For the past few years, I've been spending a lot of time on college campuses, discussing the ethics of eating animals with college debate teams; I argue that vegetarianism is an ethical imperative for all members of the student body, and my adversaries (two members of the school's debate team) argue that it's not.
Last year, I visited Harvard, Yale, BYU, the Universities of Texas, Georgia, and Florida -- and dozens of other schools, coast to coast. This fall, I'm slated to visit Cornell, Princeton, Boston College, the University of Minnesota, and half a dozen additional schools.
The topic is a hot one on college campuses, and the teams that have accepted have been rewarded by what they have consistently told us to be their largest event audiences ever. You can watch many of the debates online, if you're so inclined, but here is the crux of my argument:
First, eating meat wastes and pollutes our land, water and air--as I discuss more thoroughly here. Second, eating meat drives up the price of cereals, which leads to starvation and food riots -- as I discuss here. Finally, eating meat supports cruelty to animals so severe that it would warrant felony cruelty charges were dogs or cats so horribly abused -- and that's true even of so-called "humane" farms (video).
Cruelty to animals is where I focus in these debates, because it's the issue that is most obvious: We are a nation of animal lovers -- according to a Gallup Poll last May, fully 97 percent of us support laws to protect animals from abuse -- and yet the animals with whom we come into contact most frequently are the animals we pay other people to abuse and kill for us.
The arguments that seem to resonate with students most deeply are:
First, other animals are made of flesh, blood, and bone -- just like humans. They have the same five physiological senses (i.e., they see, hear, smell, taste, and touch) that we do. And they feel pain -- again, just like we do. At most colleges and universities, students are unanimously opposed to eating dogs or cats; the idea revolts them. Yet there is no ethical difference between eating a dog, cat, chicken, pig or fish. If anything, eating your dogs or cats would be morally preferable, since they would have led a good life until you killed them.
In fact, both pigs and chickens do better on cognition tests than dogs or cats. Chickens can navigate mazes, learn from television and have both a capacity for forethought and meta-cognition. Pigs dream, recognize their names, play video games far more effectively than even some primates, and lead social lives of a complexity previously observed exclusively among primates.
Dr. Richard Dawkins, the foremost living evolutionary biologist, calls other species our evolutionary "cousins" and denounces what he calls "speciesist arrogance" -- the idea that we are better than, and can do whatever we want to other species. Darwin taught us that other species are more like us than they're unlike us. Eating meat entails eating "someone," not "something." Eating meat entails eating bits from an animal's corpse. That's not hyperbole; it's reality. That's not sentimental; it's a fact. Don't want to eat corpses? Don't eat meat.
Second, if we're eating meat, we are paying people to abuse animals in myriad ways that would violate anti-cruelty laws if these were dogs or cats rather than chickens and pigs. Animals are deprived of everything that is natural and important to them; they never breathe fresh air, raise their young, develop normal relationships with other animals, explore their surroundings, or do anything else they would do in nature. Artificial breeding practices are used so that animals will grow far more quickly than they would naturally, and their organs and limbs simply can't keep up. For example, chickens' upper bodies grow seven times as quickly as they did just 30 years ago, so these factory-farmed animals who live for fewer than two months (they're still chirping like infants when they're sent to slaughter) suffer from lung collapse, heart failure, and crippling leg deformities.
Michael Specter, a longtime staff writer for the New Yorker , visited a chicken farm and wrote, "I was almost knocked to the ground by the overpowering smell of feces and ammonia. My eyes burned and so did my lungs, and I could neither see nor breathe... There must have been 30,000 chickens sitting silently on the floor in front of me. They didn't move, didn't cluck. They were almost like statues of chickens, living in nearly total darkness, and they would spend every minute of their six-week lives that way."
Similarly hideous conditions exist for all animals raised for food; rather than further detailing the horrid details, I will ask that you if you eat meat, you watch "Meet Your Meat," which is narrated by Alec Baldwin, and "Glass Walls," which is narrated by Sir Paul McCartney -- I generally show the opening two minutes of Meet Your Meat as a part of my 10 minute opening statement in college debates. Both videos offer a gruesome window into what we're supporting if we choose to eat chickens, pigs and other farmed animals. If we eat meat, we should at least ensure that we know what we're paying for.
