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To
Meat or Not To Meat—My Plight (revision
two) Growing up in a small town in the
end of the 20th century has brought me and taught me many-a-thing, as well as
left gaping holes in my education and a blind eye as to serious business
going on in the world. It left me with
several prejudices, known and unknown, hard-learned experiences with living
in a small, tight-knit gossip circle, filled with housewives, local business owners,
and the like always trying to one-up the others with the latest tidbit about
so-and-so over the morning coffee and the usual chit-chat about the local
gossip scene. I came to resent this,
but learned to work with it, and turn the system back upon itself so as to
playfully incriminate those doing the “talking” and rumor spreading. From this came an understanding of the
local social circles, and how to rise above them, removing myself so as to
gain a better perspective of the motivations of those involved. This false feeling of control has
proved to be deceitful in recent years.
While being confident about my beliefs and practices, I was trained to
keep watching; looking down the road, looking straight ahead. This sort of tunnel vision or speed
blindness tends to leave a person with a lack of perspective, which I had
previously found so sought-after. I have been toying with the idea
of vegetarianism for some time now, and when I started down this road, I
really had no idea what I was about to get myself into. I now receive strange reactions from people
when I mentioned that I did not eat this or that, the looks of people at the
dinner table when I order a dish with the tofu option over chicken or
beef. Let me just say now that I have
come to enjoy tofu more than most types of meat I have been so attracted to
in my life. In fact, I sometimes crave it, as if it were a drug, of
sorts. Perhaps it is. In this paper I am going to
attempt to really dive in, for the first time, and lay out facts, fictions,
thoughts, and deeds that are involved regarding the human consumption, or
rather MY consumption of meat, and all that is involved therein. I will almost certainly not resolve my
inner conflict on these pages, but I will make some headway towards some sort
of dietary aspiration. In the end, I
may decide to become vegetarian. I may
even decide to go vegan. Perhaps I
will dive headlong into an all-meat diet, with nothing but steaks,
hamburgers, fried chicken, and lamb to await my every meal for the rest of my
days. In all likelihood, I foresee
that I will decide to try out vegetarianism for a while, just to see if I can
swing it[1]. I will begin by diving into the material, starting with
William Stephens Five Arguments for Vegetarianism[2]. Stephens’ first argument is one of
distributive justice. Principals of
distributive justice are normative, designed to allocate goods in limited
supply relative to demand. The
essential argument here is that, in terms of grain and soy needed to produce
relative amounts of meat versus just eating the grain, meat is a very costly
item. The ratios here are simply
shocking: there is a sixteen to twenty-one-to-one ratio involved in the
production of beef; it takes sixteen to twenty-one-to-one pounds of grain and
soy to produce one pound of beef.
Moving through the other varieties of meat, there is a six to
eight-to-one ratio in the production of pork, a four-to-one ratio in the
production of turkey, and a three-to-one ratio involved in producing chicken
meat. I find these numbers simply
astonishing. As a student of science,
specifically physics, let me compare this to one of the least efficient, yet
widely used means of transportation today: the gasoline engine. Based on a non-renewable energy source,
four-stroke gasoline engine waists approximately sixty to eighty percent of
its potential energy produced in the form of heat and friction, never to be
available again. It is easy to say
that this process is far less than efficient, yet it is used by millions upon
millions of people every day to go here and there, not to mention the
chemical pollutants involved in this process.
Imagine just how powerful or efficient of vehicles we could be using
if we were able to gain 100 % efficiency out of a gasoline engine/non-renewable
energy source, much less a renewable energy source. We’re talking about a high-end sports car
getting over one hundred miles to the gallon. Even the most efficient of the
means of meat production is horribly inefficient, and it does not take a
student of science to see that, by cutting back production of meat and
channeling those extra grain resources into the slew of people—the millions
of people who die each year from lack of grains in their diet, we could save
lives; we could save many lives. The
ratio involved here is more or less one-to-one—almost 100% efficient! It would take close to a miracle to make an
advance even close to that in terms of engine efficiency. In heed of this and continuing to eat meat,
I am not only putting my stamp of approval on wasteful production, but I am being
selfish and refusing to share, showing a blatant disregard for distributive
justice. Stephens points out that
developing nations mimicking America worsens this. We, as one of the most technologically
advanced and industrialized country in the world, are setting a poor and
irresponsible example. As serious as
some people interpret the Bible and watch football, it seems to me that if
we’re fortunate enough, by chance of birth, to be born, live, and be
consumers in an agriculturally wealthy nation, we should lower the demand for
meat by laying embargo to its ‘luxury.’
