Eat What Makes You Feel Happy and Healthy
On a small ranch in nowhere, California, years ago, I held a cow as she died. Every exhalation could be seen in the air, a cold and forceful release of life. The report we had been given was about sheep getting stuck in mud. Instead I sat in the muck as a black-and-white cow breathed for the last time. She would receive no burial, no cremation, no eulogies. Her life was this – breath in, breath out, pause, breath in, breath out, and then one final heave, one final attempt at remaining in this world and then nothing.
Because she could not enter the slaughterhouse on her own four hooves, she was left to rot in that field. Her skeleton is probably still there, bleached and bare. Her children and sisters are dead too, dismembered for a moment of gustatory pleasure.
I haven’t thought of this cow in a long time. Not until I read this post by an individual who has decided to start eating animal products again:
I hope that you will eat what makes you happy and healthy, and not let anyone tell you different.
And I remembered the cow. Her ebony fur turning to white. Her ribs a testament to some untreated health condition. How I, the only person in the world, cried tears of sadness and shame and horror for this nameless, faceless-to-the-world, cow. How could eating her bring happiness to someone else? Unadulterated joy? How could I, in good conscience, stand by quietly and not say something? How could the momentary pleasure of a human take priority over this cow’s right to live?
Suffering exists in this world. It is unending and unyielding and intrinsic to life and death. I won’t argue that.
Behind a vegan diet (not exhaustive):
* Millions of nonhumans killed during the harvesting of edible crops we eat
* Human workers over-worked and underpaid and, on non-organic farms, are exposed to high levels of pesticides and chemicals
* Mono-crops that outcompete native plants and reduce biodiversity
* GM crops that outcompete native plants and reduce biodiversity
* Birds and “pest” animals poisoned for eating seeds
* Synthetic fertilizers kill fish and other wildlife
Behind an omnivorous diet:
* Millions of nonhumans killed during the harvesting of crops fed to livestock
* Human workers over-worked and underpaid and may suffer psychological trauma from slaughter as well as severe injury and/or death
* Mono-crops that outcompete native plants and reduce biodiversity
* GM crops that outcompete native plants and reduce biodiversity
* Birds and “pest” animals poisoned for eating seeds
* The mass killing of native predators and species that compete with livestock
* Synthetic fertilizers kill fish and wildlife.
* Overuse of “natural” fertilizers (manure) create dead zones, kill fish and wildlife
* The death of 15-30 billion sea animals in the US (world numbers?) and the significant reduction in biodiversity of the oceans
* The death of ten billion land animals in the US and 50 billion worldwide
All the suffering that is behind a vegan diet is also behind an omnivorous diet AND THEN SOME. The sheer magnitude of suffering to make an omnivorous diet possible in the United States, for example, far exceeds even the most processed, unhealthiest of vegan diets. It just does.
Don’t get me wrong – I used to like meat. I LOVED cheese and milk. A lot. It made me feel happy and healthy. There is no shame in ignorant pleasure of food. But to know the suffering? To know the torture and maternal deprivation and physical mutilations? To know all that and to STILL find pleasure? I, for one, could not do that. And if I had some super rare health problem that somehow required me to eat animal products? I wouldn’t glorify it. I wouldn’t try and claim veganism is somehow a purveyor of the same or more suffering than an omnivorous diet. I couldn’t. I would think of the animals I have killed, unknowingly. I would think of the cow lying in the field, dying. I would think of the hens I have pulled bruised and battered from egg farms. I would think of the cow and calf on a dairy farm, the two most precious of individuals who MADE me become vegan, and I couldn’t do it. There would be no justification for me. There would be not one ounce of pleasure in eating them or their by-products. None.
So while I do not think the poster is a horrible, awful human being for choosing to be a part of more suffering (and that is truth, not hyperbole), I cannot in good faith, stand idly by and accept that we should just “eat what makes us happy”, suffering and unnecessary killing be damned.
Because there are 10 billion nonhumans in this country who face the kill room, who flinch and scream and cry, who DIE for this so-called “happy and healthy” lifestyle, and they deserve a voice. They deserve to have people stand up and say that it’s not okay to eat whomever makes you feel ‘happy and healthy’ just because you can. There is no pride or joy in choosing to NOT be a part of egregious suffering and then, for whatever reasons, choosing (or feeling forced) to be a part of that cycle again.
Eat what makes you feel happy and healthy. Remember this, though – when given the choice between causing more harm and less harm, it is our moral imperative to choose the latter. When we cannot, when we have subscribed to an ethical lifestyle of veganism and – whatever the reasons – cannot/will not do it anymore, I ask this of you – think of the cow alone and dying in a field, and please, please do not find pleasure in her suffering, in her flesh. Please.
ETA: I don’t intend this as a spring-board to argue about the person in question, please be cognizant of that.
Stephanie Ernst
Marji
Kelly G.
Deb
Mary Martin
Thank you, Marji. Thank you. I fought tears as I read this. Both posts are troubling me, for various reasons, the first one especially. I am glad that lovely people like you and Ginny have responded thoughtfully on the various aspects of this issue.
It has been hard to read, and I think it is important to respond with thoughtful discourse of our own. Ginny does a great job from a nutritional standpoint. For me, it always comes back to the non-humans, so my perspective is of course from a moral and ethical view. There are other issues that were brought up that can hopefully be discussed as well.
Love this post. Lay it all out there. Many of us try to make it seem like a vegan diet is some kind of holy moralistic achievement, devoid of any suffering. Just give it to us straight. Love how you notice that others are confused or unknowing, not horrible or evil. An argument as close as possible to honesty and truth from both sides is an argument I can get behind. And the most likely to be listened to.
I am honored to know the fine woman who held that dear cow as she passed from earth’s scene. I believe she was waiting for you to find her, acknowledge her, respect her, love her. Her last breath must have been a sigh of relief that her new BFF had arrived just in time.
Any human being with an ounce of compassion should be moved by the passionate plea of your last paragraph, Marji. I pray that all those seeking pleasure from food look within their hearts and unlock their natural empathy for animals that, like a prisoner, longs to be released.
Thanks, Olivia, that is very kind of you.
I don’t know if I gave her much comfort, she was pretty far gone. But, if anything, I was witness to an intimate, if sad, moment and the one “gift” I could give her was to not turn away.
One winter, I stopped after the person in front of me hit a cat with their car. I lifted the cat off the street & sat with her on the side of the road while she gasped & died. I petted her & cried, I didn’t care who saw me doing it. I don’t think I gave that cat any comfort, but it was purring despite the blood running from its mouth.
It’s an experience I’ll never forget…
I really appreciate the way you approached this. You are not denying the possibility of health issues that require a choice between personal health/suffering and non human suffering. I was so upset to read the original, but could not find a way to say this.
I would personally always choose survival, so I do not want to condemn those who make that choice. and it sounds like in her case, it was an issue. but many people look at that who do not have the same issues, to rationalize eating “tasty” dead flesh. It made my stomach churn.
THANK YOU for writhing this post. I have no other words to say right now. Just thank you.
Thanks for this post. Because of your disclaimer at the end, I won’t say anything more than that.
Hi!
Great write-up! I was trying not to tear up while reading your post.
And, I was actually directed to your page after reading that “person’s” blog article.
I am actually kinda confused. So for those who take up veganism and do it right, but get unhealthy in the long term, what do you suggest? Just stick to veganism no matter what?
I am not trying to attack you here, please don’t think that way. This is my honest question and after reading that “person’s” blog article, I have to say that that I am even more confused and I am not sure whether or not to take up a vegan diet because of its possible health disadvantages.
Thanks
I am not a health professional at all, but I do believe there are very healthy ways and unhealthy ways to be vegan. I personally tend toward the unhealthy — too much junk food, processed foods and sugar (which I fluctuate with and I do notice a change for the better when I eat less of it). If, as a vegan you feel you start having health issues, I would suggest finding a vegan health practitioner if you can (even online, Brenda Davis is a vegan nutritionist, for example, and you can find a wealth of information at PCRM, Physicians’ Committee for Responsible Medicine). I would also suggest that oftentimes health problems can take years to develop, so that veganism may not always (or even often?) be the root cause of ill/poor health (I suppose that also depends upon how long one has been vegan). I know of people who are raw food vegans, and those for whom raw foods don’t work. I see an acupuncturist (she’s vegan) and tend toward more lightly cooked foods in a very vague macrobiotic sense. I think what’s most important is to be aware of your own body, to know your body and when things start to feel wrong somehow to take stock of what’s going on. It could be that you need vitamins, or more fresh food, or less sugar — whatever.
But you might be interested in this video:
I’m not suggesting that every body is the same, but that it seems to me the most unhealthy vegans are the ones who simply replicate the SAD in vegan form.
This is all, of course, speculation. I can tell you anecdotally, however, that I notice a difference in my health (especially my mental health) when I steam and eat more vegetables and cut out the cane and beet sugar and molasses. I did an incredible cleanse earlier this year as well — it was pretty strict — but I felt and looked healthier than I had in years.
Don’t know if any of that helps but hopefully it’s food for thought. :)
Vinny, please, please read this post from Ginny Messina, a knowledgeable, respected dietitian, in response to the Voracious post: http://www.theveganrd.com/2010/11/do-ex-vegans%e2%80%99-stories-make-the-case-against-vegan-diets.html. You can find additional resources there on vegan nutrition as well. That people are being swayed not to go vegan because of the post’s misinformation about nutrition is just devastating. It’s also pointed out, in the post and the comments, that there must be a placebo effect at play in some of the claims about what happened immediately (or in the few weeks following) that first bite of flesh–because scientifically, what is described is just simply impossible.
Wait, so your answer to Vinny is it’s impossible for a vegan diet to make you sick or unhealthy, because that is really what Ginny says in that article.
The article argues that there isn’t anything nutritionally lacking in a vegan diet. *Not* that, for whatever reason, a vegan can’t be sick or unhealthy. But if that vegan is sick it is not the result of the *diet* itself, because veganism is perfectly healthy at all stages of the life cycle, but for third variables (e.g. individual health reasons).
I ask this really in search of knowledge and to see the logic worked out as I am having a hard time seeing it all.
Take the following situation:
Where I live, there is an immense appreciation for cows for their milk products. It is not uncommon to take a hike up to the top of a mountain vale only to see a herd of cows that was led up there in early spring to roam freely, eat freely, live freely through late summer before being fed on warmer lower pastures and eventually barned for the winter and fed hay. Most of the time, the cows are left to themselves to live how they wish. A farmer comes to them in a truck periodically to milk the cows. I can quite easily find butter in the grocery or directly at the farmer’s market that is made from this milk.
Now, in order to replace this butter in my diet, I can also go to my local organic store and buy solid palm oil. I have a hard time finding margarine here that I can be sure is vegan made from more locally sourced products (from sunflower oil, for example). Therefore, my choice is butter or palm oil, which is made very far away. There is destruction to the ecosystem to farm and collect the palm seeds for oil. There is potentially irrevocable damage to the natural habitats of oragutans. There is also the death of animals involved in the processing, packaging, and shipping of the palm oil to where I live – more so than the locally sourced butter.
From the balance I can see, it seems more damage is done to the environment and to animals through my purchase of the palm oil than in the purchase of the butter. That should mean that I should use the butter in order to cause the least possible harm to animals that I can. It seems that the butter would, in this specific case, be more in line with veganism than the vegan palm oil. But can that be right? What am I to do?
The palm oil issue is a HUGE problem. I’ve had a little margarine since May, but mostly I’ve been going without because of that (and I won’t eat dairy).
My concern here is that for any business, especially a small business, to be viable it has to focus on its bottom line. When those cows’ milk production is used up, where do they go? How long do they usually live? I think Marji knows the lifespan of a cow; if I’m not mistaken it’s naturally around 20 years or so. Most dairy cows live to be about 4. In the case of the small farmer you mention, how many cows can s/he sustainably keep feeding without their becoming a liability (and of course there’s the environmental cost of the feed for the cows throughout the winter). I am also pretty sure that in order to produce milk cows must keep being impregnated. I guess that the farmer doesn’t have the money or space to keep all the calves, and therefore must separate them from their mothers (a horrible experience for mama and baby).
So while the perception that this is all sustainable and cruelty-free is there, I think scratching the surface might show another story.
Again, I really appreciate your concern about the palm oil thing — how vegan can Earth Balance, for example, be if its use is wiping out an entire species?
Therefore, my suggestion would be to start reducing your butter/margarine consumption to a level you feel comfortable with. As I said, I have eaten some of it when I’ve gone out (on cake frosting, for example, or with pancakes), but I haven’t bought any since May. I might miss it on mashed potatoes or something but it’s actually a lot easier to do without than I’d thought.
Good luck to you. This is a really confusing and shitty issue.
Thanks so much Wendy for your kind and insightful response! You have really given me another layer of complexity to think about. Maybe the best thing for me to do is to try and use liquid oils where I can (harder for some baked goods, but there are natural blended vegetables that can be used to make breads like zucchini and pumpkin breads) in the short term, and talk to my local store to let them know my concerns with the palm oil and my desire for other choices. They are pretty nice, and I think they will try what they can. It is a really hard thing to try and figure out!
Hello Confused,
The site wouldn’t let me reply to your response to me, so I’m just adding another response here.
I’m not a huge baker, but I have found a lot of good recipes in Great Good Desserts Naturally by Fran Costigan, none of which use margarine — all use liquid oils, from the divine chocolate cake to the peanut butter cups (which I have not yet tried). She uses a lot of maple sugar but you can substitute cane sugar if maple is too hard/expensive to find.
Anyway, I should probably add that this issue came up in an AR forum over a year ago and the problem with the palm oil margarine is that the palm is needed for that buttery/hard consistency. At this point the only alternative to palm in vegan margarine seems to by partially hydrogenated oils, which are really bad for human health! So don’t be surprised if your local store can’t be of much help. It is, without doubt, a conundrum. As with most things, though, even a reduction is a help (sometimes I get all hardass and think that time is running out and it may be too late even to reduce, but that is definitely better than nothing and since I’m still eating some of it Iprobably ought to shut my trap ;) . So if you’re anything like I used to be and going through a thing of margarine every two or three weeks, reducing to one a month or every other month will likely be a good start.
I wish I had an answer to this problem, because it’s hard sometimes for people who are contemplating the switch to veganism to often throw out all those old tastes and comfort foods; and it is also difficult for me, as a vegan, to listen to vegan organizations tout these products as some sort of miracle replacement.
