I've been lurking for months, Glynis, you hit on a question I've struggled
with a lot in the past year. I was a vegetarian for 10 years, vegan for
about half that, but the closer I got to really studying and understanding
and worshipping all of life the more I realized that my distinction (kill plants OK,
kill animals not OK) was based on wishy-washy identification with similar
life forms and speciesist hierarchy and overall ignorance of the nature of
plant life.
Now I just buy cook and eat vegan because it uses a hell of a lot less
land and bad farming (if you shop as much as possible organic and local,
living in the Central Valley of California made me realize factory farming
is immoral whether it's tomatoes OR chickens) and every now and then
when someone else is doing the cooking I eat meat and dairy and if I
had access to organically raised stuff or hunted or fished I would
probably eat more.
My dad always used to tell me to read Gary Snyder's "Song of the Taste"
and he was right but he eats a lot less meat these days too.
Begin forwarded message:
Dear Amanda,
I love plants--all plants from trees to mosses--and I'm curious
what reply you would make to my questions: Given that human beings must
eat to live, is it any less wrong/destructive/immoral/etc. to eat plants
than to eat animals? Are animals inherently more deserving than plants of
our sympathy/protection/concern? If so, why? (Because they are more
similar to us?) I, too, like you, am struggling to understand the
politics of diet, the politics of food.
Glynis Carr
