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Translations: Spanish
Most vegetarians I know are not primarily motivated by nutrition. Although they argue strenuously for the health benefits of a vegetarian diet, many see good health as a reward for the purity and virtue of a vegetarian diet, or as an added bonus. In my experience, a far more potent motivator among vegetarians–ranging from idealistic college students, to social and environmental activists, to adherents of Eastern spiritual traditions like Buddhism and Yoga–is the moral or ethical case for not eating meat.
Enunciated with great authority by such spiritual luminaries as Mahatma Gandhi, and by environmental crusaders such as Frances Moore Lappe, the moral case against eating meat seems at first glance to be overpowering. As a meat eater who cares deeply about living in harmony with the environment, and as an honest person trying to eliminate hypocrisy in the way I live, I feel compelled to take these arguments seriously.
A typical argument goes like this: In order to feed modern society’s enormous appetite for meat, animals endure unimaginable suffering in conditions of extreme filth, crowding and confinement. Chickens are packed twenty to a cage, hogs are kept in concrete stalls so narrow they can never turn around.
Arguing for the Environment
The cruelty is appalling, but no less so than the environmental effects. Meat animals are fed anywhere from five to fifteen pounds of vegetable protein for each pound of meat produced–an unconscionable practice in a world where many go hungry. Whereas one-sixth an acre of land can feed a vegetarian for a year, over three acres are required to provide the grain needed to raise a year’s worth of meat for the average meat-eater.
All too often, so the argument goes, those acres consist of clear-cut rain forests. The toll on water resources is equally grim: the meat industry accounts for half of US water consumption–2500 gallons per pound of beef, compared to 25 gallons per pound of wheat. Polluting fossil fuels are another major input into meat production. As for the output, 1.6 million tons of livestock manure pollutes our drinking water. And let’s not forget the residues of antibiotics and synthetic hormones that are increasingly showing up in municipal water supplies.
Even without considering the question of taking life (I’ll get to that later), the above facts alone make it clear that it is immoral to aid and abet this system by eating meat.
Factory or Farm?
I will not contest any of the above statistics, except to say that they only describe the meat industry as it exists today. They constitute a compelling argument against the meat industry, not meat-eating. For in fact, there are other ways of raising animals for food, ways that make livestock an environmental asset rather than a liability, and in which animals do not lead lives of suffering. Consider, for example, a traditional mixed farm combining a variety of crops, pasture land and orchards. Here, manure is not a pollutant or a waste product; it is a valuable resource contributing to soil fertility. Instead of taking grain away from the starving millions, pastured animals actually generate food calories from land unsuited to tillage. When animals are used to do work–pulling plows, eating bugs and turning compost–they reduce fossil fuel consumption and the temptation to use pesticides. Nor do animals living outdoors require a huge input of water for sanitation.
In a farm that is not just a production facility but an ecology, livestock has a beneficial role to play. The cycles, connections and relationships among crops, trees, insects, manure, birds, soil, water and people on a living farm form an intricate web, “organic” in its original sense, a thing of beauty not easily lumped into the same category as a 5000-animal concrete hog factory. Any natural environment is home to animals and plants, and it seems reasonable that an agriculture that seeks to be as close as possible to nature would incorporate both. Indeed, on a purely horticultural farm, wild animals can be a big problem, and artificial measures are required to keep them out. Nice rows of lettuce and carrots are an irresistible buffet for rabbits, woodchucks and deer, which can decimate whole fields overnight. Vegetable farmers must rely on electric fences, traps, sprays, and–more than most people realize–guns and traps to protect their crops. If the farmer refrains from killing, raising vegetables at a profitable yield requires holding the land in a highly artificial state, cordoned off from nature.
Yes, one might argue, but the idyllic farms of yesteryear are insufficient to meet the huge demand of our meat-addicted society. Even if you eat only organically raised meat, you are not being moral unless your consumption level is consistent with all of Earth’s six billion people sharing your diet.
Production and Productivity
Such an argument rests on the unwarranted assumption that our current meat industry seeks to maximize production. Actually it seeks to maximize profit, which means maximizing not “production” but “productivity”–units per dollar. In dollar terms it is more efficient to have a thousand cows in a high-density feedlot, eating corn monocultured on a chemically-dependent 5,000-acre farm, than it is to have fifty cows grazing on each of twenty 250-acre family farms. It is more efficient in dollar terms, and probably more efficient in terms of human labor too. Fewer farmers are needed, and in a society that belittles farming, that is considered a good thing. But in terms of beef per acre (or per unit of water, fossil fuel, or other natural capital) it is not more efficient.