Still, reduction would be great and if your store comes up with any really good solutions please let me know!
Thanks again Wendy! I wasn’t aware of the extent of the palm oil issue and it’s necessity for giving margarine that more solid feel. Still, it’s worth a try, and I will let you know if I discover any thing useful. In the meantime, I’ll be checking out those recipes!
I too teared up while reading this, Marji. Thank you for your compassion and your calm, rational deployment of facts. I know I’ll think often of your friend the cow and the incredible final gift you were able to give her.
Beautifully put, Marji. I can’t agree with you more. And I like to think that, despite that cow’s horrible life she at least left this violent world knowing compassion, at last, from a human being. That is no small thing.
The thing I have been trying to convey on any forum or thread concerning the *person* has been not to attack her personally, but to look at the reasoning behind what has happened. I guess I can understand the need to choose one’s own personal health over a whole list of other things, but I think I have come too far over the years to just go back to eating meat or animal products. I had a few set-backs early on in my vegetarianism (I went veg in 1990) but ultimately became vegan because of that. It can be tiresome to be constantly thinking about a balanced diet, but my yoga teacher gave me a piece of great advice: eat a rainbow every day. That seemed to have most, if not all, my daily requirements met.
The one thing I don’t like about what exvegans say is the belief in the misinformation presented to them to persuade them to eat meat again. ALL information is slanted, ALL of it. The trick is, can you do your own research & come to your own conclusion? If so, then I respect that choice. I make no excuses for why I strayed from vegetarianism for a few years (I was pregnant/nursing and craved meat like I was a cougar or something), I don’t say my doctor told me to eat meat, I don’t say that I needed the extra protein. I will tell you straight out I WANTED MEAT and so I ate it. There. No excuses. I believe in straight talk, clear actions & taking responsibility for both. And I deeply respect the same in those around me.
Thank you for this.
Um, where is the comparison of an ORGANIC vegan diet NOT using mono crops or GMO products? A lot of vegans try pretty damn hard to be green and avoid GMO stuff like the plague. And raw foodists are emphasizing growing your own crops in square foot gardens, eating “wild” native foods, and actually TRY to buy local or THINK about the workers.
80to 90some percent of the grain in this country is grown to feed animals. Obviously if we planted kale and fruit trees, we could feed more people without giving them cance, heart disease and diabetes ( IN MY OPINION).
Hi Maria,
I’m a vegan who consumes 90-95% organics and I know what you’re talking about. Still, a lot of the larger organic farms are owned by agribusinesses, and there are still animals killed in the process of sowing and harvesting.
There are, though, and awful lot of one-track-mind vegans who do not even attempt organics, who subsist on crap like Trix and other vegan junk food. But what I understood from Marji’s post is this is the worst-case scenario of vegan eating, and it’s still kinder and better than omnivorous eating. I read this as a response to ex-vegans and omnis who make all kinds of ludicrous and uneducated claims about the unsustainability of veganism (especially when vegans might buy less locally than some omnivores/locavores). Ugh, I read Lierre Keith’s horrible book for a reading group so I can tell you there are a lot of former vegans and vegetarians who will use these kinds of excuses. I don’t think Marji was suggesting that there aren’t those of us who don’t try harder. Just that even at the most unsustainable, veganism remains more sustainable than carnism.
:)
Thank you for this post! I was so angered when I read the blog post you cited. Simply put, she is an idiot and is giving veganism a bad name. I am just furious that there are people like her out here.
“There is no shame in ignorant pleasure of food. But to know the suffering? To know the torture and maternal deprivation and physical mutilations? To know all that and to STILL find pleasure? I, for one, could not do that. ”
Thanks so much for stating that… Even though I was consuming eggs/dairy as a vegetarian… In my mind – I was (I thought) “vegan”. I was deceived (or did not examine enough) about those “products”. My “ethics” were there… Just blind-sided.
I am absolutely with you about the callous way some can know about the suffering and STILL find pleasure… I’m stumped what to do with those sorts as I do believe they are emotionally dead and almost beyond reach. :(
I can appreciate your point of view and that you feel very passionately about it.
It seems though that you are stating that if a person has to eat meat for health reasons that they must feel horrible and guilty about it? Is that a healthy attitude to take about the food that we must put into our bodies?
I suppose it is a little difficult to explain without conveying some form of agreement with your first question. The person in question was vegan for ethical reasons, meaning she abstained from eating animals out of moral reasons. So one would think that if, for whatever reasons, she had to go back to eating animal products – which she understood involved animal suffering – she wouldn’t act as if it was akin to a sexual experience or glorify it.
But she did, and yeah, I have a problem with that. And yes, I suppose I expect a certain level of decorum from a well-known ethical vegan blogger when she shared her first experience with eating dead animal flesh.
Do I think she is horrible? Or she should feel horrible? No.
As to “healthy attitude about food”, it’s hard for me to have a happy (which is what you are implying I should have) attitude about putting the flesh of suffering animals into my body, even if I had to.
Thank you for the reply!
I didn’t mean to imply that you (or anyone) should feel happy about eating meat.
I just was wondering if you thought that someone else should feel bad for the rest of their life because he/she had to eat meat. I’m glad to hear that’s not what you meant and I appreciate that you took the time to reply.
Karla, personally, I *would* feel bad because eating animals involves causing harm and death. Harm and death are impartially bad. Now, if I required flesh for health reasons that harm and death is necessary; however, it is still bad for the animals who suffer and die. It is a no-win situation, in other words, and like running into a burning house with two people and only being able to save one, it is something that I would regret.
Moreover, it makes you wonder: how much suffering and death will it take to keep me alive and why am I worth it? If, for health reasons, I was a non-vegan, I would eat few animals quietly and spend the majority of my time advocating that the other 98% of people who aren’t individual outliers and *can* be health vegans go vegan.
@Alex:
If, for health reasons, I was a non-vegan, I would eat few animals quietly and spend the majority of my time advocating that the other 98% of people who aren’t individual outliers and *can* be health vegans go vegan.
That would be blatant hypocrisy, acting one way and yet pretending and advocating another. More significantly, where exactly do you get that 98% figure? In your hypothetical situation, you would (wrongly) be counted in that supposed 98%. If people for whom a vegan diet genuinely does not work just pretend otherwise, how are we to know how many people really can and can’t eat a healthy vegan diet?
I ask all this because I suspect that many people do fall into that category – forced to eat at least some non-vegan foods for health reasons, but keeping it secret due either to personal conviction or to fear of social consequences. The hardcore vegan response to any “outing” of this sort of thing is a concerted “shutupshutupshutup”, as demonstrated by much of the response to Tasha’s open apostasy.
In some of my other comment exchanges here, there has been the question of whether it really is necessary to eat non-vegan foods as part of a healthy diet. I have been a bit simplistic on that point, I fear – given that some people manifestly can not be healthy on a vegan diet, and that some people quite clearly can, the true question is about how many people can and can’t be healthy on a vegan diet. From what I’ve seen, activist vegans work pretty hard to keep that information from ever being established. Given that proper information is a prerequisite for rational decision-making, I have a very big problem with any attempt to restrict the ascertaining of relevant information (particularly such important information). That 98% figure you used appears to be based on nothing – the true figure could be 99%, or it could be 1%. Whilever those who try and fail to be healthy on a vegan diet are urged to keep quiet, we have no way of knowing. We’ve established that humans are physiologically very varied, so there is no way to determine this figure theoretically – the only option is empirical evidence, which you are working hard to suppress and distort.
The entire vegan argument falls apart if this goes the ‘wrong’ way. If 99% of people need non-vegan foods in order to be healthy, then all the arguments about ‘animal rights’ add up to nothing more than an argument for humane practices in animal farming (and I’m all for humane practices). Even if only 0.001% of people need non-vegan foods, that’s still an ironclad argument for the perpetuation of an animal industry unless we argue that humans should be condemned to suffer malnutrition needlessly. If you happen to fall in the whatever-percent who can be healthy on a vegan diet, by all means do so. I suggest, however, that it is misguided at best and sadistic at worst to argue that everyone should either eat vegan or feel guilty about eating meat.
Er… right to live? There is no life without death; every living thing dies. That being the case, there are really only two issues with killing: suffering, and loss of future time alive.
If (like me) you’re bothered by cruelty to animals, then take an interest in the details of animal treatment for any meat you eat (and especially avoid halal and kosher meat). More significantly, worry about the animals cut to pieces (while still alive) in the normal course of harvesting grain. They suffer. A cow killed by Captive Bolt Pistol (the usual method afaik) does not. If we care about suffering, it makes no sense to argue that grain is “cruelty-free” while beef is not; I would instead argue the converse.
If you’re worried about future quality life, I suggest you consider both quality and length of life for the wild animals from which our present-day meat animals were domesticated. I refer you also to the incidental barbaric slaughtering of small animals while harvesting grain, as mentioned above.
With the debatable exception of plants and microorganisms, every living thing eats death in one way or another. This is a basic fact of life, and is unavoidable. What exactly makes the life of a cow worth more to you than the life of a carrot, for instance? If it is the capacity for suffering (which is a valid concern), then your objection is adequately met by the humane (ie. suffering-free) slaughter of meat animals.
As to actual quantity of suffering, this depends on the details. Your blind assertion that food production for an omnivorous human diet “just does” cause more animal suffering is an unsupported statement of belief, and I assert that you are just plain wrong.
who face the kill room, who flinch and scream and cry
Er… nice dramatisation, but it’s complete fantasy. Current mass-production slaughter methods are humane, in the sense that animals do not suffer. Even if you don’t trust human decency to avoid causing unnecessary suffering, trust commercial pragmatism: stress just before death lowers the quality of the meat.
Causing less harm is in fact the single axiom upon which my entire personal ethical framework rests, but the evidence available to me (and to you, if only you’d look) quite thoroughly refutes your claim that a vegan diet necessarily (or even plausibly) results in less harm. I take no particular pleasure in the death of an animal, and certainly no pleasure in suffering. I do, however, take pleasure in food (including meat). Deliberately or not, you commit the fallacy of false equivalence when you equate suffering with flesh.
I have no issue with your choice to eat a vegan diet; that is your choice, and I have no grounds for disapproval. I do, however, take issue with your unsupported assertion that your choice is morally superior to any other. Oh, and the meat we eat is not “the flesh of suffering animals” – even if the animal in question had been mistreated, death ends all suffering.
Did you even read my post?
All the suffering in a vegan diet is found in an omnivorous diet AND THEN SOME. It is not realistic to raise farmed animals on the scale we raise them without feeding them grain – guess where grain comes from? Large fields of wheat, soy, corn. And guess what happens when you harvest that corn, wheat and soy for livestock? The same thing that happens when you harvest edible corn, wheat and soy for human consumption – animals die.
I’ve been in slaughterhouses and they are terrifying places. A captive bolt gun applied correctly will stun an animal insensible to pain, per federal law. In large slaughterhouses, captive bolt guns are applied incorrectly frequently enough to be a problem. In small slaughterhouses, I’ve seen it used incorrectly resulting in unnecessary suffering. The moment of death, though, does not mean there is no suffering – slaughterhouses are frightening places, thus they inflict suffering on the animals entering them. There is no avoiding that.
Remember, all the suffering that occurs from a vegan diet occurs for a standard omnivorous diet AND THEN SOME. And when you don’t HAVE to cause suffering, don’t. The overwhelming majority of human beings can survive on a plant-based diet – that is a diet that causes, overall, less suffering. Not no suffering, less.
It has always baffled me why meat apologists refuse to see that the same death that is behind a vegan diet is behind their diet plus the additional unnecessary death of animals, both wildlife and domestic. It is nonsensical, really.
Marji – “he same death that is behind a vegan diet is behind their diet plus the additional unnecessary death of animals”. Exactly, the way I see it is that as they are filtering OUR food through the process of fattening animals. The same damage is done only magnified with other issues as well. Very good point. ;)
I did indeed read your post, Marji – thanks for asking.
OK, so you object to factory farming. I understand that and even tend to agree with you, though it’s worth noting here that universally abandoning the practice right now would directly cause starvation (and hence suffering) on a scale unprecedented in human history. Anyway, I will concede that you make a valid argument against the means by which most meat is produced today. What you have not done, however, is to make a valid universal case against the consumption of meat. To take one obvious example from my own diet, how is kangaroo meat a less ethical food option than any mass-farmed vegan option? Kangaroos are wild animals (ie. not farmed), and culled humanely. In many places this culling is necessary for the health of the local ecosystem; is it more ethical to let the carcases rot? Even in situations where the culling is primarily for food rather than for population control, the suffering involved in that food production is practically nil. Oh, and the environmental impact also compares very favourably to pretty much any other food source.
My first point here is merely that it is naive, simplistic and misleading to argue that a vegan diet is necessarily more ethical in any sense than an omnivorous diet. An argument against current mainstream meat-farming practices is not an absolute argument against meat-eating.
My second point is that death is natural and ultimately unavoidable, and is therefore not per se a valid argument against meat (or veganism, since crops are also alive). I’m far more concerned about suffering.
Pat, I don’t have the time or knowledge to compare every single diet on earth. I made a decision to compare a standard vegan diet with a standard omnivorous diet, because those are the two diets the person in question chose between.
If you are concerned with suffering, then the best way to cause limited amount of suffering is to garden veganically. No animal inputs. Prevention of pests rather than killing them. Growing plants that do not have a nervous system, sentience or nociceptors.
Clubbing and shooting kangaroos, a species unique to one continent on earth, causes suffering. There is the chase – fear, suffering. There is the kill – pain, suffering. For the young, the fear, pain and suffering is more prolonged as they are ripped from maternal pouches and clubbed to death. Not convincingly less harmful (to the kangaroos, in this case) than a home-grown vegan diet. Kangaroos, again limited to one continent, compete with livestock when they should not have to (if we cared about native species, of course). They are harangued, harassed and killed by farmers. They are forced to suffer by being excluded from native habitats by sheep and cattle ranchers.
A kangaroo has a desire to live. If you are able to avoid taking that life to live, then that is what you should do. If you must go out and hunt kangaroo yourself in order to survive, you have no alternatives, that is your prerogative and no judgment from me…but my guess is your life situation is not that of a subsistence hunter out in the wilderness with no access to alternative means of nutrition. But taking the life of another when you don’t have to causes unnecessary suffering – the animal is denied their right to exist. Predators kill because they have a biological instinct to do so…they may even physiologically enjoy the chase and kill, but there is no choice for a carnivore, no moral imperative.
