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Kill the Cow, Save the Tree
By Charles Eisenstein / May 15, 2007
Dear Isa,
I’m going to start at the end, addressing your skepticism about “ethical omnivores.” So yes, I eat most of my food from farmers I know personally. In the winter, I do eat a lot of non-local produce, and I eat rice from Arkansas, and olive oil from Italy, but even then most of my animal food is local.
The farms that supply me are pretty idyllic. There are many people like me who really care. We are seriously committed to eating in an ethical way.
Can “idyllic” agriculture support six billion people? Well, it uses far less fossil fuel and groundwater than factory farming. Factory farming is only more efficient in dollar and labor terms, not in productivity per acre of land. In a truly sustainable agricultural system, we will spend much more time per capita to grow the same amount of food. I think this is a good thing.
By the way, much of the land used for grazing animals would be unsuitable for horticulture. This is the flaw in the argument that it takes ten calories of grain to produce one calorie of meat. However, I do think that in a truly sustainable system meat production would be lower than it is today. We overeat and waste enormous amounts. As much as half of all food is wasted today.
I hear your exasperation, but when I question your moral differentiation between plant and animal life, it’s not because I’ve failed to understand your points. Have you ever stood before a 300-foot-tall redwood or a thousand-year-old oak, and felt yourself in the presence of a great and wise spirit? I would sooner kill a cow than chop down such a tree. Perhaps I would sooner die. To say it is “just wood” would be to show the same prejudice toward plants that you decry toward animals.
Logic says, hey, it’s just a bunch of wood, just a collection of cells that are themselves composed of inanimate carbon, nitrogen, and so on. But this is precisely the same logic that Descartes’ followers used to justify their grisly experiments on animals, explaining cries of pain as nothing more than the wheezing of bellows and the creaking of wheels. At bottom, it’s all just force and mass, right? In our despoliation of the planet, we routinely use such logic to trump our innate biophilia, the love of all life that resides in our hearts.
I question your assumption that a plant doesn’t have the “necessary hardware” for sentience. Shall we dismiss millennia of shamanic experience that says otherwise? Or is sentience purely a function of a central nervous system—most highly developed in humans. (Here again is the implicit hierarchy of being, with us at the top.)
As a matter of fact, the intricate non-linear feedback loops of a central nervous system are rivaled if not exceeded in complexity by plant interactions mediated by root networks, mycelial networks, volatile aromatics, and other vectors. Stephen Buhner describes this beautifully in The Lost Language of Plants. I also recommend Elliot Cowan’s Plant Spirit Medicine for its compelling accounts of plant-human communication. I find a certain hubris in dismissing shamanistic beliefs as mere superstition, as you did when you claimed that “they came up with animal spirits.” I think it is the reduction of the natural world to a collocation of forces and masses that enables us to destroy the planet with expected impunity.
Most of our plant and animal food species are in a sense no longer "natural." A modern chicken wouldn’t live very long in the wild, and modern corn cannot even reproduce without human assistance. Like other species, we live in symbiotic dependency with our food sources.
I do not share your feeling that something has “gone wrong” in the gazelle’s moment of terror in the lion’s jaws, just as I see nothing wrong in another gazelle’s last agonizing, desperate struggle to rise to its feet as extreme old age overtakes it. Death and pain are part of life. Suffering is distinct from pain. I have experienced enormous pain without suffering. Suffering comes from resistance and attachment, and in a sense no one can make another person suffer. I am not excusing or justifying anything here, just questioning whether the prolonging of life and minimizing of pain are indeed the highest ethical guidelines. One way to investigate is to apply it to yourself. Have you, in your life, taken risks and endured discomfort in the pursuit of things more important to you than security and comfort?
What alternative ethical principles could there be, then? Any coherent, satisfying ethical system must address the obvious and profound wrongness that emanates from our present agricultural system, and especially factory meat production. But I think that vegetarians, perhaps being more sensitive to this wrongness than most, have misidentified its source. The animals are going to die anyway, whether or not we kill them, and in death there is usually terror or pain. The source of the wrongness is not killing. It is life out of balance. It is life distorted, contorted, perverted into a grotesque and hellish mockery of life.