In an ideal world, meat would be just as plentiful perhaps, but it would be much more expensive. That is as it should be. Traditional societies understood that meat is a special food; they revered it as one of nature’s highest gifts. To the extent that our society translates high value into high price, meat should be expensive. The prevailing prices for meat (and other food) are extraordinarily low relative to total consumer spending, both by historical standards and in comparison to other countries. Ridiculously cheap food impoverishes farmers, demeans food itself, and makes less “efficient” modes of production uneconomical. If food, and meat in particular, were more expensive then perhaps we wouldn’t waste so much–another factor to consider in evaluating whether current meat consumption is sustainable.
Moral Imperative
So far I have addressed issues of cruel conditions and environmental sustainability, important moral motivations for vegetarianism, to be sure. But vegetarianism existed before the days of factory farming, and it was inspired by a simple, primal conviction that killing is wrong. It is just plain wrong to take another animal’s life unnecessarily; it is bloody, brutal, and barbaric.
Of course, plants are alive too, and most vegetarian diets involve the killing of plants. (The exception is the fruit-only “fruitarian” diet.) Most people don’t accept that killing an animal is the same as killing a plant though, and few would argue that animals are not a more highly organized form of life, with greater sentience and greater capacity for suffering. Compassion extends more readily to animals that cry out in fear and pain, though personally, I do feel sorry for garden weeds as I pull them out by the roots. Nonetheless, the argument “plants are alive too” is unlikely to satisfy the moral impulse behind vegetarianism.
It should also be noted that mechanized vegetable farming involves massive killing of soil organisms, insects, rodents and birds. Again, this does not address the central vegetarian motivation, because this killing is incidental and can in principle be minimized. The soil itself, the earth itself, may, for all we know, be a sentient being, and surely an agricultural system, even if plant-based, that kills soil, kills rivers, and kills the land, is as morally reprehensible as any meat-oriented system, but again this does not address the essential issue of intent: Isn’t it wrong to kill a sentient being unnecessarily?
One might also question whether this killing is truly unnecessary. Although the nutritional establishment looks favorably on vegetarianism, a significant minority of researchers vigorously dispute its health claims. An evaluation of this debate is beyond the scope of this article, but after many years of dedicated self-experimentation, I am convinced that meat is quite “necessary” for me to enjoy health, strength and energy. Does my good health outweigh another being’s right to life? This question leads us back to the central issue of killing. It is time to drop all unstated assumptions and meet this issue head-on.
The Central Question
Let’s start with a very naïve and provocative question: “What, exactly, is wrong about killing?” And for that matter, “What is so bad about dying?”
It is impossible to fully address the moral implications of eating meat without thinking about the significance of life and death. Otherwise one is in danger of hypocrisy, stemming from our separation from the fact of death behind each piece of meat we eat. The physical and social distance from slaughterhouse to dinner table insulates us from the fear and pain the animals feel as they are led to the slaughter, and turns a dead animal into just “a piece of meat.” Such distance is a luxury our ancestors did not have: in ancient hunting and farming societies, killing was up close and personal, and it was impossible to ignore the fact that this was recently a living, breathing animal.
Our insulation from the fact of death extends far beyond the food industry. Accumulating worldly treasures–wealth, status, beauty, expertise, reputation–we ignore the truth that they are impermanent, and therefore, in the end, worthless. “You can’t take it with you,” the saying goes, yet the American system, fixated on worldly acquisition, depends on the pretense that we can, and that these things have real value. Often only a close brush with death helps people realize what’s really important. The reality of death reveals as arrant folly the goals and values of conventional modern life, both collective and individual.
It is no wonder, then, that our society, unprecedented in its wealth, has also developed a fear of death equally unprecedented in history. Both on a personal and institutional level, prolonging and securing life has become more important than how that life is lived. This is most obvious in our medical system, of course, in which death is considered the ultimate “negative outcome,” to which even prolonged agony is preferable. I see the same kind of thinking in Penn State students, who choose to suffer the “prolonged agony” of studying subjects they hate, in order to get a job they don’t really love, in order to have financial “security.” They are afraid to live right, afraid to claim their birthright, which is to do joyful and exciting work. The same fear underlies our society’s lunatic obsession with “safety.” The whole American program now is to insulate oneself as much as possible from death–to achieve “security.” It comes down to the ego trying to make permanent what can never be permanent.
