Meat: It's Dead!

Vegans are often asked why they don't eat dead animal parts (meat) or eggs or dairy. (Veganism in dietary terms refers to the practice of dispensing with all animal produce--including meat, fish, poultry, eggs, animal milks, honey, and their derivatives.) For many it is about animal cruelty/animal domination. For some it is environmental, political and health. For some there are religious reasons. And, for others it's economics.

Many of the reasons also tie in with corporate dominance and the desire not to support the large corporations that tell us cow mucous (sometimes called milk) is good for you. For almost all vegans it eventually becomes about taste. Vegans soon learn to live without the slimy yuck that putting dead animal parts in your mouth creates. Vegans also smell and taste better. (Stump Talk has done an extensive survey over the last two years.) And then there is the stink of the cooked carcasses themselves.

Walk by your corner animal crematorium (fast food joint that sells charred animal parts). These crematoriums definitely have an environmental impact. The burger princes and mcburgers are responsible for much of the destruction of forest lands. The farms that feed (with tons of chemicals) and murder the animals and process them using gallons and gallons of water that flow into our lakes and rivers are also creating major environmental problems. The fishing industry is also devastating our seas and rivers by their greed. And who wants to eat a mercury laden "fresh cod" anyway? Slade Gorton and his corporate fishing buddies should back off and grow some organic veggies if they really want to do something good for this planet.

We have been brainwashed by the dead animal parts industry's media campaign. By supporting this industry we also support the bombardment of our airwaves with their endless commercials telling us how good a dead chicken, pig, or cow is for us. Selling and marketing dead animal parts is big business and that also means big politics. Bill Clinton's political career was made possible by billions of dead chickens, via his Arkansas benefactor, Tyson Foods. The dead animal parts and dairy industry has a strong lobby to make sure that they keep the tax breaks and subsides alive (as opposed to dead) so that they reap huge profits selling their cancer-causing, artery-choking animal parts and cow mucous (cheese, butter, milk, cream, and so on).

That lobby has also systematically dismantled oversight of the dead animal preparation industry. Outbreaks of e coli, mad cow disease, and other deadly, meat-carried pathogens are likely to increase, not decrease, in the coming years. The long-term health effects of eating carcass are clearly bad--but, more and more, the short-term effects might be truly lethal.

"What would I eat if I didn't eat dead animal parts and cow mucous?" This is one of the biggest problems of eating animal parts. It lowers the incentive to be creative and expand one's diet. How many animals are eaten? Mostly, it's cows, pigs, chicken, fish. How many vegetables are there? How many fruits, legumes, nuts, seeds? How many combinations of the fruits, vegetables, legumes, nuts, and seeds are there? The possibilities are endless. The preparation methods are endless: roasted, fried, baked, sun dried, grilled, steamed, sauteed, raw (ever tried raw animal parts?). A small percentage of the population may have a dietary need for animal and animal products in their diet, but with the proper balance of all the vegan foods available many could live a healthy life without consuming dead animal parts and the world would be a better place for it. We can get all the vitamins, protein, and minerals that we need from a vegan diet.

Veganism is a lifestyle. It is a lifestyle of compassion and concern for what is on this planet. Monviolence relates to how we interact with other humans. But nonviolence begins with the fork. What we consume as food affects us all. Factory farms are violent. Pollution of this planet is violent. Destruction of ecosystems is violent. The socialization of eating dead animal parts, and all that comes before it, is about insulating us from the reality of what we are doing.

We disassociate ourselves from how that chunk of dead animal gets to our market. But if we look at the impact of getting that slab of beef to our plate, we become aware of the harm that it does to us socially, psychologically, and economically, and to the harm that it does to this planet. All this is related to what we put on our plate. Are we consuming dead animal parts and animal by-prpoducts because the industry tells us to, or because we just don't know any better? Maybe it's a little of both.

Stump Talk is put together by John Reese. If you want to help out or submit an article or have suggestions for articles write Stump Talk c/o ETS!, e-mail can@drizzle.com, or fax or call 206-632-2954.