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The Ethics of Vegetarianism
Vegetarianism: A Means to a Higher End
>From the book "The Hare Krishna Book of Vegetarian Cooking"
By Adiraja Dasa
(c) 1989 The Bhaktivedanta Book Trust International
Used with permission
Ethics
Many people consider the ethical reasons the most important of all for
becoming vegetarian. The beginning of ethical vegetarianism is the
knowledge that other creatures have feelings, and that their feelings are
similar to ours. This knowledge encourages one to extend personal
awareness to encompass the suffering of others.
In an essay titled "The Ethics of Vegetarianism," from the journal of the
North American Vegetarian Society, the conception of "humane animal
slaughter" is refuted. "Many people nowadays have been lulled into a sense
of complacency by the thought that animals are now slaughtered
'humanely', thus presumably removing any possible humanitarian
objection to the eating of meat. Unfortunately, nothing could be further
from the actual facts of life...and death.
The entire life of a captive 'food animal' is an unnatural one of artificial
breeding, vicious castration and/or hormone stimulation, feeding of an
abnormal diet for fattening purposes, and eventually long rides in intense
discomfort to the ultimate end. The holding pens, the electric prods and
tail twisting, the abject terror and fright, all these are still very much a part
of the most 'modern' animal raising, shipping, and slaughtering. To accept
all this and only oppose the callous brutality of the last few seconds of the
animal's life, is to distort the word 'humane'."
The truth of animal slaughter is not at all pleasant-commercial
slaughterhouses are like visions of hell. Screaming animals are stunned by
hammer blows, electric shock, or concussion guns. They are hoisted into
the air by their feet and moved through the factories of death on
mechanized conveyor systems. Still alive, their throats are sliced and their
flesh is cut off while they bleed to death. Why isn't the mutilation and
slaughter of farm animals governed by the same stipulations intended for
the welfare of pets and even the laboratory rat?
Many people would no doubt take up vegetarianism if they visited a
slaughterhouse, or if they themselves had to kill the animals they ate. Such
visits should be compulsory for all meat eater..
Pythagoras, famous for his contributions to geometry and mathematics,
said, "Oh, my fellow men, do not defile your bodies with sinful foods. We
have corn, we have apples bending down the brances with their weight,
and grapes swelling on the vines. There are sweet-flavored herbs, and
vegetables which can be cooked and softened over the fire, nor are you
denied mild or thyme-scented honey. The earth affords a lavish supply of
riches of innocent foods, and offers you banquets that involve no
bloodshed or slaughter, only beasts satisfy their hunger with flesh, and
not even all of those, because horses, cattle, and sheep live on grass."
In an essay titled On Eating Flesh, the Roman author Plutarch wrote: "Can
you really ask what reason Pythagoras had for abstinence from flesh? For
my part I rather wonder both by what accident and in what state of mind
the first man touched his mouth to gore and brought his lips to the flesh
of a dead creature, set forth tables of dead, stale bodies, and ventured to
call food and nourishment the pets that had a little before belloed and
cried, moved and lived... It is certainly not lions or wolves that we eat out
of self-defense; on the contrary, we ignore these and slaughter harmless,
tame creatures without stings or teeth to harm us. For the sake of a little
flesh we deprive them of sun, of light, of the duration of life they are
entitled to by birth and being."
Plutarch then delivered this challenge to flesh-eaters: "If you declare that
you are naturally designed for such a diet, then first kill for yourself what
you want to eat. Do it, however only through your own resources, unaided
by cleaver or cudgel or any kind of ax."
The poet Shelly was a commited vegetarian. In his essay A Vindication of
Natural Diet, he wrote, "Let the advocate of animal food force himself to a
decisive experiment on its fitness, and as Plutarch recommends, tear a
living lamb with his teeth and plunging his head into its vitals, slake his
thirst with the steaming blood...then, and then only, would he be
consistent."
Leo Tolstoy wrote that by killing animals for food, "Man suppresses in
himself, unnecessarily, the highest spiritual capacity-that of sympathy and
pity toward living creatures like himself-and by violating his own feelings
becomes cruel." He also warned, "While our bodies are the living graves of
murdered animals, how can we expect any ideal conditions on earth?"
When we lose respect for animal life, we lose respect for human life as
well. Twenty-six hundred years ago, Pythagoras said, "Those that kill
animals to eat their flesh tend to massacre their own." We're fearful of
enemy guns, bombs, and missiles, but can we close our eyes to the pain
and fear we ourselves bring about by slaughtering, for human
consumption, over 1.6 billion domestic mammals and 22.5 billion poultry a
year. The number of fish killed each year is in the trillions. And what ot
speak of the tens of millions of animals killed each year in the
"torture-camps" of medical research laboratories, or slaughtered for their
fur, hide, or skin, or hunted for "sport". Can we deny that this brutality
makes us more brutal too?
Leonardo da Vinci wrote, "Truly man is the king of beasts, for his brutality
exceeds theirs. We live by the death of others. We are burial places!" He
added, "The time will come when men will look upon the murder of
animals as they now look upon the murder of men."
Mahatma Gandhi felt that ethical principles are a stronger support for
lifelong commitment to a vegetarian diet than reasons of health. "I do
feel," he stated, "that spiritual progress does demand at some stage that
we should cease to kill our fellow creatures for the satisfaction of our
bodily wants." He also said, "The greatness of a nation and its moral
progress can be judged by the way its animals are treated."
