Vegetarianism.

VEGETARIANISM as a cause is fraught with dilemmas and problems. I do not mean as a diet, for I have no objection to those who decide for themselves what it is they wish and wish not to eat, or who of necessity must avoid certain foodstuffs. I find veganism however extremely objectionable both as a cause and as a diet; as a diet because I am certain that it makes people ill, and as a cause because it harms the natural world far more in its agricultural demands than pastures and livestock ever could.

   Of course I trust that most people who are vegetarians by choice feel a moral repugnance at the slaughter and eating of animals, and this I understand, for I would myself be incensed if anyone killed and eat my dog. My grandmother told once a story of keeping geese for the purpose of eating them, but grew so attached to them that she was sure she never could unless starving be persuaded to do so. All the same, we would eat a goose at Michaelmas time and enjoy it more than almost any other meat in the year, for thinking not of the animal we may savour the food.  One of my brothers feels that the less he sees the meat on his plate as an animal the better, and this is not unusual. It is the anonymity of the animal which reduces our moral repugnance. I love pigs as an animal, they are noble creatures, most loveable, and highly intelligent, but I also enjoy bacon, sausages, gammon, black pudding, and cured ham. If I kept a pig for a pet, something I hope to do one day, I am sure I would feel as my grandmother about her geese, and yet while keeping that selfsame pet I am also convinced that I would buy many a pack of bacon for breakfast. Am I then an hypocrite for both loving a creature and loving its meat? I am sure many zealous vegetarians would say I am but I do not think so. I no more wish to cause suffering to animals than they do, but I have no objection to rearing them, keeping them, and painlessly slaughtering them, in the circle of life.

   Certainly I am aware that farming practices are not all they could be, and therefore continue an advocate for purchasing meat from farms I know would give the animals adequate space and time to live; and such practices are better for the taste of the meat as well as for the comfort of the animals. I disapprove greatly of those who 'shop for a bargain', thinking more of the pennies they save than the practices they endorse in their purchase. A certain distant relative of mine on the other side of my family used to buy the cheapest ingredients, and when my grandmother reprimanded this individual he replied, 'that is how I can spend a week in the best hôtels in Europe'. I would rather know that pigs are not packed together indoors all their lives than that I can spend a week yearly at the Ritz, also I would rather eat good meat.

   To really very strident vegetarians however, the whole process of farming livestock is blameworthy, but I cannot agree. Consider this, that if human beings did not engage in animal husbandry, billions of animals whose lives the vegetarians claim to value would never have existed in the first place. Indeed, if nature had been left to her own devices and man never had blessed (or cursed if you prefer) the face of the earth, doubtless the sheep and the chicken would be extinct while wolves and other predators would dominate the planet. What is better to the animal activist, the lives of pacific animals or the lives of predators? Are they all equal? If not, should not man be an interventionist? If they are, what matter if the mosquito renders all mammals extinct by disease? Dishonest intelligence is not intelligence, there is a balance in the scale of things, and the short-sighted is the very inverse of idealism. Variety itself demands management.

   Yet here the question is often confused with the confluences of other doctrines. Carbon dioxide, a most necessary gas without which life on earth could not be supported, is by the monochrome spectacles of the age villified. Because flatulent livestock are in such large numbers they contribute significant amounts of carbon dioxide and methane to the atmosphere, and so this irrelevant argument is often made against the eating of meat. I say it is irrelevant because it has nothing to do of itself with the eating of meat or the welfare of animals as moral questions. This is a far more nebulous question to consider (literally nebulous, because it concerns gases) but I will consider it all the same because it is so frequently made relevant to these matters.

   Should we fell trees in the autumn because the leaves they shed turn black on the ground? They turn black on the ground because they release the carbon they have absorbed from the atmosphere back into it. This is not commonly known. Many celebrated and professedly conscientious persons are obliged, for reasons perhaps only fully known to themselves, to fly great distances in admittedly tremendous style, sometimes to cut a ribbon, sometimes to have extremely important drinks with powerful people. This smarts the conscience, and it is very piteous for them, but they often make good their hopelessly necessary combustions by sending money to companies who will, on their philanthropic behalf, plant trees for them. These trees will, they rest assured, absorb more carbon dioxide than their voyages ever released. Mayhap they will but, as I have observed, they will only do so until the autumn. Anyway, algæ performs the majority of such work in silence and obscurity on the surface of the oceans. So should we fell these trees for releasing carbon dioxide? I dare say no. No more should we stop breeding animals for doing so, or stop breeding ourselves. There are some considerations which supersede others.

