Number 93 : July 1998 |
We have evolved as a species to eat animals as well. The best proof of this is that if someone has a food allergy, and they go on a diet of Lamb and Pears, the allergy will always disappear. (Certainly it is thought that most food allergies are caused by the fact that we have not evolved, through natural selection, to be able to eat farmed / processed crops, and animals fed with natural products.)
We used to eat food we could gather and hunt for meat, and fish, from wild animals, but as we have become more civilised we have started to farm food. The main moral drawback is the farmed animals do not have a fighting chance of survival, and they may be fed on unnatural foods (although organic farming avoids this). The main moral improvement is that by eating farmed fish, and meat, we are not killing animals that would otherwise have survived, and one could argue that these animals would not have had a life at all had we not bred them.
The key issue is that one should not eat meat if one would not be prepared to slaughter the animal oneself. Country people, and many people from other lands, keep their own animals, and cut their throats when they need them for food, and the human race may not have survived if it had purely relied on fruit and vegetables.
With regard to animal products, the only valid reasons against these are; if they are non-organic and not fed on natural foods causing cancer, BSE, etc.; and / or if they are not free-range - eg. factory farmed.
Graham T. Dare
Graham : I’ve carried on publishing your homilies as you haven’t asked me to stop, and they have the virtue of brevity & act as springboards for raising numerous fascinating issues. Above, you said something I strongly agreed with for once ! I share your view that domesticated animals only exist because we farm them, and that their feral ancestors wouldn’t now exist in the numbers their domesticated counterparts do. We do, however, have the obligation to ensure that farm animals’ lives are, on the whole, worth living for each individual - even if their lives are short - by avoiding the worst excesses of factory farming.
That said, is the effectiveness of the "lamb & pears" diet an established fact or an old wives’ tale ? Is the fact that domesticated animals wouldn’t survive in the wild an issue ? We humans live in a symbiotic relationship with them - we wouldn’t survive very well in the wild either; leave me out when we return to hunter-gathering !
Incidentally, does anyone remember the TV drama Threads ? It dealt with the aftermath of a nuclear war, with the ensuing nuclear winter. Scary ! The UK population would rapidly decline to mediaeval levels in the absence of industrialisation & efficient farming - ie. nearer to 6m than 60m.
I don’t go along with this "do it yourself" slaughtering lark ! I’d be too squeamish to perform an appendectomy, but that doesn’t mean I have no moral right to have one if the need arises. We all have different stomachs & are suited to, or can tolerate, different jobs.
Theo