Fisking The Tofu Mystics

Analphilosopher's Animal Ethics Blog sent me over to the Society of Ethical and Religious Vegetarians homepage. This organization attempts to convert people to vegetarianism through religious argument.

I read the SERV argument and said to myself: "Self, these people need a severe fisking."

Let the fisking commence!

OUR RESPECTFUL CHALLENGE TO RELIGIOUS COMMUNITIES:

1) Religions stress that we should treat all creatures with compassion. Yet, ten billion animals are raised in abusive "factory farms" and brutally slaughtered annually in the U.S. Farmers deny animals fresh air, space to move comfortably, and fulfillment of their instinctive needs.

This is a strong indictment of factory farms. However, saying that some farmers - okay, most - engage in noncompassionate practices does not lead one down the primrose path to vegetarianism. It's almost as if they are saying: Since some Catholic priests molested little boys, we should avoid Methodist clergymen at all costs. If religious folks want compassionately raised animals, they should find small scale farmers and support the sustainable agriculture movement.

From a religious viewpoint, the Jewish, Christian and Muslim scriptures are pretty clear in granting humans dominion over the beasts of the field. In fact the consumption of some animals (unfortunately not port, which in the words of Vincent Vega, "tastes good,") is explicitly sanctioned. I'm not sure how even the most hardcore liberal revisionist can get around Biblical approval of meat consumption.

2) Religions teach that people be very careful about preserving their health and their lives. However, animal-centered diets have been linked to heart disease, several forms of cancer, strokes, and other degenerative diseases.

Sure, overconsumption of meat products is bad for you. Everything should be balanced. Dad and I ought to stop picking off the tasty spiced fat from the roast pig. But if we eliminate all food that has been linked to health problems when it is abused, even the vegetarians are going to go hungry. My recommendations here link back to the previous item. If a religious person is concerned about keeping their temple-body healthy, they ought to moderate all food consumption, exercise, and maybe support the sustainable agriculture movement by purchasing leaner grass-fed beef from their local farmer.

3) Religions emphasize sharing with hungry people. However, two-thirds of harvested grain in the U.S. and 37% worldwide is fed to animals destined for slaughter. Meanwhile, an estimated 20 million people die annually because of hunger and its effects.

This claim is ridiculous. I particularly like the response of the little kid who, when commanded to finish his plate because children are starving to Africa, volunteers to mail his leftovers to Ethiopia. If we eliminated factory livestock production and its attendant unnatural grain consumption, the grain we are growing in Kansas ain't goin' to Somalia. Without economic incentive, it won’t be grown. I advocate the elimination of confinement livestock feeding, but not from some dreamy impractical hope of ending poverty, but because confinement feeding is cruel to the animals, bad for the farmer (agricultural margins are smaller and smaller every year), bad for rural communities, bad for pollution, produce lower-quality meat (taste, drugs, and fat), and leads to erosion (due to the erosion caused by grain monoculture). Let's turn those two thousand acre cornfields into grazing paddocks. Everyone wins.

The claim that 20 million people die annually because Americans like to eat steak is just plain wrong and they know it. It's a simplisitic, and worse, dishonest argument.

In fact, if the world converted to vegetarianism, MORE people would die of starvation. Leaving aside aquaculture entirely, animals like sheep, cattle, and goats can produce calories for human consumption in areas entirely unsuitable to plant production. Some hillsides and arid regions just can’t be turned in tomato gardens. But, through the miracle of the ruminate digestive system, grass that is inedible to humans (never mind that the long-suffering North Koreans try) can be converted to an eminently digestable and healthy product.

4) Religions teach that preserving and nurturing the earth is a spiritual imperative. Yet, animal-centered diets waste food, land, water, energy, and other resources, contribute substantially to soil erosion and depletion, and promote air and water pollution, tropical rain forest and other habitat destruction, and global warming.

Pasture agriculture actually REDUCES erosion. The thick, well-managed sward of grass covering my hillside pastures holds the soil better than the naturally occurring forest that would quickly take over if I pulled animals off the land. If I planted crops, the bare earth would literally wash away over the course of a few years. Drive through moderately hilly farm country and you can spot washes where farmers looking to survive put hillsides into corn production.

The rain forest destruction will continue whether the people of Brazil eat beef or not. Farmers are going to slash and burn if the alternative is starvation. If they plant gardens rather than graze cattle, the weak soil of the rain forest will give up its meager plant nutrients that much faster.

The pollution attributed to agriculture exists, but again the vegetarians are confusing factory farming with all farming.

5) Religions stress that people should pursue peace and that violence results from unjust conditions. However, animal-based diets, by wasting valuable resources, help to perpetuate the widespread hunger and poverty that eventually lead to instability and war.

I've dealt with this above. Resources are not wasted because of meat consumption. Areas that lack resources are going to be in trouble no matter what. Grain that American farmers can’t sell to feedlots won’t be grown. Economic reality, societal instability, and lack of birth control lead to famine. I'll eat a grass-fed steak tonight with a crystal clear conscience.

Moving towards a vegetarian diet expresses one's conviction that we should show compassion for animals, preserve health, help feed hungry people, protect the environment, conserve resources, and pursue peace. We respectfully ask those who take religious values seriously: Should we not be moving towards plant-based diets?

I don't see how there has been much of a religious argument here. There have been vague, factually inaccurate appeals to a sense of social justice. If the social justice claims are wrong, there is no religious requirement to follow the vegetarian example, even if there was not explicit Biblical approval of omnivorism.

But then again, I can hardly claim to an expert on religion like the Big Hominid. I'm just a poor lapsed Lutheran attending a church whose hard and fast religious doctrine is based on the totally unambiguous, cut and dried, crystal clear Nineteen Articles.