Right, quite simply, i'm considering going veggie or certainly moving to a position where i only have meat on special occasions. I need your help. What are the ethics of the matter, what are the economics of the matter?
The grain used to feed up one cow (which makes, for the sake of argument, 100 meals) could instead be used to feed people (for the sake of argument, 1000 meals)and we could beat world hunger, is one argument frequently used. But what would happen to the animals if we all turned veggie, they'd still need feeding, right? What of all the people whose livelihoods depend on farmed meat?
On the one hand, i don't mind eating animals, i've done it for years and animals are absolutely delicious all over! On the other hand, i do regard them as spiritual beings and my treatment of them ought to reflect that.
I've always justified it in the past by these two things:
1. If it were down to me, i could kill, skin and cook an animal myself. It's not that i need someone else to buy me out of doing the dirty work, it's just that that's the way society has arranged itself. But i'm maybe a bit less convinced of that these days.
2. I would never make a distinction between animals i would eat and animals i wouldn't. What i mean is, some folk say "Oh, you can't eat rabbit, they're such lovely pets" therefore making a distinction between types of animals that were and weren't appropriate to eat. I always thought 'Hypocrite. If you'll eat a lamb, the cuteness factor can't mean a thing'. Worse still is where people make a fuss about acknowledging where the meat has come from. I'd eat horse, dog, sheep, pigeon - anything.
What i now think is that if animals are all on the same plain, perhaps that plain isn't one of edibility, but rather one of inedibility.
My backup justification has always been, well, Jesus at least advocated the catching and cooking of fish, and he'd have eaten a fair few passover lambs in his time too. The counter? I now recognise how vastly different his economic context was to mine.
The thing is, when one starts talking about 'justification' one has already acknowledged a position of defense, or that something's wrong.
Help me out, what are your takes on these arguments, and what are the important arguments i'm missing?
By the way, top tip: don't put 'meat' into a google image search, certainly not at work anyway.
10 comments:
By the way, top tip: don't put 'meat' into a google image search, certainly not at work anyway.
That reminds me of preparing for a Christmas Service a good few years ago. We wanted nice pictures of candles and other light sources to include in a presentation, and one of the guys who was putting it together came to a planning meeting and said he'd learned that "free pictures" was not a sensible thing to put in a search engine.
What do you mean when you say you see animals as spiritual creatures? Can you explain how they differ from trees etc? If it's about consciousness - which seems to be the argument for a lot of vegetarians - where do you get the idea that consciousness = spirituality from?
There are plenty of good reasons for being a vegan - not that I ever will be - but your reasoning seems unusual.
Ok, cool, what ar they?
Also, i don't equate spirituality with merely consciousness, though i see where i may have given you that idea.
"Ok, cool, what ar they?"
I don't know. But I think the word spiritual has a lot of baggage. I accept that animals are created by God, that all life is God-breathed, but I also accept that's true with plants too. I can't think of any evidence for animals being able to communicate with God in the way we can, for example. Or make moral decisions. I can't recall any biblical example of animals being filled with the Holy Spirit either.
The consciousness bit wasn't inspired by any particular phrase you used, I was just trying to figure out how you draw a distinction between plants and animals such that one is spiritual and the other isn't (or at least one is less spiritual so it's more okay to eat them).
It's just struck me that by "what are they" you might have been referring to the reasons for being a vegan.
In that case, I guess environmental benefits, health benefits, creating potential for a society less based on mass production of foodstuffs, and (arguably, though I'm sceptical) supposed emotional benefits where non-meat-eaters who still eat healthily are supposedly calmer more at peace than others.
Hi Tim, yeah it was the latter i was after. I think the comparative spirituality of the various componants of God's creation is a side issue to what i'm looking for here.
Ok, you say: "I guess environmental benefits, health benefits, creating potential for a society less based on mass production of foodstuffs".
I want to know what environmental, health and societal benefits? And how do they happen through vegetarianism?
(thanks for your time, tim)
ok, although you would probably be better off talking to someone who is convinced enough by these benefits that they actually ARE a vegan themselves!
You've mentioned part of the environmental benefit with your grain argument. Meat products also tend to have more airmiles (or lorrymiles). Having said that, a lot of vegans might eat posh foodstuffs that have been imported, which cancels out that effect. But if you're growing the food yourself that obviously isn't true.
The societal benefit argument only really works if you're interested in overturning global capitalism and you want to figure out what you might replace that with. We can't rely on global markets for our sustenance while trying to destroy them and replace them with something better. We need to be more self-sustainable so we can support our own communities. Of course you wouldn't care about this argument if you were on the breadline, you would just eat whatever was available to you - so at worst this argument can be a bit of a luxury.
The health arguments are that if you have a balanced vegan diet (which not all vegans do, because the stereotypical vegan is weird and obsessional) then you are much healthier than a meat-eater because meat pollutes the body system and forces it to focus on digesting difficult-to-digest substances at the expense of other stuff. I'm sceptical about this kind of argument because I don't know the science.
For me the best argument for veganism is that treating animals more humanely would lead us to treat humans more humanely too. There is of course no evidence for this assertion, but it sounds plausible to me. Though it's worth bearing in mind that it's easy to get people to donate to save a circus elephant but very difficult to get people to support human beings locked up in immigration detention centres. So there may be an extent to which charitable behaviour is a zero-sum game.
In short, my view is self-sustainable veganism good, faux-trendy Waitrose veganism bad - but neither are for me.
Andy it might help to have a listen to a podcast from Philosophy Bites. Nigel Warburton intereview Peter Singer the philosopher ethicist who is the best known advocate of animal rights. You can get it here
http://nigelwarburton.typepad.com/philosophy_bites/animals/
Or from iTunes.
If you end being convinced though, don't tell me. I'm under enough pressure on this from my own conscience already and the bacon, sausage and black pudding I had with this morning's breakfast were superb.
Thanks for the balance in that comment, Glen.
Post a Comment