If you would not personally slice a chicken's beak off, or castrate a pig without pain relief or slice open an animal's throat, why pay someone else to do it for you? Where is the basic integrity in entering into this mercenary relationship? Is the person who hires someone to do something less culpable than the one who carries out the action? Of course not. Eating meat involves paying people to do things for us that most of us would not do ourselves. Where's the basic integrity -- the consistency -- in such a relationship?
Or, put in a more affirmative way: Vegetarianism allows me to live my values -- to "pray ceaselessly," as St. Paul puts it: Every time I sit down to eat, I cast my lot: for mercy, against misery; for the oppressed, against the oppressor; and for compassion, against cruelty. There is a lot of suffering in the world, but how much suffering can be addressed with literally no time or effort on our part? We can just stop supporting it, by making different choices.
So what's the trade-off: Why do people eat meat? And are the reasons we eat meat -- the benefits -- worth the costs?
Well, we get a few moments of pleasure -- most of us like the taste. We have more options at the grocery store and at restaurants. We can eat over at a friend's house without having to bring a dish. We never have to explain our dietary choices...
Is that really it? That it's convenient? That it's easier?
Although I don't discuss this on university campuses, where everyone knows plenty of healthy vegans and thus knows they don't need meat to survive, I should take a moment to point out that meat is absolutely not good for us. The American Dietetic Association -- the largest body of nutrition professionals on the planet -- conducted a meta-analysis of all the studies that have ever been done on diet and disease, and found that vegetarians have lower rates of heart disease, diabetes, high blood pressure, cancer and obesity than meat-eaters (they believe that the studies indicate causality, not just correlation). Their position paper on vegetarian and vegan diets concludes that vegetarian and vegan diets are appropriate for all people and during all stages of life, including infancy and pregnancy.
So add it all up: Eating meat wastes and pollutes our natural resources -- requiring many times the water, land and energy of eating plants (a moral imperative on its own). Eating meat requires about 1 billion metric tons of grain, corn, and soy -- fed to the animals, who burn most of that energy off, which drives up the price of food for people who are starving (another moral imperative, on its own). And eating meat involves paying other people to do a wide variety of things to animals in ways that most of us would never do ourselves.
Put another way: If we believe that people should try to protect the environment, OR we believe that we should try not to cause people to starve OR we oppose cruelty to animals, the only ethical diet is a vegetarian one.
Find recipes, shopping tips, and a lot more information at www.GoVeg.com.
Follow Bruce Friedrich on Twitter: www.twitter.com/brucegfriedrich
Carole Carson: Combating Obesity: How and How Come
Ellen Kanner: Meatless Monday: Home Field Advantage
Victoria Moran: Veg and the City: My Journey to Ethical Veganism
Lodro Rinzler: Buddhism and Vegetarianism: Would Sid Eat Meat?
How to Successfully Become a Vegetarian
You didn't answer my questions. I think it is incumbent upon you to answer them.
I am sure it was an oversight, so here they are again. Thanks for your attention.
If a human being needed to eat animals to stay alive, would that still be 'indefensible' in your words?
If not, why not?
Thanks!
Maslin,
Thanks, but I can do both. I actually did reply to your post earlier. I said that in my opinion, if a human had no choice but to eat animals, that would not be indefensible; similarly, if you had to kill a human being or be killed, who is going to argue against self-defense? I posted a fairly lengthy discussion of this question previously. The short version is this:
My post argues explicitly that people don’t have to eat meat to survive and that, in fact, according to all medical and nutritional bodies, everyone can be vegan and vegans tend to be healthier than meat eaters. It seems the BerryNoir and a few others are exceptions, but that’s a small enough group that the ADA, AMA, and USDA didn’t see fit to mention it. For everyone in my college audiences and the vast majority of Americans, a vegetarian diet is certainly at least as healthful as one that includes meat.
"I’m not doing this to make a statement. I’m just trying to survive.”
When the hog farmers are switching over, can we stop arguing about the health benefits of vegan diets?
And no one ever said that a vegan diet can't work for some. People have backgrounds rooted in many, many historical diets from regions all over the world.
