Several years ago there was a popular bumper sticker promoting vegetarianism. It showed a large, lean, handsome, buck deer with a huge rack leaping effortlessly over a fence. On the other side of the fence was some tall grass and it said simply, "Deer eat grass." Of course the implication was that grass had all the nutrition the deer needed to grow big and strong, inferring that people could similarly adopt a vegetarian lifestyle and be strong and lean like the deer.
A few months after seeing this thought provoking bumper sticker I saw another one. At first I thought it was the same one as it looked very similar. There was the same deer leaping a similar fence. The only difference was now there was a tiger hiding in the tall grass laying in wait for the deer who would soon become his lunch. The inscription said simply, "Tigers eat deer." I instantly got the point.
What part of the food chain do you want to be? I don't know about you, but I want to be at the top of the food chain. Like the old sentiment we've often heard, "I didn't claw my way to the top of the food chain just to eat grass." or the quasi religious, tongue in cheek question "If God didn't want us to eat animals why did he make them out of tasty meat?"
Now I'm an animal lover (on my plate.) No seriously, I believe we should respect all life and not cause it undue suffering, but treat it with kindness and compassion - until it's time to harvest it for food. Without man eating animals millions of livestock animals would not get to live at all, as there would be no economic reason (or even the ability) to keep them alive. Some might view this as a good thing, less animal flatulence (methane) so less global warming, less consumption of cereal grains which man can eat, etc., however I do not. I think humanity would be lessened if we did not have the vast numbers of livestock animals that we do today, and I believe that these critters want to live, even if it is a shorter life than they might live in the wild. Remember the wilderness is brutal, it's literally dog eat dog, where animal's lives are most often cut very short due to predation, starvation and disease. It can be argued that well fed, disease free livestock typically live a far better life than their counterparts in the wild. Even in the end, they are slaughtered quickly and humanely, not brutally and painfully torn to shreds by predators, possibly even eaten alive in the most gruesome end imaginable - or succumb to a slow, lingering death due to parasites, disease and starvation suffering cruelly for an extended period of time before they expire. No, from an ethical and moral standpoint I see no problem with ethical rearing and humanely harvesting livestock for our needs. Besides, did I mention they're yummy.
Chip
