'Eat more veal?' How about 'be more honest?' [Jan. 20, 2008 blog posting]

I was going to write about the food I bought from The Hungry Vegan, but that'll have to wait because there's a more urgent matter: I need to tell my friends in the UK to buy veal because it's okay to eat it now.

In "Veal Back on a Guilt-Free British Menu," by The Observer's Juliette Jowit, we learn that the former poster-child of suffering, the veal calf, has been deemed acceptable to eat, and that "There's nothing inherently cruel about veal if the calf is reared to the highest standards," according to Peter Stevenson, the chief policy officer at Compassion in World Farming.

That's a relief.

What I don't get is what's inherently humane about killing a sentient being when you don't need to. Chefs Wolfgang Puck and Jamie Oliver, whose livelihoods depend on the slaughtering of massive numbers of nonhuman animals (at least the way they set up their lives right now. They could easily become vegan chefs.), apparently cannot afford to allow their alleged sense of compassion and kindness be taken to its logical conclusion.

As you may know, when I started blogging in 2006 I probably would have agreed that veal could be back on the menu under certain circumstances. But I've since realized that I was lying to myself and others by saying that it's not right to eat animals when you don't need to, unless of course the animals were raised or killed in a certain way. But even if you don't believe in animal rights, and you really are a welfarist and concerned with compassion and kindness, I ask you:

Is it kind to tear a baby from his or her mother? Is that a demonstration of compassion?

Is it kind to take that baby to a place where almost everything about her life will be dominated and controlled by someone and she will have few choices of her own? Is that a demonstration of compassion?

Is it kind to slaughter a sentient being so you may eat her flesh? To end her life when you decide it is time to end it? Is that a demonstration of compassion?

And what of her mother, trapped in an endless cycle of insemination and milk-production, controlled by a human? Is that kind? Where's the compassion?

And how about the reality that the reason that mother cow was created was to be in the service of people who would take her babies and her milk whenever they wanted? Kindness? Compassion? Would you use either word to describe any of this?

If it's time for compassion and kindness in world farming and celebrity chefery, it should also be time for honesty. Slaughter isn't compassionate or kind, and it's up to us to help people think through that rather inconvenient truth.

[Please visit Mary's blog for related links - Like the AAS Daily Watchdog, I visit Mary's site every day]