Guess What, Vegetarians: You're Killing Bunnies For Your Lunch, Too
A farmer, Jenna, formerly a vegetarian, posted "An Open Letter To Angry Vegetarians," at her blog coldantlerfarm. An excerpt:
I was a vegetarian and animal activist before I was a farmer, but that was all about passion for me and did not include much science. The only things I read about meat and the environment were based on giant corporate farms. I did not understand anything about ecology, biology, wilderness, and the personal responsibility of eating local. But what I really didn't understand was agriculture. I mean I was totally ignorant. I did not think about anything but ingredients on the package, never questioning the methods or politics behind them or the larger picture. As long as my dinner did not include animal flesh or animal products I was content in my righteousness. I was a pro-choice vegan. To be blunt, I didn't think things through.The truth is there is no meal we can eat without killing. None. A trip to your local grocery store for tofu and spinach may not include a single animal product but the harvesting of such food costs endless animal lives. Growing fields of soy beans for commercial clients means removing habitat from thousands of wild animals, killing them through deforestation and loss of their home. Songbirds and insects are killed by pesticides at legion. Fertilizers are made from petroleum now, and those fields of tofu seeds are literally being sprayed with oil we are fighting wars over. Deer died for that tofu. Songbirds died. Men and women in battle died. And then when the giant tofu factory harvested the beans they ran over those chemical oil fields of faux-food with combines that rip open groundhogs, mice, and rabbits. Tear apart frogs and fledgling birds. It is a messy and bloody business making tofu or any of that other non-murderous food.
What about organic tofu and vegetables? That doesn't include chemical fertilizers and the companies are mindful? Right? Well, that is correct. But if you are not using oil to fertilize your crops then you are using organic material: manure, blood, bone, fish, etc. You may be a vegetarian but your vegetables are the most voracious of all carnivores. That small farm at your local green market needed to lay down a lot of swine blood, cow bone, and horse poop freeze-dried in bags marked "ORGANIC" to grow those carrots so big and sweet. Animals are an integral part of growing food for us, as food themselves or creating the materials that feed the earth. And the earth must be fed.
And let us not forget the miles on the road these vegetarian options must travel. That oil-free organic tofu sure needs a lot of diesel to get here to New York...
You can not ignore this. You can't call a small farmer a murderer and turn a blind eye to the groundhog ripped in two, the owl without a nest, or the blood spilled for oil halfway across the globe through military force. I mean, you can ignore it, of course you can. You can also search the internet for people killing pigs and call them names, but that doesn't make you right. There is nothing you or I eat that wasn't once alive save for some minerals. Plants and mushrooms are living things, just as alive as animals. And we take their lives wholesale and without regret. In the words of Joel Salatin,
" ...By what stretch of arrogance do you think a life form that looks like you is more important than a life form that doesn't?"Though I know you may not appreciate that quote. After all, Joel is a murderer, too.
via @DrEades
Comments
People like to think we are more than animals. Perhaps we are mentally, but not biologically.
When ever someone claims to be vegan or vegetarian I am always so temped to give them a plate of leaves plucked off the tree out back to see them actually try and eat vegetable matter.
Humans are carrion eaters, we eat dead things. Our meat is dead for months usually before we eat it. Very rarely do we eat meat fresh off a corpse, and when we do we cook it to the point cell membranes are destroyed in a similar manner to purification. Even the vegetable matter we eat is generally dead.
Fruits, gourds, vegetables, they are the dead and decaying uteri of plants, packed full of nutrients deigned to rot quickly to provide nourishment for the seeds within.
We're scavengers, bone pickers, vultures with brains big enough to allows us to engage in petty self delusions and pretend the reason we are at the top of the food chain isnt because we are willing to eat the dead things around us
Posted by: lujlp at July 28, 2014 10:46 PM
Also recent scientific studies show plants have a form of sentience as well and can recognize their offspring, and 'siblings' and have been shown to share or even sacrifice their own resources to ensure the survival of a close 'family'
Posted by: lujlp at July 28, 2014 10:57 PM
Of all mankind's immoralities the worst it to slaughter helpless vegetables that cannot flee.
Posted by: parabarbarian at July 29, 2014 6:12 AM
"it" -> "is" That'll teach me to post before my ninth cup of coffee.
Posted by: parabarbarian at July 29, 2014 6:14 AM
It's not about causing no harm, but about causing LESS harm.