As to “rotting carcasses”, dead animals feed other animals and organisms. The body is not wasted. It’s consumed by scavengers/predators and broken down by bacteria and maggots. Not wasted at all. Nature is what it is – I’m fine with leaving it that way. It’s both pretty and ugly, cruel and kind. We have done everything in our power to be apart from nature, and I don’t see too many folks leading the charge to return to the paleolithic lifestyle. As such, we can choose to take the lives of other sentient beings and we can choose not to.
And I believe choosing not to is more sustainable – when done right – than choosing to…and I certainly believe choosing not to take the life of another causes less suffering. Yes, simplistic. No, not naive. Nor is it misleading.
While I appreciate your point of view, and I understand there are a lot of details and nuances to this debate than ever could be discussed in this setting, I doubt we will be convinced of the validity of each other’s arguments. I do appreciate considering other ideas and insights, I’m just not convinced an omnivorous diet causes less unnecessary suffering.
Thanks for this. This is the type of logic that didn’t make sense her article and her previous one on Bill Clinton. She obviously had to convince herself that she was somehow doing harm as a vegan in order to make her new diet work for her.
Honest opinion? I fully respect anyone’s choice to heal themselves from severe illness and depression, regardless of what it requires them to eat. Could people like Tasha be missing something that could have allowed them to thrive on a vegan diet? Possibly. Is it my place to pressure such a person AGAINST looking at the moral consequences of killing HERSELF? To make lots of personal conjectures about how she wasn’t trying hard enough, was on placebo affect, etc.? It’s her body. HERS. I cannot speak for her experience. I cannot dwell on the fact that she got pleasure out of healing her body, just because it involved eating slaughtered animals. She obviously gave veganism a real effort, and that is something I respect.
What I don’t follow is that her theoretical transformation is as revolutionary as her physical/emotional one, which is what she would like us to think.
“it’s not okay to eat whomever makes you feel ‘happy and healthy’ just because you can”
Yeah, that’s the thing. Some people aren’t doing it “just because they can.”
Thank you for such a well written response. It is important to understand in what cases people need to go back to eating meat to feel healthy. Judging by the information that Ginny Messina wrote in her latest post, the person in question might not have had that need. And it does not appear that she tried hard enough to investigate the causes of some of her health issues. The fact that she was healed immediately also makes me very sceptical. And lastly, I just can’t wrap my mind around how a person who believed in the ethical reasons of veganism can go on like that praising meat. Even if she truly needed to go back to eating meat for health reasons…
Animals don’t have “rights” as humans do. Animals do not have souls. Animals are property. We have a responsibility to ensure sustainability by not over-hunting, over-fishing, over-killing for the food that we eat. We also have a responsibility to not kill anything we’re not going to eat (that’s wasteful). As to refraining from eating meet because it’s cruel or oppressive of animals, don’t make me laugh!
Plants are also “alive” you know, so if we were to give animals rights and try to protect animals from suffering, it would make hyppocrits out of us if we were to rip fruits of plants and eat them or upturn whole plants to eat their roots (which would be a decidedly painful experience if they had nerve endings).
Graham, just to clarify, when you refer to “animals” do you only refer to food animals, or do you also include companion animals such as dogs & cats? Personally, I see no difference between a cat or a pig or a dolphin, just differences in their condition (pet, food, entertainment).
People not over-hunting, over-fishing or over-killing would be a great start IF our society were actually hunting or fishing for our own food! I don’t think that strolling the aisles of a grocery store qualifies as hunting. If we were still a society of hunter/gatherers would there be this moral debate at all? Do we debate the morality of tribes in Africa who still live off the animals & the land with none of modern conveniences (or choices) that we have here in the USA?
To clarify my point: “society” refers NOT to sustenance hunters such as indigenous or native cultures living within our modern borders, but to people like us who are obviously modern enough to have computers with which to participate in these discussions.
QUOTE: We also have a responsibility to not kill anything we’re not going to eat (that’s wasteful)
Exactly. Factory farms raise & kill WAY more animals than we consume. All those under-plastic-packages of meats in the butcher shop aren’t all bought, some are thrown in the garbage once they pass their expiration date.
This society in the US has a history of killing more than we consume. Before Europeans came to North America, the Native Americans were killing only what they consumed: one bison could feed & clothe many people for a long time. But along came Europeans who would kill many bison and only take bits & pieces, laying waste not only to herds of wild animals, but decimating the food supply of the native people!
The plant argument isn’t even worth getting into until someone discovers a plant with a brain stem & sentience.
Laughing away the real suffering of farmed animals is hardly a winning argument.
Hi Graham… No one is saying that animals “have rights as humans do”. No one is advocating that animals should vote, drive a car or enter into contracts. However they do have a right to their own lives… In spite of the most in the world who opt to ignore this right.
Also humans were once “property” – Just because something is legal does not mean it is a morally correct course to pursue.
And this “soul” you speak of – You choose to make this the standard for your argument to justify killing — Yet it is not tangible. How very conveinent (or sly) to base an action on something that can’t be validated.
Finally on plants: “which would be a decidedly painful experience if they had nerve endings”… Indeed that word “if” makes all the difference in the world.
Let’s see how this sounds…
Graham doesn’t have “rights” as “regular” humans do. Graham does not have a soul. Graham is our property. We have a responsibility to ensure sustainability by not over-hunting, over-fishing, over-killing Graham’s children that we eat. We also have a responsibility to not kill anything we’re not going to eat (that’s wasteful). As to refraining from eating Graham or his children because it’s cruel or oppressive of him, don’t make me laugh!
If we get the majority of society to agree with the above, it will make it true, doesn’t matter what Graham thinks, we humans KNOW better, the (im)moral majority rules! Ha ha!
AlexK – My hat’s off to you for your clever verbal jujitsu! That turn-around really illustrates the naked truth of it all. Well done.
@Marji:
As far as “standard” has any meaning here, “standard vegan diet” vs. “standard omnivorous diet” is a no-brainer. This is not the choice that the person in question made, though – I don’t think it makes any sense to describe her current diet as “standard omnivorous”.
Clubbing and shooting kangaroos
Shooting, yes – single bullet to the head, just as humane as CBP done right. Clubbing, no – you seem quite keen to assume brutality without or even against evidence.
a species unique to one continent on earth
Nicely emotive, but doesn’t actually affect the level of suffering. Might be relevant if extinction were a danger, which it is not.
There is the chase – fear, suffering
No, there is not. The only way to even keep up with a kangaroo at speed is with a car or motorbike on a fairly decent road – on kangaroos’ usual terrain, there’s not a chance of that. Oh, and even if you could keep up it’s impossible to shoot accurately while driving at any speed on pretty much anything except a sealed road. Again, you seem quite happy to make stuff up.
For the young, the fear, pain and suffering is more prolonged as they are ripped from maternal pouches and clubbed to death
Where do you get this stuff? Hunters target young males – no one hunts female kangaroos. Again, you’re making stuff up.
compete with livestock when they should not have to
You’ve gotta be kidding me. Livestock are limited by fences. Kangaroos are not.
They are harangued, harassed and killed by farmers
Er… I don’t even know where to start. Suffice it to say, that’s complete garbage.
They are forced to suffer by being excluded from native habitats by sheep and cattle ranchers
Do you have any concern whatsoever for the truth? Your statement is patently false in quite a number of ways, many of which are easily checked by means of a simple Google search.
1. Kangaroos aren’t “excluded” from any native habitats. Bluntly, there’s no way to do it except with very high electric fences. They go wherever they want to go.
2. There are huge areas of protected habitat for kangaroos and other animals.
3. There are huge areas of uncultivated land, in which kangaroos roam free.
4. Even cropland is open to kangaroos – they tend to avoid it, but they’ll come if they get hungry.
If you must go out and hunt kangaroo yourself in order to survive, you have no alternatives, that is your prerogative and no judgment from me – but my guess is your life situation is not that of a subsistence hunter out in the wilderness with no access to alternative means of nutrition.
Nope, I have choices. Could you explain to me why the humane killing of a kangaroo so I can eat a steak causes more suffering than the horrific shredding of however many small furry critters so I can eat a vegan meal?
The body is not wasted
I never said it was. But how many small furry critters could be saved from horrific slice-and-dice deaths if that roo were instead eaten by humans?
I’m just not convinced an omnivorous diet causes less unnecessary suffering
Neither am I, and I have not made that absolute statement. I merely object to your absolute statement that a vegan diet necessarily less suffering than an omnivorous diet, since it is fairly easy to provide specific examples to the contrary.
SAVE THE COWS! EAT MOAR CHICKEN!
No, none of my statements are false. There are several government reports on the status of kangaroos and hunting that prove my statements true. Done and done.
You want to come up with every specious argument you can to support killing nonhumans for your diet.
A vegan diet is, overall, a diet that causes less suffering. All I’m getting from you is ways to rationalize killing nonhumans when you don’t have to.
Hello Marji,
I disagree with your argument that a vegan diet causes less suffering. At every meal, there is a choice to be made. The vegan choice is not always the choice of least suffering.
I raise sheep here on my property as food for myself and my family. Lambs are born on pasture where they grow up with their mothers, eating nothing but grass, living among wild creatures and tall Douglas fir trees, on rocky soil that is unsuited for crops. The lambs spend six months or so converting grass (unusable to humans) into grass-fed meat, and then they are slaughtered humanely. There are no collateral deaths–one lamb death is enough to feed my family lamb for a year. There is no destruction of habitat; no plowing of fields; no use of pesticides or fossil fuels. There are many vegan dietary choices which cause far more suffering (and environmental damage) than a meal of my grass-fed lamb. So why make the arbitrary decision to “go vegan,” rather than eating mindfully and making the choice of less suffering at every meal?
Incidentally did you know that conjugated linoleic acid is difficult to get anywhere but from grass-fed meat, and that it has known anti-cancer properties? (www.eatwild.com)
In my personal opinion, vegans begin with the premise “meat is bad” and will then use any number of unrelated arguments, none of which stand up on their own, to justify that premise.
Let me ask you this: Do you believe it is realistic to feed the world on the lambs you raise? Do you believe that the way you raise lambs is how most raise sheep or other farmed animals for food production?
In order for the production of nonhumans to sustain the current human population, it is impossible to raise animals in the manner you believe is “humane”. To produce enough flesh and by-products for consumer demand requires grain production. It is not feasible to raise 66 billion nonhumans on pasture (or whatever feed you believe is more sustainable than grain) alone.
So in order for people to consume animal products at their current rate or even less, it requires the confinement of nonhumans as well as the production of grain (which requires the death of wildlife in myriad ways). It requires extensive suffering.
A diet that causes the least amount of suffering in terms of wildlife + slaughtered nonhumans + exploited humans is either a plant-based diet or a diet extremely low in animal products. Since we do not require animal products to survive, per every meaningful scientific data to date, it seems ethically sound to abstain from all or most animal products because they cause more suffering than plant-based products. Remember, most farmed animals do not come from farms like yours, nor is it reasonable or sustainable to do so.
I find it extremely interesting that the pasture-based ranchers are coming out of the woodwork to tout an animal based diet as ideal when pasture-based ranches are exceedingly rare and unsustainable in terms of economic feasibility (i.e., pasture-based operations will not meet current market demand), particularly in the United States. While I have no doubt you care about the welfare of the animals you kill, I cannot find your supposition as anything but self-serving.
Replying to myself as I have no other option…I feel like you’ve totally changed the subject here. The point I was making was simply that some of the day to day dietary choices I make cause less suffering than many vegan dietary choices.
Is your new argument that I have a moral obligation to switch from my diet to a vegan diet, thus causing more suffering with at least some of my dietary choices, because a vegan diet could easily be implemented worldwide? If you want to go down that path, I’d be happy to have that discussion with you. But that’s an entirely different discussion from the one we were having before.
And honestly it seems pretty irrelevant…even if hypothetically veganism were more likely to work on a large scale than the way I eat (which I know is not the case but I’ll give you the hypothetical for now)…why on earth should I personally switch to veganism JUST BECAUSE IT CAN WORK ON A LARGE SCALE? That’s not a very compelling reason for me to change my diet. Now if you want to bring in another 20 different reasons why I should go vegan, fine. But again that is getting away from my original point, which is that many of my dietary choices cause less suffering than many vegan dietary choices.
Incidentally, I haven’t supported any factory farmed animal products since about 1998 or so, and I somewhat resent your comment about “pasture based ranchers coming out of the woodwork,” lol–I’m far from a rancher, just someone who raises food for their own family on a VERY small scale, because I don’t agree with the way food is grown commercially and I’d like to get away from that as much as possible. That includes commercially grown crops as well as animals by the way.
When a human believes that his livelihood, his health, his happiness, his satisfaction, even his life, depends upon harming another sentient being, he is focusing exclusively on himself and his own self-proclaimed needs.
He is perhaps afraid that he won’t have sufficient supply of something (whether it be food or specific nutrients or money to pay his bills or even a cure for a disease) unless he obtains these things at the expense of other living beings.
Or maybe he simply likes the feeling of power over weaker individuals. Or he lusts after the taste of flesh. Or he is relentlessly climbing the economic and social ladder. Or he is comfortable not questioning his cultural traditions. Or he thinks that the way he is using other living beings (read: sustainable farming) is better than the way other people (read: factory farms) use them.
Whatever his perceived justification, he will rationalize anything and everything he does in order not to feel guilty about causing harm — or death — to another being.
In the case of how we harm animals, humans have two easy outs that assuage their guilt: animals are legally the property of humans, and animals have been killed and eaten by humans for tens of thousands of years.
But if we humans feel we have the right to breed animals only to destroy them when it benefits us to do so, then there is nothing to stop humans from doing the same thing to other humans in countries where humans are treated like property or where tradition dictates that humans be sacrificed.
If we feel that violence and exploitation are acceptable vis a vis some species (cows, pigs, chickens, goats, cats, dogs, kangaroos, elephants, whales — the specific species depending on the country’s culture and available wildlife), this attitude opens the way for us to employ violence whenever we want our way, whenever we think we are superior to the “other,” and whenever we believe we have something to gain and nothing to lose.
