Meaties and veggies who serve up poison are not the change-makers we need

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Image by ThinkVegan via Flickr

If I had as much passion for onions, peppers and potatoes as some meat-eaters have for bacon, chicken and beef, and was as upset and angry about not getting carrots every day as meaties can be about the suggestion that eating meat five days a week is good for no-one and bad for the planet, I’d be worried my priorities were all wrong. Because they would be.

Food is essential, obviously, and I don’t want to get into the argument over whether killing animals is inherently wrong here, but it irks me when gobby meat evangelists spew forth accusations against all vegetarians of being ‘holier than thou’ as some do, and have today, in the comments on an article published by the Guardian advising people on how to give up meat .

I never present all meat-eaters as unthinking, selfish, addicts who turn a blind eye to factory farm cruelty just so’s they can put cheap Tesco chicken on the table ‘for the sake of the little children’. It would be wrong to do so. An increasing number of people who still wish to eat meat are actively pursuing an agenda to put an end to factory farming and encourage organic, free-range meat.

Some even raise animals themselves, conscientiously and caringly, and take personal responsibility for ending those animals’ lives humanely. They get their hands dirty with blood and feathers and skin, eyes and bumholes and claws, instead of pretending there never was any blood in the shrink-wrapped, pale pink packages offered up by supermarkets to those who want to eat meat but could never kill, preferring others to do the messy stuff for them, out of sight and mind.

I admire people who raise animals properly for their own consumption greatly, though my own, deeply personal and utterly immovable, conviction is that meat is murder. Do I present this belief as argument? Do I directly accuse friends, family, anyone, as being murderers or complicit in murder? No. I never do. I don’t extend my belief that way. It is my view that if I took life, or accepted dead animal onto my plate, I would be able to accuse myself and could not accept that which I would see as a terrible truth. I can and do feel guilt at many things, but I can say that no animals have to die so that I can have a full belly. This is never presented as argument. It simply is, for me and me alone. Yet even with all that explanatory, when I am asked and do express this emotional and ethical cornerstone of my very own, I still get meat-eaters suddenly adopting a Catherine Tate-like persona and spitting, ‘So what? You sayin’ I’m a murderer? Eh? Eh? Are you? Are you?”

No. I am not. If such people cannot grasp what I am saying, I am not responsible for their ignorance or their assumptions. What’s more, I only express my belief so baldly when pushed to do so (though this is a blog entry, and I’m freely expressing as is my right). Stating such a spiritual foundation as the primary reason why I don’t eat meat would not advance any debate over how to best feed people in the future, or ensure optimum health is achieved through diet, or cut our methane and CO2 emissions. Nor would it do anything to help the heavily medicated billions of animals living half-lives in their own filth.

The arguments should not be personal, they should not be capable of being interpreted as abusive by anyone on any side, they should be about two things: first and foremost, animal welfare, whether the animals are to be eaten or not, and secondly, what facts exist to make any case so that we can make our minds up individually and collectively. Some people make decisions based on emotional responses, others make the exact same decisions based on practical considerations. And there will always be those, meaties and veggies, who just bawl, insult, and accuse. These people will not be at the vanguard of change; they will forever be shouting from the sidelines.

The headline of the Guardian article is ‘Giving up meat is easy’. I can assure you, for most people, it is not. I was a meat-eater myself once upon a time. I stopped eating animals in 1991, but still recall getting cravings for months afterwards. I went through three weeks of greasy skin and hair, spots and irritability. I have no doubt whatsoever that I was an addict, that meat is addictive, and that I did the right thing. But easy? No. It became second nature, and while I never chastise friends or family who are preparing and cooking meat while I’m around, it is true to say that I no longer see it as food, and the smell—cooked or raw—makes me want to throw up. I work hard to hide my gag reflex when someone’s taking pride in preparing a roast.

Still, for around three years, the smell of bacon continued to tantalise me. You can commit to vegetarianism in the span of a heart-beat, sure, but truly becoming a vegetarian takes some years of not having consumed meat at all. Perhaps it is the dedication involved in making the change that offends some people who wilfully misinterpret such devotion to personal change as extremist, but it is no more so than stopping smoking, no longer chewing your fingernails, deciding to walk a new spiritual path, or deciding to grow your hair long.

I would rather prioritise my battles than lay into everything at the same time. Raising animals naturally and with all due care, putting an end to intensive factory farming, and encouraging less consumption of meat, are more pressingly urgent campaign topics than chastising the world’s meat-eaters for not forsaking the consumption of flesh altogether. But yes, it is undeniable that overconsumption of meat is unsustainable and damaging to the planet. Meat intake must be reduced. Just let’s not get sidelined into epic battles over the morality of eating meat that neither side could possibly win.

My morality, my ethics, are mine alone and no-one else’s. If yours are similar, great, but it’s no indicator as to whether we’d actually get along. Of course if you eat meat and don’t care where it came from, whether the animal lived freely or in a prison camp, and don’t give a shit about others or the environment, that is an indicator—of the fact that I would be unlikely to get along with a person apparently so selfish, so immovable, so inflexible. But people can, and do, change during calm debate and discussion. They don’t change when attacked. Vegetarians, vegans and omnivores would all do well to recognise that, beneath our convictions and beyond our plates, we share the same human spirit, the same biology, the same basic needs. We must find ways forward. Screaming and hurling abuse at each other will never achieve anything other than to ensure it’s business as usual, with no changes at all—and therefore bad for me, bad for you, bad for the animals, and bad for the planet.

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