Posted by: Glen at July 29, 2014 6:23 AM
There are parts of the published letter I could quibble with, but the point is: we are part of the ecology, not alien to it. Yes, we kill living things for our food. Guess what: other animals do the same thing. There is no animal that subsists on rocks and dirt.
In my observation, most ecology activists divide into one of two camps: (1) those who value animals based on their cuteness, and (2) those who simply wield it as a club to stop progress. A lot of them keep themselves safely ensconced in their city-center hipster apartments and never actually get out and experience the nature they claim to care so much about. I tell people that a lot of the most conscientious ecologists are hunters and they look at me like I'm crazy. But hunters are actually out there in it, on a regular basis, and they often notice changes in patterns and populations long before anyone else does.
Posted by: Cousin Dave at July 29, 2014 6:45 AM
It's not about causing no harm, but about causing LESS harm.I'm not sure you can prove that eating X calories of vegetables from an "organic" farm does less harm than eating X calories from a grass-fed cow, but by all means, give it a shot.
(If vegans really wanted to cause less harm, they could raise all their vegetables themselves, making sure to pick them by hand and use no pesticides, but so few actually do. It's almost like they are willing to *gasp* sacrifice the lives of some animals for their personal convenience!)
Posted by: Chris Rhodes at July 29, 2014 6:51 AM
Fertilizers are made from petroleum now, and those fields of tofu seeds are literally being sprayed with oil
A tad over wrought. Chemistry: how does it work? go ahead, spray oil on your fields and see if it helps.
Posted by: I R A Darth Aggie at July 29, 2014 6:55 AM
@ IRA Darth. Overwrought indeed, all that blood and gore to make her point. One pernicious rumor needs to be stamped out: use of petroleum-based fertilizers. There's no such thing in big ag. Synthetic fertilizers use methane (natural gas) as a base to help fix the nitrogen component. And by then it's a completely different molecule. We don't spray petroleum on our farms, and there's no chance of running out of natural gas.
Posted by: Canvasback at July 29, 2014 7:56 AM
@ IRA Darth. Overwrought indeed, all that blood and gore to make her point. One pernicious rumor needs to be stamped out: use of petroleum-based fertilizers. There's no such thing in big ag. Synthetic fertilizers use methane (natural gas) as a base to help fix the nitrogen component. And by then it's a completely different molecule. We don't spray petroleum on our farms, and there's no chance of running out of natural gas.
Posted by: Canvasback at July 29, 2014 7:56 AM
Not to quibble, but technically natural gas is a fossil fuel, and is created by the same process, and found in conjunction with oil and other petroleum based hydrocarbons.
I don't know why you think a distinction needs to be made here.
If you are out there farming with anything other than a pointed stick alone, chances are, you are using plenty of fossil fuels in almost every permutation to grow those vegetables.
Posted by: Isab at July 29, 2014 9:45 AM
@ Isab "technically natural gas is a fossil fuel," Much is, much isn't. Methane is produced wherever organic matter decays. We don't need to wait for the fossilization process. Crude oil is petroleum, and that's the word she used and here's the image she used: "those fields of tofu seeds are literally being sprayed with oil we are fighting wars over." That's the distinction. She's hyping her point when she doesn't need to.
Posted by: Canvasback at July 29, 2014 10:20 AM
"Chemistry: how does it work?"
Good point. We should ban everything that contains carbon and hydrogen.
Posted by: Cousin Dave at July 29, 2014 10:44 AM
"Methane is produced wherever organic matter decays."
And that is exactly how crude oil is produced.
Whether she is hyping her point or not, oil and coal are decayed vegetable matter also.
The age of it, should not be used to determine, that one is good, (some natural gas) and the others (crude oil and coal) bad.
Have you ever seen some of the crude oil produced in Australia?
It is light yellow in color, low sulfur, looks, and smells like vegetable oil.
Posted by: Isab at July 29, 2014 10:49 AM
It's not about causing no harm, but about causing LESS harm.
But vegetarianism/veganism causes more harm Glen.
Entire ecosystems are destroyed to grow vegetables in places where they can grow naturally.
What causes less harm? Killing billions of individual animals and insects to grow foodstuffs?
Or killing and eating a few hundred thousand midsize critters that live in that ecosystem and survive as part of a natural food chain?
