters and butchers, but I think that if we all had to participate in the process along the way, we might all treat the animals that we use for food with a bit more respect.
I do not believe that hunting, fishing, trapping and preparing your own meat for your own consumption constitutes abuse or immoral behaviour. Predation is a natural relationship between stronger and weaker organisms. It becomes problematic when we abuse the advantage and turn it into things like industrial-scale farms and slaughterhouses. An animal will inevitably die in the wild. A well placed bullet from a hunter is probably a better way to go than being devoured by wolves or starving in the winter. But hunting in our society has evolved into a leisure activity rather than a necessity because of animal husbandry. When hunters couldn’t keep up with the demand, we turned to farmers to pick up the slack and somewhere along the line, we defenestrated the code of respect for the animals that feed us.
One of the traits that we’ve evolved that’s unique among all animals is a conscience. Some sense of ethics, morals, right and wrong. Is it ever right to kill an animal? Veganism is more or less a first-world privilege. We’re all participants in a unique phase in history. Most of us live in cities where we have the resources and the wherewithal to be properly nourished for our whole lives without touching animal protein. Does the viability of a vegan diet in most modern cities mean that it is no longer moral to take the life of an animal?
I’m still troubled by this question, but my answer is no. I feel that it is still justifiable to use animals as a food resource. I also feel that the solution to the industrial farm and slaughterhouse is to have a relationship with our food that extends beyond picking a a cut from a grocery store shelf or a menu. Respect for animals that give us food ought to be a necessary precursor to their consumption, in my view.
We are animals, just like the other animals on earth, and our unique evolution has given us the ability to prey on animals and to digest their flesh to the benefit of our bodies. There are a number of evolutionary indicators that suggest acclimation to an omnivorous diet - the shape of our teeth, for instance, or the necessary bacteria and enzymes in our digestive system that allows us to process meat. Flesh carries the full complement of amino acids and is a complete protein. It seems that humans are well equipped, from a biological standpoint, to use meat as a valid food source.
Again, the problem comes with abuse of the privilege. We’re far beyond letting a few people spoil it for everybody. Overconsumption is the norm rather than the exception. It carries a whole host of problems, both ethical and health related. A standard portion, containing more than enough protein to feed a healthy adult, is about the size of a computer mouse. One of those each day, or even every few days, is plenty for anybody who eats a balanced diet.
The point of this entry isn’t for me to lecture anybody, or to come down on people who choose to eat meat. I’m well aware of the fact that we’ve moved far beyond the point where it’s reasonable to expect a complete reversal in the way our society eats. Most of us have been raised from birth to expect a portion of animal protein as part of at least one meal, and sometimes each meal of every day. The ease of acquiring that type of diet makes it difficult to ask people to change their eating habits. My upbringing was no different. I just decided that I didn’t want to do it anymore until I could provide it with my own hands.
I would catch a fish. I would shoot a deer. I would raise a coop of chickens and eat their eggs. My argument is with the industry, not the activity. For the time being, I don’t have the knowledge or the resources to hunt, fish or raise animals, so until then, I choose not to participate in the industry because I disagree with its methods of raising animal protein. It’s not wrong to take the life of a creature when you do so with respect for the animal, the environment that you take it from and the nourishment that it gives to you in exchange for your efforts in hunting, catching or trapping it.
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My personal stance is straightforward. I eat a vegan diet because I disagree with the practices of the industry that provides meat and dairy products. I am not willing to lend financial support to animal abuse and excessive pollution. Outside of this, my views tend to diverge from those of many other vegans that I have met. I do not have a fundamental disagreement with eating meat in and of itself. My argument is with abuse and overconsumption.
If you eat average grocery store or fast food meat, you are in a small way complicit in the wholesale abuse of animals and the massive pollution that accompanies raising and slaughtering them. These practices continue because most people who consume mean never have to see what goes on behind those walls. But what if you had to participate in every step of the process? It’s a powerful thing, the ability to take a life for food. It seems to me that an education should include a demonstration on how to prepare an animal for consumption. We can’t all be hunters and butchers, but I think that if we all had to participate in the process along the way, we might all treat the animals that we use for food with a bit more respect.
I do not believe that hunting, fishing, trapping and preparing your own meat for your own consumption constitutes abuse or immoral behaviour. Predation is a natural relationship between stronger and weaker organisms. It becomes problematic when we abuse the advantage and turn it into things like industrial-scale farms and slaughterhouses. An animal will inevitably die in the wild. A well placed bullet from a hunter is probably a better way to go than being devoured by wolves or starving in the winter. But hunting in our society has evolved into a leisure activity rather than a necessity because of animal husbandry. When hunters couldn’t keep up with the demand, we turned to farmers to pick up the slack and somewhere along the line, we defenestrated the code of respect for the animals that feed us.
