 |
| ... and Hitler |
 |
| The world's two most famous vegetarians - Gandhi |
I had my first taste of meat for six and a half weeks on the evening of Easter Saturday when Lent came to an end. It is good to give up because starting again makes you look at what you eat/use/do afresh. My daughter is a vegetarian, was once a vegan and has been trying to convert me without much success. Although I do have cut back on eating meat considerably, I have not it given up. Why not?
There are three ways to approach an issue like this – intellectually, emotionally and sensually or, if you prefer, via the head, the heart and the stomach. Let’s take them one by one.
Stomach – there is no doubt that I like eating meat. Tearing flesh from bone is a very neolithic urge and an enjoyable action. After finishing a meal with meat, I feel satisfied in a way that I never quite am with its vegetarian equivalent. And there is nothing quite like the smell of roasting meat to make the taste buds salivate. This is not a moral point but, as a biological being, I am definitely up for eating my fellow residents on planet Earth. This is how I was designed – or evolved – and is not in itself a cause for regret or shame.
Heart – I am not someone who takes delight in killing fellow creatures for food. I do not hunt and am, like most city dwellers, squeamish about killing animals. If I had to kill what I ate I might need to turn vegetarian. Or maybe not.
Brain – My basic problem with vegetarianism is that if you deny the death, you deny the life. While I acknowledge that the meat industry does some pretty terrible things to animals, most of these are during their lifetimes and can be controlled, supervised, improved. If we simply abolish eating meat altogether then the animals that provide this meat will soon disappear in a one way journey to the slaughterhouse.
So, it is two out of three. I enjoy meat and am not convinced by the case for refraining from it, even if I leave the killing to some less sensitive souls. There is nothing unusual in this: I pay someone else to fix my car - and my body - when they go wrong. On the same way they pay if they want a tourist guide. We live in a world of specialists rather than survivors and animal slaughter is definitely a specialism. Even those who shoot birds and game employ a small army of helpers who depend on the sport of the better off.
Human beings can, of course, survive on a non-meat diet and many societies have done so. It is worth pausing, however, to look at those which have and I have three examples which I believe prove my point. These three examples are one that has survived and prospered, one that has ended and one that, thank God, never came into being. They are India, pre-famine Ireland and Hitler’s vision of a future Germany.
India is a country where the majority of the population have never eaten meat. It is not illegal to do so but it is restricted to the wealthier sections of society. In fact, meat-eating is often seen as a sign that you have risen from the ranks of the peasantry who cannot afford meat. Few Indians argue in favour of vegetarianism from a moral standpoint. They have just excised it from their way of living over the centuries. It is well known that you can feed more people per unit of land with a vegetarian diet than by raising animals, so this is how the Indians have coped with such a large population in a restricted space. Likewise, vegetarianism is often adopted in the West by people who live in densely crowded countries. Those who occupy places with wide open spaces almost always eat meat – either through hunting or by raising livestock.
Ireland today it has a population of five to six million which is actually lower than it was 200 years ago when it had to feed around eight million people. The reason for the drop in numbers was the potato famine which killed a million and forced over a million more people to emigrate. The Irish pre-famine diet consisted largely of potatoes and when the crop failed, hunger inevitably followed. Again, there was nothing particularly moral about this adoption of a meatless life. It was simply a result a large population in a restricted area. Once the population dropped the Irish starting eating meat again and still (mostly) do so.
Nazi Germany was formed, of course, from the vision of one man, Adolf Hitler. The extent of and the reasons for Hitler’s adoption of a meatless diet are debatable but it seems to me that mass vegetarianism was an essential consequence of ‘lebensraum’, literally ‘living space’ whereby the Aryan races would expand by seizing land from their weaker neighbours. The accompanying race purification would mean getting rid of undesirables – Jews, homosexuals, gypsies and those mentally or physically disabled – and animals would follow them into extinction as living space was increased both inwardly by more efficient land use coupled with eugenics and outwardly by conquest of those unfortunate enough to live next to the Nazis. The world’s two most famous vegetarians were Hitler and Gandhi. They were superficially opposites yet they both wanted to free their people and feed them in a restricted space. Coincidence? I doubt it.
Hang on a moment here. Are we saying that all vegetarians are fascists? Of course not. They are usually gentle and humane, inclined to be left-wing. Yet, the vegetarian movement is surely one which increases human domination of the planet rather than one which allows animals and human beings to live in Disneyesque harmony. It is an evolutionary defence mechanism designed to help us survive as our population increases. And for that reason – rather than sentiment or taste preference – I cannot take it up.
Edwin Lerner
My other blog is: diaryofatouristguide.blogspot.com