Posted by: lujlp at July 29, 2014 1:58 PM
Read Lierre Keith's "The Vegetarian Myth" if you want more compelling arguments about the carnage induced by farming. Consider the American prairie as an example. What did it cost to convert them into the vast farm fields of today? A few million native Americans, 100 million buffalo, tens of millions of elk and deer, a million wolves who lived off of those large herbivores, millions of ground birds ... thousands of species of which were extincted before we could classify them, 12 feet of topsoil which is now down to a few inches, etc. etc.
Also listen to Allan Savory's TED talk: http://youtu.be/vpTHi7O66pI about how converting land to grass for ruminant grazing is probably the only way to save the Earth from encroaching desertification, and the eventual starvation of all mankind if it isn't stopped.
Posted by: AllenS at July 29, 2014 8:20 PM
> could classify them, 12 feet of topsoil
> which is now down to a few inches, etc. etc.
WHEN WILL WE BE RID OF THE IDIOT HIPPIES????
WHEN??????
Posted by: Crid [CridComment at Gmail] at July 29, 2014 9:23 PM
An old high school acquaintance of mine went into a diatribe one day against meat-production as inefficient and undemocratic. I pointed out to him that he didn't like people very much and ultimately he hoped that the lot of humanity to die off. Ultimately, if he was telling the true, meat is best.
He had no reply.
Posted by: bastiches at July 29, 2014 10:07 PM
I just hate the Earth people so much...
It's just so blindingly obvious that their fantasies have nothing to do with soil or desertification or species loss...
All they want is control of other people's lives.
Posted by: Crid [CridComment at Gmail] at July 30, 2014 1:11 AM
WHEN WILL WE BE RID OF THE IDIOT HIPPIES????
Hows about you prove him wrong rather than wail like a twelve year old girl?
Posted by: lujlp at July 30, 2014 2:18 AM
Dang. Thank the gods I'm a smart hippie.
Posted by: Flynne at July 30, 2014 4:11 AM
"Read Lierre Keith's "The Vegetarian Myth" if you want more compelling arguments about the carnage induced by farming. Consider the American prairie as an example. What did it cost to convert them into the vast farm fields of today? A few million native Americans, 100 million buffalo, tens of millions of elk and deer, a million wolves who lived off of those large herbivores, millions of ground birds ... thousands of species of which were extincted before we could classify them, 12 feet of topsoil which is now down to a few inches, etc. etc."
The buffalo were replaced by cattle, and sheep, not farming.
I notice no one is crying over the extinction of the Aurochs, or the slaughter of European wolves, or of course, the complete eradication of the American horse, by Amerinds who ate them, rather than domesticate them.
The native Americans farmed too, and burned large swaths of forest, in order to do so.
Yet;
The myth of the pristine American heartland, carefully tended by ecologically conscious Native Americans, lives on.
Posted by: Isab at July 30, 2014 10:26 AM
The best part of the hippie movement was the back-to-the-land aspect.
Few succeeded at it, though, because it required a buttload of hard physical labor and some land.
Posted by: Gog_Magog_Carpet_Reclaimers at July 30, 2014 3:56 PM
Jared Diamond, whom I've never really thought of as a hippie, nor an idiot -- but what do I know? -- noticed that agriculture has had some less-than-fabulous consequences.
http://discovermagazine.com/1987/may/02-the-worst-mistake-in-the-history-of-the-human-race
Posted by: Nice Marmot at July 30, 2014 6:51 PM
Jared Diamond is a very good anthropologist, with some great articles to his credit.
But like many ivory tower intellectuals, he understands primitive cultures rather well. And his own civilization, not at all.
Agricultural societies won the day. They produced more descendants, and in the long run, a higher quality of life in general.
Just because we as individuals can achieve better health through eating more like paleo hunter gatherers, a very individual thing, that doesn't translate into a successful culture.
Paleo people's can only exist in limited numbers where the environment protects them from having to compete with agrarian cultures.
This is why there are so darn few of them left.
Jared Diamond pretends like adopting agriculture was some sort of conscious choice, that could have been made differently, rather than the reason, that 99 percent of the people alive in the world today, are descendants of those farmers, who lived long enough, and well enough to pass on their genes.
Posted by: Isab at July 30, 2014 9:02 PM
To amplify on wnat Isab said, Jared Diamond may be a smart guy, but the belief that the human race could survive in anything remotely resembling its current form without agriculture is idiotic. To almost anyone except an ivory-tower intellectual, that is self-evident.
Posted by: Cousin Dave at July 31, 2014 7:15 AM