To my dismay, I recently learned that Uganda is seeing a rise in the ritual sacrifice of human children and that other countries, including India, Indonesia, South Africa, Gabon and Tanzania, record ongoing incidents of human sacrifice (www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/04/05/ritual-sacrifice-of-child_n_525207.html).
It seems that the perpetrators are deluded by witch doctors into believing that they will get rich quick if they participate in the sacrifice of children. Sometimes the child’s parents are complicit in these horrendous crimes.
Why is it that children are looked at by these people as “products”? Could it be that, like most humans, they’re so used to regarding equally innocent and defenseless animals as mere “products”?
If you are loath to compare the two, why is that? It is because you have been taught that you have the right to dominate animals? But isn’t that the same attitude that leads to domination and brutalization of children, both emotionally and physically?
The entire article on child sacrifice is disturbing, including this quote: “If it is a sickness you try to treat it, and if they die that is one thing,” said Caroline’s father, Balluonzima Christ. “But when you slaughter a person like a goat, that is not easy.”
One wouldn’t expect that this dear, grief-stricken man would grasp that the same kind of selfish disregard that views goat sacrifice (and goat breeding, milking, slaughtering and eating) as acceptable is also the basis of the moral blindness that resulted in this heinous violence against his daughter. But while he may not be in an emotional place to understand that point, objective observers should be able to see the connection.
I think of myself as one such objective observer. I have nothing to gain in terms of personal pride or prestige or profits from animals — or from arguing against the exploitation of animals. I do believe, though, that I have a moral obligation to my fellow beings. That’s why I have taken so much time studying and thinking through this subject.
I am not trying to be disrespectful or to interfere with anyone’s life. I am simply attempting to show that there is life beyond using animals — a much richer, saner, kinder, healthier, freer life for us ALL. Animals and humans alike. And our earth, to boot!
I’m convinced that mankind has evolved to the point where we are intellectually ready to outgrow our dependence upon animals’ physical bodies and to accept our rightful role as their protectors–and their rightful role as our partners. (And our teachers! We have so much to learn about forgiveness and loyalty and pure affection and cooperation and honesty from our creature kin.)
But most of us don’t seem to be emotionally ready. Rather, we seem more interested in childishly avoiding the truth: the truth that we are treating animals, physically and mentally, as we would NEVER agree to be treated ourselves.
We really have no legitimate excuses left, either in the developed world or in the developing world, to use animals for our selfish purposes. The longer we do that, the more we’re prolonging the inevitable suffering that comes from that selfishness.
These words may not be reaching the hearts they are intended to reach. But the thoughts and feelings behind them must be doing some good somewhere.
For my fellow reformers, here are a few quotes (from well-known and little-known authors) that may lift your spirits as they do mine:
“Reformers are not usually popular, and it takes energy to forward constructive change. We can all feel tremendous pressure to leave the human scene unstirred. But unwillingness to forward reform is really a form of selfishness, and if we cave to that unwillingness, everyone’s progress stops sooner or later, including our own.” ~ Keith Collins
~ “At every crossing on the road that leads to the future, each progressive spirit is opposed by a thousand appointed to guard the past.” ~ Maurice Maeterlinck
~ “If you want to make enemies, try to change something.” ~ Woodrow Wilson
~ “Opposition to the good is always supported by illogical reasoning.” ~ Abingdon Bible Commentary
~ “To go against the dominant thinking of your friends, of most of the people you see every day, is perhaps the most difficult act of heroism you can have.” ~ Theodore H. White
Yes, me raising a few sheep in my pasture is leading directly to ritual human sacrifice in Africa. Why didn’t I see it before?
The reason you didn’t see it before (sarcasm aside) is that you are not the sheep, nor are you considering how the sheep feel or the right of the sheep NOT to be sacrificed for your perceived needs. It’s the same right as the right of human children not to be ritually sacrificed, I believe.
If I can do without sheep, so can you. If I can live with a light vegan (and carbon) footprint on the planet, so can you. (I’ll leave out of the conversation those who seem to require hunting to survive, though raising animals who are “gifts” from Heifer International and Oxfam is just plain backwards, perpetuating the cycle of violence and poor use of land, water, etc.)
Just as the world is becoming more earth-friendly, so can (and must) it become more animal-friendly, because that’s the only way to TRULY be whole-earth-friendly, not to mention human-friendly.
I’m grateful and glad you opted out of all forms of commercial food production! I’m catching up to your awareness, finally! Meaning I’m much more aware now than I was a few months ago that I can find better ways, even as a vegan, to do more things right, and thus more good.
I hope that all vegans will be ever-more-mindful of EVERYTHING we can do to reduce every kind of indirect suffering that we, like non-vegans, unintentionally cause. It’s a matter of keeping our eyes and hearts open every day. The woman who wrote today’s post on this blog, Mary Martin, is extremely conscientious about that (please see http://challengeoppression.com/2010/12/02/on-the-gift-of-awareness).
I believe Marji made her main point at the beginning of this long back-and-forth post-cum-comments. Her primary objection is also mine. We both think harming (including killing) animals for any reason (especially unnecessary reasons) is immoral. But you already know that (smile), even if my attempt to show that exploitive violence is the same across all species failed to win you over.
I’m no saint, but I can say in all honesty that as my heart has expanded and become more all-inclusive, the identity of the victim has become irrelevant to me. (Sure, it would be more emotionally devastating to me if my blood sister were murdered than it is to know that your sheep has endured the same fate, but that wouldn’t change the fact that both acts feel immoral to me, even if only one is considered legally criminal.)
We’re trained by our respective culture, aren’t we, to believe that some victims are worth more than others. Yet the action, and often the motive, of the perpetrator is cut from the same cloth. That is why I equated these two seemingly disparate kinds of killings.
As a human race, we seem to outgrow atrocities one at a time, from worst (killing human children) to less bad (killing elephants) to not bad at all (killing ants). Those are the rankings most people assign to these respective acts. But the victims don’t have a ranking, do they?
What I’m saying, I guess, is that ideally we ought to feel for all sentient beings everywhere, love all of them, and do good insofar as we can to all of them. Why not at least admit and strive for the ideal instead of settling for something less?
I’ll grant, though, that it’s a step-by-step process, and very individual.
OK, I’m retiring my soapbox from this post (I hope).
Well said, Olivia. So much better than I ever could. Thank you.
Kate, thank you. You have better arguments than mine here, since you’re actually obtaining your meat by more ethical means than mass-produced vegan food – all I can do here is point out logical inconsistencies in the vegan arguments, whereas you need only point to your own practices and quirk an eyebrow. It is not your fault that your arguments fall upon deaf ears here; among zealots, one can do but little persuasion.
Marji, underlying your response to Kate is the assumption that everyone’s food choices must be the same – that a particular diet is only valid if it would work for everyone on the planet at once. Do you even begin to comprehend the unprecedented conformity and oppression (of humans) that this assumes? Oh, and a major point made by the original ex-vegan essay is that veganism is not an environmentally friendly (or even tenable) diet on a large scale anyway. You seem to have ignored that, as you ignore everything else which contradicts your beliefs.
(please note, by the way, that I am not criticising anyone’s personal decision to eat only vegan foods – I shouldn’t have to spell that out, but apparently I must)
Pat,
There is no assumption that everyone’s food choices must be the same.
I think what you seem hell bent on ignoring is that our current model of food production does not work, and it causes the unnecessary, egregious, wanton suffering of 66 billion nonhumans worldwide. It has destroyed our oceans. It has wreaked havoc upon our ecosystem, particularly our water sources (and most of that is attributable to manure run-off and poor manure management).
You want to compare berries to berries, but there is a fricking giant genetically modified watermelon that is our modern industrial food complex…and you keep ignoring that. That is endlessly (unsurprisingly) frustrating. You want to look at tiny fragments of small pictures – I’m looking at the grand and giant big picture.
I am not up against subsistence farmers and hunters. Low hanging fruit and not important to the overall discussion of modern farming. I am up against an industry that makes hundreds of billions of dollars. You want to make this about ethical veganism A versus kangaroo hunting A versus subsistence veganism B v eating your own sheep B….I am tackling the much bigger issue of what is the most unsustainable, the most destructive diet on earth – the standard one that is far more exploitative and far more horrific than even the ugliest and most unhealthiest of vegan diets. You want to quibble about you making choices that still kill lives but apparently is causing less suffering than my own…while ignoring that gm watermelon once again.
And when I am faced with all that suffering. When I can make conscious choices to cause less harm to the beings around me, my first option is not to go out and murder kangaroos or kill the sheep I work with at the sanctuary. My ideal option is to grow my own food veganically (oh my gosh, the horrors) and my next option is to consume local foods that have at least been managed organically, and my next option is to consume plant-based foods, and my next option is to consume processed plant-based foods. I am not about to rip babies from mothers, steal milk, or take the lives of intelligent, sentient beings when I don’t freaking have to. And in order to fight against the sheer magnitude of suffering farming has inflicted upon domestic and wild nonhumans, I am not going to champion killing cows, pigs, sheep, turkeys, goats, kangaroos, <> when I can champion a diet that seeks to – overall – limit the enormity of suffering facing those 66 billion nonhumans and wildlife.
Is that such a mystical thing to understand?
My soapbox just hauled itself back out of its corner; that was fast!
This is addressed to all breeders of sheep and other animals: forget diet, forget food, forget nutrition, forget land, forget air, forget water, forget pollution, forget carbon footprints and all the environmental arguments being bandied about here.
Instead, please sit down on the grass.
Look a few yards in front of you, at one ewe, with her lamb leaning against her one minute, playing around her the next.
Gaze into her eyes.
Until you see a spark of life there.
A sweet soul there.
A heart trusting your intentions.
Contentment as she lies down to rest.
A mind, simple as it is, aware of her surroundings, alert for danger.
Lips that smile as she watches her child play.
She is a mother. Like you, she feels tender, unconditional love for her child.
Look at her until you recognize that her feelings are the most important thing about her existence. That her gentle and generous, meek and mild, obedient and affectionate qualities comprise her ovine essence, her true sheep substance.
Look at her until you can honestly put yourself in her place, in her mind, in her heart.
Look at her and at her baby, until you no longer see wool, milk, mutton or lamb chops.
Look at her as she is looking at you.
She is not seeing you for your flesh or your milk or your hair. You are not food or drink or clothing to her.
She is seeing your friendly face, hearing your friendly voice, feeling your friendly hand. She is not worried that you will kill her, any more than you are worried that she will kill you.
But you believe that with centuries of convention on your side, with beliefs about biological imperatives backing you up, with a lifestyle (however simple or complex) to maintain, you have a right to kill her and kill her child. And you feel fine about it, because she is “only” a sheep, and her child is only a “lamb.” And at least, you say to yourself, you are not sending her live across an ocean to either suffocate in a ship’s hold or reach the Middle East and be hacked to death while fully conscious.
But by taking her life, for your own ends, whatever they may be, you are oppressing her.
And yet you do not want anyone to take your life, to oppress you.
You are committing a violent act, and yet she is incapable of committing a violent act against you.
She is a peace maker. You are a peace breaker.
Can someone who kills another ever feel true inner peace?
Is someone who kills another expressing peace to others?
It may sound ludicrous to say that the world’s emotional, economic, ecological, ethical, social and spiritual health depend upon each of us ceasing all violent actions–and the selfish motives and passions that engender these acts. But it’s obvious to me that if we are ever to feel permanent harmony within and express it outwardly to all, we each have to love one another as gently and generously as sheep love their lambs.
Attaining peace within the best-intentioned individual human hearts takes a lifetime, and then some. Spreading peace throughout the world, and having it stick, will take eons. But if those of us who are the kind keepers of the earth cannot take the simple step of stopping the slaughter of sweet, sensitive sheep, and trusting that the rewards for quitting killing will enhance our economy and our environment, then what hope have we of ending human-on-human violence?
Sweet post, Olivia, but pointless – it’s intellectually bankrupt emotive pap, full of logical fallacies.
I agree that your hypothetical ewe has life, the ability to react to stimuli, and the capacity to suffer. The rest is, quite frankly, utter nonsense. I agree that it is unethical to cause needless suffering, but I do not consider humane slaughter for human consumption to be needless suffering. If you still regard Kate’s practices as unnecessarily cruel, compare it to the typical vegan alternative (with all its horrendous slice-and-dice slaughter of small furry critters, for instance).
Also, I suggest you research vegan food production before making any further claims about how “quitting killing will enhance our economy and our environment”. I’m not qualified to argue this point, but it seems to me that the evidence is against you.
(sorry for duplicate comment – forgot to click “notify me of follow-up comments via email”)
All diets cause the death of animals. By raising my own animals, I can make sure they have good lives, and their deaths are quick and painless. I am taking accountability for the deaths I cause, rather than pretending they don’t exist. If it were possible to eat without causing the death of other creatures, I’d be there. I am a huge animal lover. I take pride in the fact I’m not supporting factory farming.
Seriously, people that love animals don’t kill them. I don’t have the energy to say anymore than this because Olivia has done a wonderful job of that already. I do really hope that you will come to the same conclusion one day and join in helping to help them.
I actually AM helping animals–I’m giving animals a great life here on my farm, and I also regularly donate money to organizations such as the Humane Farming Association (www.hfa.org) and do my best to raise awareness about factory farming and how horrible it is. I buy meat locally and only from people who treat their animals well. I also raise veggies and berries on my farm as well has having an orchard with apples, pears, plums, cherries, etc.
In fact just this fall I bought a pig (butchered) from a young girl who raised it for 4-H and sold it at the county fair. That pig had a great life. Yes he was killed at the end, but so are animals killed for all the foods you eat. And if we are going to get into a discussion of total number of lives lost, a 100% carnivorous diet beats a vegan diet any day. A small fraction of one beef cow is enough to feed a person meat for a year. How many collateral deaths does a vegan diet cause in that time? It’s not comparable.
Now if you personally don’t feel comfortable eating animals, that’s fine. But they’re still dying for your diet. There is no way around that fact.
“Intellectually bankrupt.”
“Emotive pap.”
To those who are feelingless elitists, yes.
To the sheep with genuine feelings, no.
I can identify with the sheep’s feelings much better than I can with a human’s non-feeling.
What holds a human being back from feeling for an other-than-human being?
This question is for me best answered by Will Tuttle in The World Peace Diet.
