I am in favor of animal rights. I believe all feeling, sentient beings have a right to live under conditions in which their evolved physiology is well-suited. Note that "animal rights" subsumes "human rights." Humans are animals, a fact which I have found seems to irritate many people. Animal rights people are human rights people with a larger circle of compassion. I believe enlarging one's circle of compassion is a good thing. Missy and I became vegetarians, on the Great American Meat-Out day (March 20th) in 1990, because we were becoming more aware of the feelings of others. It was a time of open and honest sharing with each other and with loved ones and we were becoming ever more sensitive and empathetic. Meat-Out Day brought home to us the arbitrariness of bounding our compassion to members of our own species. Pain is pain. If a sentient, feeling being is experiencing pain, awareness of it pains us too. To discount the pain of others or their inherent value (at least to themselves) on the basis of that being's species is another -ism, specieism. It is, in my opinion, no less wrong than racism or sexism. Specieism is more difficult to recognize and overcome, and thus is longer lived than the other -isms, because the members of the persecuted group cannot speak out against the injustice. (It is interesting to see that the historical arguments for racism and sexism are strikingly similar to those offered today in support of specieism.)

I don't believe this view is nonsensical. Indeed, I believe being arbitrary is being illogical. It seems to me people are arbitrary when they think it is fine to eat, kill, or inflict pain upon members of certain species but not on others. (We are appalled by people in other countries killing and eating dogs or horses, but we think nothing of eating cattle which are sacred animals to people of other cultures.) We have cruelty to animal laws, indicating that we have compassion for non-human animals at some level, but we suspend those laws when it comes to "food animals." Food animals--in mass production factory farms--live human-shortened lives of human-inflicted hell. We lower our ethical standards to satisfy our dietary preferences and pocketbook. How ignoble.

Probably only a small percentage of the US population ever consider becoming a vegetarian. That low number doesn't mean it's not a healthier choice, just that it's a choice that wasn't considered. I believe if it were seriously considered by more people, there would be many more vegetarians. Vegetarianism is a more ethical lifestyle (the masses don't think about, let alone see the mistreatment of non-human animals on factory farms and in slaughter houses--how many would forsake meat if they had to kill and butcher their victims?), vegetarianism is more environmentally sound as it involves eating lower on the food chain (on Earth Day a few years ago, the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine made the claim, "You cannot be an environmentalist unless you are also a vegetarian"), and vegetarianism is healthier for members of the human species.

People who eat meat often defend that action by claiming "man is a carnivore." Let's distinguish between what humans can eat and what we are, by evolution, most suited to eat. For example, cattle will eat ground meat and bones if that's their only food choice. Cattle are fed ground animal remains that are considered unfit for human consumption on some factory farms; they are also fed powdered cement to gain weight more rapidly. Few would claim cattle are carnivores or cementavores. Humans are not carnivores but omnivores. We are adapted to eating many kinds of foods but thrive best when our diets are mainly, if not wholly, vegetarian. We don't have the claws or fangs of true carnivores. Our jaws are mostly geared to grinding not tearing foods. We cook our animal foods and use knives to cut them because we are largely incapable of eating flesh without doing so. Our stomach acids are not as strong as those of carnivores and our digestive tracks are much longer than comparably sized carnivores. (The meats staying in our digestive tracks for relatively long periods of time, and the associated reduction in fiber which is displaced by the eating of meat, contribute to causing our most prevalent diseases.)

The typical Western diet, heavy in meats and light in grains and vegetables, is a matter of taste, habit, and culture. When only the rich could afford to eat meat several times a week, the masses aspired to eat more meat. A "chicken in every pot" became a goal that was an indication of wealth and success. As creatures of habit, we tend to eat what we are used to eating. If you've ever made the change from regular milk to skim milk, or regular soda to diet soda, you probably started off strongly disliking the one and liking the other. After the swap, the roles were reversed. Your habit changed. The same happens to food that we eat. (I don't believe I ate any vegetables other than potatoes--mashed or as french fries--from about age six to eighteen. Now I enjoy dozens of different vegetables.)

I believe that as we our taught what foods to eat, i.e., those foods given to us by our parents when we are children, we not only develop a habit and taste for them but we also associate them with nurturing. As a result, it is doubly difficult to turn away from those foods. At some unconscious level, it may seem as it is turning away from one's parents and rejecting the nurturing they were giving you. It can be even more difficult to change dietary habits if a person has children and has been feeding them the meat foods from their own childhood. People prefer continuing in the belief that they are being nutritionally nurturing of their children rather than recognizing their mistake and seeing they are setting their children up for a less healthy life. This is Dr. Benjamin Spock, author of Dr. Spock's Baby and Child Care, which in seven editions has sold over 50 million copies:

Good nutrition is vital for our children's well-being, as well as our own. Research has shown that many health problems, particularly heart disease, some forms of cancer, high blood pressure, diabetes, and others are to a great degree caused by diet. Many of these conditions have their roots in childhood. The beginnings of artery changes are often found before age 3. By age 12 they are present in 70 percent of children, and by age 21 they exist in almost all young adults. Weight problems are worsening among our children and contributing to so many difficulties later in life. ...[W]hen parents offer healthy foods--vegetables, fruits, whole grains, and beans--at home, and when the whole family, including the parents, makes these foods front and center in the diet, children learn tastes that can help them throughout life. ...I would encourage families who are still including meats in their routine to explore vegetarian meals and have as many meatless meals as possible. [Good Medicine, Vol VII, No. 2, Spring/Summer 1998, p.6-9].

In general, physicians are a poor source of nutritional information. Somewhat suprisingly, many nutritionists are also uninformed (learning from materials provided by the meat and dairy councils). If you want to understand what foods are beneficial to people and which are not, follow medical research. What you hear repeatedly from medical researchers who study foods and their affect on the human body is that we eat too much fat and protein (which can be translated into "too much meat"). The numbers they end up citing as dietary recommendations all but preclude including meat in one's diet (e.g., Campbell's landmark study of Chinese diets recommended 10-15% of caloric intake be calories from fats).

What do we do with all the cattle, pigs, fowl, etc. that we are currently raising for food? If we became a nation of vegetarians overnight, we could let them live out their lives naturally and stop mass producing more. (In the US alone, more than 6 billion chickens are born, raised in miserable conditions, and killed each year.) Clearly the vegetarians overnight phenomena won't happen. A doable alternative would be to reduce farm animal numbers and their collective suffering by reducing our intake of flesh. It helps every time we bypass a meal that includes portions of a killed being.

Few Americans become vegetarians. They don't seriously consider it, they prefer to be mainstream, it takes effort to change and they already have eating habits that are societally acceptable, they are conditioned to seeing flesh foods as nurturing, and it is simpler to include meat as a food choice (e.g., a vegetarian's choices for fast food restaurant fare are salad, baked potato, french fries, and a few Taco Bell choices hold the cheese). People in the meat producing/supplying industries also have a financial interest in people eating meat. That is one more issue they would have to resolve in order to move towards vegetarianism. I don't urge people to become vegetarian. It is a far-reaching lifestyle choice and the individual's to make. I do urge them to make important life choices consciously and based on awareness; not out of habit or assuming some outdated, inaccurate "common knowledge," and to recognize that important life choices one makes can significantly affect the lives of others. If you have and understand the data, are willing to accept potential consequences, and still choose to eat meat (or smoke, or drink alcohol, or discipline via corporal punishment, or not regularly brush your teeth, or commit suicide, or whatever), that's fine. Make your choices and accept responsibility for whatever follows. It is your life. My wish is that it be a healthy, conscious one.

© 1999 frantzml@juno.com