I would bet if comprehensive studies could be done, the people who have found a good dietary fit for health, whatever it is, would find that it reflects the historical diets of their direct ancestors.
Chickens outperforming dogs and cats on cognition tests: There are quite a few links and quotes here:
http://www.goveg.com/f-hiddenliveschickens.asp
http://www.goveg.com/f-hiddenliveschickens_brainy.asp
http://www.goveg.com/f-hiddenliveschickens_social.asp
For example:
Dr. Lesley Rogers, a professor of neuroscience and animal behavior, concludes, “[I]t is now clear that birds have cognitive capacities equivalent to those of mammals, even primates.”7
And: [C]hickens are able to understand that objects still exist even after they are hidden or removed from view. This level of cognition is actually beyond the capacity of small human children.9 Researchers also recently reported that chickens “can anticipate the future and demonstrate self-control, something previously attributed only to humans and other primates.”10
They “understand sophisticated intellectual concepts, learn from watching each other, and even have cultural knowledge that is passed from generation to generation. Dr. Chris Evans, a scientist who studies avian cognition says, ‘As a trick at conferences I sometimes list these attributes, without mentioning chickens, and people think I’m talking about monkeys.’”
“Children who grow up getting their nutrition from plant foods rather than meats have a tremendous health advantage. They are less likely to develop weight problems, diabetes, high blood pressure, and some forms of cancer” (Dr. Spock’s Baby and Child Care: Seventh Edition (New York: Pocket Books, 1998) 333).
Here are some vegan children profiles:
http://www.veganhealth.org/articles/realveganchildren
Thanks for allowing me to clarify.
Bruce
* Human breast milk is vegan, as is the Catholic communion. In both cases, the issue is symbiosis. I have never heard of a vegan who says that human breast milk is not okay. Can you please provide some reference to some vegan who made this argument? I find it hard to imagine.
* You also refer to “certain vegans” who believe “that ‘apex predators’ in the wild should be sterilized and allowed to go extinct?” Please provide some reference for that claim. I’ve never heard of such a thing. Of course animals eat animals in nature, but we can make choices about what we eat, and can choose to support compassion, as discussed in my original post.
Thanks,
Bruce
I just don't get how you can on the one hand understand that breast milk is so important for babies, and then advocate that babies go from breast milk directly to a strict vegan diet? Does not compute.
Also, here's the link:
http://www.abolitionist.com/reprogramming/
"If you want to know the real Bruce Friedrich, just give a listen to him in his own words:
http://www.consumerfreedom.com/downloads/reference/audio/010501_bruce_friedrich.wav
Here's a taste of it...
"...of course we're going to be, as a movement, blowing stuff up and smashing windows. For the record I don't do that stuff, but I do advocate it. I think it is a great way to bring about animal liberation. And considering the level of the atrocity and the level of the suffering, I think it would be a great thing if all of these fast food outlets, and these slaughter houses, and these laboratories, and the banks that fund them exploded tomorrow. And uh, I think it's perfectly appropriate... (applause) ... And I think it's perfectly appropriate for people to take bricks and toss them through the windows and uh, you know, everything else along the line. Hallelujah to the people who are willing to do it."
To reply to your comment:
First, this isn’t what this discussion is about; it’s a diversion from the discussion of whether eating meat is ethical or not.
Second, the quote is almost a decade old (July 2001). I changed my mind after this quote caused me to have discussions with people who disagreed with what I was saying. I hope that you agree that changing one’s mind is acceptable, and imagine there are things that you used to believe that you no longer believe.
I hope that clarifies.
Thanks,
Bruce
Surprise surprise.
It's attitudes like the one expressed in that quote that have caused so many people to turn against PETA and to ignore even the positive things it has accomplished in the area of improving animal welfare.
I trust you, as a manner of civility, when you say that you've changed your mind. And yes, there are plenty of things I believed years ago that I no longer believe. A long time ago, I believed that the best diet (for health - I was neither knowledgeable about nor particularly concerned with factory farming or the environmental issues at that time) was the Atkins diet, which I practiced until my health took a nosedive and I had to abandon it. Since then, I have obviously done a complete 180 on that issue (and fortunately so has my health).