He writes: “We are not predatory by nature, but we’ve been taught that we are, in the most potent way possible: we’ve been raised from birth to eat like predators. We’ve thus been initiated into a predatory culture and been forced to see ourselves at the deepest levels as predators. Farming animals is simply a refined and perverse form of predation in which the animals are confined before being attacked and killed. … Compassion is ethical intelligence: it is the capacity to make connections and the consequent urge to act to relieve the suffering of others. Like cognitive intelligence, it is suppressed by the practice of eating animals. … As long as we remain, at core, a culture that sees animals merely as commodities and food, there is little hope for our survival. The systematic practice of ignoring, oppressing, and excluding that is fundamental to our daily meals disconnects us from our inner wisdom and from our sense of belonging to a benevolent and blessed universe. By actively ignoring the truth of our connectedness, we inescapably commit genocide and suicide, and forsake the innate intelligence and compassion that would guide us. … [W]e invent mental categories for the infinitely mysterious beings we encounter,
such as “blacks,” “slaves,” and “pagans,” or “food animals,” “game,” “pests,” and “laboratory animals.” These categories, and the violence with which we treat the magnificent beings thus categorized, do not fundamentally change or cheapen that sacred and enigmatic nature. They only cloud and enslave our minds with the distorted thinking
born of our exclusionary and self-serving attitude. The light of the infinite spiritual source of all life shines in all creatures. By seeing and recognizing this light in others, we free both them and ourselves. This is love. Failing to see it, often because we never experienced others seeing it in us, we imprison ourselves, mistaking the confines of the shallows for the deep and free. By seeing other animals merely as objects to be exploited for food, we have torn the fabric of essential harmony so deeply that we have created a culture that enslaves itself, often without realizing it. The domination of humans by humans is a necessary outgrowth of dominating other animals for food. … This enslaving mentality of domination and exclusion lies at the core of the spiritual malaise that allows us to wage war upon the earth and upon each other. … [T]he mentality of domination characterizing the culture into which we were born thrives on seeing and emphasizing differences and ignoring similarities, because this is what enslaving and killing animals requires us all to practice. As herders and dominators of animals, we must continually practice seeing ourselves as separate and different from them, as superior and special. Our natural human compassion can be repressed by learning to exclude others and to see them as essentially unlike us. This exclusivism is necessary to racism, elitism, and war, because in order to harm and dominate other people we must break the bonds that our hearts naturally feel with them. The mentality of domination is necessarily a mentality of exclusion.”
I have nothing more to add.
Again, all diets cause the death of animals. I’m just facing that head on rather than pushing it under the rug. I know you won’t believe it, but I love all animals, and nature. Since I was a very young child all I wanted was to be around animals.
Kate, before I say anything else, I’d like to make it clear that my response is not intended to attack you, nor tell you what to do.
But since you obviously care very much about what is being discussed here (I mean that in a positive way), I wonder if you might be interested to reconsider some of the statements that you have made here.
If we look at the original post, Marji writes:
“Suffering exists in this world. It is unending and unyielding and intrinsic to life and death. I won’t argue that.
Behind a vegan diet (not exhaustive):
* Millions of nonhumans killed during the harvesting of edible crops we eat
* Human workers over-worked and underpaid and, on non-organic farms, are exposed to high levels of pesticides and chemicals
* Mono-crops that outcompete native plants and reduce biodiversity
* GM crops that outcompete native plants and reduce biodiversity
* Birds and “pest” animals poisoned for eating seeds
* Synthetic fertilizers kill fish and other wildlife”
The point is that your statement “Again, all diets cause the death of animals.” is hardly a new insight to those who write this blog or who read it regularly.
Similarly, it is a stretch to imply that the commenters here are ‘pushing it under the rug’ in comparison to yourself.
If you would read through the comments here on this and other posts (We Should All Be So Lucky, for example), particularly Olivia’s and Harry’s gentle and understanding words, there is very little reason for you to write here that ” I know you won’t believe it, but I love animals.”
Perhaps you could consider this perspective: most if not all of the vegans here were once omnivores who loved animals and also ate them. I was this myself, and on the way to being a vegan I was a lacto-vegetarian who loved animals, eschewed eating them for ethical reasons, but who also killed them myself.
I am not going to claim that I or anyone else here can comprehend the entirety of your experience. But many of us have been people who loved animals and also killed or ate them, perhaps in ways that we convinced ourselves were more ethical compared to average or legal standards of slaughter and consumption. Your perspective is not an alien one.
And could you not retain your ethical practices regarding animals if you were a vegan? For example:
“I actually AM helping animals–I’m giving animals a great life here on my farm.”
Perhaps you might also consider allowing them to live into old age.
“So why make the arbitrary decision to “go vegan,” rather than eating mindfully and making the choice of less suffering at every meal?”
You seem to consider that one cannot be both vegan AND a mindful eater (Is the extent of mindfulness in one’s food consumption proportional to the amount of food-related death you personally witnessed? Or to how close you are in the food chain to direct killing? ;-) just playing.)
One can still be vegan AND mindful of the deaths that occur to put the food on one’s plate, and have that mindfulness act as a spur to continually considering which food choices cause least harm.
If you haven’t done this already, may I respectfully suggest that in order to appreciate a vegan perspective you may have a go at being vegan yourself for an extended period of time (supported by accurate nutritional information – Ginny Messina’s website is a good place to start).
On a related point, I turn briefly to Pat H.’s comments.
Pat, from your statements regarding the relative number of animals killed to produce vegan food – you seem like you might be in a position to help out vegans with respect to our mindfulness of animal suffering, and ways to reduce it. I have the impression that, like me, you are an Aussie, in which case I’d be particularly interested in any information that you have. What are your sources of information – where do you derive your statistics?
I think this kind of information could potentially be very helpful in choosing one plant food over another, or finding out if a particular food can be harvested by different methods, resulting in altered numbers of animal deaths.
I think it quite unlikely that you’ll gain any ‘compassionate carnivore’ converts by posting this information here :).
However, now I’m vegan, I don’t feel that I can be complacent about the suffering that still results from my life and choices. I can be vegan, but continue to improve what I do. I’d be surprised if there weren’t others here who feel the same way.
Bronwyn, welcome to this discussion. What excellent points you make. I relate to everything you say, and appreciate the way you say it.
For many years, I never equated animals and meat in my mind, so thoroughly conditioned was I by society. I didn’t even start out as an animal lover. The more I came in contact with animals, though, the more I wanted to be around them, because they made me feel good. Gradually, I began to put less importance on what I was getting from them and more emphasis on what I could do for them. It was a slow process of awakening: first to their basic physical and social needs, then to their feelings (their desire to be happy in life) and their right to emotional well-being throughout their lives, then to their desire and right to not be killed (in shelters or in abattoirs or in vet offices unless as an act of mercy to relieve terminal suffering).
I’m as eager as you are, Bronwyn, to learn from Pat and anyone else who knows about further reducing or better yet eliminating suffering and death–both human and other-than-human–that I as a vegan unwittingly cause from my lifestyle.
Your idea of non-vegans on this post trying the vegan way for a time (which I gather would include attempting to look at each animal in a different way: as someone who is not going to become a commodity paid for by the pound) is a great suggestion. One never knows what event, or series of events, prompts someone to change their entire world view–but it only happens when one is ready and willing for it to happen, as ethical vegans here can attest.
Your in-quote-marks reference to “compassionate carnivores,” Bronwyn, dovetails with an email I received today from the just-launched Carnism Action and Awareness Network: http://www.carnism.com. CAAN was founded by Melanie Joy, author of WHY WE LOVE DOGS, EAT PIGS AND WEAR COWS: AN INTRODUCTION TO CARNISM. In her book, as well as on her new website, Melanie explains why she coined the word “carnism” to describe the ideology of meat-eating.
I appreciated this response, its kind tone and effort to understand.
I’m more put out and annoyed and not feeling so kind. If Tasha is really dying for lack of meat, she should eat some and live. I’m not one of the vegans who say they would rather die than eat meat. If stranded on a desert island, without my tofu and black bean burgers, I’d eat whatever I could to stay alive.
But back to the point. Who knows the truth? Tasha admits she’s lied in the past. And the post she wrote is so vague on specifics and riddled with erroneous information that it is impossible to know. What is apparent that it is laden with Weston Price propaganda.
I’ve known too many former vegetarians who never gave a peep of alarm that they weren’t thriving suddenly turn to Weston Price/Nourishing Traditions and then claim afterwards all along the veg diet was killing them. Just like Tasha. Tasha’s ‘coming out’ reads like a Weston Price conversion story, with all the religious bells and whistles. She was wrong! She was in error! She believed in false gods! She was DYING. But now that she has seen the light, life has never been better! She gets out of bed every day praising meat!
Funny, didn’t these former vegans also have such enthusiasm about their vegan diets when they were still new and novel? I detect a novelty addict.
Also part of the Weston Price/Nourishing Tradtions MO is that she is being *persecuted* by mean, mean vegans who dare to write and suggest she try this or that supplement. And death threats? Sorry if I’m skeptical about those too–vegans are notorious wusses after all, we can hardly lift our poor skinny anemic arms anyway–but the ‘death threat’ thing is also part of the religious persecution complex, and a common tactic amongst the Weston Price cultists used to deflect criticism and get sympathy. I’ve seen it before.
I suppose Tasha gets points for being honest *now*, but to me she’s just jumped on to another food cult. One with even less scientific basis–i.e., the American Dietetic Association and other reputable organizations have said vegan diets can be healthy. No reputable nutrition expert would give too much credence to Weston Price ideas such as “nutritious cholesterol” or “the lipid hypothesis” that Tasha mentions. Or that you should eat as much salt as you want. So its not just that Tasha has decided to eat meat–she’s just lost her mind. And to equate veganism with anti-feminism, as she has done? Talk about self-indulgent rationalization and projection!
Her defenders complain that mean fanatic vegans are criticizing her and tearing her apart, and not letting her make her own personal decisions. But Tasha’s post is not what many people take it as, a mere personal decision. She has used and profited from the vegan community and set herself up as an example. She invited the public into her diet and intentionally built a following. But now when she flip flops, she should be immune from questions? When she repeats factual errors that even mainstream would reject as nonsense, she is allowed a critical pass from meat-lovers and hailed as a heroine.
As Jessica from Lima’s Vegan Kitchen wrote, thrown the vegan community under the bus. It’s not that I care what one woman does with her diet. People stop being vegans everyday and it ain’t national news. People also go wrong on their omnivorous diets all the time. In Tasha’s case particular woman was so determined to assuage her cognitive dissonance (her “guilt”) that when she left our family, she tried to burn down the house!
She says ‘it’s a personal decision’ and ‘everybody is different’. But then goes on to great lengths to try to demolish veganism, and hypocritically asserts how nobody can thrive on such a diet.
Its that since this story has gone viral, people will for years to come reference ‘the vegan who almost died’ whenever any conversation about ethical eating or animal rights comes up. They won’t know the holes in her story or suspicious statements. They’ll just remember her and shut down on vegetarianism entirely. Remember how that Myths of Vegetarianism went around the internet years ago? Every meat eating friend and uncle and auntie sent it to me, not knowing it was utter nonsense written by someone who claimed to be a doctor but really had questionable credentials. Nor did those friends and uncles and aunties know that just a few years later, the author of that diatribe, one of the Weston Price proteges, died of a heart attack at age 40.
That is why I say to the vegan community, be skeptical. This is not a mere personal decision. This is propaganda, and it will be used for years to come. And therefore I feel the vegan community should, and must, respond.
yseult, I appreciate your historical perspective, your knowledge of Weston Price propaganda and your courage in questioning suspect words and motives.
I think you make a valid point, and I’m glad you didn’t keep it to yourself.
To Confused Vegan–
I don’t use butter or margarine at all. Neither is really good for you. I haven’t used it for years. I don’t eat toast for breakfast, and when I eat bread its usually my own fresh baked so it doesn’t need it. At most I’ll dip it in olive oil with fresh cracked pepper. Almost every thing butter/margarine is used for you can use something else. I bake with grapeseed oil or coconut butter with great results, which I can get at my Martin’s grocery store (same as Giant).
Is Earth Balance not available where you live? I’m not sure on this, but isn’t Smart Balance the non organic version? Smart Balance is sold in my local Walmart. I also live in a rural area. I moved here from a big city where I was used to fantastic natural food stores. It has taken me a while to redesign my diet for a rural area, but with the local produce I think I’m living/eating better than ever.
Best of luck!
Funny! Just recently someone “snubbed” their nose at my veganism for one particular food product: “MARGARINE!” He said, “I could never be vegan because I can’t stand margarine!” HA! That was a first for me. Usually people are more put out by the lack of “real” ice cream or “real” cheese. But whatever. :) I had a good laugh over it.
Anyway, I always use olive oil – like you I bake my own breads so I don’t need butter. A touch more sugar than a recipe calls for actually makes butter /margarine completely unnecessary. The only time I use any margarine (Earth Balance is my choice, and now they are stocking EB in sticks at my Whole Foods Market) if for baking, on corn on the cob, but mostly I avoid it as much as possible.
Otherwise, who needs it? It masks the real taste of your food…
Smart Balance *Light* is the vegan version of that product. :-)
I use it sometimes in an effort to consume less Earth Balance, which, though it’s organic and has a great texture and taste, is made with palm fruit oil from Indonesia. The same company owns both products. It says that the oil used in Earth Balance is taken from existing palm plantations instead of new ones, and from a region where the orangutans are not concentrated. (For those who aren’t yet aware of the issue, it’s that more and more of the orangutan’s habitat is being destroyed and replaced with palm plantations, resulting in the disappearance of this magnificent species of great ape.)
Hi Olivia,
Where do they say this about Earth Balance? Because just last year a letter to the company by a member of the Friends of Animals (I’m off their email list now for other reasons) listserv said clearly that this is an issue that concerns them, but that they, Earth Balance, cannot guarantee any of their palm is safe for orangutans, except perhaps the organic Earth Balance.
If they’ve had enough complaints I’m concerned that they might have changed their story; after all, who among us can go and verify this? And they pretty much have the monopoly on vegan margarine/butter substitute.
Thoughts?
Existing palm fruit plantations are as bad. They are a monocultured crop, and they negatively impact anywhere from 50-100% of the native species, depending on what sources you read. They (monocultured palm oil) severely damage some of the most fragile ecosystems in the world.
