2.6
July 11, 2012

Meat me Halfway.

Photo: Jellie S

I am sitting on a porch amid ferns in Playa del Carmen, watching the world spin by.

I have 29 percent power left on my laptop, and my charger is being repaired. So I’ll keep this quick.

There is no ethical reason to eat meat. Looking for an ethical reason to eat meat is like trying to find a yoga mat in a bowling alley.

Photo: Ell Brown

Correct me if I’m wrong, by writing an ethical reason to eat meat in the comments.  The New York Times Magazine ran an essay contest looking for one; the winning essay backs up my point 100 percent. Jim Gaffigan puts a good spin on it while keeping it accurate. He makes us laugh while pointing to what’s happening.

In a recent debate in Australia, “Should meat be taken off the menu?” the audience was swayed strongly towards taking it off.  The best speaker was this guy, Phillip Wollen, a formed VP and major financial wheeler dealer. The most inane argument from the meaters was, I promise you she argued this, that certain species of animals would go to extinction if we were to stop eating them. Really. Have a burger, save a cow.

So I pretty much give up on the arguing, for today.

I’m looking for the middle ground. We are all here between the stars and the earth’s core together. Any informed meat eater knows that eating any meat is simply bad for your health. (If you can believe Harvard) We all know that the planet and the water supply pay dearly for meat consumption.

We know there is no ethical reason to eat meat. Humans eat it because it tastes good.

So can we meet in the middle?

What if we were to all stop eating meat in our appetizers? Is that asking too much? Could we maybe take cheese off the dessert menu?

What if we were to start with dissecting frogs? Could we just quit that? Has there been a meaningful discovery, other than that dissecting frogs is gross, in that action over the past 10 years? Let’s switch to fake frogs for a start, could we?

I am looking for genuine ethical reasons to eat meat. There are none that I know of. So in the face of the onslaught of slaughter, I’m also looking for levels of compromise that maybe a meat eater could swallow. Will either appear?

~

Editor: Brianna Bemel

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