Meat Eating With Morality
Vegetarians and non vegetarians often share the same beliefs, but have very different actions. Which ones are more likely to create the change we're looking for?
How many times have you heard someone say that they “don’t eat meat because it’s cruel”? With my most recent experience, it was swiftly followed by “and we don’t need meat anyway.” I tried vegetarianism at the age of 13 for a few weeks because some other girls in my class decided it would be a cool thing to do. Unfortunately, I’ve always enjoyed the full gambit of red, white and sea meats and haven’t yet succeeded in placing morality before my own rumbling tummy. The longing I have for a bacon sandwich after a few weeks of abstinence tells me that I couldn’t voluntarily be a vegetarian for any significant length of time. The way Adam hunted down his first feed of lion and chewed up the red meat with his fine set of purpose built gnashers, suggests that we weren’t supposed to be anyway. However, I’ve concluded that vegetarians who are so on the grounds that the farming methods used to provide meat is cruel, are probably making the issue much worse by not eating any meat at all.
As omnivorous beings, we like to be able to walk into any supermarket and buy large quantities of meat for at best a very cheap price and at worst a very reasonable price. This keeps our food bill relatively small allowing us to have more disposable income to spend on the fun things in life. This quest for a bargain becomes even more pronounced during harder times and certainly during a recession putting pressure on the farmer to provide large quantities of meat very cheaply. To do this, he has few options as cheap meat can only really come by using cheap farming methods. It may be cruel, but it’s the only way to provide the consumer with what it demands.
In contrast, free range meats seen mainly at farmer’s markets are more expensive, because the farming methods are more expensive. Free range will continue to be more expensive the less the consumer purchases – which when times are hard is much more likely. So here lies the problem – if vegetarians who don’t eat meat on the basis that it’s cruel, bought free range and organic meats instead, the prices of those meats would start to come down. As soon as those prices fell to an affordable level where other fringe consumers could make a shift, the prices would fall even further, competing in the same market as the bulk meat factories. If consumers were buying less from the bulk meat farmers, it would force a rethink in their practices and change their farming methods – which whether you are a vegetarian or not would have to count as a successful outcome. By eating no meat, the only people buying meat are those who like it cheap and plentiful, further fuelling the system and allowing the wheels of the ‘cruel’ farming factory to continue to turn. We have seen this happen with free range eggs – more people are now buying them, so the prices have dropped substantially making it more affordable to more people. There’s no reason that we shouldn’t be able to achieve this on a slightly larger scale with meat?
Despite my rumbling tummy taking precedence over most things, I would be very willing to stop being part of the problem and to contribute towards being an active part of the solution.
1. “Vegetarians and non vegetarians often share the same beliefs”
Really? If this is the case then why aren’t they taking the same sort of action? What stands in the middle? It must be differing values, because if they have the same beliefs then they must have had references, either actual or virtual, to help establish those beliefs in the first place – so tell me – what are these common beliefs that vegetarians and non-vegetarians share? Or are we talking about beliefs unrelated to the topic of vegetarianism? If we do in fact share the same beliefs I’m thinking that there must be a missing link somewhere between beliefs and values (as these are the foundations of our general behaviour) to be able to cause such differing actions between vegetarians and non vegetarians.
2. "How many times have you heard someone say that they “don’t eat meat because it’s cruel”
Yes, this is one of the many good reasons not to eat meat. Who can honestly say they are not bothered by anxious, frustrated, fear-ridden birds forced to spend 10 to 12 months squeezed inside a small wire cage with up to eight or nine other tormented hens amid tiers of identical cages in gloomy sheds holding 50,000 to 125,000 debeaked, terrified, bewildered birds? And who can honestly say that they would be able to kill the animal that ends up on their plate – if you could, would you do so without looking into a pleading set of eyes, and would you do so knowing that you needed to kill this animal for your own survival? Sadly, many people choose to ignore the reality of where their food comes from and what it’s gone through to end up on their plate because it’s not them who suffer directly in the end.
3. “and we don’t need meat anyway.”
This can be debated far and wide – all I know is that I was iron deficient when I was a meat eater, and for the 8 years I have been vegetarian, to my knowledge I have not been deficient in anything. I feel great and have loads of energy…..this may not been the same for everyone of course as we are all individuals and are all made up a wee bit differently. I was told just this morning by a meat eater that professional sports people need to fulfil their nutritional requirements by eating meat……try telling that to Dave Scott, who won 6 ironman titles as a strict vegetarian. Many people who decide to try vegetarianism simply remove the meat from their diet, without making any substitutes, and in these cases they are likely to feel some effects of ill health. So I think I’m doing ok without meat – why don’t you try removing it from your diet (and making any necessary substitutions) and then see if you need it? Just don’t get your ‘needs’ mixed up with your ‘wants’.
