Twelve Black Code Monkeys

Wholefoods, a chain of natural food supermarkets in the U.S. recently helped set up a foundation called the Animal Compassion Foundation whose purpose is to develop and promote practices in animals used for food that are compassionate and humane. This is, in my opinion, a good thing. Factory farms have made for horrible existences for animals for a century or more. Finally, with the growth of the organic and local farm, we are seeing more attention to naturalistic practices that both provide for better lives as well as better quality food.

The one problem I’ve seen with this foundation is that among others who are animal welfare advocates, one of the organizations participating is People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA). PETA has a stance that mimics most extremist vegana and vegetarian and animal rights movements - the complete elimination of animals being used for food, period. This is the dilemma that is faced by most vegetarians and vegans who become so for ethical reasons. In their minds, killing animals for any purpose is wrong, whether done painlessly or not, and whether the quality of their lives was good or not. Also, the eating of “flesh” or even dairy or eggs from animals is repulsive to them. So, any effort among omnivores to make the lives of animals better is seen as disingenuous or simply meaningless in the face of our ultimate sin, that of eating meat.

I’m not sure exactly what to say to those people. I firmly believe that eating meat - naturally raised, not factory-produced - is enormously healthy for you and while one can certainly live on a completely vegetarian or even vegan diet, most people don’t really thrive. Some do, of course, but many don’t. In any case, I’m not willing to sacrifice my health because some people feel its unethical of me to eat meat. These people are of course entitled to their opinion, but as long as they keep it at that, I’m perfectly fine with that.

I do, however, think that despite some of these people’s tunnel vision, that some vegetarians respect other people’s right to eat the way they choose and they are all the more happy that some of us carnivores are thoughtful enough about animals and the environment to want to promote farming and animal-husbandry practices that support better lives for animals and more sustainable land management.

The extremists seem to not even understand what would be most beneficial to their movement. But extremists often cannot see the forest for the trees. They tend to be so subsumed by their ultimate goal that they cannot fathom even steps in that direction. If I were in their shoes, I’d be big supporters of these types of movements because it will make more people familiar with the problem in general without having to be shouted at by people on the corner waving graphic blown-up photos of mangled animals. Extremists don’t understand that this shock treatment only serves to alienate and anger most people. But maybe their stance is not conducive to rational argument? More likely, it is just a lot easier to shout and show graphic stuff that ANYONE would be disgusted by, then to actually defend a position in a rational way.

To repeat, I’m not trying to feather all vegetarians or vegans as extremists. I know some personally who do not look down on me for eating meat (at least that I know), and whose decision is a personal one which they choose not to inflict on others. But these are folks with friends and family who are 98% meat-eaters, and they probably have made a conscious decision that if they were to try to proselytize, many of those people would simply not want to have much to do with them. Of course extremists on the other hand view their cause as more important than anything else, so would basically rather lose all ties to friends and family who eat meat rather than associate with such horrible people. They can, after all, form new relationships within their extremist communities, right?