Modern Dualism
Digging deeper, the root of this fear, I think, lies in our culture’s dualistic separation of body and soul, matter and spirit, man and nature. The scientific legacy of Newton and Descartes holds that we are finite, separate beings; that life and its events are accidental; that the workings of life and the universe may be wholly explained in terms of objective laws applied to inanimate, elemental parts; and therefore, that meaning is a delusion and God a projection of our wishful thinking. If materiality is all there is, and if life is without real purpose, then of course death is the ultimate calamity.
Curiously, the religious legacy of Newton and Descartes is not all that different. When religion abdicated the explanation of “how the world works”–cosmology–to physics, it retreated to the realm of the non-worldly. Spirit became the opposite of matter, something elevated and separate. It did not matter too much what you did in the world of matter, it was unimportant, so long as your (immaterial) “soul” were saved. Under a dualistic view of spirituality, living right as a being of flesh and blood, in the world of matter, becomes less important. Human life becomes a temporary excursion, an inconsequential distraction from the eternal life of the spirit.
Other cultures, more ancient and wiser cultures, did not see it like this. They believed in a sacred world, of matter infused with spirit. Animism, we call it, the belief that all things are possessed of a soul. Even this definition betrays our dualistic presumptions. Perhaps a better definition would be that all things are soul. If all things are soul, then life in the flesh, in the material world, is sacred. These cultures also believed in fate, the futility of trying to live past one’s time. To live rightly in the time allotted is then a matter of paramount importance, and life a sacred journey.
When death itself, rather than a life wrongly lived, is the ultimate calamity, it is easy to see why an ethical person would choose vegetarianism. To deprive a creature of life is the ultimate crime, especially in the context of a society that values safety over fun and security over the inherent risk of creativity. When meaning is a delusion, then ego–the self’s internal representation of itself in relation to not-self–is all there is. Death is never right, part of a larger harmony, a larger purpose, a divine tapestry, because there is no divine tapestry; the universe is impersonal, mechanical and soulless.
Obsolete Science
Fortunately, the science of Newton and Descartes is now obsolete. Its pillars of reductionism and objectivity are crumbling under the weight of 20th century discoveries in quantum mechanics, thermodynamics and nonlinear systems, in which order arises out of chaos, simplicity out of complexity, and beauty out of nowhere and everywhere; in which all things are connected; and in which there is something about the whole that cannot be fully understood in terms of its parts. Be warned, my views would not be accepted by most professional scientists, but I think there is much in modern science pointing to an ensouled world, in which consciousness, order and cosmic purpose are written into the fabric of reality.
In an animistic and holistic world view, the moral question to ask oneself about food is not “Was there killing?” but rather, “Is this food taken in rightness and harmony?” The cow is a soul, yes, and so is the land and the ecosystem, and the planet. Did that cow lead the life a cow ought to lead? Is the way it was raised beautiful, or ugly (according to my current understanding)? Allying intuition and factual knowledge, I ask whether eating this food contributes to that tiny shred of the divine tapestry that I can see.
Divine Tapestry
There is a time to live and a time to die. That is the way of nature. If you think about it, prolonged suffering is rare in nature. Our meat industry profits from the prolonged suffering of animals, people and the Earth, but that is not the only way. When a cow lives the life a cow ought to live, when its life and death are consistent with a beautiful world, then for me there is no ethical dilemma in killing that cow for food. Of course there is pain and fear when the cow is taken to the slaughter (and when the robin pulls up the worm, and when the wolves down the caribou, and when the hand uproots the weed), and that makes me sad. There is much to be sad about in life, but underneath the sadness is a joy that is dependent not on avoiding pain and maximizing pleasure, but on living rightly and well.
It would indeed be hypocritical of me to apply this to a cow and not to myself. To live with integrity as a killer of animals and plants, it is necessary for me in my own life to live rightly and well, even and especially when such decisions seem to jeopardize my comfort, security, and rational self-interest, even if, someday, to live rightly is to risk death. Not just for animals, but for me too, there is a time to live and a time to die. I’m saying: What is good enough for any living creature is good enough for me. Eating meat need not be an act of arrogant species-ism, but consistent with a humble submission to the tides of life and death.