   A friend of mine is a pescetarian because he does not relate so much to sealife as to cows and lambs, which surely says more about him than it does about the debate. Dolphins are supposed to be very intelligent, I think whales are too, and I saw once a blind shrimp in a David Attenborough documentary dig a tunnel to dwell in with a fish who was the bread winner. Surely thoughts and feelings may exist under as above the water. Indeed I have read, though this is doubtless a variable matter, that the farming practices of fish and crustaceans are worse in some respects to that of livestock. Nevertheless, it is probably true that fish and crustaceans think and feel to only a very limited extent. There has been a hot debate in recent years as to whether lobsters have the perception of pain. Some mistake the sounds they make when put alive into boiling water as screams, when it is in fact the release of air like a whistling kettle. I myself very much doubt that they have the perception of pain as they are invertebrates. My brother thinks they do, but even he agrees that such pain as they might feel cannot be compared to that of an injured mammal. I do not however doubt the pain which many empathetic animal lovers feel themselves psychologically when any animal suffers or dies. In this however we must consider one other animal: the homo sapien.

   I hope no one in their right mind will doubt that of all the animals it is man who has the highest capacity for suffering. Not only can we suffer the most excruciating physical pain but we can suffer such a degree of psychological pain, which may even be induced or worsened by physical pain, that sometimes suicide is sought as the last resort against its intolerable perception. We are quite unique in this, despite some views to the contrary, no other animals intentionally seek out their own deaths. Surely then human empathy must extend most completely to human suffering. It may be extended further to animal suffering, but we never can know to what extent an animal suffers. If we judge of animal suffering by our own suffering we are mistaken. We can only approximate a likely overestimated approximation, whereas we are certainly correct when we judge of the suffering of other people by our own. I take this so seriously that I say, with very little doubt, that I do not think the accumulated suffering of all the insects, crustaceans, fish, and other simple organisms, in the world, is equivalent to the torture of a single person. In this I for once disagree with an old saying, that the death of a fly is as complete as the death of a man. No other creature has such a complex and sensitive nervous system or brain as man, we must be kind to one another when we consider this. I am afraid that many people such as Chris Packham forget it. Patrick Moore, the co-founder of Greenpeace, calls this way of thinking anti-human. Certainly I can feel that many human beings are irritating to me. So can many animals be, such as buzzing flies and howling dogs, but the old Renaissance reverence for man is surely the better way of thinking. He is the measure of all things; how noble in reason! how infinite in faculty! how like an angel in apprehension! how like a God! The beauty of the world, the paragon of animals! (Let us forget the quintessence of dust.)

   This must be a helpful consideration when we think of many people who cannot well digest vegetable matter. Meat breaks down more readily in the stomach whereas some vegetables can be passed almost intact through the human digestive system, and the vegetable eating precusor of man Paranthropus went extinct while the more varied eating Australopithecus prospered. Furthermore, I see the countenances of people who have tried not to eat meat. Simon Cowell when he attempted veganism looked a shell of his former self, pallid and weak. There is not enough protein in a diet without meat, and people who think protein supplements will provide the want should beware of the heavy metals in those such as mercury and lead.

   Lastly, I should like to mention the terrible effects which agriculture can have on a country and its populace compared to livestock. Livestock encourages pastures and hedgerows, whereas the industry of growing some of the more popular vegan or vegetable products encourages destruction of villages and deforestation. The amount of chemicals used in the farming of the soybean is so extreme that it has been known to cause mutations in the people who live near them. I saw once a documentary showing some African people who suffered these mutations. One boy was literally born with his brain outside his skull. These are horrors greater to me than those claimed of traditional, time-honoured, and ethical, livestock farms. Animals only require water, food, space, light, and good treatment, they should not require much else if they are properly cared for and loved. When we begin to deal in things like chemicals and '3D printing' I think we should take stock, and stop writing the book of our lives like a Robert Heinlein novel and think to compose it more like an H.E. Bates story.