I am not a vegetarian and doubt I will become one. I believe God has given us animals for food. Me, in 2005. I wrote that during the course of a review of Matthew Scullys *Dominion: The Power of Man, the Suffering of Animals, and the Call to Mercy*. I had been talking to a friend about ways to avoid despair when there is so much bad news in the world. He said that he limited his intake of information about injustices he could do nothing about. For example, he said, theres this book about animal cruelty in agribusiness that he just wasnt going to read because there wasnt anything he could do about it. Well, I was already into agrarianism and Wendell Berry and animal cruelty was a subject I knew nothing about. So, ignoring my friends advice, I read *Dominion*. It could not have hit me harder. Scully (a speechwriter for Dubya) was a conservative Christian and so was I at that time. The book addressed the cruelty of factory farms and the Christian obligation to minimize suffering wherever possible. Scully (IIRC) took the usual locavore tack and said we should get our meat from local sources with verifiable humane treatment of animals. Rachel and I attempted to do that for a few years and mostly failed. It was expensive and easy to cheat with a McDonalds hamburger. Eventually we read Pollans *Omnivores Dilemma* and watched Forks Over Knives and Food, Inc. and decided to go vegetarian. We did that for two years, until Rachel watched Vegucated and started reading Colleen Patrick-Goudreau during early 2013 and went vegan. I followed her about a month later. Shortly after that I read *Animals Like Us* by Mark Rowlands and became convinced for myself. We discovered that this was an issue where we could, in fact, do something about injustice, at least where it directly impinged upon us. Of course were still implicated in other injustices, some of which we cant extricate ourselves from. (This, by the way, is a modern, workable meaning of the old idea of original sin.) But this is something we have found we can do. No animals will suffer miserable lives and endure grisly deaths for me, simply because I like the taste of their flesh. Veganism doesnt fix everything but it is a step in the direction of living a compassionate life.
Posted on: Tue, 21 Oct 2014 17:10:44 +0000
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