At the time, I mistakenly thought that a high-protein, low-carb diet would be the answer to my type II diabetes; little did I know that, at least in my case, it would only exacerbate it, and that veganism would end up reversing it.
In any case, I wouldn't want stuff I wrote years ago to be used as "proof" of what I believe today.
that would be a severe understatement.
Goldfarmer, I’m glad you didn’t take your leave when you said you were going. I think your comments are a useful addition to the discussion. PETA supports animal welfare and animal rights. If you go to PETA.org, animal rights is front and center—that bit never changes. But we also support animal welfare improvements for farmed animals, for example a reform of chicken slaughter (see www.peta.org/cak).
Twinings writes: “If I'm stranded in the wild and I have to choose between myself and a creature that has a very small brain that is not capable of human thoughts/emotions such as empathy I will choose myself.” Of course—everyone would. That’s not what this post is about. On the small brain thing, though: Chickens and pigs do better on cognition tests than dogs or cats (cat lovers claim that the cats are just refusing to participate in the studies). There’s some interesting info here:
http://www.goveg.com/amazingAnimals.asp
Susan Elizabeth 1949: I tend to be a stickler re: definitions, too, but by saying “someone” when referring to animals, animal rights people are making the point that animals are not things. It’s an intentional attempt to help language catch up with science.
1) Veganism is healthy for almost everyone. BerryNoir is the only person I’ve ever heard of suffering from something like what she describes; there is not a single reputable nutrition or medical group that opposes veganism for anyone.
2) Although obviously vegans should do more than just be vegan, there is ample peer reviewed science to show that funneling crops through animals is environmentally catastrophic. As the science editor for the Guardian put it, “Behind most of the joints of beef or chicken on our plates is a phenomenally wasteful, land- and energy-hungry system of farming that devastates forests, pollutes oceans, rivers, seas and air, depends on oil and coal, and is significantly responsible for climate change. The way we breed animals is now recognised by the UN, scientists, economists and politicians as giving rise to many interlinked human and ecological problems…”
http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2010/jul/18/vegetarianism-save-planet-environment
Consider cancer patients. Chemotherapy leaves them nauseated and weak, cancer leaves them often severely anemic and they NEED to eat the maximum amount of calories, fat and protein - especially because they most often cannot eat much due to the overwhelming nausea. Could some of them make it on a vegan diet if they somehow managed to eat enough food to make up the calories, protein, iron and fat? Maybe. But because it's unlikely and life or death, most doctors encourage a diet high in what they need so that their needs are met with the minimal exertion.
There is a world out there of people who do need animal products to survive and you are turning a blind eye to it because it doesn't fit into what you'd like reality to be - but that doesn't make these people disappear.
We’re certainly not ignoring (casually or otherwise) “the fundamental complexity of the world.” If anything, we’re trying to focus some attention on it, for people who are not thinking that much about it. Clearly that doesn’t include any of the folks who are in this discussion, but it does include most meat-eating Americans, very few of whom (way less than 1 percent, I’ll bet—even Michael Pollan and Eric Schlosser eat factory farmed meat sometimes) eat only grass-fed animals.
Thanks for your very interesting post!
Bruce
I fully agree with the environmental argument though. This may be more of issue due to overpopulation though.
I feel the whole animal welfare movement has gone too far with morals of animals eating other animals thing. If animal activists were really serious about it they should ban all pets as forcing a cat or dog etc to live in the human world is not natural nor can it be living its life to its fullest potential (neutering etc). Not to mention the environmental issues and the pet food industry thing
Also, I believe the ultimate agenda is to get rid of pets.
Evolution is just change over time. It is not progressive, in any sense of the word. There arguably has not been any substantial increase in the complexity of animal life in the past 400 million years, if not longer. This includes the evolution of humans.
I don't think anyone here has gien the impression that they deny the concept of animal suffering. Among the omnivores here, none that I have met advocate factory farms and nearly everyone agrees that Americans have the luxury, for the most part of being able to eat less meat and support local, organic and more humane animal agricultural practices.
Do YOU have empathy? Do you understand the concept of empathy? It is most often understood to be a human to human emotion.
