It is a wonderful sense of affirmation when we come into contact with literature that confirms our beliefs and eloquently sums them up for a large audience. The River Cottage Meat Book by Hugh Fearnely-Whittingstall is not only a fantastic cook book, but a persuasive work of moral sensibility in reference to consuming animal products. If you are uncertain of how you should feel about eating other animals, or would just like to know more about butchering and cooking meat, I highly recommend this book. A few passages really hit home with us, and hopefully these excerpts will create a greater appreciation and respect for meat in you as well.
Intriguing approach to the morality of being a meat eater.
It seems obvious to me that the morality of meat eating lies in the factual details of our relationships with the animals we kill for food. It is what we do to them that counts. There is the simple fact that we plan and carry out their slaughter. And, in the case of farmed animals, there are the more complex interactions through which we manage and control almost every aspect of their lives from birth to death. From where do we draw the moral authority to bring about their deaths? And what is the moral status of the means and methods we use to run their lives? (13)
On differences in opinion about carnivorous and vegetarian diets.
The real problem with these arguments is that they are often born of a gridlocked antagonism between meat eaters and vegetarians, who each feel the need to defend themselves against the implied criticism of the other's position. They miss the moral nitty-gritty by a wide margin because the issues at stake have become almost tribal: two groups feeling mutually threatened, throwing sticks and bones. This is an unhappy, contaminated forum in which to conduct a reasoned moral discussion. (13)
A Perceived limitation to the Vegetarian Utopia, and the Symbiosis of Domestication
Of all the creatures whose lives we affect, none are more deeply dependent on us - for their success as species and for their individual health and well-being - than the animals we raise to kill for meat. I'm talking about common domestic livestock - poultry, pigs, cows, sheep, and goats. We control almost every aspect of their lives: their feeding, their breeding, their health, their pain, or freedom from it, and finally the timing and manner of their death. We have done so for many thousands of years, to the point where their dependence on us is in their nature - evolutionarily hard-wired. Their suffering, or lack of it, their animal happiness, or animal misery, are down to us. This dependency would not be suspended if we all became vegetarians. If we ceased to kill the domesticated meat species for food, then these animals would not revert to the wild (even assuming, if "the wild" means "land unaffected by man," that there is still such a place to be found on the planet). The nature of our relationship would change, but the relationship would not end. We would remain their custodians, with full moral responsibility for their welfare. (17)
Modern hypocrisy and steps towards good Husbandry (Wifery, Parentry?)
The vast majority of our food animals are now raised under methods that are systematically abusive. For them, discomfort is the norm, pain is routine, growth is abnormal, and diet is unnatural. Disease is widespread and stress is almost certain. We have battery laying hens in wire cages so small they can't turn around. We farm broiler chickens indoors for our fast-food restaurants and supermarkets in such close confinement and such huge numbers that premature deaths counted in the millions are considered the industry norm. We raise millions of pigs who never see daylight, soft ground, or even straw, but only strip-lighting, steel, and concrete. We keep cattle indoors not for months but for years, bedded on their own excrement and given drug-laced feeds - the only way to stave off the diseases that would inevitable invade such intensive systems. Sheep, who may even be lucky enough to have lived outside, are then herded into trucks to be driven for days, without food or water, to their slaughter. This isn't husbandry. It's persecution. We have completely failed to uphold our end of the contract. In the face of such abuse, the moral defense of meat eating is left in tatters....
Because the same moral majority of the pollster's main street becomes the immoral majority, or at least the apathetic majority, once they get behind the wheels of a shopping cart. They continue to buy the products they are so quick to condemn. So these appalling, abusive practices, it turns out, do have popular support - albeit that the supporters are in denial (it seems that nothing suppresses the exercise of conscience as effectively as the words "Buy one, get one free"). But there's no getting away from it: if you buy something, you support the system that produces it. In the face of such apathetic meat eaters, I have a lot of respect for vegetarians who are morally motivated...
Personally, though, I think there is a better way to change things. I think we should certainly change the way we shop - and boycott the products of those who do not look after their farm animals, who have effectively reneged on the deal. But I believe there is a positive vote to be cast as well as a negative one. And I think it is best exercised by buying the meat of those who practice good husbandry, who continue to embrace the notion of a contract with their meat animals, and who do all they can to uphold it, honorably, morally, and responsibly. (25)
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