You might ask, how can we know what the life purpose of another being is? Without that knowledge, isn’t it wrong to cut that life short? My answer is that we have an innate ability to recognize what is balanced, beautiful, harmonious, and right. The heart knows that a complex rainforest ecosystem is more beautiful than a parking lot.
Unfortunately, our culture has so alienated us from our natural wisdom that we no longer choose what is right. We have been intimidated by powerful economic and ideological forces that have marooned us in a realm of narrow self-interest and rationality.
Reason has its place, but it is the heart that knows. No Benthamite quantification of happiness and suffering will help us choose ethically. We can try to create a calculus of suffering, counting the pounds of biomass killed, the number of earthworms destroyed, the units of sentience in an insect vs. a cow vs. a human, and solve this vast equation to make a decision. But we would be rationalizing what we already know, and deceiving ourselves if we pretended to decide right from wrong on the basis of the equation. Such elaborations usually obscure rather than clarify.
In the end, I choose local organic food because it feels right. Soon in our dialog I hope to share with you how the same feeling has guided me to eat meat—the story of my journey to vegetarianism and back again!
With gentleness,
Charles
NEXT: What if I feel that we should listen to Neil Diamond, shoot heroin, and play D&D?
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EAT MEAT!!!!!!!!!!!KILL DEER!!!!!!!!
If hungry meat eating aliens ever land on this planet I hope Charles Eisenstein door is the first they knock on.
I think Charles’ entire argument is simply one big naturalistic fallacy.
To claim that sentience is necessary for suffering is not too controversial, I think the burden of proof is on the one who claims that sentience is not a necessary component for suffering to occur.
As to his defense of the redwood tree – it comes from a purely subjective spiritual epiphany. Not quite good moral philosophy. I hope no one would take me seriously if I felt compelled to fell a redwood that I felt was emanating evil.
Lastly, Charles, where do you draw the line? Do you eat pigs? How about horses? Elephants? Monkeys? Monkees? Chimps? People? And in your answer, please refrain from trotting out the naturalist fallacy – remember, you cannot derive an “ought” from an “is.”
Well, Singer's response covers much ground, but I cannot resist in yelling against the gross misabuse of Descartes and science here. Let me comment on some particular points in a linear fashion.
http://michaelbluejay.com/veg/hitler.html He wasn’t veggie dammit!
Hitler was not a vegetarian, he was advised to eat a vegetarian diet by his doctor for stomach problems, but did not.
This argument is always trotted out to somehow ‘disprove’ that vegetarians can be ethical. Not only is it wrong, but it doesn’t make sense.
It’s like me saying Osama Bin Laden is a meat eater (I actually have no idea if he is or not), it’s not relevant.
I found it ironic that Eisenstein calls his website "The Yoga of Eating" while arguing for eating meat, thoroughly disregarding the principle of Ahimsa. In the classical yoga system the first stage (or limb, as they are generally called) of yoga is Yama (ethical disciplines) and of these, Ahimsa is the first. Ahimsa is one of the central tenets of Hinduism, within which it is applied to all living beings, who are believed to be of the same essential quality (atman). The main schools of Hinduism do not differentiate between the soul within a human body, or within that of an animal.
Perhaps Eisenstein's understanding of Hinduism is as flimsy and incomplete as his understanding of the Shamanic Experience (TM Toddx).
As for his response to Isa tonight – I echo the "Oy vey! I can't even breath from the silliness." But, based entirely on his photo above, he is quite cute.
Charles, If I understand your two articles correctly, you are arguing that “ethical omnivorism” is MORE ethical than veganism because it spares plants (including redwoods) and thereby avoids trhe fallacious reasoning that animals are superior to plants. Am I reading this correctly? If yes, then I disagree that animal consumption is more ethical and that vegans have no concern for plants, even majestical trees.
When I first decided to become a vegetarian, I loved the idea of idyllic agriculture as you describe it. I was objecting to the way animals are treated on factory farms, that labels such as “free range” did nothing to improve a chicken’s life before slaughter and I was heavily influenced by environmental concerns that can surely be aided by organic and balanced farming methods. At this point, I favor veganism as a personal choice. I believe that your system can help, but not solve our world’s problems. Also, you should not attack me for my choice just as I do not attack all of the people in my life who are meat eaters.