They do not just affect orangutans, they are devastating for pretty much all species, both nonhuman and plant, living in the region. Pygmy elephants are shot and killed for getting too close, and they have lost valuable habitat and food sources. Sumatra tigers are negatively impacted as well…and those are just a few well-known species.
Which is unfortunate, because palm oil in of itself is not a bad thing. The palm oil tree has many medicinal and culinary properties that make it a useful plant. Just not on the GLOBAL scale of today.
Here’s an alternative recipe not using palm oil, I found whilst googling around:
1 cup sunflower oil
1 tsp liquid lecithin
1 cup cold water
Pour a little of the water into a blender, then add oil and lecithin. Blend briefly on high speed while adding the rest of the water. Store in refrigerator and use within 2-3 weeks. Variation: for a very rich cream substitute, add 1 tbsp maple syrup and 2 tsp carob powder.
Thanks very much for that information, Marji. I was thinking that the Earth Balance response sounded a little too good to be true. I’m glad you have found a good alternative. I’ll try it soon.
Hi Yseult,
Is Smart Balance vegan? A lot of their stuff contains fish oil. It’s also made by the same company that makes Earth Balance, so it probably contains palm stuff.
I still think it’s fantastic that living a rural area you manage to maintain veganism. Just wanted to point that out, though.
:)
Wendy,
Actually I don’t know about Smart Balance. I was tossing that out there as something to investigate, as its widely available. I hoped someone might know already if it was vegan. I can get Earth Balance here too, but only since they built a Martin’s in town. I now find it ridiculously easy to live without margarine, though. Not sure why I ever needed it.
Have to plug my favorite cookbooks by Terry Walters ‘Eat Clean’ and ‘Clean Start’ and she never uses margarine. Also seasonal, local, and with a few exceptions the ingredients are easy to come by in the country.
@AlexK: “people that love animals don’t kill them”
Sounds like an unquestionable and self-evident fact, until you actually think about it. Consider veterinarians, for instance, who devote their lives to animal welfare and then kill more animals than anyone except some abbattoir workers.
@Olivia: “feelingless elitists”
Yes, because anyone who rejects your saccharine fantasies must be both emotionally barren and an elitist. Of course.
I have ‘genuine feelings’, as well as consciousness and intelligence. Sheep do not.
Will Tuttle’s writing is erudite, but similarly littered with fallacies and just plain untruths. Do I really need to go through and point out all the errors in the text you quoted?
Cognitive dissonance. Sounds like you’ve got it. See rationalization, below:
An overarching principle of cognitive dissonance is that it involves the formation of an idea or emotion in conflict with a fundamental element of the self-concept, such as “I am a successful/functional person”, “I am a good person”, or “I made the right decision.” The anxiety that comes with the possibility of having made a bad decision can lead to rationalization, the tendency to create additional reasons or justifications to support one’s choices. A person who just spent too much money on a new car might decide that the new vehicle is much less likely to break down than his or her old car. This belief may or may not be true, but it would reduce dissonance and make the person feel better. Dissonance can also lead to confirmation bias, the denial of dis-confirming evidence, and other ego defense mechanisms.
When you are a sheep then you can judge whether they have feelings or not. I do not own sheep (the notion of ownership of any sentient being is repellent), but I have been around sheep on a sanctuary. If you can’t tell that they have individual needs and wants, which are desires and emotions, then you don’t know your sheep.
Animals are not automatons, no matter how hard you try to convince others and yourself of that.
And I just wonder, so often, why people who don’t give a shit about animals bother to troll this and other similar blogs.
I wonder that too, Wendy. I used to be active on a natural mothering board that was vegan supportive until the WAPF folks showed up, and turned everything to shit. They have a compulsion to ‘convert’ like other religions. Irony is vegans are so often stereotyped that way, but most vegans I know are like me: quiet and mind my own business, and some friends don’t even know about my dietary principles.
It’s not a wild theory, but I’ve long thought that the militant, obnoxious in-your-face vegans are the very same ones that turn into ex-vegans who join WAPF. Two sides of the same coin. I think what they are really searching for is belonging, importance, and the high that comes with belonging to an elite group with special knowledge of the truth.
Case in point Tasha, who just can’t cautiously add a little animal products to see if her health improves, she has to undergo a massive retooling of her philosophy, she she can finally see that it is the VEGANS who are woman-hating, etc etc. And then of course broadcast it to the world, and the adoring meat public. I saw this morning her story is being carried by the usual paleo websites, but also beefmagazine.com. I keep trying to find where the ‘mean vegan response’ is that they’re all squawking about, but can’t. Anyone got any links? Because if my Googling indicates what the real truth is, vegans are rising above and talking about other things. Its the omni/carnis who are doing the bashing, and bashing the vegan community.
Pat, there is ample evidence sheep are intelligent. All species must have a certain level of intelligence to survive.
Sheep can remember up to 50 human faces for multiple years. That would be like trying to remember 50 sheep faces in a flock of thousands…and recognize them again two years later. Think you can do it?
Sheep can navigate mazes. Heck, back in my college days, as part of my animal behavior class, I did an experiment on their ability to get from Point A to Point C while trying to figure out the middle B. And they could.
They can learn their own names and modify their behavior in response to new information.
Those are all signs of intelligence.
When we are happy, we release certain hormones. So do sheep. When we are in pain and suffering, we release certain hormones. So do sheep. No modern scientist would deny sheep feel pain. Many would not deny they release similar hormones and display similar EKG readings as humans do when experiencing emotions of familiarity or happiness. For example, sheep are so sensitive to the facial expressions of humans, that they respond best when a person is smiling rather than when they are frowning.
So you might want to rethink your fallacious and speciesist argument that sheep are stupid, unfeeling beings.
Last night I got out my copy of “The Inner World of Farm Animals” by Amy Hatkoff and went to the chapter on Sheep and Goats. The author quotes scientists saying some of the things that Marji related above.
Here are a couple of quotes: “After more than seven decadese of cumulative discoveries about consciousness, we have not yet found any fundamental differences between humans and mammals” (Beernard Baars, former senior research fellow, Neurosciences Institute of San Diego) and “Sheep are much like us in that they recognize each other’s faces in photographs. … [They have] “a far greater level of social awareness and emotional complexity than we had previously thought. … [I]f sheep can do this then the likelihood is that many other species can, too. … ” (Keith Kendrick, professor of cognitive and behavioral neuroscience at the Babraham Institute near Cambridge, England).
@AlexK:
I make what sense I can of this complex world, and live as best I can. I make the best decisions I can, based on my understanding of the information available to me. To me, this is rational. I am not claiming that my way is the only way, or even necessarily the best way. My interest here is simply in debunking false premises and fallacious logic, and trying (perhaps vainly) to get across the idea that maybe it’s OK for other people not to live exactly how you choose to live.
If you want to consider “denial of dis-confirming evidence”, you could perhaps begin to rectify that by addressing the original ex-vegan essayist’s discussion of the vegan diet’s environmental impact on a large scale. This is not specifically a dig at you, by the way; in all of this discussion (including the original response post), no one has done so. Failing that, you could point out a specific claim that I have made, and answer it with a particular piece of “dis-confirming evidence” which I have hitherto ignored. The claims I have made here are actually rather modest, and I haven’t yet seen any evidence to weaken them. If you legitimately refute a specific claim that I have made, I will change my opinion on that point; this has occasionally happened to me in debates, and I am far more interested in actual truth than in seeming to be right.
@Wendy:
So when you are a carrot then you can judge whether carrots have feelings? False logic.
Calling sheep “sentient” is a heck of a stretch (to put it kindly), and your arguments for that are either unsupported or proof only of life itself. You, and apparently many others, are working with a strict binary and a fairly extreme dividing line. Beyond rejecting your choice of where exactly to draw that line, I reject the very concept of the binary; the world isn’t that simple. So not only is it ridiculous to assert that every creature with a nervous system is sentient, but it is strange to draw a sharp distinction at all. This is why I don’t eat primates, for instance, or octopus/calamari, or dolphin. At one end of the scale are humans, who/which are almost always sentient. Near the other end are creatures such as earthworms, which have a nervous system but are not sentient by any reasonable definition. In between, black gently fades to white; any sharp dividing line between “sentient” and “non-sentient” is an arbitrary human conceit.
There is no single way that we should all think, nor any one set of opinions that we should all hold. Living as we do in this immensely complex world, each of us must personally decide how to live. This is why I bother to refute nonsense and offer opinions here; I have a very strong objection to any claim to prescribe how other people should live, excepting only claims based solidly on thorough understanding and compelling evidence. I have no problem with your choice to follow a vegan diet; I have a problem with you (or anyone) calling me or anyone else morally inferior for making a different choice.
For the record, I am actually an animal lover. I object to the assumption that any meat-eater must necessarily “[not] give a shit about animals”. Logically, that is roughly equivalent to the assumption that anyone who questions the government’s actions must necessarily be “unpatriotic” – automatic denigration, seeking to delegitimise any opposition or criticism.
As to your last paragraph, Pat H., I understand where you’re coming from. And I mean no disrespect or sarcasm in this reply: I’m sure American slave owners of 200 years ago objected to being told that they didn’t care about the feelings and rights of African-Americans. I’m also sure they thought that those pesky abolitionists had no right to criticize them, were acting like over-the-top zealots, and should just mind their own business.
It IS logical to say that if someone kills someone else, they don’t respect or love their victim.
It is NOT logical to call that thinking an “assumption” and it is NOT logical to equate it with calling someone who questions their country “unpatriotic.”
No one here is saying that you do not love dogs and cats and horses or squirrels and birds and mice. What we are saying is that your concept of love for your sheep is so different than the accepted definition of LOVE that we can only conclude you do not care about the feelings and rights of sheep.
Sustainable farms are tons better than factory farms, but they are going backwards in time instead of forwards. It is like the owner of a factory farm of human slaves, if there were such a monstrous invention in the 1800s, going back to an organic farm with those same human slaves.
We are saying that humans killing animals for food is wrong in the same way that human slavery is wrong. You are saying that it is a matter of personal preference and that humans should be able to do what they want to their animal property (within the bounds of whatever laws against animal abuse might exist).
Just because we disagree with you, and say so, doesn’t mean we think you are a bad person. We think that your PRACTICE of raising and killing sheep is immoral.
We activists who participate in forums like this (where you found us and freely chimed in) are not content to sit on the sidelines and quietly eat our non-mutton-and-lambchops meals and wear our non-wool clothing. We are reformers who feel that part of our moral duty is to defend innocent, inoffensive sheep (and all animalkind) in whatever legal way we can. We hope that the ideas behind our words will slowly lift world consciousness and slowly change hearts and laws.
It’s not fun to go up against one’s culture. But it is less fun watching our fellow sentient beings be executed on death row, even when their “sentence” is served in lovely surroundings and especially when they are innocent of any crime (well, I don’t even believe in the capital punishment for the guilty, but that’s another story).
Yes, we are AGAINST a worldwide tradition and are trying to alter it, but we’re not AGAINST individual humans. If anything, we’re FOR humans everywhere. We’re FOR removing the cultural mask that has blinded mankind for centuries to the reality that we are all one family. I believe that none of us, in our true, permanent, SPIRITUAL selfhood, needs or wants or is capable of killing any of our brothers and sisters of any species.
We activists for animal rights have learned, from experience, that we can’t change anyone except ourselves. But we can try to shed light on the subject, both with our words and by our deeds.
We’re each facing and overcoming our own inconsistencies, and none of us claims to have all the answers or even to be living in perfect accord with what we know to be true. But for all of our imperfections, those of us who care about lifting mankind’s concept of animals in as unselfish a way as possible — not to get glory or bash others or score points — feel we have no choice but to continue this good fight.
So, yes, I do automatically denigrate killing. Especially kissing-then-killing, which, in the blog that’s running simultaneous to this one, titled “We Should All Be So Lucky,” we term “treachery.”
Yes, I do seek to delegitimize opposition when the opposition legitimizes killing. I hope I’m not guilty of criticizing anyone personally. But I welcome criticism if I have insulted anyone. That is not my intent. My object is to show how all of us, in our heart of hearts, are actually better than our killing culture has made us out to be.
Last night a friend of mine who is a Bible scholar (she reads and speaks and writes in Hebrew and Greek) said that she connects the Old Testament Commandment “Thou shalt not kill” with the New Testament Beatitude “Blessed are the merciful: for they shall obtain mercy.” I think that’s a lovely and apt link. And because mercy and justice are conjoined in my mind, I believe that the deliberate and needless killing of animals is both unmerciful and unjust.
@yseult:
That’s a very interesting idea. I know a number of vegetarians and vegans face-to-face, and none of them could reasonably be called ‘militant’ or even ‘evangelistic’ in their dietary choices. I show a dissenting viewpoint in a context like this, however, and it’s a very different story. I’ll grant that I am arguably “asking for it” by choosing to comment here (so it’d be silly for me to complain or play victim), but the comments I’m getting here do qualify as “mean vegan response” in my book (and I have no trouble believing that Tasha is getting much worse, especially in private communications where there is no reality check). A friend of mine who merely read Tasha’s essay and the comments on it commented to me that “the vegans commenting there just don’t seem like very nice people.” Looking back through previous comments here, I don’t see a lot of “you are a bad person because X”. What I do see is comments along the lines of “any person who can do X is a bad person”, where X is something that I (and others) clearly do. It’s an astounding collection of attempted guilt trips, most apparently seeking to overwhelm reason by means of all-out emotional assault.
I guess it depends a lot on what you see and how you see it; a vegan participating in this discussion will likely get a very different impression than a pedantic omnivore like myself, much as I (a white man in the general public) simply have not seen the (rather well-documented) racial abuse carried out by my state police (who have almost invariably been polite and professional in their dealings with me).
My issue has always been with fanatics and bigots; I have a problem with anyone telling me it’s immoral for me to eat meat, just as I have a problem with anyone hassling a vegetarian or a vegan for choosing not to eat meat. Getting back to your thesis that I find so interesting, it makes sense to me that people who are fanatical on one side of a disagreement are more likely than most to be fanatical on the other side (if ever they switch). The conviction that [insert issue here] is supremely important doesn’t go away, so of course one’s new position must be proclaimed just as forcefully. There’s a very interesting psychological phenomenon (in Pavlovian breakdown psychology) which works much the same but (I think) only instantly, by means of a psychological breakdown; it explains, for instance, how vehement atheists are sometimes converted at religious revival meetings. I need to do a lot more reading up on that; I want to know more about how this breakdown works on a longer timescale, and I wouldn’t be surprised if it turns out to apply also to a case like Tasha’s. Hers does seem to be a fairly classic case except for the timescale (on which point I’m unsure) – passionate believer in a particular value system, experiences breakdown (physical causing mental), and suddenly she’s passionately opposed to that value system.
