Saturday, November 03, 2007

On Vegetarian/Veganism

I have been recently reading The Omnivore's Dilemma and just last night was reading through Pollan's thoughts on vegetarian/veganism.

"But just as we recognize that nature doesn't provide a very good guide for human social conduct, isn't it anthropocentric of us to assume that our moral system offers an adequate guide for what should happen in nature?
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To contemplate such questions from the vantage of the farm, or even a garden, is to appreciate just how parochial, and urban, an ideology animal rights really is. It could only thrive in a world where people have lost contact with the natural world, where animals no longer pose any thread to us (a fairly recent development), and our mastery of nature seems unchallenged.
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The grain that the vegan eats is harvested with a combine that shreds field mice, while the farmer's tractor wheel crushes woodchucks in their burrows and his pesticides drop songbirds from the sky; after harvest whatever animals that would eat our crops we exterminate. Killing animals is probably unavoidable no matter what we choose to eat. If America was suddenly to adopt a strictly vegetarian diet, it isn't at all clear that the total number of animals killed each year would necessarily decline, since to feed everyone animal pasture and rangeland would have to give way to more intensively cultivated row crops.
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The vegan utopia would also condemn people in many parts of the country to importing all their food from distant places.
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To give up eating animals is to give up on these places as human habitat, unless of course we are willing to make complete our dependence on a highly industrialized national food chain. That food chain would be in turn even more dependent that it already is on fossil fuels and chemical fertilizer, since food would need to travel even farther and fertility-in the form of manures-would be in short supply. Indeed, it is doubtful you can build a genuinely sustainable agriculture without animals to cycle nutrients and support local food production. If our concern is for the health of nature-rather than, say, the internal consistency of our moral code or the condition of our souls-the eating animals may sometimes be the most ethical thing to do.
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...the essential concession: What's wrong with eating animals is the practice, not the principle.
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The death they suffer in our hands commonly is, and always may be, speedier and, by that means a less painful one, than that which would await them in the inevitable course of nature."


Basically, predation is a part of the natural order, and it has it's purpose too, to keep a rather precarious balance so that Animals (on the whole, not individuals) can continue to survive. What's wrong with meat eating in our world right now, and especially in the westernized nations, is that the CAFO's (Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations) cut costs at the expense of the animals they raise, and in so doing, they deprive those animals of their natural inclinations and way of life.

However, a "good farm," a sustainable farm (example: http://polyfacefarms.com/) does not deny animals that way of life. In fact it encourages it and uses the animals natural instincts to make the farm run more efficiently and more sustainably. For example, on Poly Face farms when the cows leave their pasture (daily) they let chickens loose in that pasture to scratch around in the manure. This does two things, it spreads the manure around so that it becomes fertilizer instead of breeding bacteria and killing the ground it sits on, and the chickens find grubs that they love to eat and which makes their bodies create the fat that makes them taste good later. This is just one example, there are many. The end result of this is that the animals quality of life is excellent, and (I think sometimes veg's forget this) their deaths are better than what they could probably expect in the wild.

I agree with the veg's that the CAFO system of farming is completely fucked up, abusive towards animals, and wrong. But that doesn't make meat eating wrong, it makes the CAFO system wrong, and that needs to change. As Pollan says "the essential concession: What's wrong with eating animals is the practice, not the principle." But, I personally don't think opting out of the meat eating system all together will effect that change. To my mind that's sort of like asking for feminist change while at the same time refusing to identify with feminism as a movement. If you want to effect change in this area, what to do is to seek out these sustainable farms (not necessarily organic but that is for another day) and if you don't have any, then find the best you can. Support them, give them your money, buy locally so that you can drive by and see how your animals live, and don't buy into the CAFO system. If enough of us do that, they will have to change.

16 comments:

  1. amen. that book rocks my socks.

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  2. Awesome book. But despite agreeing that it is the massive, corporate farms that are the most pressing problem...I still think that vegetarianism is better for the environment. Unfortunately, even small, organic farms clear a huge amount of land for their animals to live on. We are growing food for animals to eat so that we can eat them. We could feed so many more people if we only grew food directly for human consumption.

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  3. so totally agree with you, as a neo pagan queer communist/ libertarian who grew up in a butcher shop I've always found meat a challenging issue. I eat veggie alot becausee of centralised farming, but people can't get their heads around the fact that I do that but am pro meat and animal farming in general, just can't afford lots of ethically produced meat. which is how it should be I think.