4. “The way Adam hunted down his first feed of lion and chewed up the red meat with his fine set of purpose built gnashers, suggests that we weren’t supposed to be anyway”
Is this what happened? I may not have paid much attention in religious education but from what I remember, Adam much preferred the ‘apple’. And if we are so inclined to reference the bible to justify the actions we take, then:
And God said, "See, I have given you every herb that yields seed which is on the face of all the earth, and every tree whose fruit yields seed; to you it shall be for food. Also, to every beast of the earth, to every bird of the air, and to everything that creeps on the earth, in which there is life, I have given every green herb for food"; and it was so."
Gen. 1:29, 30.
And yes, there are some arguments that we have purpose built ‘gnashers’, although unfortunately we’ve now done so much to destroy the environment (much of this amounting in a number of ways from the carnivorous portion of our diets) that it might just all eventually come back on us and we won’t be able to use our ‘gnashers’ anyway as we’ll all be gone. But that doesn’t matter does it, because it won’t affect us directly. It might not even affect our kids too much, probably just the generations following them, and therefore why should we care?? And back to those ‘gnashers’ – although I have seen arguments that defend their meat eating purpose, I have seen more plausible ones that show our teeth and general jaw structures are extremely close to the classic ‘herbivore’ characteristics, and not close to even the ‘omnivore’ characteristics (e.g. omnivore and carnivore have short, pointed incisors, whereas herbivores and humans have broad, flattened and spade shaped incisors. Carnivores and omnivores have long, sharp and curved canines, whereas humans have short and blunted canines……). I could list a large number of other jaw and nail characteristics that set us apart from omnivores and carnivores but this discussion is probably long enough already and it’s the morality and environment I’m more concerned about – not whether our human makeup is more similar to that of a hippopotamus (herbivore) or a wolf (carnivore)
5. “As omnivorous beings”
Again, debatable.
6. “We like to be able to walk into any supermarket and buy large quantities of meat for at best a very cheap price and at worst a very reasonable price”
Yes of course we do, because today’s society is so enveloped in greed, and ultimately we think about how it benefits us in the end. We don’t think about who or what might have suffered in the process, or about how the generations to come might be affected. If we don’t think about it, and choose to ignore it, then it’s not happening right?
7. “This keeps our food bill relatively small allowing us to have more disposable income to spend on the fun things in life”
Again, it’s all about us…..we think it’s our ‘God-given’ right to have what we want when we want it. There are many fun things in life, and I perceive food to be one of these. I really enjoy my tasty vegetarian diet, especially knowing that I am doing what I can, within my own means, to ensure that a minimal amount of suffering went on before I stuffed it in my gob. From time to time I do have to spend a bit more, so therefore I eat a little less of those things. It’s a matter of priority isn’t it? Maybe if we axed the $2000 some of us spend on take out coffee per year, that extra money could be spent on free range, organic food purchases.
8. “It may be cruel, but it’s the only way to provide the consumer with what it demands.”
So just because we demand it, we should treat animals as we wish, because of course they don’t have a voice to speak out, or hands to punch our lights out with? If your morals tell you yes, and you could visit one of those pig farms with the sow stalls and watch these intelligent and sensitive animals bar-biting, head weaving, and unable to turn around in their stall, and say ‘yes, I’d like to kill you and eat you’, then all the power to you.
9. “So here lies the problem – if vegetarians who don’t eat meat on the basis that it’s cruel, bought free range and organic meats instead, the prices of those meats would start to come down”
Yes I guess it would, but why get vegetarians to start contributing further to problems such as global warming (a pretty big problem) which are very much exacerbated by the meat industry (free range or otherwise)? With exceedingly more meat eaters existing in the world, and rather than creating a more negative effect by getting vegetarians to take a step backwards, shouldn’t meat eaters be switching to free range and in doing so, eat less of these types of foods so that the effects on their wallets is insignificant?
10. “Despite my rumbling tummy taking precedence over most things, I would be very willing to stop being part of the problem and to contribute towards being an active part of the solution.”
The use of the words ‘would be’ puzzles me. What is stopping you from being an active part of the solution? Are you waiting for all the vegetarians to switch to eating free range and organic meats? It’s not going to happen, so don’t ‘would be’, ‘should be’ ‘could be’ any longer. If you want to be a part of the solution, do it now, and like many vegetarians are trying to, do what you can realistically do to act upon what you believe in. Everyone draws the line between what they do and don’t do at a different level, but just make sure that where you draw you line is indicative of your beliefs and that your actions reflect this. If your rumbling tummy wins over from time to time, then find others ways that you can help (e.g writing to various organisations, signing pledges, etc). I leave this blog with a quote from a very brainy man:
“Nothing will benefit human health and increase chances for survival of life on Earth as much as the evolution to a vegetarian diet.” ~Albert Einstein