We should not be showing such reckless abandon by selfishly
squandering our agricultural wealth; we should instead be sharing it with
those, who, by the similar accident of birth, live in agriculturally poor
areas of the world. ______________________________ Friends and neighbors aside, what
else do I have to worry about?
Pollution. Erosion. Waste.
The Environment. My
Environment; Our Environment—Mother Nature.
The production of livestock, besides being inefficient, also produces
a large amount of waist, specifically livestock manure. Manure produces, amongst other things,
methane, one of four gases that contributes to global warming. Livestock account for somewhere from
fifteen to twenty percent of global methane emissions. Nitrogen is a chemical natural to
our earth; it comprises 78% of our atmosphere and is a vital ingredient in
any artificial fertilizer. It is
everywhere. Since manure is exposed to
open air and most likely a fertilizer of some type immediately upon its
production, the means for the production of certain types of harmful nitrates
is almost guaranteed. These are also
almost guaranteed to find their way into ground water, drinking water. This is a leading cause for Methemoglobinemia (blue baby syndrome), cancer, and
numerous forms of nervous system impairments.
This is a natural cycle considered an organic pollutant, but the sheer
number of livestock is now to account for over one half of the toxic organic
pollutants found in fresh water. Speaking of water, apparently it
takes about 3,000 liters of water to produce one kilogram of American
beef. 3,000 liters! This is mostly due to inefficient use of
irrigation and water recycling techniques.
This, combined with deforestation, contributes to massive
desertification of the land on which the livestock is grown. Overgrazing and over cultivation of this
land are prime factors in a ridiculous amount of erosion of the earth,
costing up to about thirty-five pounds of topsoil per pound of steak
produced. My prime ‘beef’ with all of these
facts is waste. The toil on the land,
the tainting of the ground water—the cost is simply too high per unit of
livestock meat on my plate for me to reflect and happily chew a piece of
steak at the same time. As if the
labor on the land and the inefficient allocation of resources, we come back
to energy and non-renewable resources.
The amount of non-renewable assets that go into the amount of meat the
average American consumes in a year is enough to drive all the way across the
United States and half way back in the new Honda Insight[3]. Livestock production leads to
serious environmental harm. As a human
being eating meat, I am in a sense laughing in the face of sustainable
development. Ecologically it would be
beneficial to impose sanctions on livestock and take up a vegetarian
diet. What about the animals? How do they deal with being cooped up,
slaves to the humans, living each day out just to wake up one morning to be
slaughtered and served on the latest McDonald’s big meal deal. Peter Singer[4]
and Tom Regan[5]
have two different arguments that arrive on the thesis against factory
farming. Singer, whose line of thought
makes so much more sense to me is quite simple, starting out by saying that
we should simply take into account the interests of every sentient being, and
give those interests similar weight of interest as the like interest of any
other sentient being. Now, practices
that inflict suffering on any sentient being without good reason, should be
considered morally wrong. My problem
(which I also find with Regan’s argument) lies here, which I shall address in
a moment. The two turning points here are
that factory farming inflicts suffering on sentient beings and that humans
(arguably) do not need meat for a healthy diet. These points taken, it easily follows that
sentient beings have a serious interest in not being made to suffer, and that
humans, having a trivial interest in meat as a dietary luxury must wage this
trivial interest against the aforementioned serious interest in not being
made to suffer, and concede that factory farming is, in fact, morally wrong.[6] Due to its exceptional layout and
self-inclusive gist, I follow and can side myself with Singer’s argument much
more quickly than Regan’s, and I submit that inflicting suffering on a
sentient being or a SOAL is morally wrong and fundamentally unjust because it
is both an unnatural and immoral form of hunting, but I have to question
whether cattle, pigs, sheep, chickens and the like are sentient beings and I
HAVE to question if they are a SOAL. I
will concede that they are, in fact sentient, as it means simply conscious,
but Regan’s intense and presumptuous description left me with an awful taste
in my mouth. I find it IMMENSLEY hard
to go all the way and believe that a cow/pig/sheep/chicken/turkey has a sense
of the future, including their own, and emotional life with preference and
welfare interests, with the ability to initiate action in pursuit of their
own desires and goals, having a psychophysical identity over time. Personally, I will put these
premises past a cow/pig/sheep/chicken/turkey.
Certainly they can act to protect themselves to a point, but I think
that, given any semi-complex scenario, an animal as simple as these will have
a hard time plotting revenge or escape, if you will. Certainly we can give animated characters
such as Tom and Jerry human qualities such as curiosity, anger,
hatred, jealousy, or an appreciation for art and music, but it seems, at
least for the mentioned livestock-class animals we are discussing, to be a
*bit* much. Friends, neighbors, environment
and moral considerations aside, what more could there to be potentially argue
for or against concerning livestock?
