Defending the Carnivore
My post from the other day about PETA's lawsuit against KFC (had to change the post here because my archives are screwed up, again oh wait, try this, just tested it and it seems to actually work although I've no idea why my archives keep getting screwed up) elicited a strong reaction from Leblanc at Intellectual Properties that I feel compelled to respond to.

But first, an appropriate quote for the pending argument.
The sign of intelligent people is their ability to control emotions by the application of reason.- Marya Mannes.

The gist of the post is that its no more justifiable to be a vegetarian if the reason for your being a vegetarian is based on the presumption that plants cannot feel pain. She called bullshit on the argument as just another way to justify being a meat eater.

However, I don't think it works that way. Regardless of whether plants can feel pain, I will eat them and the same goes for animals. Why? How can I justify the killing of another animal for my survival? Because its how the world works. The entire tapestry of biological history is one huge food chain of who ate who or what. There are animals that eat vegetation exclusively, they're called herbivores and they include animals like cows, koala bears, deer, rabbits and grasshoppers. Then there are the carnivores that eat herbivores and other carnivores. And then there are omnivores that eat pretty much anything.

We're monkeys, or primates more precisely. Our evolutionary track includes a bump, a moment in our history when we went from being scavengers to hunters. Primates eat meat whenever they can get it, it tastes good and provides a huge burst of energy as well as the building blocks to repair damaged tissues. When we made that leap to becoming hunters, our cultural history truly began for a number of reasons. One, the hunt provided a group bonding experience. Two, the proteins digested from the kills made us stronger and more capable. Three, to hunt successfully we had to be able to communicate.

And no, this isn't mere conjecture on my part. There are scholars that I've read that support this theory as well. Robert Wright among them, the guy who wrote the book I'm currently reading (slowly), Non Zero, the Logic of Human Destiny.

Now let's take a look at vegetarians. We happen to live in a society where one can make choices about one's diet. There are more food options available to people now than ever before in history. And it is possible to live a healthy life by balancing out one's diet so that all of the necessary nutrition is brought into the body. But its an unnatural state for primates to not ingest meat. Yes, its a choice, yes, you can do it and be healthy. But we're meat eaters, our dentition is the most obvious proof of this fact.

Choosing to not eat meat is a choice. Its not a necessity as it is for animals that do not have the physical capacity (i.e. enzymes, digestive system, teeth, etc.) to consume and process meat.

Now let's return to the earlier argument. And no, I'm not saying that all vegetarians don't eat meat because they feel that killing animals is wrong. Some just don't like the taste, some don't like the idea, some just prefer greens. Whatever. But in my construct here, the vegetarian declines to eat meat because they don't feel its proper to take the life of something else to survive. Or that causing pain to a living creature is wrong.

The first of those two statements is very, very easy to dismiss. Pulling an ear of corn off a stalk kills that ear of corn. There's no way to argue to the contrary. Yes, it is the fruit that the plant was bred to produce. But you are killing it nonetheless. Same thing for chard, lettuce, beans and everything else. Once you prepare it to eat, it is dead or dying.

I can hear someone saying that it doesn't kill the plant to pull off the ear of corn but that's irrelevant. Are the Masai less hate worthy because they bleed their cows for nutrition instead of killing them for their meat? They don't kill the animal but they use its parts for their own lives.

And causing pain to a living thing as an argument for vegetarianism is bunkum as well. Its incredibly naive to say that a plant cannot feel pain because it doesn't have nerve endings. Its narrow minded to denounce the argument that all living things cannot feel pain because part of life is the reaction to external stimulus, either wind, rain or the slice of the farmer's scythe. The fact that we cannot currently register that pain on any scale that we can understand certainly cannot be taken to mean that it does not exist. That's incredibly poor deductive logic. It would be like saying that the other side of the moon doesn't exist because we can't see it. Its the fundamental tenet of Cardinal Berkeley's argument for proof of the existence of God and it fails in this instance as well as in his.

The basic fact of life is interaction with the environment. Once that interaction ceases then life has also ceased. Part of that interaction is the response to assaults by bugs, animals or man (maybe that should be animals, including man). Thinking that plants cannot feel pain though they respond to other stimulus is untenable. And yes, their sensation of pain is almost certainly nothing like we know it to be. But the fact that plants react to attacks, by recoiling from flame, by starting new growth to replace the lost growth, by scarring up when possible, is a strong argument for the fact that plants can and do feel some sensation that has an analogue to the pain an animal feels when its injured.

So, the argument of being a vegetarian out of a sense of not wishing to cause pain to living things fails. Just because we cannot register the injury to the plant for having its fruits harvested or its roots torn up or the simple act of cutting the grass, certainly does not and cannot be taken to conclude that they do not feel pain.

I'm sure there are holes in my argument here but the basic foundation is reasonably solid. And I'm more than willing to discuss it further, either in comments or via email or IM or over beers. But come armed with a counter argument that's got some weight, not just calling bullshit and leaving it at that. The world is still a monstrously unknown place for us, why is it so hard to believe that plants can feel the pain of being yanked from the ground.

I could actually even argue that its more barbaric to consume plants because they are still very much alive when we eat them usually. The animals we eat, by and large, are dead and cooked. How easy would it be to be a vegetarian if that lettuce you're eating was trying to escape back to the garden or was squealing as you chomped down on it?