Vegetarians Who Eat Meat

Susie and Hazel lounge

A few days ago Deb wrote about the myth of animal consent. How appropriate that Newsweek published an article called “No Sacred Cows”, a veritable how-to for “vegetarians” to feel okay about eating animals.

How-To Feel Good About Eating Animals

1) Get Your Primal On: “The “primalness” of the meat-eating (or meat-purchasing) experience comes up a lot in these conversion narratives.” Nothing excuses bad behavior better than relying on the Primitive Principle – if cavemen did it, we can do it too! I mean, really?

2) You Can Still Feel Elitist: “Buying only grass-fed, sustainably raised (and incredibly expensive) meat allows former vegetarians to maintain the same sanctimony.” Because choosing a plant-based diet is incredibly elitist due to its affordability, availability, and sustainability.

3) Ethical Meat is Ethical: “This is the argument used by born-again carnivores like Katzen: eating meat is not ethically wrong. Eating ethically wrong meat…is wrong.” Taking the life of an animal when you don’t have to? No worries! So long as that animal sniffed around in the dirt and, you know, hung out in bucolic pastures, it’s fine to cut their throats and eat their flesh. Really, it’s totally okay. It’s even ethical.

4) Animals Consent, Please Eat Me They Chorus: “steak apologists seem to be missing is that no matter how “lovingly” the cow was raised, no matter how much grazing or rooting he did in his life, he gave up that life to become their dinner.” Deb said it best, “There can not be consent when one has power over another.” But, for you “flexitarians”, don’t let that little caveat bother you. Cattle can “give up their lives” just to become your dinner – convenient and tidy.

5) You Can Help End Misery and Suffering: “And if these organic farm animals have such great lives, isn’t the more humane thing to eat a cage-raised, industrially processed chicken? At least we’d be putting it out of its misery.” Do not help end suffering by not eating animals, help end suffering by eating them so that you can put those chairs animals out of their misery.

Yes, humans are fallible and we all make errors in judgment. I’m not going to cast aspersions for each and every mistake vegans and vegetarians have made.

But are we really so weak-willed, so ready to ignore the magnitude of injustice inflicted on billions of animals that we’ll use any excuse, any rationalization to justify consuming, unnecessarily, the flesh of other animals?

I’d like to think the pros of veganism, from its health benefits to its environmental benefits to the most obvious benefits of all – reducing our suffering impact are strong enough to overcome the negativity, the tradition, and the normalcy of eating animals. We owe it to ourselves and most especially to the chickens, turkeys, pigs, cattle, goats, sheep, rabbits. It’s not about being better than anyone else, it’s not about being ethically superior or “sanctimonious”, it’s about being compassionate and showing others how easy and healthy and wonderful for all involved it can be to be vegan.

And if you do “fall off the wagon”, don’t make excuses. Don’t rationalize. Refocus, remember and retry. The animals don’t care about our excuses, they don’t even care about our compassion – they care about living, mating, raising their children, making friends, avoiding enemies, experiencing the joys and tragedies of existence. Just like us in so many ways.