Meat Is Murder

Jonathan Safran Foer, author of Everything Is Illuminated and Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, has a new book out, a non-fiction, called Quitting Meat: A Process of Change. The book reportedly makes an impassioned case for re-examining our attitudes toward animals, arguing against eating meat based on the very simple and obvious realization that it's wrong to kill animals for food.

"If animal welfare matters to us, if the air and water matter, if swine flu and E. Coli matter, if global warming matters, if biodiversity matters, if rural communities matter," he recently wrote in the Huffington Post, then it's time to re-examine our attitudes toward eating meat.

Foer's position is that ultimately, we eat meat because we like to, and we devise all sorts of justifications afterward. For example, as a Buddhist, I recognize the interdependence of all life, but I can also see how we humans are not separate from the rest of the food chain. Killing is a fact of life, and as hard as I try to avoid it, I cannot. The wheat, corn and vegetables in my diet were once alive, but now are no more. Even if I resist the reflex to swat a flying insect, I cannot avoid accidentally inhaling microscopic bugs. Even my own blood is designed to kill, with its red cells and hemoglobin seeking out and destroying any foreign microbe, bacterium, or virus that's entered my body.

But that's just a rationalization and if I think about it at all it cannot justify allowing the barbaric and inhumane practices at our industrial farms and food-processing plants - the military-industrial slaughterhouse.

But still, I tell myself that even if I gave up meat entirely, I still have a pet cat to feed. His metabolism and body cannot eat anything other than meat, so I wind up buying him these little tins of diced halibut, chicken by-products, and smelly beef substances - "Fancy Feasts" of all varieties. I'm still funding the slaughterhouse. So why not just give in, I argue, and feed myself as well as long as I'm a customer anyway?

And then I can try and soothe my conscious somewhat by eating as low on the evolutionary tree as possible. I would never, ever eat a monkey or great ape, and generally eat fish or seafood more frequently than chicken, and chicken more frequently than beef or pork. And I would never eat my cat.

Cats have been called friends of the dharma, because they caught the mice that would nest in the sutras and scriptures in monasteries. The monks would not kill the mice themselves, but would keep cats to do the killing for them. "The monks of the East and the West Halls were arguing one day about a cat," a famous koan begins. I wonder if the argument was about the morality of killing by proxy.

Cats and dogs are cherished, mice are despised, and farm animals are pretty much forgotten. "How is it that Americans, so solicitous of the animals they keep as pets, are so indifferent toward the cows they cook for dinner?" Elizabeth Kolbert writes in her review of Foer's book in The New Yorker. "The answer cannot lie in the beasts themselves. Pigs, after all, are quite companionable, and dogs are said to be delicious." Indeed. "If we let dogs be dogs and breed without interference," Foer writes, "we would create a sustainable, local meat supply with low energy inputs that would put the most efficient grass-based farming to shame."

Relax. No one is advocating eating your pets, but instead just reflecting on our dualistic attitudes toward animals. In fact, I know that if I were, say, trapped at the bottom of a well with Eliot and knew we had no chance of rescue or escape, I would die of starvation first rather than eat him, even though I know full well that once I died he would probably devour my carcass. Of course, my decision would be informed by the knowledge that even if I were to have eaten him, I would just get hungry again later, but my suffering would be compounded by the knowledge of what I had done.

But that's my pet. Why is it that I do not have similar reservations about eating a cow? Or a chicken? Or a trout?

One reason, Foer notes, is that most of us have been eating meat in one form of another since we were kids. Foer writes that we got over our colds with chicken soup. We celebrated the Fourth of July with grilled burgers and hot dogs. We ate our grandmother's brisket. These things matter. As do our cravings. As does convenience. This is why resolving to stop eating meat is so difficult in the first place, and why maintaining the resolution is even harder. Mark Twain once said that quitting smoking is among the easiest things one can do - he did it all the time. Foer adds vegetarianism to that list of easy things.

When it comes to meat, Foer explains, change is almost always cast as an absolute. You're either a vegetarian or you're not. There's no two ways about it. It's a dualistic distinction, and I used to play off of it by telling people that I was a vegetarian who ate meat. "After all," I'd explain, "carnivores also eat vegetables. Why can't vegetarians eat meat?" The answer, obviously, is that vegetarianism is defined by that from which one abstains, while it's opposite is defined by what it includes. But why is that?

I've tried vegetarianism numerous times, most successfully, if success is defined as "long lasting," in the mid-1970s. But like many other resolutions, I broke down after one or two years, and found myself once again back at the slaughterhouse. Other, more recent attempts have counter-intuitively resulted in me gaining a lot of weight, as I filled myself with breads, pasta, and other starches, as well as fatty cheeses and nuts for protein. All that it took for me to go back to eating meat again was one glance at myself in the mirror coming out of the shower.

In his Huff Post piece, Foer considers not so much what inspires one to change, but what inspires one to remain changed. "It's easy and common to learn something---through an argument or fact, image or experience---and feel compelled to make different choices. But for how long? Change is inspiring, but only rarely durable. "

We can, however, realize change day by day. A few weeks before Thanksgiving isn't the best time to attempt to stop eating animals forever, but change doesn't have to be immediate and absolute. I successfully avoided eating animals all day today. I had a vegetarian burrito for lunch, and a fruit salad for dinner, but yesterday I was served a chicken sandwich at a business luncheon. I went with the flow and ate it. But that doesn't mean that I can stop my vigilance about what I eat, and what practices my purchases sustain, and my level of benevolence toward the creatures who share the world with us.