The environmental aspect is not the only one in the ethical question. The very act of killing one animal for its flesh can be regarded as “just plain wrong,” an act that is bloody, brutal, and barbaric. Although human beings have always killed animals for their flesh, we now come to the crucial question again and again whether it is permissible to inflict so much fear and pain on an animal before butchering it for meat. We are lucky that there is now a great distance between the slaughterhouse and the dining table.
There are any numbers of discordant views about meat eating. One good example is that of Catherine Friend who takes up the issue of large-scale killing of animals for their meat in her book The Compassionate Carnivore. In her book she attacks uncritical meat eaters who’ll stick anything down their throat that tastes good, irrespective of the kind of life the animal might have led, and barely aware, given modern packaging, that it comes from an animal at all. When she advocates compassionate farming she doesn’t mean we have to cut out factory-farmed meat or have to eat only organically grown food. What she means is that we can start respecting the animals and eat only what she calls ‘happy meat.’
That is the meat from a creature raised in a humane environment with the suffering and pain reduced to a minimum.
There are also people who consider meat eating unsuitable for human life. Dr. Michael Bluejay for instance, suggests that human beings are plant-eaters by design and not carnivores. He believes that our bodies are not optimized to have meat as a regular part of its diet and suffer the consequences when we eat too much meat. His main argument is that since our bodies can easily digest plant foods, and since we are healthier when we eat less animal foods, we can surely avoid eating this much meat. There are also those who believe that science has continuously been telling us to stop eating meat.
If we still insist on meat to be a part of our meals, we should take extra care that we get safe and good meat. Think, for example, about the ‘bird flu’ or the mad cow disease. Such a disease will surely make the meat from an infected fowl or animal dangerous. What surety do we have that the meat, particularly imported meat, is safe?
No guarantee, given the greed of people who may sell the meat of an infected animal.
It is not merely a distant possibility. Mad cow disease was first reported in Britain and soon it spread to France, Germany, Portugal, Spain, Switzerland, Belgium, Denmark, Italy, the Netherlands, Luxembourg, Liechtenstein and Ireland mainly through infected animal feed. The cause was bone meal from the carcasses of infected cattle. As a result of it hundreds of thousands of cattle have been slaughtered. Infection in human beings was noticed for the first time in 1996 and very soon nearly one hundred people died of infection. It was the direct result of eating contaminated meat. In this kind of a situation eating meat can be really dangerous.
Okay, so with all this writing about meat, it brings me to my last point. In our anatomy and physiology class at Palmer college of chiropractic, I remember those human cadavers quite well. Let me put it softly, it was hard eating meat after lab.
The Top 3 Things You Can Do Now To Ensure Your Eating A Happy Animal.
- Eat organic, grass fed meat.
- Don’t buy meat at the grocery store, buy it local.
- Eat 1/3rd the meat portions you are currently eating, and eat more organic greens.
