http://www.peta2.com/college/vegfriendlycollege-08/?c=p23179

Knox column: When vegetarians and higher education mix, beware the results

Jack Knox, Times Colonist
Published: Sunday, November 23, 2008

News item No. 1: UVic is the top comprehensive university in Canada, according to a Maclean's magazine survey.

News item No. 2: UVic is the second most vegetarian-friendly university in Canada, according to peta2, the world's largest youth animal rights organization.

Well, I darn near dropped my pork chop on the newspaper, right there at the breakfast table: "I'm sorry, but isn't this an oxymoron? How can a university be both top-rated and vegetarian-friendly?"

"Careful," she replied, nibbling on her radish, or whatever passes for a morning meal in her world. "You're getting grease on your defibrillator paddles."

"I'm serious," I said. "How can students succeed without the brain-fattening goodness of meat?"

But there it was in black and white, the PETA people praising UVic's menu options: "Offering mouthwatering choices like vegan lasagna, curried faux chicken, and potatoes stuffed with chili and soy cheese, students never have to travel far to find a delicious and cruelty-free meal!" (Jeez, whatever happened to Kraft Dinner and beer?)

I shook my head in confusion, sending droplets of barbecue sauce flying across the room. When I grew up outside of Kamloops -- cattle country -- there was no such thing as a vegetarian. Just as any cyclist over the age of 15 was deemed to have been busted for drunk driving, anyone on a meatless diet was assumed to be both A) poor and B) a lousy shot. This time of year, every house had a dressed deer hanging head-down from the carport rafters. It looked like all the other deer had revolted and strung up Moosolini by his heels.

Then I moved to Vancouver Island. Deer all over the golf courses, bunnies all over UVic. "Aren't they cute?" Um, sure. Wasn't allowed to eat them. This must be what a eunuch feels like in the Playboy mansion.

The Island truly is Tofu Heaven. A few years ago, the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals rated Victoria the second most vegetarian-friendly city in Canada, just a bean sprout behind Vancouver. Whole restaurants are devoted to the sale of glorified compost. Grocers sell veggie burgers that appear to have been peeled from car tires. If, as reported, only four per cent of Canadians are vegetarian, then most of them live south of Campbell River. They're easy to spot: Lean and fit, vegetarians get around on foot or by bicycle, as opposed to carnivores, who prefer to travel by ambulance. (Homer Simpson: "Bacon up that sausage, boy." Bart: "But daddy, my heart hurts.")

The PETA people stressed the health argument in this week's press release (which, by the way, named New Brunswick's Mount Allison the most veggie-friendly university): "Consumption of animal products has been linked to heart attacks, diabetes and other killer diseases." (The way they put it, it made killer diseases sound like a bad thing.) They also tend to rattle on about avian flu and mad cow and point out that a meat-based diet requires seven times as much land as a vegetarian-based one.

Meat-eaters have two standard comebacks: A) If God didn't want us to eat meat, He wouldn't have made it taste like beef, and B) Adolf Hitler was a vegetarian.

Except he wasn't. Apparently that's a myth. According to the New York Times, ol' Adolf liked a good feed of bratwurst now and then (though it's worth noting that Armin Meiwes, the German cannibal who famously killed and ate a man he met over the Internet, has reportedly turned vegetarian in prison).

PETA can drag out some celebrity sausage-shunners of its own: Charles Darwin, our own Pamela Anderson and Clint Eastwood, who, despite stuffing his face with a hot dog while blowing people away in Dirty Harry, is not just vegetarian, but vegan. Vegans won't eat animal products at all, not eggs, not dairy, not even honey. Their diet consists primarily of small stones and the gum on the back of postage stamps. Vegans sneer at vegetarians the way nuns sneer at premarital virgins. Amateurs.

Vegetarians themselves come in a variety of flavours, none of them barbecue. Lacto-vegetarians eat dairy products but not eggs, while ovo vegetarians do the opposite. Su vegetarians shun not only animal products, but the so-called fetid vegetables: onions, leeks, garlic, scallions, shallots. Fruitarians eat only nuts, seeds and fruit -- stuff that can be collected without harming the mother plant. (Basically, fruitarians are baby-killers.)

Perhaps we should all just agree to disagree. To each his own. Live and let live. And if we can't let live, then at least don't overcook it.

© Times Colonist (Victoria) 2008

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