Meat-Eater or Veggi?

The "cute" side does come into it of course, but all domestic animals are cute- lambs, piglets and calves are cute, as are ducks (I've kept ducks as pets, I still adore duck à l'orange and Peking duck).

 

All humans are naturally squeamish - it takes constant exposure to the brutality of slaughtering to eat to become inured to that. I think that is a natural reaction that has been bred into us for survival, that stopped us killing everything in sight and probably led us to farm certain animals rather than just hunt whatever was running wild. The modern world has desensitised our natural squeamishness - the slab of steak on the styrene pack in the supermarket is divorced from the animal on the hoof in the field - we no longer make that mental connection between food and animal, animal and food. So when we have an animal as a pet we do not regard it as food and the mere thought of eating it is abhorrent to us. This natural reaction does not make us naturally vegitarian, it makes us responsible omnivores.

 

I think percieved intellegence comes into it too - we recognise the intellegence in some animals and regard them as lesser forms of our own intellegence - most of us would struggle to eat monkeys and dolphins for example. I guess this would be empathy.

 

Rabbits are food - they were imported into several countries as food (originally by the Romans), escaped and went wild, then were adopted as pets. What put them off the menu in many of those countries was myxomatosis and it has taken generations to put them back on, but the seperation of "food" and "pet" is probably too great for most people to consider eating rabbit pie. As a confirmed omnivore I have eaten rabbit - I didn't enoy it - whether that was the gamey taste or the thought of eating Bugs Bunny that put me off I cannot honestly say, I don't have the same issue when eating Bambi or Donald Duck.

 

 

 

The key is domestication - the domestication of ourselves, our food-stock (animal and vegetable) and the animals we commandeered to help us in that process (now called "pets") - if we had done none of those domestications we could not have a vegetarian choice in out diet plans.

 

Vegetarianism is a product of our own success as "farmers", not only in arable  farming but also in animal farming. Before the agricultural and industrial revolutions we could not pick and choose our diet, everything was seasonal and we ate what we had because that was all we had. We could only grow and eat certain foods at specific times of the year, we could not preserve and transport food as easily as we can now. We could not choose to be purely vegetarian, but we could not choose to be purely carnivorous either - the omnivorous diet was the only viable option. We could not have the high levels of meat in our diet that we have now without the progresses made in growing the vegetable feedstock for those animals. Progress as given us a choice and the ability to choose, applying "morality" to that is reverse engineering a natural behaviour into something it never was. Vegetarianism is not a moral diet or a biological classification, it is a lifestyle choice that has been enabled by our ability to manage and alter our environment.

 

 

 

 

damn that's philosophising.

 

 

As Logan said - fish and seafood no problem, mammals are something else, mainly because a cow's head is more than I can eat in one sitting - sucking pig wasn't a problem when I had that, not that I ate any of the head - I don't eat that much offal anyway so brain, eyes and cheeks don't appear on my plate at all. I've prepared most foul from fully feathered, headed and footed creature into something oven-ready so that's not an issue, again, I see no point in eating any of the discarded bits when there is a whole carcass of white meat to munch on. While I am aware that all animals have heads, and tails and feet and livers and kidneys, I don't have a problem with knowing they do, or not eating those bits. Cabbages have roots - not going to eat a cabbage root any time soon, but having one on my plate isn't going to put me off.

 

However since it was a philosophical question I would counter it by asking would you eat the whole plant? You can chow down on a plate of spuds but would you eat the stalks, leaves and flowers of the potato plant (well, no - they are toxic) (would you eat a raw potato) - you'll grind down the seeds from grasses and bake them into bread or make pasta, but would you eat straw or hay (well, no - you intestine isn't equipped to digest them) - you'd eat an apple but would you eat a apple tree (well, no - you cannot break down cellulose fibres). I've eaten rose petals but I've never been hungry enough to munch my way through the rose bushes in the garden.

 

99% of the plant kingdom is inedible, most of it will kill you.

I have yet to do this, but I certainly wouldn't be opposed. In fact, I hear the eyes and brain of certain animals are some of the tastiest parts. Fish eyes are common to eat in Japan, and so forth. It wouldn't be my first choice, but I'm not so ignorant that I assume it's somehow less gross to eat any other part of an animal. 

As odd as this could read, there are humane ways of slaughtering animals.  And I of course think putting them through torture is absolutely wrong. I just disagree with the argument that some people make that animals should have the same rights and responsibilities as humans. Could you imagine being a witness in animal court, then going to visit your murderous pet in animal prison?