sobering thoughts
I might've mentioned to some of you that I just finished reading Gandhi's autobiography, The Story of My Experiments with Truth (1925). There were plenty of things I didn't know about him and his personal idiosyncrasies which I got from this book, and one of these was that he was a pretty hard-core vegan, and basically ate nothing but fruits and nuts after a certain point in his life. He got sick a lot (e.g., "I very nearly ruined my constitution during the recruiting campaign. In those days my food principally consisted of groundnut butter and lemons"), but he didn't attribute any of this sickness to malnutrition.
I've eaten almost no meat and very little fish (those who want details of lapses are welcome to ask me, I have nothing to hide) for the past five years or so, but thought it would be very hard to give up dairy and eggs. After all, milk production doesn't actually involve killing anything, does it?... until this morning while sitting in bed I had this thought:
In order for a cow to produce milk, she must have a calf.
Okay, fine, duh. While theoretically I was aware of this basic biological fact, there are some connections one doesn't quite put together until they appear in a flash of satori. This FAQ accessible from www.peta.org follows up the previous sentence like so:
"Dairy cows" are impregnated every year in order to keep up a steady supply of milk. In the natural order of things, the cow’s calf would drink her milk (eliminating her need to milked by humans). But dairy cows’ babies are taken away within a day or two of birth so that humans can have the milk nature intended for their calves. Female dairy calves may be slaughtered immediately or raised to be future dairy cows... Even the few farmers who choose not to raise animals intensively [my NB: this includes organic and free-range] must both eliminate the calf (who would otherwise drink the milk) and eventually send the mother off to slaughter after her milk production wanes.
Well, uhhh... ummm... crap. but I like ice cream. and chocolate. and cheese. and. uhhh. well.
Okay, so PETA isn't the most unbiased source one could consult. But all they did was come out and say what I had inevitably to suspect myself. Even setting aside one's feelings about living conditions on dairy farms, there's a conservation law, a source-sink balance for lifelines involved, if the cattle population of the world is not to explode. Every lifeline that begins must eventually end, and in this case they are likely to end in the most economically expedient manner, rather than the most humane or natural one.
However idiosyncratic some of his views might have been, one thing I like about Gandhi is that in his writings he is very consistent about showing his work. Truth is to him the most important thing, all other things being subordinate, and whatever success he may have had in other walks of life may be attributable to his unflinching regard for the truth. I'm sure as heck not about to compare myself to him, but perhaps I would do well to cultivate at least that virtue -- and then see what that suggests I should do in the future. For one thing, maybe I'll pay closer attention to rebbyribs' recipe posts from now on.
Thus far I still see no reasoning against free-range eggs. So I'll continue to eat those for the time being. As for the rest... uh, we'll see.
edit: After thinking about free-range eggs some more, I have to say I'm not buying it. The living conditions on free-range farms may certainly more humane than those on factory farms. But the chickens still use up agricultural resources which humans could be using more efficiently, with corresponding impact on the environment. And what, do the farmers give the hen a decent burial after she dies of old age, as thanks for laying us all those eggs? I'm skeptical.
At this stage, I ask myself about my main motivation for continuing to eat dairy and eggs, and the answer I find is that it'd be a lot harder to give those up than it was to give up animal flesh. I'll have to think about it, but I bet that if I'm to enjoy logical self-consistency here, I should either go vegan or go back to eating meat.
I've eaten almost no meat and very little fish (those who want details of lapses are welcome to ask me, I have nothing to hide) for the past five years or so, but thought it would be very hard to give up dairy and eggs. After all, milk production doesn't actually involve killing anything, does it?... until this morning while sitting in bed I had this thought:
In order for a cow to produce milk, she must have a calf.
Okay, fine, duh. While theoretically I was aware of this basic biological fact, there are some connections one doesn't quite put together until they appear in a flash of satori. This FAQ accessible from www.peta.org follows up the previous sentence like so:
"Dairy cows" are impregnated every year in order to keep up a steady supply of milk. In the natural order of things, the cow’s calf would drink her milk (eliminating her need to milked by humans). But dairy cows’ babies are taken away within a day or two of birth so that humans can have the milk nature intended for their calves. Female dairy calves may be slaughtered immediately or raised to be future dairy cows... Even the few farmers who choose not to raise animals intensively [my NB: this includes organic and free-range] must both eliminate the calf (who would otherwise drink the milk) and eventually send the mother off to slaughter after her milk production wanes.
Well, uhhh... ummm... crap. but I like ice cream. and chocolate. and cheese. and. uhhh. well.
Okay, so PETA isn't the most unbiased source one could consult. But all they did was come out and say what I had inevitably to suspect myself. Even setting aside one's feelings about living conditions on dairy farms, there's a conservation law, a source-sink balance for lifelines involved, if the cattle population of the world is not to explode. Every lifeline that begins must eventually end, and in this case they are likely to end in the most economically expedient manner, rather than the most humane or natural one.
However idiosyncratic some of his views might have been, one thing I like about Gandhi is that in his writings he is very consistent about showing his work. Truth is to him the most important thing, all other things being subordinate, and whatever success he may have had in other walks of life may be attributable to his unflinching regard for the truth. I'm sure as heck not about to compare myself to him, but perhaps I would do well to cultivate at least that virtue -- and then see what that suggests I should do in the future. For one thing, maybe I'll pay closer attention to rebbyribs' recipe posts from now on.
Thus far I still see no reasoning against free-range eggs. So I'll continue to eat those for the time being. As for the rest... uh, we'll see.
edit: After thinking about free-range eggs some more, I have to say I'm not buying it. The living conditions on free-range farms may certainly more humane than those on factory farms. But the chickens still use up agricultural resources which humans could be using more efficiently, with corresponding impact on the environment. And what, do the farmers give the hen a decent burial after she dies of old age, as thanks for laying us all those eggs? I'm skeptical.
At this stage, I ask myself about my main motivation for continuing to eat dairy and eggs, and the answer I find is that it'd be a lot harder to give those up than it was to give up animal flesh. I'll have to think about it, but I bet that if I'm to enjoy logical self-consistency here, I should either go vegan or go back to eating meat.