What about ourselves? What
about me? I feel like quitting meat
‘cold turkey’ is going to throw off my body, my metabolism, my mental well
being, probably my athletic performance.
On ignorant premonition, I feel as though I will easily be able to
sustain myself by replacing protein sources and the like, but to what degree
will my body be thrown off? First off, we have the Eskimos,
Greenlanders, Laplanders, and the Russian Kurgi
tribes, with the populations as a whole consuming the highest percentage of
animal flesh in the world. These
groups also seem to have the lowest life expectancy, right around thirty
years. Thirty years!? Originally I thought that this was a really
skewed claim, and only somewhat relevant.
These people live in harsh climates, it is no wonder they have a low
life expectancy. But then I found
about another Russian group, the Caucasians, the Yukatan
Indians, the East Indian Todas, and the Pakistan Hunzakuts, all of which live in equally harsh conditions,
but their diets consist of little or no animal flesh, combined with some of
the highest life expectancies in the world--90 to 100 years. In the East Andes of Ecuador, on the Black
Sea, and in the Himalayas of Northern Pakistan live groups of people that
enjoy full, active lives, living, working, and playing past the age of eighty
while having diets that consist of only 1.5% meat and dairy product
calories. Contrast these two scenarios with
the United States: we have one of the
lowest life expectancies of all industrialized nations, yet we live in a
temperate environment, and have the most sophisticated medical technology
available in the world. The US is one
of the highest consumers of meat and animal products. These cases combined with several
different studies documenting that the stamina and strength of a vegetarian
is superior to that of meat eaters makes me wonder how in the world I can eat
meat and be consider myself healthy.[7] It seems that a balanced, well thought out,
meat-less diet is healthier than a diet containing meat, thus providing
strong reasons for becoming a vegetarian. ____________________________ Now, is
it really going to matter if I decide to buy and eat meat? The lines of causation that stretch out
between the boycotting of meat by Americans, the market effect this will have
on international agribusiness, rising surplusses of
grain worldwide, and political decissions to export
such surplusses to famine-plagued areas, are
without question long, complicated, difficult to establish, and even more
difficult to predict the outcome of.
It is easy to argue that such tenuous, convoluted causal lines are too
easily severed by unforseen or uncontrollable
circumstances. Any single person
boycotting the meat industry is going to be symbolic at face value, but
coupled with political action and greater numbers of people, it could exert real
market pressure to undercut the meat industry. Consider
this: Americans lead the world in meat consumption, with one hundred and
twelve kilograms per capita, or about two kilograms per week, whereas in
India on average of two kilograms per capita are consumed per year. Our view of meat consumption might look
better if we remember that if Americans were to reduce their meat consumption
by only ten percent for one year, it would free over twelve million tons of
grain for global famine relief—enough to feed sixty million starving
people. Factory-farmed meat is a luxure indulged by in predominantly by Americans and
Europeans at the expense of the poor of developing nations—it is a wasteful
and selfish at odds with distributive justice, showing a lack of compassion
for those who deserve decent food. It could also be said that by
limiting consumption to those animals (i.e. goats) that graze on unfarmable ‘rough pasture land that grows only grass’ as
Singer describes it (i.e. mountain slopes), meat eaters would not be
depriving hungry people of any grain protein at all. This then, concedes that farmable land
should not be used to support meat production, but this all too
quickly assures that all land ‘that grows only grass’ can and rightly should
be used to produce animal protein for humans.
________________________________ What choice could I possibly
have? I have laid out all of the facts
against meat eating, and every one of them sickens me. Distributive justice supplies a piece of
prominent Christian philosophy of selflessness, sharing, and equality. There are more than several reasons for
abandoning meat production all together for environmental reasons, and I do
not wish harm upon cute little animals.
Sentient or not, I should hold their serious interest in not being
made to suffer over my trifling, petty interest in eating meat. There are even numerous health studies that
suggest that I will be able to work harder, live longer, and further my
enjoyment of life by lessening or quitting my meat and dairy intake all
together. Still, I am hard pressed to
quit eating meat outright as I feel that I have left some vital points
against vegetarianism, not to mention a deeper discussion of the validity of
animals being SOAL and/or sentient beings.
Thus I submit here a draft, on the promise that I will try a
vegetarian diet over the present holiday. * * * * UPDATE It has now been almost two months
since I first laid my fingers into this text, and decided to try out
vegetarianism. I am still going
strong, and find that, with the exception of a rare craving for chicken
tender melts from Perkins, I have no desire to eat meat on a sound moral and
physiological basis. |