I’d never heard of WAPF, so I did a (very little) bit of reading. Honestly, at a glance it seems pretty sane to me. Obviously I don’t agree with anyone telling you you should eat foods that you prefer not to eat (unclear as to what WAPF actually does in that regard), but other than that I can’t find anything objectionable. I’m genuinely curious here; what exactly is WAPF doing that is making people so angry? From all mentions in previous comments, I had assumed that “Weston Price” was a corporate-funded propaganda machine singing the praises of factory-farming animals for meat; such a stark discrepancy between impression and reality makes me wonder about the underlying conflict.
I’m basically just replying to your last comment (the reply to Wendy), but one interesting point from a previous comment:
the author of that diatribe, one of the Weston Price proteges, died of a heart attack at age 40
While the conclusion you draw from this (“be skeptical”) is reasonable as long as it’s interpreted to mean “do some research” rather than “dismiss anything you don’t like”, the argument itself is a bit dodgy. The link between diet and heart disease is not causal, and other factors (notably heredity) play a huge role. Case in point: running advocate Jim Fixx (who had a family history of heart disease) died of a heart attack at a fairly young age, but I don’t think any reasonable person would use that fact to argue that running (or exercise in general) causes (or is even positively correlated with) heart disease. What’s far more sensible is to look at observed statistically significant correlations, which (if I understand correctly) is what WAPF is trying to do in the first place.
@Marji:
Again, it’s a question of where to draw the line. Any creature with a central nervous system is by definition capable of feeling pain and suffering; I have stated this repeatedly, so I’m not sure why you keep using it as an argument on your side. Sheep are sufficiently far towards the non-sentient end of the spectrum that I’m comfortable with eating their meat, but I care about their welfare because I accept that they can suffer (and I try to minimise suffering). I could go into more detail on the connection between brain and mind, but I rather think this is not the place.
@Olivia:
The slave argument is easily met; those human slaves were still human, whereas other animals are not. Slave owners (backed by mainstream ‘science’ of the time) had lots of fallacious arguments explaining why “negroes” were subhuman, and these were simply false (and often quite bizarre, as I discovered when my partner was researching an essay on US slavery).
Honestly, I’m aware of the arrow of history. I can look at how changes have played out in the past and make vaguely reasonable guesses about how things are going to change in the future. I can predict other primates (and probably a few other species) being given some rights, for instance, or concern for animal welfare finally overcoming respect for religion sufficiently that cruel ritual slaughter practices (eg. those for kosher and halal meat) are outlawed. I can see current protections on animal welfare being strengthened a long way. What I don’t consider remotely plausible, practically, scientifically or philosophically, is all animals being declared unavailable for human consumption. That’s just how I see things, mind you, but it fits neatly with my understanding of all the information I have.
It is NOT logical to call that thinking an “assumption” and it is NOT logical to equate it with calling someone who questions their country “unpatriotic.”
I refer you to Wendy’s comment about “people who don’t give a shit about animals”. Wendy said precisely what you just claimed that no one is saying.
It is fair to say that I don’t love sheep. It is not fair to say that I don’t care about their welfare. Precisely the same pair of statements applies to the vast majority of humans (who I don’t personally know), though they have rights. I remind you that non-human animals do not in fact have rights; there seems to be a feeling here that it is somehow helpful to deny that fact.
We are saying that humans killing animals for food is wrong in the same way that human slavery is wrong
Thank you – that is a helpful distillation of your viewpoint. I accept that you hold this view, and that you have a right both to hold it and to live by it; personally, though, I reject it. Leaving aside the details for a moment, this is the crux of our disagreement.
We are reformers who feel that part of our moral duty is to defend innocent, inoffensive sheep (and all animalkind) in whatever legal way we can. We hope that the ideas behind our words will slowly lift world consciousness and slowly change hearts and laws.
Good luck with that, seriously. If and when you manage to change anything much, the most likely change (in my opinion) is an improvement in the welfare of sheep (and other animals raised for human consumption). I like this change.
none of us, in our true, permanent, SPIRITUAL selfhood, needs or wants or is capable of killing any of our brothers and sisters of any species
Ah, another variant of the “no true Scotsman” fallacy. Suffice it to say, I reject this statement.
Last night a friend of mine who is a Bible scholar (she reads and speaks and writes in Hebrew and Greek) said that she connects the Old Testament Commandment “Thou shalt not kill” with the New Testament Beatitude “Blessed are the merciful: for they shall obtain mercy.”
I find that very interesting, knowing rather more about Biblical theology than I do about global implications of specific diets. If your friend speaks and writes in Hebrew and Greek (and presumably is familiar with the entire Bible), I wonder how she reconciles “thou shalt not kill” with the extraordinary series of genocidal slaughters which the Israelites proceeded to carry out with YHWH’s explicit approval (and often at His explicit command). I particularly wonder how she would respond to your choice to see support for your own position in it, considering what the Old Testament actually had to say about the killing of animals. Bear in mind the explicit commands to slaughter animals for ritual sacrifice in a number of contexts, for instance, or the explicit command that animal slaughter must be carried out in what we now recognise as a needlessly cruel way.
I’m glad you’re not saying I’m a bad person, by the way, and I’m not saying (or thinking) it of you. :-)
Pat, that is once again called rationalization. You create a subjective standard that allows you to eat whomever you wish because, hey, they don’t meet your standards of sentience, intelligence, whatever. Yet you chastise anyone else who appeals to emotion for their supposedly fallacious supposition!
Sheep are intelligent, by objective standard. How intelligent by human standards is debatable. Intelligence requires more sophistication than simple pain and response behaviors. Being able to respond to the facial expressions of an entirely different species is pretty ingenuous…and something us humans have a hard time with!
I, for one, am glad having “self-awareness” is not the gold standard by which anyone must actually base their eating habits. I keep it simple – do I need sheep flesh to survive? No. Done and done. No “sentience spectrum” necessary!
Well, I must admit you have me laughing (in a friendly way: with you, not at you), Pat H. Your response, “Ah, another variant of the ‘no true Scotsman’ fallacy. Suffice it to say, I reject this statement” hit my funny bone.
You’re right about my friend being familiar with the whole Bible: she has a Masters in classical Hebrew from Cambridge. So she’s well aware of what the Israelites meant by the “not kill” Commandment and of the many Jewish laws that governed — and still govern — the slaughter of animals.
Somehow, I don’t think she’d mind if I applied her words to this subject. See for yourself her exact words: “Say–once I tried out the theory that Matthew”s beatitudes were each meant to fulfill a commandment. So I matched them up to see if it made any sense. I put them in subjects, so all the commands about idolatry are one, and the last two paragraphs of the beatitudes are one–so it’s a bit of a fling. But I think they do make really good sense — see what you think. It worked out that ‘Thou shalt not kill’ matched ‘Blessed are the merciful: for they shall obtain mercy.” I became a vegetarian after that! Cheers, XXXXX”
She, like me, contends that the vegan ideal to which the enlightened man should aspire and which he can help his creature friends reach is found in Gen. 1:29, 39. She observes that this ideal is attainable (on an individual level now, and collectively in the future), if the prophet Isaiah is to be believed.
Since you say you’re acquainted with Biblical theology, Pat H., would you consider reading a book or two by an advocate of animal rights who argues his case solely from a Christian perspective? Rev. Prof. Andrew Linzey is an Anglican priest and Oxford professor (you can find his bio and books on Wikipedia). Perhaps you will find his arguments more foolproof (or less “fallacious”–to use your word) than Will Tuttle’s.
You didn’t explain why the latter’s statements don’t meet your smell test. But then again, we didn’t ask you to. Fire away, if you want to. We’ll duck! And maybe fire back. :-)
Switching gears: I maintain, along with Marji, that not only is a “sentience spectrum” irrelevant, but that it’s impossible for there to be such a thing as acceptable “welfare” standards, much less adherence to them, much less enforcement of them, much less sufficient punishment of the lawbreakers to cause all abuses to cease.
The impossibility is on two counts: (1) as long as animals are legally property, they will always be subject to the will and the whim of their “owner,” typically (in our heavily populated meat-eating world) a corporate entity that has no incentive to treat them “well” and every incentive to not treat them “well”; (2) even if all “welfare” standards were 100% met by everyone who handles animals, this is not acceptable to those who believe that animals deserve the right not to be used in these ways. Even if animals don’t have legal rights, that’s no reason for them not to receive them.
You are probably correct that primates will be the first to receive limited rights; Spain has already accorded Great Apes a few basic ones. But that doesn’t mean that in the sweep of history — long long long long term — all flesh-and-blood property will be granted a new legal status (either not property or else a new class of property, separate from inanimate things). At that point, they will NOT be allowed into your stomach (smile). Let’s all hope that the petri dish research pays off and that tasty, textured meat will soon be grown in a lab.
I’m no scholar or debater or logician or philosopher or theologian or scientist. But what I’ve cultivated in recent years is, I hope (and the sheep hope!) the ethical intelligence (compassion) and cognitive intelligence (common sense) that the simplest little child possesses.
Innocent children recognize the innocence of animals and treat them as unequivocal equals.
Sensitive children know in their heart that it is unjust not only to abuse animals but also to use them for any purpose that is not in the animals’ interests.
Wise children not only see through inconsistencies, cognitive dissonances, and hypocrisies in adults’ exploitation of animals but are brave enough to speak up — and to aim a smooth stone from their slingshot at these inconsistencies, dissonances, hypocrisies (Goliaths that would block our moral and spiritual evolution).
Every activist posting here realizes that the eradication of the property designation for animals won’t happen in our lifetime. But as the quotations from chronologically arranged http://www.creaturequotes.com (a website referred to us by Bea Elliott on the “We Should All Be So Lucky” blog) show, it takes the singular effort and moral might and spiritual insights of many thinkers, writers, doers throughout centuries to effect even the most gradual change.
Transforming our world from 10,000 years of herding to a culture that doesn’t draw an imaginary “don’t kill/can kill” line between humans and all of earth’s other inhabitants is a goal we think is worthy of our best efforts. That’s what George Bernard Shaw thought. And Leo Tolstoy. And Mahatma Gandhi. And Isaac Bashevis Singer. And the scribe of Genesis 1. And the author of Revelation. Not bad company.
@Marji:
You set “objective standard” against “human standard”. Who sets the “objective standard”, if not humans? False distinction. Your choice of a convenient “objective standard” is equivalent to my choice to construct my own, just as in this world of a million denominations the properly-informed choice of a denomination is equivalent to the invention of one’s own personal doctrine.
You make your choices, and I make mine. Neither set of choices is “objectively” superior to the other.
@Olivia:
Isn’t it nice when we get along? :-)
I will admit the wording of Genesis 1:29 is different from how I had remembered it. Mind you, that’s shameless cherrypicking – it comes less than a chapter before the divine prohibition on our knowing the difference between good and evil (Gen 2:17), for instance, and less than two chapters before the divine endorsement of agony in childbirth (Gen 3:16), not to mention the first “your husband … will rule over you” statement in the Bible (also Gen 3:16). And while we’re looking at the first chapters of Genesis, let’s not forget that God accepted Abel’s offering of meat and rejected Cain’s offering of “fruits of the soil” (without any explanation that I can see). If you’re looking for non-contradictory support for a vegan diet, I rather think you’re looking in the wrong place.
I’m afraid I don’t find the Christian perspective particularly persuasive, being an atheist myself. I just happen to be quite familiar with the Bible, partly from my time as a Christian. I’d go a long way out of my way to avoid basing an argument about the real world on the Bible, since I do not regard it as a reliable source except in certain specific contexts. As to Tuttle: I’m not going to shred the whole thing thoroughly (that would take too long), but I’ll point out a few flaws:
-”We are not predatory by nature” is a direct denial of significant aspects of human nature, to say nothing of evolutionary (pre)history. We are indeed predatory by nature, though in fairness I will note that the existence of an instinct in us isn’t a particularly good argument for allowing that instinct free rein.
-”we’ve been raised from birth to eat like predators” is utter nonsense; a child does not commit a predatory act by eating food ultimately derived from a form of predation. To a child, meat is simply a type of food. Incidentally, I find it interesting that the word “meat” used to mean food in general – not sure of the details of that meaning shift.
That’s two fundamental errors in the first sentence – I think I’ll leave it there.
I do not claim that animal welfare will ever be absolutely universal, but I don’t see that ‘animal rights’ are particularly relevant to the question. Rights and welfare regulations are different philosophically, but not in practical terms here. Rights can be infringed just as easily as regulations can be contravened – the only (implied) difference is in the specifics of enforcement, and that can be addressed by regulations.
“Even if animals don’t have legal rights, that’s no reason for them not to receive them”
That’s a very direct rejection of logic itself. Funnily enough, it fails to sway me.
“Let’s all hope that the petri dish research pays off and that tasty, textured meat will soon be grown in a lab.”
If and when that is a reasonable option (and actually environmentally friendly), I’ll cheerfully switch to it. Until then, I’ll continue to eat what I need to eat in order to keep my body healthy. As far as I’m concerned, this includes parts of dead animals.
Again, you assume a lot about children. While they are not the blank slate that was previously assumed, they are not born knowing everything you claim. Among other things, we are all born amoral – empathy and compassion, like almost everything else, must be learned (largely through personal suffering, in my experience). By definition, “innocent children” do not know the difference between good and evil. By “sensitive children” here, you appear to mean “children who have already learned my own sensibilities”, and by “wise children” you seem to mean much the same. It’s yet another variant on the “no true Scotsman” fallacy, which is of course a form of circular reasoning.
I agree that drawing a definite line between “don’t kill” and “can kill” is silly, and your choice to place it between animals and plants is no less silly than a decision (not mine btw) to place it between humans and all other animals. Oh, and cherrypicking history for notable people who seem to have agreed with you proves nothing. Martin Luther thought Jews should be wiped from the face of the earth, for instance, and Newton had some extremely strange beliefs for much of his life (and this is without even touching the immense potential for misinterpreting the views of someone who can’t respond, eg. the persistent attempts to label Einstein a Christian or Hitler an atheist).
