The Privilege of "Happy Cows"

The Ethicist Contest Winner: Give Thanks for Meat  For me, eating meat is ethical when one does three things. First, you accept the biological reality that death begets life on this planet and that all life (including us!) is really just solar energy temporarily stored in an impermanent form. Second, you combine this realization with that cherished human trait of compassion and choose ethically raised food, vegetable, grain and/or meat. And third, you give thanks.

Translation:

Good news! You can eat meat as long as you place yourself in a very particularly privileged position above the rest of the planet and ignore how most people won't ever have accesses to the same resources and choices that you do!

What, there's no way that we can find enough land to produce enough of this sort of ethical meat to feed the entire planet, and even less of a way to make it affordable? Oh, well you should have thought of that before you chose to be born as someone less privileged as myself.

Give thanks to me, for I am to be praised for finding a way to wrap my privilege-denial in self-aggrandizement!

McGoats says "Do you realize the privileged position one must be in, in order to be vegan?"

Oh yes, no doubt of that. It wasn't at all what I was responding to, but I agree with you. Getting to eat ethically in any way is a privilege, be it "happy cows" [aka expensive cows] or no cows [aka food considered too "specialty" for regular grocery marts]. Like yesterday, my friend had pizza, and I could either eat what he offered or go hungry. And back to the guy whose privilege-denial I was criticizing, I couldn't just eat only happy cow meat even if I wanted to, since that stuff is damn expensive.

My concern is that if the people who control the food production process were to somehow manage to overhaul the entire system and produce only low-impact sustainable ethical food, we simply won't have enough to feed the entire planet that way if we insist upon a high-animal-protein diet. I can see a future in which some people do eat some meat, but it would be at a greatly reduced rate of consumption than what is typical (at least in the USA where I am). And those of us who are able to sustain ourselves without meat are welcome to continue to do so.

People who insist that a more ethical food supply must come from the bottom-up are speaking from a place of privilege. The people at the bottom of society cannot bear the brunt of the blame for the less ethical choices we make, because more ethical choices do often come at too great a cost, precisely because ethics itself is not built into the system.

Does that mean my decisions are magically more ethical because the most ethical option was not available to me? Nope, I still acted less ethically. All it means is that I'm not to blame for my less-ethical non-choice. The sooner I accept that there are better options being denied me and the more I demand more ethical options (at less cost) available to myself and others like me, the sooner (hopefully) we can overhaul the entire system to make ethical decisions less privileged. But even still, it's not our fault if our demands fall on hardened hearts (those of us who are willing and able to take the time and effort out of our busy lives to make such demands).

But seriously, assholes like that "let's all just eat happy cows, yay!" bro aren't doing anything but helping privileged people like him feel better about themselves.

http://catandgirl.com/?p=1094

Why Do Vegetarians Get So Irritable, Anyway?

I am not a vegetarian evangelist, primarily because I don't have time, and only a mild passion for the topic.  But I do think that avoiding animal products is an action where the benefits increasingly outweigh the inconveniences as society moves in that direction.  So, I do a good deal of facepalming when I wander across bad arguments against avoiding animal consumption.

"But I don't want to eat a salad every day!"

Neither do I, so I don't.  Definitely not alone, or while laughing.

But this brings me to a surprisingly persistent argument against avoiding animal consumption, which I call the Entitled Prick Argument, but for the sake of diplomacy, I'll rename to:

The "But I Don't Like Veggies/But I Like Meat!" Argument

Most people don't realize the "I hate plants" argument is surprisingly sound.  The reason?  I can't prove your mental states wrong, short of having evidence that you do in fact gleefully consume a salad in your bedchambers every evening.  If you claim an anti-plant life stance, I really can't refute that.

The problem is, we have almost as convincing evidence that the meat industry is harmful to our planet as we have evidence for climate change itself, and that hasn't stopped multitudes of people from not giving a shit about either one of those.  Sometimes they try to summon the forces of selective skepticism against the evidence, but generally it all falls back to "but I don't want to ___", thus showing their hand as a matter of personal preference, not empirical conclusion.  They're literally saying that they see themselves as a person who is more entitled to eating meat than responsible for reducing their negative impact on everyone else.

And someone who is secure in being that kind of person with that kind of life stance isn't going to give a shit about rational arguments.

Remember the pepper spray incident at UC Davis?  (Of course you do, it just happened last weekend.)  The security personnel who mercilessly sprayed nonviolent people in the face without warning were clearly not taking the time to consider rational arguments for both sides and then go with the side which is supported by the best evidence for helping the most people.  Neither is the general public sitting down and consulting charts and statistics to try to convince them that they were wrong.  No, at some point we realize when someone just doesn't give a shit, and we move to public shaming, vegetarians included.

But for some reason, when vegetarians point out that "hey, you're actually hurting everyone by eating meat, so stop already!", they're the ones who are vilified.  As opposed to the people who are, you know, actually harming everyone.

PS: Yes, there exist good arguments for why a particular individual can't reliably avoid consuming animal products. That is not what this post is about.