If this sounds radical or unattainable, consider that all those calculations of what is “in my interest” and what will benefit me and what I can “afford” grow tiresome. When we live rightly, decision by decision, the heart sings even when the rational mind disagrees and the ego protests. Besides, human wisdom is limited. Despite our machinations, we are ultimately unsuccessful at avoiding pain, loss and death. For animals, plants, and humans alike, there is more to life than not dying.
This article appeared in Wise Traditions in Food, Farming and the Healing Arts, the quarterly magazine of the Weston A. Price Foundation, Summer 2002.
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Excellent read. Resonates loudly with me. In the end my body will tell me, many times, what types of food it is ‘happy’ with. An increase in ‘vibrational harmony’ is what I seek in regards to that.
On the ethics of eating meat. All living organisms must eat and when one eats, some other creature or plant must die. The food chain has existed from the beginning of time and each organism in the chain occupies its position as a result of evolutionary contingencies. The position exists because the organism was able to maximize nutrient absorption due to maximum availability and absorption and the organism’s ability to capitalize on it due to its own inherent characteristics. Humans are animals, part of nature and part of the food chain. Nature and the food chain is amoral. Only humans seem to think they can apply morality to the food chain. Well, if it is immoral for humans to eat animals, what about other animals eating animals. As the food chain operates, every instant of every day some creature is eating another creature often in the most violent and pain inducing ways. Packs of wild dogs hold a prey down while eating it alive. There are 600 species of parasitic wasps. You can say they are only insects, but tell that to the tarantula paralyzed by a wasps venom and eaten alive by the wasp hatchlings. I agree that factory farming of animals is cruel to the animals, ecologically unsound and and results in unhealthy animal products, but animals raised in harmony with nature and then eaten would be consistent with nature and the food chain. Morality is a human concept that simply cannot be applied to nature and the food chain.
So would it be okay with you if I found a random female on the street, chased her down and had sex (raped) with her? Don’t many species of animals operate this way? As long as we’re comparing ourselves to dogs & wasps, we might as well be consistent, no? Why limit our shared behaviors to how we eat? You might as well revise your closing staement to: “Morality is a human concept that simply cannot be applied”.
Duh! Nowhere did he state that Morality does NOT apply to humans.
Was that a brain fart or is your reading comprehension that bad?
I know this is an old comment, but I just found the article and appreciate the ideas presented as it’s a topic I’ve wrestled with for a while, like many people before me.
Humans apply morality/ethics to the food chain for the same reasons we apply morality to all of our actions: because we can, whereas animals cannot.
Even the author is not questioning whether or not we should consider the morality of killing and eating animals; he simply disagrees with the standard of morality that says causing death for another being is the ultimate evil.
“Morality is a human concept that simply cannot be applied to nature and the food chain.” With kindness, absolutely, incorrect. Morality is a human concept that simply MUST be applied to nature and the food chain. Even if I am to agree that eating meat is necessary, I would then say it 100% matters how that animal lives and how it is killed. There are ways to kill animals that are quick and less painful than others. Yet, even with these “more humane” ways to kill, animals are boiled alive, skinned alive, beaten alive, ad nauseam. Why? For various reasons, I reckon. For example, sometimes, so the meat is more tender. REALLLLLYYYYYYYY?!!! Is that necessary – having more tender meat? No, absolutely not!
Additionally, if I am to agree that eating meat is necessary, I absolutely do not agree with non-food products being made with animal products, as that is not a health need, but an egotistical desire.
If I am to agree that eating meat is necessary, I demand morality to be applied to the living conditions and killing of said meat. We are animals, indeed; however, we are animals with a level of consciousness that exceeds the other animals in the animal kingdom and we have that for a reason, as well. So, we MUST engage our higher-level of consciousness to make decisions about morality when it comes to nature and the food chain, along with all decisions we make while alive. This is one of the grand tests and purposes of live – the choices we make.
Warm regards.
As I am unable to kill an animal I choose not to eat them. However, I am very comfortable growing, killing and eating plants. Sometimes a decision is so inherent to one soul and life path that all logic falls to pieces. Sometimes the ‘right’ decision is a shift in consciousness that opens up a way of being that is an authentic expression of an individuals soul purpose. That too is part of the divine tapestry. Thank you for bringing a compassionate enquiry to this issue, greatly appreciated 🙂
As a vegetarian of 45 years and now a vegan after watching “Cowspiracy: The Sustainability Solution,” I find it discouraging and disappointing to encounter this website and all its anti-vegetarian articles. It’s hard enough to eat in this meat-centered society that sanctions use and abuse of animals. But to have people of seeming good intent and intelligence undermine those who choose to draw the line at not raising and killing animals when it is not necessary for health is downright demoralizing.
