The Meat of Ethical Eating

[crunchysteve]

Here's a thing, an actual medical situation. I have autoimmune diabetes and, not only does that eff up my carbohydrates metabolism, it can also mean I have a hard time to get proteins to "stick to my ribs." On top of that, my fat burners are running like afterburners because, even with regular insulin, my body has been, for all of my life, all too willing to burn fat because it's barely getting enough carbohydrates. This gives me the body of a racehorse and the engine of a paddlesteamer. And despite a lifetime of cycling as my main mode of transport, cycling which, according to the cardio who stented me when I had my "widowmaker" heart attack, I had had a "widowmaker" heart attack. In the technical jargon, an NSTEMI, AKA and infarction.

Yet, meat is troubling, especially as a buddhist. Worse, while I do eat some seafood, I really can't stomach most of the fancy stuff, especially the oily fish, they make me ill. Besides, if one should not eat a mammalian living being, AKA "meat is murder," who is to say fish don't suffer? (Hint: there's science for the fact that they do.)

So, vegetarian/vegan diets. I've tried them. I've wound up ill. Medically ill. I wanted to eliminate meat from my life but every time I've tried, I've wound up malnourished. Within a few months. I actually envy those who get away with it like some folk envy each other because each sees the other as "skinnier." Perceptions, hey. BTW, no fat shaming intended here, either. I do not fat shame.

Further to the actual science of diet, humans are beta predators. In pre-settled farming era, we were both predator and prey. It's possibly one of the reasons we have affinity for dogs and cats, they're the same, opportunistic predators, easily able to bring down "microgame" yet also easy game for bears, lions, tigers, sharks, depending on the part of the world we're talking about. And, as a predator, our metabolism needs carnitine, the amino acid we can't get in any way, shape or form from vegies. We can manage without it for a while - the vegos who fall of the wagon. Like I have thrice, for health reasons. You've only got to teach me three times... IKR.

Hunter gatherer cultures tend to honour their prey, take pride in a swift surprise kill to minimise suffering. There are exceptions, but it's only when humans get removed from meat production, we begin to "externalise" our contribution to suffering. Logical buddhism teaches me I must not externalise it, yet I do, because, well, bloody hell the accelerating decline of my health thanks to the second law of thermodynamics and "woolworths genetics."

So, I kind of felt the need, after watching the following, to share it. Please watch it, I'll wait...

Watch on YouTube

This economic breakdown of how little it costs to give meat animals meaningful, pain-free lives, based on US and EU data is shocking, even to a lefty with vego friends - we all knew it was easy. But easy and relatively cheap?! We're cruel to save meagre cents off the dollar at retail? The argument I've hear all my life, "It'd be too expensive to treat our prey animals with kindness," always rang hollow, especially as the one saying it walked away from the interviews I was given to edit and climbed into a luxury car, but fifty cents to a buck-fifty more per serving, at worst, where a serving might be up to 5 bucks before cooking and veg?

I know, some struggle financially, but that is the fault of the same people who treat animals cruelly to save a few cents at the factory farm as they whinge about the cost of labour. We have come from hunter gatherers who took pride in a quick and painless kill of the animal that was just large enough to give the tribe their protein for the month, to a mercenary torturer species that is deliberately, knowingly cruel to save single digit cents in multiple dollars. Cruelty for money to animals? Cruelty for money to the people working for them. Eliminating animal cruelty is as much a socialist/anarchist imperative as eliminating slavery in cobalt mines or union busting in more "civilised" places.

Eating some meat is OK, it's how nature works, even committed buddhists eat meat where it is what is available. What is unethical is the cruelty of the farming, and that only exists because its fractionally cheaper to do it that way. According to the poets, we deserve happy, productive lives and a quiet death in our sleep, why don't our faithful food animals? Happy lives in healthy pasture until "ethered" before slaughter, well away from others of their kind? Is money that much more important than kindness? Pay decent wages to workers, treat animals with kindness beyond harvest. The two are the one issue!

It's how nature works. "She" provides. Grass for the grazers. Grazers for the predators. Predators for the pathogens and the worms. The circle of life. Nowhere in that circle does nature seek to minimise the costs and maximise the profits for a privileged few.