Comments

Ali Jo,

Thanks for posting this debate. This is one of the cool possibilities that the blog format opens up, but you're one of the first to use it.

I think Omnivore's Dilemma will also inform the debate. I guess I have just 3 contributions to make;

1. You have to decide if you are arguing on "natural" or on "moral". You seem to go back and forth. The anthropological stuff I've seen shows that most human food is plant food but that most cultures (including indigenous cultures like Australian aborigines, Calusa in Florida, and !Kung in Africa) also highly value animal flesh. Like you say, just because lots of humans do it, and other animals also do, doesn't mean its right. But it does seem hard to argue that it isn't natural.

2. I agree with your distrust of overconsumption of soy. This year I quit being a vegan (after 15 years) partly around this. Rather than soy-yogurt 3-4x a week it seemed better to do pasture raised goat yogurt.

3. I think the strongest arguments in favor of vegetarianism/veganism are a) health - vegetarians live longer and healthier on average. You can see this, perhaps, in your own experience. But I don't think this argument can overcome Dylan's point about eating occasional and decently-raised animal food. The second major argument in favor of veganism (and less so in vegetarianism) is the non-exploitation argument - slavery is wrong and enslaving other animals to serve as food sources is morally dubious - perhaps even when the slaves are treated relatively well.

This was the main reason I became vegan - I saw it as a daily practice of resisting a culture that is based fundamentally on domination of the weak by the strong.

The argument can be nuanced though - are clams also exploited - are they really qualitatively more "there and aware" than a sunflower? If there are ways of eating that are more ecologically sustainable (pasture raised eggs, goat yogurt, perhaps even chicken flesh, beef) and more ecologically beautiful (wild honey versus sugar cane monocultures) what should our priorities be?