Of all
the convoluted rationalizations for eating meat in an age when eating meat is
not at all necessary for our survival or health, many people today are
borrowing a popular slogan I like to call “the personal choice self deception.”
It goes something like this: “My decision to eat meat is a personal choice.”
And it is usually followed by a statement sympathetic to their vegan and
vegetarian friends, acknowledging that they too are making personal choices
that are right for them. Sounds great on the surface, but it’s what lurks
beyond the surface that I find deeply disturbing for five key reasons.
1.
Eating is a communal, multicultural activity until the vegan sits down at the
table
First,
let’s take a closer look at what personal means in the context of the highly
social human activity of eating. Personal food choices had never been discussed
at the dinner table until a growing number of vegans and vegetarians — by their
very presence at the table — question the legitimacy of eating animals. A
person who tells you that their meat eating is a personal choice is really
telling you “stay away.” They don’t want you to question their highly-coveted
moral beliefs or perhaps they object to exposing their unexamined moral
quandary over how one can justify using and killing animals for food in an age
when it is completely unnecessary. In other words, They have made this issue
personal precisely in response to you making it a public.
2. There
is no free choice without awareness
The
irony is that while meat eaters defend their choice to eat meat as a personal
one, they will nonetheless go to great lengths to defend it publicly when
confronted with a vegan or vegetarian. Like some apologetic white liberals who
defend themselves by defiantly exclaiming to a new black acquaintance, “But I
have black friends too!”, some meat eaters will go to great lengths to explain
how intimately they understand veganism since they have vegan friends, have
already heard and evaluated their reasons for going vegan and respect them dearly.
They’ve
considered being vegan carefully, they will assure you, and have concluded that
it’s just not for them. But instead of arriving at some novel new understanding
of why humans should eat meat, they simply revert back to the traditional
arguments that are all pretty much centered around what social psychologist
Melanie Joy calls the three N’s of justification: eating meat is normal,
natural and necessary. (1) But their reasoning reveals the fact that they have
sorely overlooked the big idea behind veganism which author Jenny Brown points
out so eloquently in her book The Lucky Ones: “We can become prisoners of our
earliest indoctrinations or we can choose to look critically at our assumptions
and align our lives with our values. Choosing to live vegan is how we re able
to do that best.” (2)
3. The
choice has a victim and the victim is completely ignored
Let’s
take a look at the issue from the animal victim’s perspective which has been
completely denied by the meat eater’s unexamined assumption that animals have
no interest or understanding of the value of their individual lives. Does the
animal who is being bred, raised and slaughtered for someone’s food care if the
person who is eating meat has given the prospect of becoming vegan any serious
moral consideration? Of course not.
The
notion that these conscious meat eaters think they have done their due
diligence by examining the pros and cons of eating animals means nothing for
those that value their lives as we do. The fact is the animals we raise for
meat have at least as much of an interest in staying alive, avoiding pain and
suffering and seeking pleasure as these meat eaters’ pets. As activist Twyla
Francois so aptly puts it: “All animals have the same capacity for suffering,
but how we see them differs and that determines what we’ll tolerate happening
to them. In the western world, we feel it wrong to torture and eat cats and
dogs, but perfectly acceptable to do the same to animals equally as sentient
and capable of suffering. No being who prides himself on rationality can
continue to support such behaviour.”
4. Many
personal choices we make have dire consequence for ourselves and others
Now
let’s take a closer look at the meaning of choice itself. The act of making a
choice implies that the actor has free will and awareness of the options and
their consequences. In the spirit of justice, we live in a society where our
actions and choices are governed by what society deems acceptable. We can make
a personal choice to maim, rape or kill someone, but these actions will have
consequences that serve as a deterrent. It is generally accepted in a
democratic society that we are free to do what we want as long as it doesn’t
harm anyone else or infringe on the same rights and freedoms of others.
Yet, for
the meat eater, the choice of eating animals is completely disconnected from
this concept of justice since justice does NOT for them apply to other species,
only to humans (how convenient). In other words, there are no visible, negative
consequences to eating meat. The victims remain invisible and silent to those
who eat them, and that is perhaps the greatest deception of all.
5.
Atrocities are never personal
In
reality, the choice to eat meat negates the very meaning of choice because the
animal that had to be killed to procure the meat had no choice in the matter at
all. And the notion of characterizing such a choice as a personal one is even
more problematic since the choice required the taking of another’s life, not a
personal sacrifice. Nothing could be more public than the taking of a sentient
life that cares about his own life, particularly when the act is not necessary
and therefore not morally defensible.
When 60
billion land animals and another approximate 60 billion marine animals are
killed every year across the planet for “personal” food choices made by a
single species that are based on palate pleasure alone, eating meat ceases to
be a matter of personal choice; (4) it becomes a social justice movement to
protect the rights of animals. To deny animals the right to live their lives
according to their own interests is wrong and to attempt to defend our choice
to eat them as a personal one is delusional.
Article from Vegan23
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