honoring the animal?
28 January 2006

Okay, before we get to your (ir)regularly scheduled blogging, just one quick bit of shameless self-promotion….we’re like all famous and shit! Oh yeah, we’re in issue #10 of Herbivore Magazine, in the article about the “new faces of veganism” alongside genuine vegan celebrities Isa Chandra Moskowitz and Sarah Kramer. Fuck yeah! (And to think, all it took was a case of booze to the editor and a metallica mix tape….josh is such a push-over).

Okay, now back to your regularly-scheduled programming.

It feels like forever since I’ve posted here. Ummm, maybe because it has been forever since I’ve posted here. For better or worse, the podcast seems to eat most of my free time, and what little free time isn’t eaten by the podcast is consumed by the forums. But no matter, you don’t want to hear my wussy sob-stories and all that strum und drang or whatever.

Whining aside, I thought it was about time for me to write an entry on this flaky stuff that I see or hear every so often about “honoring an animal” by eating it. Though I’ve heard this before, it also came up most recently a few months back when we were on the Virato Live! show out of Asheville, NC. On the show, the host, Virato, related to us the story of a rabbi who was served pork at a dinner that he was invited to. Rather than shunning the pork, Virato told us, the rabbi went on at length about how the animal wasn’t killed specifically for him, and how it was likely a greater harm to refuse the ‘sacrifice’ of the animal. Thinking this, the rabbi then proceeded to consume the pork, and—I remember this pretty vividly—Virato told us that he let the juices run down his chin as he savored every bite, honoring the animal that was killed to provide the meal.

I’ve heard similar stories from flaky-lefty friends who’ve told me that some Buddhists will consume meat because it wasn’t killed specifically for them (thus, preserving their karmic integrity), or that other vegetarians have eaten meat when it was served to them, seeing a greater harm in refusing a host and wasting food than killing an animal.

Though none of you will be surprised to read this, I think this is a total load of crap.

If you want to honor an animal, the best way to honor it is by not eating it. And while I get it about being rude to hosts, I don’t think one should collapse on one’s ethics just to preserve social harmony. Very few animals are killed specifically for one person, moreover. The nature of contemporary meat production means that we’re distant from the meat that we eat; therefore, one could always excuse meat eating if all one is concerned about is the meat not being killed specifically for them.

In a sense, it is contract killing but without a specific target.

The best way to honor animals is to treat them as companions rather than wrapping some soft-headed new-agey crap justification around your desire to eat meat.

  Posted by Bob Torres    Permalink    Filed under:

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