Even Non-Meat Eaters Endorse the Eating of Animals

My early morning read pretty much clinched it for me today that people need a stronger grounding in both semantics and basic logic. Yesterday I heard about lacto-vegetarians wanting to call themselves lactovegans; today, I read that the writer of a column called "Vegetarianismism" is now calling people who eat meat "fellow vegetarian[s]". What's next, really? (This is going to be a little long.)

Max Fisher, The Atlantic's token vegetarian foodie, has now gone on record as 1) endorsing the eating of animals and 2) conflating vegetarianism with the eating of animals. In his piece from Wednesday called "The Case for Semitarianism", Fisher revisits ethical relativism with that same delight recent Pollanite foodies have been oozing while oohing and aahing over their hands-on involvement in the slaughter of some non-human or another. In Fisher's case, his oohing is over someone else's participation in the slaughter of a pig. Fisher uses terms like "beautiful" to describe how the Greeks have (here comes the euphemism) "celebrated pork". He immerses himself completely in his Pollan-gasm, writing:

I looked at the bright, smiling faces in Aglaia's photo as they held the severed head of the pig and resisted my knee-jerk reaction that meat is "wrong." I thought how silly it would be to tell these people to eat tofu instead, and what a loss to Greek culture, to all culture, it would be if they did. Food is absolutely central to the cultures that make the world so interesting, and that food includes meat

then invites us all to "understand why the cost of universal vegetarianism would be perhaps too high". Heaven forbid that we wipe the gleeful expressions off the faces of those Greek children during photo ops with severed heads--that would just be plain ol' mean.

Fisher does admit that this fixation on meat is "bad for the animals who die to produce it", but I guess that how bad it is for the animals isn't a particularly weighty or relevant concern for him, since his solution is that there should be "compromise" and that some animals are just going to have to be collateral damage so that humans can still cater to their taste buds and indulge themselves in their bloodlust.

Predictably, he quotes New York Times foodie Mark Bittman who recently co-opted the term vegan to help promote his book and latest food fad) and uses this as his stepping-stone to advocate the occasional eating of animals. He calls this "mitigated meat". As if the name-dropping, bandwagon-hopping and euphemisms weren't annoying enough, he then redefines the term vegetarian by providing the example of a "lifelong vegetarian [sic] friend [who] allows herself meat on holidays and special occasions". (One has to wonder whether Fisher extends this own redefining of the term to himself, since he frequently reminds his readers that he's a vegetarian.)

So what to do? According to Fisher, it depends on whether you view animal flesh as "an indulgence similar to alcohol: a social norm harmless in careful moderation" or if you view it as being "more like cigarettes--a harmful vice at any level". I guess that viewing it as the product of the torture and slaughter of a sentient creature isn't an option anymore. It's either naughty to eat animals, or naughty and unhealthy. It's all about us and not about them. Fisher's take (and introduction of yet another foodie term crafted to make people feel hip and lovely about eating animals)?

For me, the latter view makes sense, though that has a bit to do with my addictive personality (I can either eat three burgers a week or no burgers at all) as well as my moral qualms. But I see no problems--ethical, dietary, or culinary--with what I like to call semitarianism: A diet of sometimes vegetarianism, sometimes omnivorism.

So now I wonder, just how much meat do you have to eat and how many times a day do you have to eat it to qualify as an omnivore? 'Cause it seems to me that by definition, if you eat it at all, that makes you an omnivore. Is it just me, or does it seems as though foodies would like to make the word taboo, without actually condemning the eating of animals itself?

In asserting that he sees no ethical problems inherent in eating animals, Fisher contradicts what he'd written earlier about his own vegetarianism stemming from how he'd "long thought that eating a (once) living thing seemed fundamentally immoral". Fisher takes his philosophical meanderings further off-track by contrasting his proposed new "semitarianism" to (another foodie term for omnivorism) flexitarianism, stating that his new form of vegetarianism "is borne out of philosophical conviction, and that conviction is no less legitimate for food-lovers who abstain from meat one day a week or all seven". Furthermore, sounding more like Palin than Pollan, he asks all vegetarians and vegans to "recall that even the most fervently ethics-based vegetarianism isn't really about an ideological purity of all-or-nothing, us-versus-them purism activist groups foster".

