Ethical eating

by Letters Editor · April 14, 2011

From Neil Mitchell, Johannesburg

It is pleasing to see The Southern Cross raising the question of eating meat �Call to Christians to give up meat, become vegetarian� (March 23). This has become a critical issue for our time.

As Fr Peter Knox points out in his blog, Genesis 1:28 leads many to think we have a God-given right to dominate animals. But when we read the verses that follow we see that the creation myths of Genesis make a point of excluding the killing and eating of animals for food from this dominion.

In Genesis 1:29-30, God gives us, and all animals too, plants for our food. Only after the Fall, when violence (of human making) enters the world, does God �relent� and permit humans to eat meat, noting that �dread fear� will come upon animals as a result (Gen 9:2-3). And that is what we have become: the terror and the dread of animals with our �agribusiness�, feedlots, manipulation of their reproductive processes and natural diets, battery hen cages, dairies, fishing nets, abattoirs and butcher shops. Billions of animals are slaughtered every year for human food.

We are beginning to see where this mentality of domination has brought us, but many people remain in denial about the suffering we cause to animals by commodifying, confining, killing and eating them, and by drinking their secretions. We don�t want to know, because if we do know, we know we�ll have to do something.

Only when we are prepared to see the connection between what is on our plates and this suffering, can there be a change. Our denial could be wounding us spiritually and psychologically, and desensitising us toward feeling compassion. We end up reaping what we sow: a violent world.

There are indeed many compelling arguments for choosing not just a vegetarian diet, but a �vegan� diet, which dispenses with all foods derived from animals�meat, milk, cheese, butter, cream, yoghurt, honey, eggs, and, yes, chicken and fish too!

These arguments include the massive environmental devastation caused by the meat industry (animal agriculture accounts for a significant amount of global warming), justice for the poor (the meat diet is one of the structures of world domination), the question of whether animals are ethically trivial, the importance of a consistent life ethic, the interconnectedness of all life, and the need to make responsible food choices based on compassion and on what is good for the planet, not on what society has told us about the food chain.

A vegan diet has the side-benefit of being much healthier, too! But any lessening of our consumption of animal-based foods is a step in the right direction, because it decreases the demand for these products.

My guess is that in 50 years� time we will all be vegetarian, and vegan in a hundred. Maybe people then will look back on our time as a Dark Age!