No matter how much the author may cite lofty philosophical ideas, it comes down to this:
If you did not hold the belief that you “need” meat, which I find highly questionable based on the evidence of healthy long term vegans who understand how to eat wisely, would you really choose to raise and slaughter animals, including those who have trusted you their whole lives? Yes, death happens to all of us. Yes, there is predation. And there is also murder theft, war, rape, abuse, slavery, torture and other activities in humanity and other species.
But that is what civilization and law are for: to rightfully claim moral authority to outlaw and curtail such things for the good of all. Hopefully we are evolving as a species to a higher order of harmony where we will choose to live in peace with each other and with the animal kingdom.
Watch “Cowspiracy: The Sustainability Solution,” and you will see why it is also immoral to eat meat for environmental reasons. Very few can have the idyllic old MacDonald farm proposed.
I watched Cowspiracy and it did not resonate with me at all. The creator was not an authority on anything other than someone that watched An Inconvenient Truth. Additionally, several of the experts he spoke with made incorrect and ridiculous claims regarding pasture-based farming and sustainable fishing. The whole film is not credible and only resonates with vegans desperate for moral superiority.
Meat is necessary for health. There are many nutrients in meat that are not found it plants.
Meat is necessary for the environment. Animals obviously play a role in a healthy eco-system and food chain.
For me, this post introduces a new concept in the whole debate in that I am not subjecting the animal to a fate any worse than my own.
I am a former vegan. The vegan diet left me anemic, my hair broke off in chunks (was down to my bottom before I made the decision).
I was against factory farming, but my mother had filled me with ideas of self sufficiency. I bought my land at age 20, paid it off before age 23. Moved to it at age 26. Tried the vegan thing. It was very hard on me.
So I had to incorporate whole farming, and my first animals were rabbits. Given to me by a man friend I was dating, who j\kept them in the small cages, such that they always ate their little ones. I lined a 20 ft x 10 ft area with hardware cloth, erected 4 foot fencing of hardware cloth and built boxes for breeding. While waiting for this build, my new buns did indeed decapitate their babies. Once placed in the new pen, I was sad as I watched them first learn to hop. Within a month or so, there were 9 brand new babies coming out of the box, without my help at all. That was encouraging. The mother showed me my philosophy was working.
I learned how to butcher, and I have to steel myself as I don;t like it either, but I am more well because of their much appreciated meat and bone broth. Their non smelly manure is a great compost and garden soil. I grow their weeds in and around my crops, they take care of my crop waste, I don;t use peswticides, I use full spectrum minerals instead- dolomite (calcium/magnesium) and limestone (60 trace minerals). We never get tomato hornworms anymore. I also have chickens, ducks, turkeys and goats and sheep. I love their milk, and their companionship and their cleaning up our food waste. I am working on extending our pasture areas with limestone . Please watch this; https://www.ted.com/talks/allan_savory_how_to_green_the_world_s_deserts_and_reverse_climate_change
Thanks for your compassionate comments. This is a heated debate between Weston A. Price proponents, and vegans. Each person justifies and moralizes their food choices according to what they feel they deserve to consume. I became vegan in 1987 and aside from some emotional cravings for raw dairy several years later, I am committed to it. I grew up in a meat and dairy loving family and never heard the word vegetarian. One day at school a few hours after eating lunch I felt lethargic and needed to take a nap. I asked myself, why did i feel so tired?. I came up with the answer, must be the burger. I tried a -personal experiment, forgoing the “burger” the next time it was served and just consumed the bread fruit and soup. I felt no tiredness and decided I would stop eating “meat”. I had no clue of the inhumane, horrific way farm animals were treated, i simply knew my body was telling me what was right and I paid attention.
I believe that the downfall of man occurred when we first frightened and murdered the first animal for “food”. I believe that the eating of animals suppresses our consciousness, as we ingest the pain, suffering, grief they go through. They are mere slaves who suffer their holocaust at human hands. If humans believe they need meat and can even kill them themselves, thats’ a choice, but not mine. Consuming a WFPB (whole foods plant-based diet) diet, emphasizing 60-75% fresh vegetables and fruit, IS healthy for those who can and choose to show compassion to all animals whether we meet them or not. We dig our graves with our teeth.
namaste’, rachel
I BELIEVE IT IS OK TO EAT FRUIT, VEGGIES BECAUSE AFTER ALL GOD SAID IN GENESIS IN THE BIBLE EAT THE FRUIT FROM ALL THESE TREES, BUT NOT THAT ONE OVER THERE.
