Dumb Omnivore (or, Fuck The Guardian)
19 June 2005

In a recent op-ed in The Guardian called Why I Hate Vegetarians the author, a self-described “feminist” “vaguely of the left” belts out some particularly dumb arguments about animal rights, vegetarians, and health. Her primary problem seems to be judgmental vegetarians, and I agree, judgmental vegetarians can suck. The rest of the editorial? Feckless banter, every last word of it. Nevertheless, I should be straight here: when I’m calling this author dumb, I’m doing it because her argument is weak, not because I’m a self-righteous vegan.

Let’s get into some of what this “vaguely of the left” “feminist” has to say. I have tons of problems to pull apart in this screed, but I’ll go with the most glaring in my mind.

“Recent converts can be the worst. I have lost friends to the cult who, once they get fed the mantra from the militants, become something akin to ex-smokers.”

Here, vegetarians are attacked not on the merits of their arguments, but on some vague grounds that we’re militant cultists. Painting vegetarians with this broad brush lets her dismiss us all without bothering herself with the problem of thinking about what she’s arguing. How convenient.

“I am tired of feeling self-conscious in restaurants when ordering meat in front of them. No one should deny that factory-farmed animals are kept in the most appalling conditions, and that eating too much meat is bad for you. But look at their claims. Crusaders promote vegetarianism not only as healthy but as a solution to world hunger and a safeguard of the planet.”

Here, perhaps, she shows a bit too much of her hand. After all, if she understands that factory farmed animals live in horrible conditions, is our judgement really the problem, or is it that she feels judged? If she knows that animals live in poor conditions and she’s troubled by that, might it not be possible that she assumes that we’re judging her? As the nuns in my grade school used to say, “A guilty conscience needs no confessor.” Her self-consciousness shouldn’t be our problem.

On the counts of saving the planet and hunger, I agree that vegans sometimes rely on these arguments too much, and sometimes, the arguments can be weak (hunger is mostly a problem of distribution, not how much grain we could feed to people were it not fed to cows). Still, I think she loses on the health count. Just see The China Study (mentioned in a post from pleather below).

Do not assume living without animal products is always a positive, healthy choice. A vegan couple in American have recently been charged with child abuse for malnourishing their three small children. They had been brought up on a vegan diet from birth. There have been similar cases where children, who cannot choose what they eat, have had their health severely damaged because of their parents’ principles. They are putting the welfare of animals before that of their children.

This is just an absurd form of reasoning, and as an argument, it simply falls apart. It is a rhetorical strategy which implies that one represents the whole. For example, surely some meat eaters have also starved their children by locking them in a room and refusing them food (just have a look at this case involving foster parents in New Jersey). Were we to work from the logic above, we could likely infer that something about meat eating made them do this. But this is absurd, just as her argument is absurd.

Giving up meat and dairy has been linked to anorexia and other eating disorders in teenage girls. Lack of vitamin B12, found mainly in meats, eggs, dairy and fish, can cause brain damage. Most vegans, and some non-meat-eaters, have to supplement their diet with pills.

Here the author links vegetarianism to something bad (anorexia) without any real proof about causal links. Sure, some anorexics do use vegetarianism as a cover, but that’s more about the psychological condition of anorexia than vegetarianism. In addition, yes, lack of B12 can cause brain damage, but there are non-animal sources. This is not even really an argument, is it? As for the pills, I know many folks who don’t supplement and do fine. Ever heard of fortified cereals or soymilk? And finally, she’d probably shoot back that that doesn’t count, but then she’d forget about cow’s milk being fortified too. Why is that ok?

In the developed world, vegetarianism is a privileged choice. How many working-class vegetarians do you know? It is not an option for most poor people in this country.

Vegetarianism can be privileged, particularly if you eat a lot of meat analogues. But you can eat vegetarian cheaply, as I did for many years, even in years where I lived on less than $300/month total. There are working class vegans, just as there are rich vegans.

Those who think we should not eat meat because all life is sacred are naive. Would they be happy allowing mosquitoes to spread malaria, or having rats run loose in their home?

This argument is naive, but this is a common tactic of meat eaters when they want to dismiss animal rights advocates. First, she takes your eye off the ball. The ball is animal agriculture which is loaded with unnecessary, pointless, and horrible death and exploitation. By alleging that we wouldn’t even kill mosquitoes, she wishes to show that we’re absurd, and so hopes to dismiss our quite valid critiques on animal suffering.

