[continued]
2. Not all death is created equal. Now, given that humans are omnivores (I’m not going to bother justifying the assumption; talk to or read anyone who has had to leave vegetarianism for health reasons), why might we be expected to behave differently than bears or chickens or any of the others? Well, we simply aren’t like all other animals. For one, our awareness of the lives and experiences of others makes us unique. That has to be honoured. When I was a vegetarian I believed it was required of me because my humanness gave me a responsibility for the animals whose lives were sacrificed for me, and I saw no other way to prevent their unnecessary suffering. When I gave up vegetarianism I still only indulged in meat when it was offered at others’ houses. When I bought meat to keep up my iron levels or to feed to my young and rapidly growing child I was surprised to find “organic” meat was becoming readily available, but not confident in what it actually entailed, to be safe I bought bison meat. And when I heard that a friend’s brother had started hunting and had a freezer full of moose, I had an epiphany and gleefully, somewhat-less-than-legally, obtained about ten pounds of it.
Hunting! Now why hadn’t I thought of that before? When I started seeing, and quickly got engaged to, my partner, our lengthy conversations about meat and animal ethics quickly led us back to that point, and in between planning our wedding we swiftly obtained our hunting licenses. What I and my partner had recognized was that our most ethical source of meat was from animals that had lived free and fulfilling lives and that had died in fair chase (one of the basic principles of hunting, in fact even written into hunting legislation).
3. But this begs the question that I applaud Keith for also addressing: Can’t we just avoid all that animal suffering and live solely off of plant-death? I answer with some of Keith’s points, and some of my own:
-Prey need predators. Ecology 101 (I actually took this) teaches that, as with snowshoe hares and lynxes, when predator populations drop, prey populations boom to the point of hyper-competition for resources that results in mass starvation and vulnerability to predators. As it is, humans have already screwed up the balances of so many ecosystems that many animals are stuck in “boom” without enough predators to break it, and they are destroying their own habitats, often eating other species to local extinction before they bust themselves. The tragic result is loss of biodiversity, animal suffering, and in desperation, government culls, as we have seen or have been threatened just in recent and local history for snow geese, bears, rabbits, beavers and deer. It would be better for them not to boom and therefore not to bust – to maintain a steady population. Humans are in the unique position of possessing the intelligence to monitor animal populations and harvest accordingly.
-Humans are capable of being humane. Unlike other predators, human hunting technology gives us the ability to kill animals very quickly and, if done well, sometimes painlessly. We also have the intellect to choose and use animals responsibly (ex: nobody is actually allowed to kill Bambi’s mom). Unlike bears, who like to eat prey’s stomachs before they’re quite dead, or who, when the salmon run is plentiful, will only eat the brain and roe of dozens of fish at a time, or unlike wolves who will kill and inexplicably leave entire healthy animals to rot — humans are capable of creating and adhering to codes of ethics regarding which animals to kill, how to kill them, and how to use them.
-Grown plants are no less destructive, and perhaps even more destructive, than raised or hunted meat. In spite of the hype, the amount of land currently dedicated to crops, especially crops that are eaten for protein (legumes and grains), has been far more abused than the land under animals. Grazing or wild animals (ex: beef cattle, which are all grass-fed until they get “finished” in CAFOs) obviously allow for great biodiversity, and are constantly “giving back to the land” with their waste. (Nobody is advocating for animals living in CAFOs or battery cages or concrete-floored warehouses, but even the production of industrially-raised pork and chicken emits comparable greenhouse gases to vegan alternatives.) In sharp contrast, the foods that feeds vegetarians — corn, soybeans, wheat, chickpeas — are produced in vast monoculture, often surrounded by more great swaths of monoculture, as far as the eye can see. These farms are not only destructive in their exclusion of other life forms (even when they’re organic and can’t be accused of additionally poisoning everything else), but their creation required the death of an indefinable number of animal lives and destruction of stable and unique ecosystems, exerting a negative influence that extends miles beyond their fence lines.
Keith explores the above ideas further, and continues with fascinating and compelling ideas about domestication, the human relationship to annual grasses, the blurry distinction between animals and plants, and also all the political implications of vegetarianism, but I think these suffice for my scope. (She also follows with a lengthy foray into the questionability of the health of vegetarian diets, but that chapter hardly contributes to her argument.)
For all her foibles, I salute Keith for a passionate and engaging book, and an intelligent exploration of such a personal and controversial subject. I defy a vegetarian rebuttal!
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