As long as we eat animals, there will be people who wonder if we should be eating animals. As loud as the “Bacon-tastes-good!” side is, the “Meat-is-murder!” crowd easily equals them in volume and fervor.
What is lost in shouting and name calling is an actual measured and philosophical discussion on what it means to be a carnivore in the modern world. Yes, there are people who will never stop eating meat, but no matter where you stand, you must admit there are issues surrounding the world’s meat production that should be wrestled with by any thoughtful carnivore.
Tomorrow at Portland State University the question of what it means to be an ethical, thoughtful animal eater (or if such a creature even exists), will be addressed in a panel discussion at 7 pm in Room 238 of the Smith Memorial Student Union.
The panel includes Kathy Hessler from the Center for Animal Law Studies at Lewis and Clark, Ramona Ilea professor of philosophy at Pacific University, and Camas Davis, founder of the Portland Meat Collective who we interviewed last Fall in connection to a live butchery/literary event called Livestock.
What I find particularly interesting is there are no real polemic voices on the panel. The closest is Davis who, despite running a meat collective, is far from the most gun[g]-ho, unabashed carnivore I’ve ever met. She tends to approach the issue of eating meat seriously and thoughtfully.
At the very least, the discussion should be a nice change from the banner waving and nastiness that generally surrounds the debate on consuming our fellow earthlings. Even without the fervor, I imagine it will be far from boring.
The event is free. Check it out. And as usual, feel free to wave your banner in the comments below.
Animals eat other animals. It’s the eternal cycle of life.
Quick discussion.
@ D: I love this, let’s have some more quick discussions!
Abortion is murder because it stops a beating heart. Therefore, abortion should be criminalized.
Jesus saved us so Christianity is the one true faith. All others are thus displeasing God and must be punished.
The strong eat the weak in the wild, so dictatorship should be the default model of government.
Animals constantly rape each other, so that’s OK, too.
Man, we’ve solved so many philosophical disagreements in so little time!
Anyone else feelin’ specious?
What animals rape each other??
Am I wrong Colin? Have you solicited the lions of the Serengeti in the dialogue?
I’m surprised it needed to be pointed out, but I was listing silly, faux-truisms a lazy person might enlist to assert that their position was self-evidently true and undeserving of any subsequent debate.
I don’t actually believe any of the things that I listed are true, or good rationales in and of themselves.
Another fail for sarcasm on the internet.
And to D, yes you are wrong that what you said should logically be the end of the discussion when the subject is the ethics of human consumption of other animals. I guess I could just say that much in the future, but it seems less entertaining for some reason.
I think it’s an obscenely large jump to say that because other animals eat other animals for survival, then there can thus be no unethical way for humans to eat animals. Do you really think that?
Damn, reading these has made me hungry for a cheeseburger.
ducks rape each other.
Good point. Fearing the usual veg-vegan arguments (which are precluded by nature), I jumped to conclusions.
Humane raising and killing of our animal brethren is actually an interest of mine and worthy of exploration in an ever-increasingly DIY world.
I eat the shit out of animals. What kind of animals you got?
@ Blabby. Eat a duck. They’re rapists.
That’s why people first started yelling ‘Duck!’ It was short-hand for “Get out of the way! Airborne rapist!”
“Gun-ho?” Another hapless malapropism. I thought this is what reading books was for.
Hey, I just realized this is Ducknesday and there are actual duck posts!!! Huzzah. Howard will be so pleased.
Octopuses breed by rape. They’re also cannibals. When a female octopus is being attacked, she doesn’t know if the other octopus is trying to mate with her or eat her. It totally sucks to be a female octopus.
Maybe that’ll make you feel better about eating them, but keep in mind they’re also chock full of cholesterol.
My official stance?
We’re all dumb hypocrites no matter what we do, so I’m going to continue to put tasty, shiny things inside of me.
Then there are walking sticks. The lady in a mood for a little post-coital snack so she eats the closest thing around…
I haven’t eaten any animals (aside from the occasional accidentally swallowed bug or something hidden in a dish at an unscrupulous Asian restaurant) in well over 20 years. I have never once regretted my decision to go veg. The fact is, large-scale production of animals for consumption is both inhumane and environmentally destructive and leads to any number of potential diseases for the consumer. If you only eat humanely, sustainably whatever animals. Kudos to you but you are a tiny, tiny minority of meat-eaters. People need to educate themselves and put their money where their mouths are. So to speak.
When you say carnivores, what you mean to say is omnivores. Carnivores eat *only* meat.
easy for some vegetarians to sit high on their horses and direct the focus of unethical agricultural practice towards animals. funny that there’s an 6,000 square mile dead-zone at the mouth of the mississippi river where nothing can live, and it’s mainly due to the over fertilization, pesticides, herbicides, etc. that are used on crops.
this isn’t to say that industrial animal production isn’t bad, just to point out that to think the environmental impact reaches nearly all food produced in this country. even organic food is environmentally harmful, consider for example the amount of labor that has to be put in and land committed to produce less food per acre and introduce the possibility of more waste.
It is true that growing crops, by and large, causes environmental damage. But you miss the fact that some 70% or so of those crops are going to feed animals. The more meat we eat, the more crops we’re forced to grow to feed that meat, not the other way around. Cows are the worst, with every 30 calories of input we’re only getting 1 calorie of output. Smaller animals like chickens are better, but it’s still a losing battle.
And not all organic food is the same, FYI. It’s true that many organic farmers try to mimic the giant monocultures of the chemical-happy GMO producers. That’s just a foolish plan all around, and it gets even less efficient when you try to take it organic… but that says nothing of organic farming in and of itself. Perennial polycultures, on the other hand, produce more food per acre than the aforementioned systems, and they require less human input because they’re more efficient at utilizing natural inputs (sun, water, and soil nutrients).
But we love our annuals, don’t we?
These are problems of habits more than anything else.