A discussion started in the comments section of the previous post, and I decided the topic deserved a post of its own. So, if some of this doesn’t quite make sense, check out the comments from the last entry.
First off, yes, there are many people in this country who hunt for survival. Either they are too poor to afford good food for their families, or they choose to live a more natural hunter/farmer/gatherer lifestyle.
I believe that being a vegetarian or a vegan can be a fabulous choice. I also believe that being an omnivore can be an equally fabulous choice. Notice I say, “can be.” Either way, it all depends on the choices you make everyday. Are you a vegetarian who eats a lot of packaged food? Do you buy fruits shipped from thousands of miles away? Are the potatoes you’re eating sprayed with tons of chemicals? What damage are you causing to the global environment, the plants, animals, and people on a global scale by your choices? Is that damage less than a person who either hunts/farms or who buys locally grown, organic meat and produce merely because you are not directly consuming the flesh of an animal?
I believe that the person who grows/gathers/hunts her own food and the person who buys their food from organically grown, local growers/gatherers/hunters are pretty much at the top of the environmental, ethical, and health wagon. Perhaps at the very tippy top of that group are those who are also vegans, but honestly being a vegan in one of these two categories would be rather difficult. As for vegetarians who are in one of these categories…well, animals are still being eaten out there as the byproducts of the vegetarians’ eggs, milk, and cheese, so I don’t really see the difference between them and the omnivores.
Not everyone can grow/hunt/gather/buy local organic. Andy and I don’t quite a lot of the time. A big issue is cost: I could spend $5 on this local, organic butter, or I could get this crappy butter for $1. We’re kind of broke right now, so crappy butter it is. Another issue is availability. If you live in a city, you probably can’t hunt anything but pigeons, can’t have livestock, and may only have room to grow a pot of herbs. You can still probably find a farmers’ market or local produce stand, though.
I believe that if you are going to shop in the current “American” style and buy most of your food at a typical grocery store, not choosing meat is better environmentally, ethically, and health-ily.
These are my beliefs. We aren’t currently living them, though. We buy most of our food right now at Kroger, including meat. For us it’s partially cost and partially convenience. No farmers’ markets in the winter. Store that sells more local items is a 40+ minute roundtrip drive out of our way. We hope over time to change this as we get our garden in and perhaps start milking the sheep and raising broiler chickens (and maybe start hunting).
However…even when we are grow/hunt/gather/buy local organic–ing most of our food, we will still be killing animals. Even if we decided not to consume meat and just ate eggs and drank milk from our farm animals, we would still have to kill (or sell to be killed) animals.
Eggs: For every female duck / chicken kept for eggs, there is a male bird who is not needed. It is not economical to keep that male bird alive for no reason. Furthermore, most birds stop laying productively after only a year or two. Again, it is not economical to keep those birds alive if they aren’t producing. Not only is it not economical (having to pay for feed and getting nothing in return), it is not physically feasible as eventually you’d have hundreds of birds to house and tend to. Therefor, these birds most usually end up on the dinner plate. We will not be eating our ducks ever because they are quasi-pets (but who knows what happened to their brothers who were hatched out so we could get enough females for our order). If we decide to try and sell eggs at market, though, we would have to cull the flocks.
Milk: Again, for every female goat/sheep/cow used for milk, there is a corresponding male animal that is unnecessary. Also, for an animal to produce milk, she must be bred (I believe once a year?). If there is no market for the resulting offspring, they are also not needed.
It’s nice to think about never having to kill anything to survive, but that’s not how life works and we all know it. You can live in the sanitized world of a city and pretend that eating your soy burger is perfectly harmless, but how did that soy burger get to your plate? How much petroleum, packaging, and chemical fertilizers/pesticides were involved? What effect have those things had on other living things like cute, fuzzy deer?
Finally, when it comes down to the very basics…deer are prey animals.
Humans are hunter (and gatherer/grower) animals.
It’s nature. It’s the way things were made to be.
You don’t have to eat deer or any animal if it feels wrong to you. But to flat-out condemn eating meat and/or hunting is to be ignorant of the larger issues.
