To be, or not to be.. (vegetarian, that is)

Two expperiences stand out concerning this topic.The second sememster in Kenya I taught at the elementary school of the Katheka Kai Coffee cooperative. I was invited to the wedding of a fellow teacher, held in the town not far from the Coop. I didn't know them well, but they were honored to have an American attend their wedding.  The wedding feast consisted of store bought white bread and bottles of Coca Cola, which they were also very proud of. Not long after that I was invited to dinner at the compound of the assistant manager of the Coop, Musioka. He and I had become friends. He was not much older than I but had two wives and several young children.  They lived in a compound that consisted of 3 thatched-roof huts, one for Musioka and one each for the wives and their respective chldren.  Unbeknownst to me they had slaughterd one of their goats for the occasion.  I ate the entire meal, including the meat, understanding what an honor it was. That was the end of being a vegetarian then.  I knew that I would never turn down meat offered in my honor, especially if it was offered by someone from another culture who had an income of fraction of what I lived on, even as a student.

Many years later, in 1996 I became a follower of Thich Nhat Hanh, a Vietnamese Buddhist monk and world reknown leader for peace.  After attending 3 week-long retreats, I decided I could no longer eat meat. Not long after that decision, I was on a trip to visit my high school roomate in the Pacific Northwest.  She and her husband were trying to stick to a low fat vegetarian diet.  I found that my energy dropped very low and at first attributed it to jet-lag and just traveling in general.  However, it only got worse. One day I was out shopping and I decided I just had to have some protein and bought some fried fish- and ate it.  My energy came right back up to its usual level! That was the end of that try.

I was in my early forties and I had begun to notice that I was being affected by seasonal allergies, which had not been a problem ever before.  I talked with one of my sisters about this and she recommended I checkout the blood type diet.  This is a theory that people should eat according to their blood type. I am an O, which is the original human blood type.  The O diet is basically what hunter-gatherers would eat: leafy green veggies and meat, especially red meat! I tried it and was amazed.  I lost weight, the allergies cleared up and I had loads of energy. The leading proponent of this diet, Dr. Peter D'Adamo, has advised people of the O blood type to be careful to eat only organic, grass-fed meat, with no hormones or pesticide residues, which, of course, is pretty darned expensive! But...my health trumped expense.

So I am a dedicated omnivore- that is I eat veggies and meat, and just about anthing else except wheat or things with much gluten in it.  You see, it turns out that O's have wheat intolerance, and don't like grains very much at all- or should I say grains don't like us? But I do suffer from the ominvore's dilemna, though not, perhaps exactly the one Micheal Pollen made famous.  I find that I can no longer eat factory farmed food especially meat.  I know too much! I've read about and seen movies about, feedlots and slaughter houses that can only be described as worse than concentration camps for animals! Egg 'factories' where chickens are caged in such cramped quarters they can't even turn around and the points of their beaks are seared off so the bored-out-of-their-minds birds will not peck each other to death. These animals are being tortured.

So why am I still a meat eater at all? Because I do not think that death is necessarily bad or constitutes torture.  In fact, I believe we 'kill' or destroy whatever we eat.  This is the nature of the universe we live in and especially the nature of life here on planet earth.  All life requires the taking of life to sustain itself.  I used to think that trees and plants did not do this, until I realized that plants destroy the photons they are able to get directly from the suns eminations, and they also 'drink'  water, with microbes in it, destroying many of them also as they use the molecules to create more of themselves.  Death is an intimate part of life- we create unhappiness when we try to deny this turth. Of course it makes sense to minimize this and certainly to draw lines beyond which we cannot go.  But, at least, in some sense these efforts are always arbitrary.

Torture is where I draw the line, or where I attempting to draw the line.  I also try to remember to thank everything I eat for its life, plantsas well as animals.  And I also try and rmember to thank all those whose effort bringis the food to my plate, all the 72 labors that made it possible (as some Buddhists remind us).  These days I am eating less meat and more vegetables. I almost never eat meat when I am not at home since I can never be sure that it was not tortured. That said, I can still not turn down what someone else has cooked for me as a guest in their home.  I am also opposed to wasting good food and I am deeply concerned about poverty, starvation and food security.

To that end I would like to propose a new movement: LOVEPAT; Local Ominvores & Vegetarians Ending Poverty & Animal Torture.  Our goal is food security for all through local democratically controlled food production everywhere accross the globe and an end to factory farming. 

"Eat food, not too much, mostly plants." Micheal Polen.