Carnivores
17 June 2005

I’ve been reading various things about the connections between animal agriculture and the environment lately, and I’ve been saddened about what it does to wildlife. It’s been making me think about another contradiction inherent in meat eating, and in the way we treat animals in general.

Often when confronted by a veg*n, a meat eater will suddenly become a proud “carnivore.” They’ll boast about how much they love meat, they’ll wax poetic about their bbq, talk about being at the top of the food chain, and act like they eat nothing but meat.

Yet animals who are carnivores rather than omnivores in the wild are often killed for acting on their desire for meat; in a sense, they are killed because they are carnivores and humans can’t stand it. Big cats are rare and disappearing because they are threatening, wolves are killed when they attack farm animals, bears, alligators, and others are killed when they feel threatened and fight back, and so on and so forth.

Why are omnis so proud of their carnivorous side on one hand, but on the other they turn around and want to harm other animals for the same desire?

I think it has to do with the fact that people think they are at the top of the food chain, and feel challenged when they realize that they aren’t. Humans feel like they own everything (or have dominion over everything), so they can dispatch with the threats to their way of doing things without thought. As with animal agriculture, we see the wildlife as an “other” and can’t recognize it as having its own worth.

  Posted by Jenna Torres    Permalink    Filed under: Opinion | 

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