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  4. Ali, I think being a vegetarian is a totally legitimate choice. But just to address this one part: "We could feed so many more people if we only grew food directly for human consumption." He also addresses that elsewhere in the book, and actually come to the conclusion that for "grass farmers" like Salatin they are in fact growing more food (more calories) for people by having animals as part of the farm eco-system.

    Me, I agree, our not being able to afford half as much meat as we eat on a regular basis in this country would not be a terrible thing.

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  5. This quote is brilliant:

    "I agree with the veg's that the CAFO system of farming is completely fucked up, abusive towards animals, and wrong. But that doesn't make meat eating wrong, it makes the CAFO system wrong, and that needs to change."

    As someone who is sympathetic to PETA's cause but still believes that is okay to eat meat -- I mean, animals eat other animals -- I truly understand where you are coming from here. Bravo!

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  6. There are a couple of things here, but let me address just one - as a vegetarian since 1973:

    The natural course of things is that the strong take out the weak and so preserve not only themselves, but also the integrity of the herd. The human race has gone beyond this: there is no longer this natural course; the human race breeds animals specifically for slaughter and consumption, and that in a most inefficient manner.

    Were we, as the theoretical 'overlords' in strength and resources, to return to the course of nature, eating according to our needs from what we have trapped and slaughtered ourselves, the world would have considerably fewer humans and, in my opinion, be a much better place as a result.

    Aside from which, going to another extreme, does anyone really consider the fact that they are eating a dead body and try to level this with our so-called civilsation?

    Pi.
    http://private-intellectual.de

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  7. "Were we, as the theoretical 'overlords' in strength and resources, to return to the course of nature, eating according to our needs from what we have trapped and slaughtered ourselves, the world would have considerably fewer humans and, in my opinion, be a much better place as a result."

    I agree.

    "Aside from which, going to another extreme, does anyone really consider the fact that they are eating a dead body and try to level this with our so-called civilsation?"

    I don't know about anyone else, but I have thought about that before.

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  8. You might want to give this a read, since you consider yourself a radical feminist (as do I.)

    http://www.amazon.com/Sexual-Politics-Meat-Feminist-Vegetarian-Critical/dp/0826411843

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  9. That looks really interesting, thank you!

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  10. If you can't intuitively feel that meat eating is disgusting, only legitimate when there is no other alternative, then it is useless talking about it to you. You are not ready in this lifetime to behave as a real human, because you have no taste.

    A refined sense of aesthetics is part of what it means to be a human. In this case, aesthetics intersects with ethics.

    My advice to carnivores who cannot give it up is to go on trying to be a good person in other ways, and in the future (of this lifetime, or a future life) you will acquire the moral sensibilities of a full human.

    Until then, you are a dog.

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  11. if you are willing to write off the majority of humans as dogs, it is useless talking about it to you.

    but. unless you believe that moral sensibility only applies to vegetarianism, this is to say that only a person who is always moral in both thought and action about all things is truly human, leaving...no one. i would argue that it is the ability to reason your way to moral sensibility (rather than it being inherent), and work your way to acting upon it that makes one human.

    failing at that doesn't make you a dog, it simply makes you a failure - but a human one. =D

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  12. OK, but that did get someone's attention.

    This is important when people have to point out that vegetarianism is a "legitimate choice". In such a situation, the idea that non-vegetarianism is frequently only a selfish choice, cannot be heard.

    Woof!

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  13. And it is difficult to see how eating meat in a country like the US, for instance, is anything but thoughtless, or worse, thought out but defended.

    There are certainly exceptions to this. Therefore, we can safely say that perhaps one per cent of the human carnivores in the US are not doggish.

    As for the other moral standards mentioned by lady brett, we are doggish on those accounts too. I don't excuse myself for my doggishness, so why should the carnivores?

    It is probable that at this time, most humans are lower than dogs, who are only acting naturally. Humans should go beyond their lower nature, no? Recognition is the beginning of moral renewal.

    The place to start is to stop causing unnecessary pain and suffering by eating meat. We all know the main reason Americans, for instance, eat meat.

    They are ruled by their tongue.

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  14. This is where you and I (and lady brett among others) are going to disagree though Hector:

    "The place to start is to stop causing unnecessary pain and suffering by eating meat."

    I don't think ceasing to eat meat entirely will accomplish this task. In fact I think eating meat is an integral part of that goal. How and why that is, is already outlined in my post.

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