One of the traits that we’ve evolved that’s unique among all animals is a conscience. Some sense of ethics, morals, right and wrong. Is it ever right to kill an animal? Veganism is more or less a first-world privilege. We’re all participants in a unique phase in history. Most of us live in cities where we have the resources and the wherewithal to be properly nourished for our whole lives without touching animal protein. Does the viability of a vegan diet in most modern cities mean that it is no longer moral to take the life of an animal?
I’m still troubled by this question, but my answer is no. I feel that it is still justifiable to use animals as a food resource. I also feel that the solution to the industrial farm and slaughterhouse is to have a relationship with our food that extends beyond picking a a cut from a grocery store shelf or a menu. Respect for animals that give us food ought to be a necessary precursor to their consumption, in my view.
We are animals, just like the other animals on earth, and our unique evolution has given us the ability to prey on animals and to digest their flesh to the benefit of our bodies. There are a number of evolutionary indicators that suggest acclimation to an omnivorous diet - the shape of our teeth, for instance, or the necessary bacteria and enzymes in our digestive system that allows us to process meat. Flesh carries the full complement of amino acids and is a complete protein. It seems that humans are well equipped, from a biological standpoint, to use meat as a valid food source.
Again, the problem comes with abuse of the privilege. We’re far beyond letting a few people spoil it for everybody. Overconsumption is the norm rather than the exception. It carries a whole host of problems, both ethical and health related. A standard portion, containing more than enough protein to feed a healthy adult, is about the size of a computer mouse. One of those each day, or even every few days, is plenty for anybody who eats a balanced diet.
The point of this entry isn’t for me to lecture anybody, or to come down on people who choose to eat meat. I’m well aware of the fact that we’ve moved far beyond the point where it’s reasonable to expect a complete reversal in the way our society eats. Most of us have been raised from birth to expect a portion of animal protein as part of at least one meal, and sometimes each meal of every day. The ease of acquiring that type of diet makes it difficult to ask people to change their eating habits. My upbringing was no different. I just decided that I didn’t want to do it anymore until I could provide it with my own hands.
I would catch a fish. I would shoot a deer. I would raise a coop of chickens and eat their eggs. My argument is with the industry, not the activity. For the time being, I don’t have the knowledge or the resources to hunt, fish or raise animals, so until then, I choose not to participate in the industry because I disagree with its methods of raising animal protein. It’s not wrong to take the life of a creature when you do so with respect for the animal, the environment that you take it from and the nourishment that it gives to you in exchange for your efforts in hunting, catching or trapping it.
Word count: 1,012
I agree that the big, ugly machine of animal production is terrible and cruel, but where our opinions seem to diverge is at the "is it okay to kill an animal" question, so I'd just like to share a few thoughts.
ReplyDeleteFirst of all, I don't think that question has an answer. If I was living in the far north where people subsist off whales and other creatures, it is not "wrong" to eat meat. And it's not "wrong" if my privileged, meat-eating dad does either.
It's a question of necessity. It's becoming fairly common knowledge that meat is not needed in our diets, since all of the nutrients that we get from their flesh, they got from the ground (or from their feed). In the example of living in the far north, meat-eating would be necessity. Without it, I would probably die. Same goes for some people in poverty, certain small tribes and those depending solely on others to feed them.
But it's not necessity for me. Or for virtually anyone else I know, since we have good-ish incomes and can afford trips to grocery store.
I don't care if factory farms didn't exist, or if all the animals were all "la la la" and killing was all super-humane. I would still choose not to consume animals or their fluids/eggs. The fact remains that there's death involved, and what gives me the right to take a life for a reason that is not necessity? Is the value of a cows' life really determined by me? Is the point of a cows' life really just to be food, or to be a baby-making machine? Same goes for deer, or fish, or anything else anyone could think up to kill and consume.
I think life itself is where the value is. Switching this to a human comparison, if someone owned me and treated me with great care, but then decided one day to kill me because they wanted to eat me, I'd be like, "what the fuck, dude, I want to keep living!" And if they were all, "hey, I'm gonna knock you up and then take your children, you cool with that?" I would say, emphatically, no. And if I was a chicken who no longer produced eggs but still had 15 years of life ahead of me and you were all, "you're taking up precious resources, so we're gonna eat you in stew", I would flee in terror.
Life is precious and we're all here for our own reasons. To snuff out a life unneccessarily is to say, "you are just here for me to use - your life is for me." But I know my life isn't for anyone else. And what a sorry state I would be in if it was.