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Monday, May 07, 2007
New Life Goal - Becoming a Vegetarian
I've been pondering over this one for a while now, ever since hearing ethicist Peter Singer interviewed on Point of Inquiry. Clearly there are health benefits associated with cutting out meat, certainly red meat, from ones diet, however, Singer argues that we (people living in Wealth Democracies) should become vegetarian for moral reasons.
He posits that it is reasonable to assume that based on the size of the brains of cows and pigs, based on their behaviour and on our shared genetic code that they do, in fact, have a certain level of conciousness, a certain subject experience. Certainly not on the same scale as ours, but he figures that conciousness is not an all-or-nothing thing. If we agree that it's possible, or probable that these animals do FEEL something, know or feel the difference between the extremely poor living conditions of a factory farm animal vs. living outside in the a more classical farm setting with big open fields, etc, if they do feel the difference, then it's certainly not morally right for us to treat the millions or billions of animals per year in such a horrible way.
He makes a very compelling argument and so I'm starting on the road to vegetarianism. It just seems like the right thing to do.
I'm not going cold turkey or anything... In the same way that I've been trying to make 'better' food choices with my new diet, I'm going to try to make more vegetarian choices when possible and gradually move to a completely or almost completely meat-free diet.
Today was a bit of a milestone, I didn't eat any meat at all today! I had an english muffin w/ peanut butter & a coffee for breakfast, sort of grazed through the day as opposed to eating a full lunch - had a banana, an orange, a cereal bar and some rice crackers, and then a 12" veggie sub for dinner.
Anyhow, we'll see how it goes - I went grocery shopping tonight and the only meat I bought were some really yummy sounding chipotle turkey weiners... I bought lots of bean soups, veggie chilli, chick peas to go in salads, etc, so that I can get my protein in...
We'll see how it goes, wish me luck! ¶ 11:41 PM
He posits that it is reasonable to assume that based on the size of the brains of cows and pigs, based on their behaviour and on our shared genetic code that they do, in fact, have a certain level of conciousness, a certain subject experience. Certainly not on the same scale as ours, but he figures that conciousness is not an all-or-nothing thing. If we agree that it's possible, or probable that these animals do FEEL something, know or feel the difference between the extremely poor living conditions of a factory farm animal vs. living outside in the a more classical farm setting with big open fields, etc, if they do feel the difference, then it's certainly not morally right for us to treat the millions or billions of animals per year in such a horrible way.
He makes a very compelling argument and so I'm starting on the road to vegetarianism. It just seems like the right thing to do.
I'm not going cold turkey or anything... In the same way that I've been trying to make 'better' food choices with my new diet, I'm going to try to make more vegetarian choices when possible and gradually move to a completely or almost completely meat-free diet.
Today was a bit of a milestone, I didn't eat any meat at all today! I had an english muffin w/ peanut butter & a coffee for breakfast, sort of grazed through the day as opposed to eating a full lunch - had a banana, an orange, a cereal bar and some rice crackers, and then a 12" veggie sub for dinner.
Anyhow, we'll see how it goes - I went grocery shopping tonight and the only meat I bought were some really yummy sounding chipotle turkey weiners... I bought lots of bean soups, veggie chilli, chick peas to go in salads, etc, so that I can get my protein in...
We'll see how it goes, wish me luck! ¶ 11:41 PM
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