This is an interesting article by Barbara Ellen written for the Observer and appeared on The Guardian on the 19th Sept 2010. Here is the article, following are my telegraphic thoughts.
Veggies have a duty to say meat is still murder
We still need tough conversations about the ethics of food production.
Not a good week for vegetarians. First, you had Lady Gaga attending an awards do in her meat dress. Yawn. Old. Been done, love. What to say except poor Gaga looked (ahem) offally silly.
Much more seismic was Simon Fairlie’s book, Meat: A Benign Extravagance, which tore apart long-accepted data on environmentally unsound meat production, prompting environmentalist George Monbiot to retract his view that the ethical way forward was veganism.
According to Fairlie, it doesn’t take 100,000 litres of water to produce one kilogram of beef (more like a third). It doesn’t take 10 units of vegetation to produce one unit of meat (the ratio could be 2:1). And the oft-quoted 2006 UN report was flawed, he says: livestock are not responsible for more of the world’s greenhouse gases than transport (the figure is closer to 10%, against transport’s 18%).
And so Fairlie goes on, like an unjolly green giant, trampling much-cherished eco-veggie facts and figures underfoot. Except that, leafing through my copy of his book, it is clear that Fairlie is not some mischievous eco-iconoclast – his main thrust is for major downsizing in meat production.
Fair enough. It seems to me that vegetarians and vegans should be able to adjust to new information when it emerges, because it isn’t always going to go our way. If some feel upset, perhaps they should take it as a sign that they shouldn’t have jumped into bed with the environmental lobby so quickly and easily in the first place. The sluts.
Indeed, it’s time for vegetarians to ask ourselves – when did we become such pushovers, so happy for our core belief system to be turned into a side issue to the eco-line? Let’s face it, we were never more compliant and grateful than when the environmental lobby came along – our knickers were coming down faster than we could say: “Global warming.”
A few months ago, I interviewed Paul McCartney about Meat Free Mondays and, not knowing what we do now, he cited the 2006 UN report about livestock emissions being greater than those caused by transport.
At the time, I understood why he needed to do this: it helped get the issue out of the veggie ghetto to include the carnivores. There’s nothing wrong with that. However, what this kind of thing also does, I now realise, is appease that strange breed of self-hating vegetarian, the sort who, for too long, has been using the environment as an ethical comfort blanket.
That’s where all those “it’s all about the planet, man” bores come from. Genuine vegetarians mainly care about animal welfare – it’s not them ruining your dinner parties with droning eco-waffle. Sling them a well-turned falafel and you won’t hear a word of dissent all evening. It’s the other type for whom “mere vegetarianism” just isn’t enough.
Here lies the fundamental difference in attitude. Rock-solid vegetarians rarely feel the need to embellish their views with apocalyptic pronouncements on “planet Earth”. Indeed, while understanding why people used the environmental line, I also felt that, pushed too hard, there was a real danger of it cheapening the core premise of animal rights: that it is fundamentally immoral to treat other living things inhumanely, whatever the circumstances.
That’s why, for many vegans and vegetarians, the findings of Meat: A Benign Extravagance, while interesting, are ultimately a non-issue, a bit like Gaga’s dress. They could even be viewed as a positive development – the reviving slap animal rights needs to stop trying to be zeitgeisty, a sidebar to other issues, and get back to its core message.
Put bluntly, people like me don’t care if the cows aren’t farting the ozone layer into oblivion as much as was previously believed. We do care if animals are being treated cruelly as matter of routine, which they are, all over the world on a daily basis. What’s benign about that?
On a wider level, there seems to be a growing need for tough conversations about global food production generally and Fairlie’s book could constitute a valuable new voice. However, if his findings actually stop someone being vegan or vegetarian, one can only wonder why they bothered in the first place.
That is exactly what I have been arguing about recently: veganism needs to get out of bed with all the healthy scares and environmental issues because these are only side benefits of adopting a compassionate diet. The core of veganism needs to remain animal rights and their emancipation from our tourtuing productions. All the other issues are just cosmetic: health or environmental reasons are merely temporary excuses for people to become vegan. Once the issues are solved these people are likely to get back to usual habits. I made this mistake myself in the past, trying to embellishing the pill with health and environmental arguments but this doesn’t contribute to radical change away from perceiving animals as commodities.
Veganism is about caring for the animals and choosing to take concrete actions in your daily life to implement compassion.
Filed under: animal rights
Lui là bas 