The brainwashing of humanity has happened over thousands of years. We convince ourselves that we are the superior species and have a right do do whatever we want for our needs. Raising and breeding animals, imprisoning them, taking animal babies away, and slaughtering at an early age are part of that human right.
Killing is not natural for humans. We did it thousands of years ago for survival. Men in WW1 typically shot over the heads of their ‘enemies”. The military had to train them to kill.
We “like” meat. We “like” eating dairy, eggs and fishes. We convince ourselves that we need to eat the animals that grew because they ate the plants–we are supposed to be eating. Even ‘pastured” chickens eat most of their diet from plants like corn, soy, millet, and so on. Eating animals is a human addiction and it is a selfish habit I grew up with. Yet we also convince ourselves that we are kind, loving, and compassionate. Killing is not kind, loving, or compassionate.
We love our dogs, cats and horses, but eat other animals. No animals want to die. No animal wants their calf, chick, poult, or baby stolen away so humans can raise, use and kill them, again and again. No human needs the milk of animals except as growing babies–we need our mothers human milk. When animals are weaned they stop drinking milk, period.
Vegan is not a “diet”. I admire those who “try” it, however vegan is a lifestyle and a comittment to ethics and non-violence. When someone fails to be vegan we can believe, even if they thought they were ok– have eaten an inadequate and imbalanced choice of foods, have not taken absorbable B12 or monitored their B12 level, or been influenced by an addicted omnivore society
that can fear outsiders.
B12 is natural in the environment and soil. It comes from bacteria in the soil.
It is absorbed through a healthy digestive system.
Over many years we have polluted and sanitized our soil and water, and are washing the soil off produce, so that natural B12 levels are no longer there. Ancient humans got B12 from the natural soil and from the water they drank. We need not and the life of a sentient being to obtain it. Supplement.
Humans were designed y God as herbivores/frugivores. He never designed us to kill cook and murder his children. Our human anatomy proves this. Carnivore and omnivore animals can make their own vitamin C and detoxify vitamin A. They expel meat they eat quickly without it rotting, smelling, accumulating, sickening, and putrefying in their body. Humans cannot do those things. Peace.
What a pile of crap. Using duality and the current movement toward consciousness to justify killing animals and eating their flesh? Just because ‘everything dies and is as it should be” doesn’t mean no action is to be taken. It doens’t mena we do nothing when there is discrimination, violence or suffering. Infact consciousness menas the opposite. Nice try, but anyone who is really pursuing universal intelligence/awareness is not going to buy this.
Humans have the freedom of choice. Having already concluded that animals are indeed a higher form of life than plants and can therefore feel pain and suffering more, why cannot we as intelligent beings just choose to stop killing animals?
It is distressing to witness intellect at the service of personal taste, no matter how convoluted the reasoning. There is no justification in advanced cultures today for killing other sentient beings for food. Plants are not sentient, they don’t have a central nervous system. Nonhuman animals have the same ability as human animals do to feel pleasure, pain and emotions. Have you seen a cow agree to being killed to satisfy someone’s craving for meat? Are you ready to give your body to a hungry wolf? We are all animals. Would anyone in the US kill their dog for food? Most likely not, yet in other cultures people do eat dogs. Does that legitimize the killing of dogs? As a species that knows right from wrong, we can choose ethically. The fact that other animals kill for food doesn’t mean that we have to for our survival, since we can survive extremely well without eating animals or their secretions. Many would say that we actually live healthier lives without ingesting animal products–less chronic diseases such as vascular diseases, diabetes, osteoporosis, etc. When you compound ethical and health reasons with the environment, you obtain a triple win.
Hello,
Thank you for sharing your perspective on this topic. I am wondering, with the view that everything is a soul, death is simply a part of life, and the most important thing about life is how well it was lived, how do you differentiate the killing of an inconvenient weed from the killing of an inconvenient human? I am asking honestly…trying to understand and this belief system as part of the path to forming my own.