Sheep possess cognitive abilities, therefore they are intelligent. That is objective, by scientific standards.
You posit their intelligence is insufficient to warrant abstaining from taking their lives unnecessarily. That is subjective and probably inconsistent. I say probably for perhaps you would eat dog before you would eat pig, since by objective scientific standards, pigs possess more self-awareness, more cognitive abilities than canines. If not, then your subjective ‘sentience spectrum’ is just an exhibition of severe cognitive dissonance in an attempt to rationalize your unnecessary consumption of animal flesh.
Yes, Pat H. it IS nice we get along :-) Especially since our respective lens on the world are like east and west; they have no possibility of meeting, do they?
I never mentioned Isaac Newton, by the way. It’s Isaac Bashevis Singer to whom I referred. He won the Nobel Prize in literature in 1978, not that that’s an indication of “right” views on any subject.
We’ve reached the place where I have no more interest in defending my thoughts. You can declare yourself the winner, Pat H. :-))))
Granted, you are an expert at pointing out what you perceive to be holes in logic, contradictions, circular reasoning, fallacies and the like.
But all your arguments are premised on materialism, which, like the dark, vanishes in the light of pure spirituality.
And all the intellectualism in the world means nothing if there is not a shred of humility in it.
In parting, may I say, with kind motives: I can recommend a good tutor in lessons on meekness. Her name is Miss Lamb.
:-) Warm smiles to you and yours. Really and truly! :-)
Hi Pat, You said “What I don’t consider remotely plausible, practically, scientifically or philosophically, is all animals being declared unavailable for human consumption.” Actually how I view our future to be is that we (ever so slowly) continue to evolve and refine our critical thinking skills. That over time the most progressive and logically consistent societies WILL view the unnecessary breeding and slaughter of the innocent as repugnant and unacceptable. Our moral compass always points towards compassion. More people everyday are becoming aware of better choices.
Now, do I think that all people will embrace this ideology of fair treatment? Maybe not. Maybe there will be pockets of those who remain ignorant and wish to continue old, cruel ways… But I see them sourcing their flesh foods in dark alleys and carrying their spoils in the brown butchers paper that intends to keep the deed hidden. I don’t think there will be that “pride” in having a “lion”, “leg” or “breast” holding front and center space in one’s grocery cart. Wheeling around, and looking at lovely, colorful fruits and vegetables in the buggy seems to be the trend we’ll continue on… Until several generations when all will see the “flesh” for the “non-food” item that it is.
You also said “I remind you that non-human animals do not in fact have rights; there seems to be a feeling here that it is somehow helpful to deny that fact.” I absolutely believe that animals do have “rights”; That all who breath have a distinct “ownership” of their bodies. Just because culture has made a profit by denying this doesn’t make it any less so. Just because man has been able to exert force upon the weak does not mean that the “weak” are being treated in accord with what they deserve. History has shown us over again that we often manipulate the status and fate of the innocent for our own means – Never has it been justified as an act that is fair.
And that’s exactly what Olivia’s comparison to children points out. Children do have a keen eye for fairness. If you divide a (vegan) cookie to share between two, each will know to the crumb, who is getting the bigger piece… Mankind will finally make those same observations and come to the conclusion that “our piece” has been far too exploitive to ever be embraced as “kind”. And I do believe man”kind” does wish to be so. Being unjust leaves a very bitter taste on the tongue. I love my species. I think it is to our own interest as well that we evolve, if we are to physically survive and spiritually thrive.
… ooops – “lion” should be loin – Freudian slip perhaps?
Beautiful put, Bea–even the “lion” reference, which I actually thought you meant as a pun since it follows the word “pride.” :-)
At first I was tempted to believe that two children dividing a (vegan) cookie want to make sure that the other one doesn’t get MORE than her fair share. Then I realized that it is more correct — more childlike — to think of each of them making sure that the other one doesn’t get LESS than her fair share. That must be what you were saying! For that is what we seek for our creature friends: to make sure they don’t get LESS than their fair share of justice.
Olivia – What an interesting perspective. Yes! It did escape me even as I was trying to illustrate that children have an intense understanding of fairness that the most perfect of that goal would be that things were as equal as possible. No cheating on getting the bigger half. I don’t think the honesty in a child would like that either. I do stand (happily) corrected! :)
One point that escaped me ’til now: We can’t accurately say we “love animals” if we don’t love one species of animal — especially when we suppress love for a species in order to enjoy the profits from or the taste of their flesh.
I think this little essay written in the late 1800s by Mary Baker Eddy sums up the ethical vegan’s regard for animals (note the reference to a butcher!):
“LOVE. What a word! I am in awe before it. Over what worlds on worlds it hath range and is sovereign! the underived, the incomparable, the infinite All of good, the alone God, is Love.
“By what strange perversity is the best become the most abused, — either as a quality or as an entity? Mortals misrepresent and miscall affection; they make it what it is not, and doubt what it is. The so-called affection pursuing its victim is a butcher fattening the lamb to slay it. What the lower propensities express, should be repressed by the sentiments. No word is more misconstrued; no sentiment less understood. The divine significance of Love is distorted into human qualities, which in their human abandon become jealousy and hate.
“Love is not something put upon a shelf, to be taken down on rare occasions with sugar-tongs and laid on a rose-leaf. I make strong demands on love, call for active witnesses to prove it, and noble sacrifices and grand achievements as its results. Unless these appear, I cast aside the word as a sham and counterfeit, having no ring of the true metal. Love cannot be a mere abstraction, or goodness without activity and power. As a human quality, the glorious significance of affection is more than words: it is the tender, unselfish deed done in secret; the silent, ceaseless prayer; the self-forgetful heart that overflows; the veiled form stealing on an errand of mercy, out of a side door; the little feet tripping along the sidewalk; the gentle hand opening the door that turns toward want and woe, sickness and sorrow, and thus lighting the dark places of earth.”
A little essay with a powerful message – Thank you for sharing this!
@Bea:
I don’t know where to start on your comment, honestly. To me the entire thing is pure fantasy, with no discernible basis in reality. The only point I feel I can even communicate with you on is the idealisation of children, and I’ve already dealt with that in my reply to Olivia.
@Olivia:
So my bird-nerd friend cannot truly love birds if she doesn’t love the Indian Mynah, an introduced pest which has done terrible things to native birds? That’s logically inconsistent, and the concept applies to many more examples.
So Pat, you don’t know where to start? Maybe this will help: You’re a dreamer in fantasy land. You want a utopia that will never be possible. Man will always be entrenched in greed and lust for the extras unnecessary to true happiness… No matter who pays the cost. You’re not a realist – What you want won’t ever come to fruit. Best to just close your eyes, heart and mind and make the best of what is. That’s reality. Just learn to get along… Stop trying to change the world for a better one that the world does not want. You’re just a peacenik who wants an idealized future which will never exist. Just give up! Don’t you realize you’re going against billions who exist now and against everything in our history?
I hope that’s a good start…
But seriously… What is it about my view that man will, in his infinite quest for wisdom and fairness, not progress towards “rights” for all that live and all that would benefit from “rights”? Why is it that you see man remaining in the contradicting, arbitrary fog of animal use? What is so depraved in our species that you think we will always live in a “might makes right” kind of brutality? All this of course would be very different if we needed to eat [dead animals] in order to keep our bodies healthy – But this isn’t the case. Why is it you think we are destined to forever desire to be kind – Yet will not be capable of reaching that goal? Do you think so little of us? Do you think our taste buds, our habits, our economics, or our lust to be “on top” will forever doom us to be senselessly cruel and vicious? Do you really think the status quo will ever hold up considering what we’ve learned about nonhumans in the last century and continue to expand upon everyday? Who is not focused on reality?
The crux is: To kill without cause violates all we are taught is right. This brings us back to children… All civilized cultures ingrain this primary ethic into children – I do not “dream” but I “believe” it’s just a matter of time before this lesson is embraced.
@Marji:
There are some issues I’d prefer not to write an entire essay about right now, about the rise (or not) of consciousness in a capable brain depending on stimulus – it’s a fairly complex topic, and it gets messy (so I’ll touch on it but try not to get too far into it). I’ll concede that the eating of pig meat and non-eating of dog meat is often inconsistent, but that quirk of human dietary habits is a fairly straightforward consequence of urbanisation. Urbanisation, by making dogs and cats (among others) into common pets, makes us emotionally less willing to eat those animals, and it also causes the rise of mentality (to varying degrees) in those pets. That’s part of the messiness – rather than being able to place (for instance) “dogs” at one specific point on this metaphorical scale, we have to recognise that any species with much of a brain at all is going to cover a significant range depending on stimulus (and on individual physiology). I draw a sharp distinction between potential and actuality; I’m fine with the idea that, given a different set of circumstances, the pig whose meat I’m eating could have developed some degree of consciousness. I realise this opens a few cans of worms, and I’ll deal with them in my next reply if you choose to challenge me on them.
Incidentally, your use of so-called “scientific standards” doesn’t impress me overmuch. Just looking at the two uses in this comment: the first is technically correct but used misleadingly in combination with implied false equivalence, and the second is correct only within significant constraints (but is falsely stated as an absolute). I suggest that your knowledge of science is rather purposeful, which is a significantly limiting imbalance.
@Olivia:
We do have rather different views on the issues at hand, don’t we? I’m not going to declare myself the “winner” here – if truth is decided based on who is willing to debate longer, we should all be creationists ;-)
As to “materialism”, it depends on what you mean. I have no interest in material wealth beyond comfort (for which I require little to be happy) and the few material things necessary for me to follow my passions (eg. a camera for my photography). I am strictly naturalistic in the sense opposed to supernaturalism, though, if that’s what you mean by “materialism”.
A debate on ‘enemy’ turf (quote-marks very deliberate) isn’t the best place to show humility, so I quite understand if the impression you have of me is of extreme arrogance. By way of balance:
-I recognise that I am a flawed human being, and that I make mistakes. I strive to overcome my weaknesses, to become always a better person, and above all, in whatever ways I can, to make the world a better place with me than it would be without me. That is my aim and my goal, though of course I fall short rather often.
-To put the previous point in context: I have no cosmic significance. I am a tiny speck of carbon flitting about on one smallish planet orbiting an unremarkable star tucked away in an unremarkable corner of an unremarkable galaxy. I have significance only in my own mind, and in the minds of those who care about me (one way or another). I work always towards understanding everything, but I do recognise this for the impossibility it is.
@Bea:
You paint a melodramatic vision in which those who disagree with you are currently prideful sinners and will in the future be furtive deviants. You conflate “have rights” with “should (in my opinion) have rights”. You romanticise children without regard to truth (as I pointed out to Olivia). About the only thing you get right in that comment is that our species has indeed over-exploited the planet. I acknowledge the arrow of progress, but simple untruth about present reality is not a particularly useful tool for progress.
I disapprove of the greed and overconsumption which seems to characterise so much of the modern world, and have never really bought into it myself; I don’t go to extremes, but I do happily live quite frugally (see the “materialism” paragraph in my message to Olivia in this comment). I am a peacenik and a realist both – as a realist I try to see the world as it is, and as a pacifist I generally oppose war (though like Einstein I consider war necessary occasionally). Again, you make unwarranted assumptions about me on the basis of a disagreement with you on one issue. I am not a stereotype.
I think your arguments for the desirability of not consuming meat are largely false. I do not think that we will forever strive for but never reach the state you desire; rather, I think we will not (and should not) strive towards that state at all. I reject your characterisation of meat-eating as necessarily “cruel and vicious”, and without that point your argument falls apart.
To kill without cause is indeed wrong, but “in order to eat the flesh” constitutes “cause” by any vaguely reasonable definition; this should not even be controversial, though I suspect it will be here. The question of “just cause” is a valid subject for debate, but the question of “cause” itself is in this context merely yet another example of logical fallacy used for emotive purposes.
No “melodrama” required… When an innocent sentient being, who loves thier lives, equal to the way I love mine is needlessly killed – the “drama” speaks for itself. It’s tragic! And I did say in my mind’s eye… Animal DO have rights. Simply because you refuse to acknowledge these rights does not dismiss my reaction and dismay when those rights are violated.
And I know you like to think you live “frugally” but you’re lifestyle requires the most expensive of “goods” – The life of another being. I believe that snuffing a life when there are other viable choices IS “overconsumption”. You are NOT a “peacenick” your acts are deliberately violent. That is the reality. I make these judgments based on what you’ve said regarding the “lesser” beings who you choose to kill. I am not “assuming” anything about you… I’m basing my opinion on information you provided.
We can NOT reach the state I desire… Unless we grant all beings an equal “right” to their own lives. It’s like trying to mix oil and water… The two: reckless and frivolous killing of victims with fairness and kindness… It just WILL NOT mix! And just because YOU reject my characterisation of meat-eating as “cruel and vicious” does not mean it isn’t a valid point. I reject your idea that it is warranted and “necessary” and “normal”. Here – We are at an impasse.
When I say “to kill without *cause*” I mean that in our “civilized” world there are thousands of alternatives… I know — I live by them everyday. I’m certainly no one “special”… I’m really quite an “average” gal. If I can do it… Anyone can — IF they have the motiviation based in justice. It’s so simple, it’s like breathing – I assure you…
And I certainly would never deny the Inuit or bushman his/her means to survive… But you sir, have provided nothing to assert your life’s dependency on Ms. Lamb’s flesh… Nothing. It’s all been about how you deem her life to be of lesser value than yours. And that continues to beg the question: By what right? Please… By what right???
Yes, but that person’s empathy was from reading a book. It was theoretical. It’s “cool” to be in the gang and it’s an ego boost for some. Plus she was so very, very , very militant and so sure of herself, that invariably backfires on the psyche. If you are based in love and empathy, there’s no pride or force. You held a cow and you saw yourself in that other being. I see my cat and myself in cows but especially pigs, I have my favorites, and chickens, I dig them so much. I have studied lots of ex-vegans. I met a family with such tooth decay due to being misguided by a famous vegan MD in Northern California. Certain vegan diets can do serious, severe damage to people both physically and mentally. I really enjoyed your ex-ex-vegan story. First one I’ve read. Thank you!