Questioning why and how we meat — not your usual vegan statement
In the past year I have been thinking considerably about why we humans eat meat. I do eat meat, but there are aspects about which I, like some others of us, had never thought well enough before.
I now decided to share what my reflections on the topic are so far.
Nonetheless, with this post I don’t want to convince you to change your diet, neither awe you with chocking facts. I am simply opening the discussion to whoever may want to join, always with respect to each others decisions.
We adore the live animals we eat
The first point is about the fact that most of us find a lot of the animals adorable, specially if they’re newborn mammals — they’re more similar to us and… well, they’re quite cute. Besides this, we are against certain practices, as the purchase of animal fur and, in situations as seeing an animal hurt on the road, we feel pity for them and some of us may have even stop to help.
The fact is that we do love animals, to pat them, to protect and nurture them but, unless we’ve got emotionally attached to specific individuals, we accept that they will sooner or later be killed for dinner.
But why is it this way? Is because Homo Sapiens’ relied on meat to evolve and survive? Does this behaviour make sense nowadays?
I don’t have the final answer, neither is my intent for this post. But it’s something I find intriguing to think about — I don’t believe we should rest on current behaviours just because it “always has been the way it is”.
We aren’t conscious of what happens before dinner
My thoughts about why we eat animals are not new, but what triggered me to think deeper about this was when I started to think more consciously of how animals are treated. And I’m not speaking about the ocasional horror stories, I’m speaking specifically of how the meat industry is designed, I’m speaking about the events happening every day on the animal farms of this world (which vary from country to country).
Currently, much of the meat industry is designed to treat living creatures which have complex emotional worlds as if they were machines. Animal farms are optimized to produce the most meat (or other byproduct) per unit of time. This is likely to cause them not only physical discomfort, but also much social and psychological stress.
I can understand why meat is so deeply rooted in our culture, but what makes it difficult for me to understand is how we treat animals during their lifetime. I don’t see why we should be so numb about their life quality before turning them into food.
The future is kill free
I do believe that humanity will evolve towards not eating meat when the experience of not-eating animals is as good as eating them — when it’s as easy, tasty and cheap.
There are fantastic vegan meals out there, but currently the great majority of the population is neither educated of how a vegan diet should happen, and more importantly, simply doesn’t want to drop meat completely. The path, in my opinion, is through lab meat.
In 2013 a lab burger cost $325. In 2015, it dropped to $11 a burger.
To create these, scientists harvest stem cells from the muscle of a live animal without harm, and place them on the right lab environment where they proliferate.
It should take just a few years until it becomes as cheap or cheaper as animal meat, and a few more to improve its qualities and be approved for consumption. It’s possibly closer than we think.
I believe that when this happens, there will be a major shift in policies for animal slaughter — eating animals will be seen as a primitive behaviour, and the only way for you to get animal burger will be through the black market.
Which doesn’t imply that we will turn out completely vegan — humans will probably still eat animal’s byproducts, since these are still hard to replicate at scale.
Not being a vegan myself, I do believe that vegans and vegetarians are living in the future.
The goal should be to optimize for quality of life
Our developed world could possibly change to a 100% vegetarian society already if we wanted to. But, that’s exactly the point: we don’t. There’s still a very long path before 30%-50% of the population resonates with the idea, which could then influence major politicians to give face for such policies and move them further, thus influencing the rest of the population.
But I do believe that positive impact — measured in animal quality of life and number of deaths — can be done without contradicting people’s wants. We can lead ourselves to change some behaviours in our diets if we have in mind that these:
- Will make a positive dent in the world, and;
- Don’t require much effort.
For example, we’re probably fine to buy eggs and meat from free-range animals if they don’t cost much differently and are available in our usual supermarket.
And every time we do that, we’re putting a vote on these type of products: we’re telling supermarkets that we want more products that guarantee better animal quality of life.
That’s what I’ve been trying to do (not perfectly though) while having ~40% vegetarian meals in between, or eating animals that I know that had a life closer to their natural habitat.
That may not be a huge change, but enough to impact hundreds of animal live’s in a positive way, and to save other few hundred per year. And since it’s easier to adopt than becoming 100% vegan, it has higher chances to be adopted by a higher number of people, leading to a even higher impact.