The problem is that emergencies are different than everyday scenarios in just about every bit of animal rights literature that I’ve read (and I’ve read a great deal). Most of the AR stuff that I know says that we should treat animals equally unless there is a deeply compelling reason otherwise. Thus, as a vegan, were you to be attacked by a lion, you’d fight back, and you could fight back and still be someone who believed in animal rights. Similarly, were a rat with bubonic plague coming at you, ready to bite, you’d be within your rights to fight this animal off too, just as we’d be within our rights to fight off malaria-infested mosquitoes. The distinction here is that fighting off hungry tigers, bubonic rats, and malarial mosquitos is a matter of life and death. Eating meat is not (unless you’re stranded on a desert island, and that’s a different story). No one needs meat to live. Nobody.

One more quick example to drive the point home: it is morally objectionable and illegal to kill other people, yet there are instances in which killing another person is justified, legal, and morally acceptable (in self defense, primarily). These are the same circumstances in which killing an animal would be justifiable. Note that everyday meat eating does not fall under this scenario.

Not all creatures are equal. There are natural hierarchies in the food chain.

Another tired argument. What is “natural” anyway? And if we can say what is “natural,” is it morally justifiable? White people once viewed slavery as “natural” because blacks were thought to be inferior. Fortunately, most people (except, say, Trent Lott) have come to realize that this is wrong. Why can our conception of what is “natural” in this case not also be wrong?

People should be allowed to make their own choices and not be bullied or frightened into giving up meat. In the US recently, children in a secondary school were taken by their teachers to a slaughterhouse to show them how animals are killed for food. This tactic is a form of mind control, as unethical as discouraging young girls from having sex by making them watch a difficult childbirth.

I agree as a matter of principle that people should be allowed to make their own choices. In fact, that’s what we vegans do everyday. But is showing someone the truth behind what they consume “bullying” them? Why is it that knowing the truth about animal slaughter is considered taboo? If we’re to be informed consumers, we should have a full 100% understanding of where our food comes from. This isn’t mind control. This is showing someone the truth.

Go ahead, visit a tofu factory. We have nothing to hide.

On the point of difficult births: difficult births are not the rule. Unless the slaughterhouse that these kids went to see was somehow exceptional, the shocking truth about animals being killed for food is an everyday occurrence. In fact, in the time it takes you to read this sentence, approximately 50 animals will have been killed in the US alone. How is understanding the dynamics of that “mind control?”

Finally:

I may hate vegetarians because they make me feel guilty, or because, meat being so delicious, they must have lots of willpower. But as an animal lover who agrees in principle with most reasons for giving up meat, I would rather not join that band of humourless, judgmental souls. It would seem that you are indeed what you eat.

She loves animals, except she eats them. Isn’t there a basic logic problem here?

Oh, and we’re humorless and judgmental. Sure, some vegans are humorless and judgmental. But we’re fighting against what we see as exploitation. Some abolitionists were probably seen by plantation owners as humorless and judgmental too.

If we are what we eat, I wonder where this author is eating “dumb” at.

In the end, this is just another pointless anti-veg*n screed. It isn’t surprising for its content: we’ve all heard this a zillion times, but what good does it do to read this in a major newspaper, particularly one that I respected for its work on the lies behind the Iraq war? The author claims to find us judgmental, yet her entire article consists of nothing but half-baked judgments about us. She’s apparently fond of contradiction: she’s not only a meat-eating animal lover, she’s also complaining about the very behavior she’s engaged in. On top of it all, she comes clean: she loves the taste of meat so much that she can’t give it up, even though she “agrees in principle with most reasons for giving up meat.”

To reiterate: I don’t think the author is dumb because she eats meat. I think she’s dumb because she can’t argue her way out of her own bias and judgment. I have rational, valid arguments for my animal rights stance that I’m happy to talk about. Can she say the same for her meat eating?

  Posted by Bob Torres    Permalink    Filed under:
PETA staffers charged for cruelty
19 June 2005

Thanks to Ryan’s del.icio.us feed over at VegBlog, I saw that two on PETA’s staff have been charged with cruelty to animals. You can get more background on this including PETA’s reaction over at VeganPorn (scroll down to PattyPan’s comment).

Though we might debate PETA’s media tactics, it would seem pretty obvious to me that anyone working for PETA would be dedicated to an ethical stance that is opposed to animal exploitation or cruelty. In the follow-up above, PETA goes to some lengths to explain their policy on euthanasia, which they support in some cases. Personally, I am decidedly uncomfortable about justifying euthanasia, and it sorta freaks me out to hear PETA advocating it. I do understand that for sick animals it may be the least cruel solution, but I haven’t really made up my mind on the whole issue yet.

What do you all think?

p.s. sorry if this post makes no sense. The cat decided that 5:30 AM was the time for him to sit on the computer keyboard, which woke up the machine, and make it beep-loudly-for a good long while. I couldn’t get back to sleeeeeep…..

  Posted by Bob Torres    Permalink    Filed under:

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