I’m so glad I’m not a vegan anymore; I am much happier and healthier as a responsible carnivore, the biggest danger in my life is dodging daggers from vegans unwilling to accept that we each have a choice in life; I choose meat from responsible sources.
Same here sister! I have never felt so happy and free since I left the vegan movement! 🙂 ONE LOVE!!
And I have never felt so happy and free becoming a vegan ! 😀. I am a health professional and see the effects of meat and dairy indulgence in people, it is concerning.
This site is entertaining but also a bit creepy and unrealistic in today’s times 🤔
“This site is entertaining but also a bit creepy and unrealistic in today’s times”
So you believe that current social fads must be better than the tried and true dietary traditions of our ancestors? The current fad of veganism in the West is a part of “progressivism”, driven by Marxist ideology.
Try looking at the results of socialism/communism in the 20th century. 100 million people killed by Stalin and Mao. I say the rise of veganism/progressivism is ‘creepy’.
Thanks for your comments. Actually, humans were designed by our creator to only eat plants, as early Genesis clearly states. Our human anatomy has no means of killing an animal with our claws or fangs, as we have none. We would break our jaw if we tried. We cannot make our own vitamin C, and cannot detoxify vitamin A–but true omnivores and true carnivores can. Colon cancer comes from putrefying flesh in ouir body, which should never be there in the fuirst place. Yeshua was an Essene/Ebionite, one among several vegetarian groups during that early time period. He and his family were all vegetarians who abhorred violence. The Essene’s later morphed into “Christians”. The dogmatic roman pagan rulers and churches pushed animal eating on others, as did Emporer Constantine in the 4th C., calling them heretics if they did not. You can eat the dead if you choose to, but if you are going back to our roots, it is plants we are designed to eat, not cadavers (regardless of how nicely they were raised) . peace be with you.
yes, humane raised and I was a pescetarian for 12 years, only wild seafood and all organic diet. My health failed on the vegetarian diet. The fat soluble vitamins A,D, and K2 are what we need, and they are only in animals in any therapeutic does. Now I do raw dairy and humane raised meat, it looks like two oz a day is what we need for health. And also, when apes were first put in isolation away from nature and fed a vegetarian diet, they could not reproduce. The learned that all apes do eat animal protein even if small doses from crawly things and the bugs in the wild fruit. Cherries are sometimes full of worms for example. When they introduced a small amount of animal protein they were able to breed.
Leviticus; Aaron and his sons had to feed their God animals cooked on the flame, and he only wanted the organs and fats. Animals do not have souls. Their very own creator eats them.
14 He then presented the bull for the sin offering, and Aaron and his sons laid their hands on its head. 15 Moses slaughtered the bull and took some of the blood, and with his finger he put it on all the horns of the altar to purify the altar. He poured out the rest of the blood at the base of the altar. So he consecrated it to make atonement for it. 16 Moses also took all the fat around the internal organs, the long lobe of the liver, and both kidneys and their fat, and burned it on the altar. 17 But the bull with its hide and its flesh and its intestines he burned outside the camp, as the Lord commanded Moses.
18 He then presented the ram for the burnt offering, and Aaron and his sons laid their hands on its head. 19 Then Moses slaughtered the ram and splashed the blood against the sides of the altar. 20 He cut the ram into pieces and burned the head, the pieces and the fat. 21 He washed the internal organs and the legs with water and burned the whole ram on the altar. It was a burnt offering, a pleasing aroma, a food offering presented to the Lord, as the Lord commanded Moses.
I grew up on ranches, lived in a “meat and potatoes at every meal” household and used to be a happy meat-eater but over the last year and a half as I hit menopause, have had to shift to vegetarianism as ALL meat tastes rancid to me. It smells delicious cooking but I cant even handle a little taste. And it does not matter if it’s “organic, grass-fed, free range, humanly harvested”, etc, etc, etc. It just simply tastes disgusting. Never mind my own moral and spiritual reasons for not eating it. So, how do I get past that and back to eating meat? Right now my diet is lacto-vegetarian.
It’s concerning, this would perhaps be deemed common sense as recent as a few decades ago. We have suffered an ever increasing neurosis. A disease of mind that our “Mother” will allow us learn from through painful experience. Will we e-volve into the elements we abuse and regress back to the closed organic cycle through a mechanical robitic style devolution. Give the pace we make mistakes let’s hope we can match with such corrective profound sustainability for longevity. ☯️
Wonderful article and perspective. Thank you.