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The Vegetarian Dilemma

I am not a vegetarian because I love animals; I am a vegetarian because I hate plants.

– A. Whitney Brown

Here’s the problem. Coming from someone who swerves to avoid moths and caterpillars on the road, this might sound a bit strange. But it occurred to me that the ‘compassion for animals’ argument for going vegetarian doesn’t make much sense to me. Now, it’s un-arguable that eating vegetables is better from an environmental viewpoint, since it takes a whole lot of plant material (which could otherwise be used for human consumption) to raise an animal to the point where it’s ready to be made into beefsteak or pork chops.

But the compassion argument? Here’s where it’s flawed. A vegetarian is trying to impress upon a meat-eater that one should feel compassion for the animals we kill. Now, the meat-eater might say ‘well, that’s good and all, but animals are just dumb. They don’t have feelings like people.’

They don’t have feelings like people. Maybe they do, maybe they don’t. But the point is that it’s difficult for the meat-eater to relate to an animal like, say, a cow. To the meat-eater, the cow just seems like a dumb hunk of meat with some basic instincts for a brain. My argument here is that vegetarians should have the same compassion for plants that they think a meat-eater should have for animals. Yes, plants might be difficult to relate to – we can argue that they don’t talk, think, or experience pain in the same way we do. But those are the same arguments the meat-eater might use for the cow. After all, none of us have ever been inside the mind of a cow, and we really don’t know what a stalk of wheat experiences, either.

Maybe the truth is that we have compassion for things that look like us. It’s easy to feel compassion for a cow, but less so for a fish, or a mosquito, or a bacteria (which many people slaughter unnecessarily every day with antibacterial soap.) When we cross the species boundary, it’s even more difficult. Flowers may get some compassion, but how about the soybean, the lentil, or the almond? Who’s sticking up for them?

Maybe, if we’re going to eat with compassion, we should look honestly at what we do and don’t know, and decide based on that, instead of on what animals we can relate to. As for me, I’ll eat a burger. I know the cow suffered (in a manner, were I to witness it, that would be very graphic). But I also know that that same cow fed many other people with its flesh. When I eat a bowl of oatmeal, I’m taking innumerable lives. The oats were waving in the sunshine, blowing gently in the breeze, and then the farm machinery came, ripped them from the ground, put them into a dark, crowded stuffy place, and kept them there until they got to ride down the conveyor belt to be smooshed into the flat shape that makes my oatmeal.

Maybe those oats are just dumb and have no feelings, and it doesn’t matter. But maybe, even though I can’t relate to them, they do experience something akin to terror or fear or loneliness.

I’m not suggesting that we all begin eating only Twinkies (they’re completely lab synthesized, right?). Or maybe fruit, which seems the most harmless sort of eating we could engage in. But I am suggesting that whatever it is we eat, we eat with awareness that we’re taking lives, and it might behoove vegetarians to realize that they shouldn’t blame a meat-eater for causing cruelty unless they’re willing to own up to their own daily slaughter.

Okay. I think I’ll go eat an . . . apple. Or maybe fast. Just for a few days . . .

This entry was posted on Sunday, October 29th, 2006 at 4:58 pm and is filed under Food and Diet, Quick Thoughts. You can subscribe via RSS 2.0 feed to this post's comments. You can comment below, or link to this permanent URL from your own site. Your comments will be queued for moderation and posted as quickly as possible.