I don't find, in the comments of others, anything to imply that this post of yours is based on anything anyone has said. We have all maintained that animals under human care should be treated with dignity and respect - we are not ignorant people who relish animal suffering.
I am posting this up top where I hope to be answered. Please answer both questions.
Hypothetically* speaking, if a human being had no choice but to eat animals in order to stay alive, would that still be 'indefensible' in your words?
If not, why not?
Thank you for your attention to these questions.
*As you may recognize, this is not actually entirely hypothetical. I have made a general case from a specific one. I have done so that the person involved in the specific case may take part or not as that person chooses. I hope this is acceptable to you and to that person.
Not a wiki link, not an online dictionary definition, an actual peta related link.
And don't worry, you won't get any snippy responses back from me.
Peace.
A terrific place to start is peta's website. On it, you can see exactly what ethical treatment of animals is. It's simple, really: leave animals alone, let them live naturally, care for your companion animals, don't breed animals, always rescue/adopt and never buy, change the kitty litter every day, use a harness on your dog, never a prong collar, buy humane mouse traps, and dont support cruelty - dont go to the circus, do buy cruelty-free products, dont eat, wear, or use animals in any way, etc. What's ethical treatment of an elephant, a rat, or a cat, it's all there. www.peta.org
I'm looking for something specific, like this:
http://www.animalwelfareapproved.org/standards/beef-cattle-2010/
I mean this respectfully...
I don't want to go digging around the peta site for answers. It makes me feel a little dirty. I'm sure if you're a true believer in 100% non animal & non animal by-product use, you'd probably feel similar if I asked you to hunt around the AWA site.
I think that many vegans would answer that it is all three at once. Certainly the leader of this discussion passes from health to environmental to moral issues with ease.
And therein lies a problem. Veganism, at least as it has expressed itself on various threads here, appears to assume that all of the various factors we take into account in making our decisions point in the vbegan direction. The healthy choice also is the environmentally friendly choice and the moral choice, and never come into conflict. There never is a need to sacrifice. It's almost like the world was designed for veganism. However brave and trailblazing they believe themselves to be, vegans appear to unwilling to confront difficult choices. After all, what claim to moral superiority can someone make when all of their most moral choices also happen to be the ones that benefit them the most personally?
The world is not made for vegans. There is no reason to assume that what is most moral also is the most healthy, for example. Morality and health are two unrelated considerations whose interests can be expected to align, if they ever align, only by chance. There is something crass and shallow in a philosophy that can so casually ignore the fundamental complexity of the world.
The problem comes in only when people attempt to use diet as an indicator of moral status. "I only eat this so my diet is better." "My diet is not murdered so I am a better person." That type of thing really bothers me.
I do get upset when vegans fail to acknowledge that their diet only is available to them because we live in a post-surplus society (which was a direct result of our ability to eat whatever was available) and that veganism is an unnatural state (which is not to say it is wrong; clothes are unnatural and so are computers). It is these points that bother me. People act like the species has maintained a vegan diet over its course of evolution.
Bruce, would you mind posting some links to back up that assertion?
Since you've been following the full discussion, I'm fairly certain that you know what my point is--that according to all reputable medical and nutritional bodies, vegan and vegetarian diets are healthful for everyone, at all stages, as discussed and linked above.
See you tomorrow,
Bruce
Also I'm waiting with bated breath to hear what you think is the best food for infants and toddlers.
Would you like to rephrase?
"These arguments about the preservation of various farm animal species are entirely specious.
Many breeds of animals raised for meat are man-made hybrids bred specifically for the slaughterhouse."
I disagree; I personally think allowing every breed and species of farm animal to go extinct would be a huge loss.
Anyway, here's the link:
http://www.albc-usa.org/
"The American Livestock Breeds Conservancy is a nonprofit membership organization working to protect over 150 breeds of livestock and poultry from extinction. Included are asses, cattle, goats, horses, sheep, pigs, rabbits, chickens, ducks, geese, and turkeys.
Founded in 1977, the American Livestock Breeds Conservancy is the pioneer organization in the U.S. working to conserve historic breeds and genetic diversity in livestock. We hope you'll browse through these pages and learn more about the diverse and valuable agricultural heritage that is ours to enjoy and to steward."