Fisher then explains that what vegetarianism and veganism are all about is reducing animal suffering and he absolves humans of any sense of agency or accountability by reassuring us that "[w]hether one person gives up meat or three people cut out a third, it's all the same to the cow, and it should be the same to us". So if someone kicks me in the shin hard enough to bruise it or three people kick me in the shin a little less hard to produce the same bruising, should it be all the same to me? More importantly, should it be all the same to them?

Watering Down 'Veganism'

Indianapolis' IndyStar.com featured a surprisingly positive piece by Shari Rudavsky today on going meatless. She ends up focusing on the health aspects of eating a completely plant-based diet, touching upon how consuming substances like dairy can often aggravate allergies or other medical issues. Her piece also addresses some aspects of the protein myth by explaining that protein deficiency is far from being a concern for vegans, and that we don't need to worry about complementary proteins -- an erroneous belief that's still promoted in mainstream media.

The article's focus on health issues leaves it falling short a bit in terms of giving readers a glimpse at the full picture concerning veganism, unfortunately. Rudavsky reassures readers that "it's not necessary to go all the way to see a health benefit. Just forgoing meat one day a week or before 6 p.m. can have an impact." She's obviously been reading Mark Bittman, the NY Times foodie who's been cashing in on veganism's rising popularity by attempting to co-opt the term.

One bit of the piece reflects precisely how people's misunderstanding of the philosophy behind it have led to attempts to water down the term 'veganism'. For instance, Rudavsky describes a man who managed to lose around 120 lbs over the course of a year and a half following a plant-based diet that was mostly raw. She then says that "more recently, the Indianapolis student has become more of a self-described 'flexitarian.' About 95 percent of his diet is vegetarian, and he is still largely vegan, mostly for health reasons." The thing is that you're no more "largely vegan" than you can be "largely celibate". Either you are, or you aren't.

It's contradictory to call someone both flexitarian (which, let's face it, is a kinder gentler term for 'omnivore') and a vegan in the same sentence. People like Mark Bittman and others trying to label-drop by calling variations on meat-eating 'vegetarian' or 'vegan' are just confusing the issue. Furthermore, asserting that someone is vegan for health reasons ignores the fact that veganism involves eschewing all consumption of animals and animal-derived ingredients -- not just the ones we'd eat.

Conscientious Killing

A friend sent me a link last night to yet another article where attempts are made to justify a sense of ethical correctness to killing animals for food. The piece was posted on a site called Eco Child's Play which touts itself as being about "green parenting". The term "conscientious carnivores" is used to describe people who "just aren't ready" to stop eating animals but who are "honestly trying to live as green as possible". According to the piece's author, some of the purported reasons people won't stop eating meat are that they're "just not healthy without some animal protein in [their] diet and that there is some logic to the argument that humans are biologically omnivorous". The thing is that just because humans can eat meat, does not mean that they need to eat meat.

A link is given to back up the statement concerning omnivorism, but the article to which it leads actually states outright that we "are not, however, required to consume animal protein. We have a choice." It goes on to state that the best "arguments in support of a meat-free diet remain ecological, ethical and health concerns". Strange that this article would be referenced in a piece that's all about how to seek out happy cows to eat because although you want to pat yourself on the back for being "green", you're "not ready" to make the right choice.

It's a real shame that so many of those involved in environmentalism today are hopping on the "happy meat" bandwagon. It's alienating a lot of people who've been a part of the movement who aren't desperately seeking excuses to continue raising animals for food.

Vegaquarian?

In a heated anti-vegetarian discussion on some forum in the world wide interwebs, someone brought up the term "vegaquarian" as the latest trendy label for someone who eats fish, but doesn't eat mammals. The person in question referred to himself as a vegetarian who eats fish and added that he likes the label "vegaquarian", which is purportedly becoming more commonplace. It's already in the Urban Dictionary. So what does that make an antiquarian, I wonder?