The Case for Vegetarians

ByOrit Shohat

From Ha'aretz, 2005

  1. Every once in a while an article is published mocking vegetarians, claiming they are obsessive, boring and humorless, and love animals more than people. The evidence for these claims is usually at the level of an anecdote: "Eating in a meat-free restaurant the other day made me realize why I hate vegetarians. The food, unlike the tasteless, bland rubbish often served up in such places, was delicious ... What was unpalatable were the customers and waiting staff, all of whom seemed to believe that what they were eating made them superior. They all looked smug and self-satisfied," writes Julie Bindel in the Haaretz Hebrew edition, June 16 (originally published in The Guardian, a British newspaper, on June 13, "Why I hate vegetarians").
  2. Then she goes on to talk about fanatic vegetarians who damage their children's health, citing the case of the crazyAmerican couple who forced their children to eat only seeds. Her pseudo-scientific claim that the intellectual capacity of vegetarians is defective due to a lack of vitamin B-12 can be countered with some impressive historical evidence: Albert Einstein and Leonardo da Vinci were vegetarians, and one cannot assume that they took vitamin supplements.
  3. Vegetarians' defense arguments are based on notonly emotion, but also in reality and logic. Eating meat is truly murder - not just murder, but premeditatedmurder. This is not an exaggeration. It is an axiom[1]. Anyone who eats meat consumes about 4,000 animals during the course of his or her lifetime. Meat eaters also understand this, but they prefer to put this unpleasant part of the meal out of their mind. All education for eating meat is based on the child not realizing the connection between the schnitzel and the chicken. And no parent takes his or her child to the kibbutz petting zoo to explain where hamburger comes from. In general, the difficult questions start to be raised at age 9. This is also the average age when people become vegetarians.
  4. Vegetarians also know that meat tastes good -- especially those who ate meat and gave it up for ethical reasons. They remember with longing the taste of roast beef burned on the outside and bleeding inside. So what? And what if it turns out that human flesh marinated in white wine and garlic is also a delicacy? After all, we do not even fry dogs in a pan, but instead pass laws to protect them against abuse. This is how it is in the enlightened and hypocritical Western world: The dog is declared to be man's best friend, and cows are designated as food. What scorn we feel toward dog-eaters in the Far East, as if eating cows were something more ethical, and how pointedlyweignore the fact that millions of Hindus consider cows to be sacred and never eat meat of any kind.
  5. The health-related arguments are the weakest of all. Vegetarians are not healthier than others (except, perhaps, when it comes to intestinal diseases). Vegetarians do not lack vitamin B-12 because it is abundantly available in milk products and eggs. B-12 deficiency is caused by problems in absorbing the vitamin, and a certain percentage of the population -- not necessarily vegetarians -- suffers from this. Today there is no disagreement in the medical world that the most healthful diet includes lots of fruits, vegetables and grains, and a very small amount of meat. If you take meat off the menu, it only improves its healthfulness, especially if you do not eat vegetarian junk food such as frozen tofu schnitzel.
  6. A person has the same body structure as a monkey, and the structure of a human's jaws, teeth and digestive system are not of a predator, but rather of a banana eater. Eating meat is a cultural habit thousands of years old, but not everything man has done for thousands of years is impossible to correct and restrain. The reason that vegetarians seem so self-satisfied, as Bindel noted, is that they are truly satisfied with themselves. They have succeeded in overcoming their urges and feel good about it. Especially when this is so easy. In the affluent part of the world, there is an abundance of vegetarian food and the number of vegetarian restaurants is on a constant rise.
  7. So what do meat eaters have against vegetarians? Precisely the same thing that bullies have against sensitive individuals, that the corrupt have against the courts, that human rights abusers have against human rights defenders, that chauvinists have against feminists. In short: No one wants anyone around who reflects him in a negative light, ruins his happiness, emphasizes his shortcomings and takes pride in all this as well. Those who purchase a fox coat to adorn themselves do not want the fox's advocate to upset their tranquility. They have convinced themselves that the animal corpse casually draped around their neck is the height of good taste and that synthetic fur is in bad taste.
  8. The economic argument that Bindel presents is the saddest of all. In Israel, you do not have to be rich to buy fruits and vegetables, but in many countries meat is indeed cheaper, and the meat industry is the winnerat the supermarket because it has brought industrialization and efficiency in raising and slaughtering to a level that allows food retailersto sell a hamburger in a bun for less than 50 cents. There are countries where a tomato costs this much. In order to reduce the price of the cow and chicken, the conditions of raising these animals have become unbearable. There are almost no cows for slaughter raised in a meadow, or chickens for slaughter that roam around the coop happily pecking at the ground, as appears in children's books. Whoever has witnessed how chickens are raised in a modern chicken coop knows what this means, but most people do not want to know. If they were ignoring the rights of animals in order to spend their time defending the rights of humans, perhaps there would be some reason for this. But usually they do not take much interest in either.

[1] A self-evident or universally recognized truth