Blurred Palates
an opinion by Ali Yazman

I still eat meat… maybe only a tiny fraction of what I was eating some years ago… but I still do.

I stopped eating chicken though. You see, I watched a disturbing documentary about contemporary chicken farming, and found the current practices quite different than the ones on my dad’s farm of 40 years ago…and despite the fact that I did not see a single dead chicken during the coverage, I saw a lot of live ones under horrible conditions, suffering terribly. So I decided to stop consuming any animal that has had to suffer to this extent in order to become food on my table. Red meat is next. The video that stopped the rest of my family from eating meat altogether – and this one, I am told, also covers a lot of blood and gore – is burning a hole through my desk. It is only a matter of time now.

But I have questions. Questions I have no answers for, and questions I am not expecting to find answers for. But troubling questions nevertheless.

Where do I draw the line?

Is a cow raised for milk production suffering any less than a cow raised for its meat? If not, then there goes the dairy neighborhood… out with the cheese, the milk, and the yogurt. And one more thing… I find it unlikely that these dairy cows retire on a green pasture in the Alps, when their dairy producing days are over. It is most probable that they meet the same fate as the meat-cow, and end up on someone’s plate… again after having led a life of sufferance.

The same goes for egg-hens. Do they suffer any less than their colleagues, who are harvested for their meat? From what I have seen, I’d say probably more. So what now… Out with the eggs?

What makes us draw such lines as to which living being – and their by-products - to consume and which not?

How do we know whether a lobster, which is caught, crammed live into a box with umpteen others, transported over thousands of miles, kept in a tiny crowded tank of water, and finally dumped live into boiling water, suffers less than let’s say … a chicken, which has been kept confined in a tiny cage for months, with its claws growing into the wire, debeaked, never having had the chance to walk and peck, let alone see daylight and enjoy fresh air.

How do we make that distinction, when proudly announcing that we don’t eat meat, we delve into a “Lobster Termidor”?

What makes the same person, who throws up in disgust and horror at the mention of a
“Cocker Spaniel al Forno” or “Siamese Fricassee”, go out the same evening and cut into a rack of lamb with great gusto… a lamb, which has been removed from its mother at weeks old, with bones still so soft that they literally can be consumed together with the meat.

Does one feel better knowing a wild duck was taken down instantly by a single bullet, after it has spent its life in freedom?

How does that compare to the ostrich raised in captivity for its meat?

What are the criteria here? How the animal has died, or how it has lived?

Is ignorance bliss in this case? … And is this acceptable?

Isn’t it hypocritical of us to revolt at nations eating dogs, while we freely enjoy suckling pigs on a spit… piglets which have had no better life or end than those dogs?

Horsemeat is closing in on the number one spot of meats sold in Europe. What makes us cringe at that, but not at tons of sardines flowing like molten silver out of the holds of a fishing boat? What makes one dead horse so precious, and millions of dead fish so insignificant?

Size…sound…abundance?

Is the salmon, which makes a complex journey - taking years over thousands of miles - without a hitch, less intelligent than a cow, which can’t make it back home from the pasture without a shepherd?

And who is to say, that a farm salmon, living in captivity in overcrowded tiny pools all its life, suffers less than a rabbit in a tight pen.

For example, is it O.K. to celebrate the rescue of a beached whale with a bucket of barbequed wings that same night?

How acceptable is the planning of next day’s “Save the Seal Pup” demonstration over a slab of Porterhouse Steak with all the trimmings?

I don’t know… I’m just asking…

Do shrimp feel pain?

Do we know how goose-liver pate is made? How many of us want to know?

Once we start…where do we go from there?

What is within reason… and at what point have we gone overboard?

So I’m asking again…

Where does one draw the line?