I have no soft stomach when it comes to causing the killing of an animal for food as you’ve assumed all veg*ans do. I did it for years and was and am guilt free. But now I’ve decided that I am more connected to my diet by avoiding animal foods and products. I challenge meat eaters to analyze the shear volume of meat products they consume and purchase. I’m also making a social/ political statement by not spending my dollars on animal products since I have no sway with the US government or factory farm laws. This makes me feel less like a “little” person because I can control my own spending and actions. I do not believe that enough land and water exist on earth for all wealthy populations to eat the quantities of meat that we eat, even when farms are “balanced”. For example, both Asian and Indian populations are beginning to consume more meat as they become more wealthy (not counting religious vegetarians). [My only support are a recent talk I attended by a microbiologist working in ag engineering who projected a doubling in food, especially meat demand, even with only a 30% rise in population over the next 20 years due to increases in wealth. Also, speaking with an Okinawin who says that they eat all of the foreign foods now, including lots of meat.]
I don’t have time to look up sources and write up a research paper, but here are some things I’ve seen or heard: PBS recently had a show about burning rain forest for agriculture. I believe that 80% of agricultural land on earth is set aside for grazing animals. This is not the balance that you are imagining meat eating is causing. If no grazing land exists, humans will burn lands to get it and thereby destroy beautiful, CO2-consuming, oxygen-generating trees and ruining the soil wrt plant crop usage.
It’s a fact that cattle are inefficient consumers of our plant and water resources. People on this thread have doubted it. It’s something I learned in Biology 101 and Microbiology 101 over 10 years ago, not from PETA. Just look at a cow’s biology. Also, that cow drinks up our water and creates too much manure, thereby creating dangerous runoff that pollutes the remaining water and not to mention CO2 production….
Finally, to everyone on this thread- don’t assume that you know why people choose veg*ism. The reasons are diverse and personal, although they center around the three principles of ethical beliefs, environmental concerns and health. Also, don’t be defensive! As a former meat eater, I was never once heckled by a veg*an and as a person who’s managed near veganism (still working on it), I don’t judge or heckle others.
I can hardly breathe from the silliness of this! Charles, again, you kill *more* plants, and therefore use more environmental resources, when you eat meat than you do if you eat plants directly. What is so difficult about that to comprehend? It doesn’t matter where or how the animal is raised. When you eat the animal, you are gobbling up all of the plant and water resources the animal consumed in his or her life. That adds up, depending on the animal in question, to 5 to 20 pounds of grain or soy for every pound of meat. As for water, the average vegetarian indirectly consumes 300 gallons per day while the average meat-eater consumes 4,200 gallons per day! All told, 20 people can eat a healthy vegetarian diet on the resources used by one meat-eating omnivore, whether he calls himself “ethical” or not. Too bad for you if you don’t care about the feelings of animals. Too bad for you if you believe the sensual pleasure you take in certain tastes or textures is worth more than the lives of other beings with wishes of their own. But if you only care about the environment, or if you only care about people, you still have to go vegan if you want to be ethical in deed as well as word.
I do. However when considering the amount of rain forest destroyed for crops, you also have to take into consideration the amount of this wheat/corn/soy/etc that is used to produce feed for farmed animals. One thing you have to keep in mind is that when consuming an animal, you are also consuming everything that he or she has consumed in the past. It is the grain that they eat which turns into the muscle you fry on the grill. Their energy is converted by the plants they eat, into their own cells which you then consume to provide your own cells with energy. In essence if you where to “cut out the middle man”, you could use the initial food source to create your own cells, instead of processing it first through the cow. You should also consider the vast number of vegans and vegetarians who purchase local produce, grains and flours. In fact many vegans/vegetarians come to their lifestyle choice solely out of environmental concerns.
With love
B.A.D.
Eisenstein makes a compelling case for respecting plant life. Vegans/Vegetarians/PETA activists make the mistake of going after a fundamental component of human diet, and alienate the majority of the population from the larger cause of environmental destruction. They don’t care about those subsistence farmers in Africa destrying virgin forest to plant crops to feed themselves. Human overpopulation is destroying the earth, and all these PETA idiots can talk about is people eating meat and drinking milk. Does any of these vegans give a s*** about the rainforests being cut down to make their furniture and their morning newspapers?
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