Questions About Vegetarianism
Alexander Dupuy
In earlier discussions, people have said that you aren't a vegetarian if you
eat chicken or fish, leading to the current discussion on whether ovo/lacto-
vegetarians do or don't eat eggs/milk. While this is technically correct,
there is really a continuum of moral questions here, and while I don't consider
people who avoid red meat vegetarians in any real sense of the word, I thought
I would quote some of a passage in the book which finally convinced me that I
should be a vegetarian, *Animal Liberation*, by Peter Singer.
[from the chapter entitled "Becoming a Vegetarian"]
"The reason for [refusing to eat slaughtered birds or mammals] may be the
belief that it is wrong to kill these creatures for the trivial purpose of
pleasing our palates; or because even when these animals are not intensively
raised they suffer in the various other ways described in the previous chapter.
Now more difficult questions arise. How far down the evolutionary scale
shall we go? Shall we eat fish? What about shrimps? Oysters? To answer these
questions we must bear in mind the central principle on which our concern for
other beings is based. As I said in the first chapter, the only legitimate
boundary to our concern for the interests of other beings is the point at which
it is no longer accurate to say that the other being has interests. To have
interests, in a strict non-metaphorical sense, a being must be capable of
suffering or experiencing pleasure. ...
So the problem of drawing the line is the problem of deciding when we are
justified in assuming that a being is incapable of suffering. ... With birds
and mammals the evidence is overwhelming. Reptiles and fish have nervous
systems that differ from those of mammals in some important respects, but share
the basic structure of centrally organized nerve pathways. Fish and reptiles
show most of the pain behavior that mammals do. ...
When we go beyond fish to the other forms of marine life commonly eaten by
humans the existence of a capacity for pain becomes more questionable.
Crustaceans---crabs, shrimps, prawns, lobsters---have nervous systems that are
more like those of insects than those of vertebrate animals. They are complex
enough but so differently organized from our own that it is difficult to be
confident one way or the other about whether they feel pain. ... There may be
room for doubt, but it does seem that crustaceans deserve the benefit of the
doubt.
Some other edible sea creatures, however, belong to a very different order.
Oysters, clams, mussels, scallops and the like are mollusks, and mollusks are
in general very primitive organisms. ... Those who want to be absolutely
certain that they are not causing suffering will not eat mollusks either; but
somewhere between a shrimp and an oyster seems as good a place to draw the line
as any, and better than most.
... What I have written may surprise some vegetarians, since, after all,
mollusks are animals. But even the line between animal and vegetable realms is
not precise, as disagreements among biologists about newly discovered
micro-organisms regularly show. So long as we keep in mind the reasons for
being a vegetarian we will be less concerned with a rigid adherence to the
animal/vegetable distinction, and more concerned with the nature and
capabilities of the being we are thinking of eating."
So what am I? a lacto-ovo-mollusco-vegetarian, although I don't always
give small crustaceans the benefit of the doubt (something I am not proud of).
@alex
arpa: du...@columbia.edu
uucp: ...!seismo!columbia!dupuy
too...@endot.uucp
parents both were. They became vegetarians
after converting to the Seventh-day
Adventist religion. I'm not sure that
the animal 'suffering' was the reason
for not eating meat but rather the
general cleanliness of the animal.
As a side comment, I remember once reading
in a Reader's Digest that the Seventh day
Adventists as a whole had less heart trouble
basically due to the foods they ate (or
didn't eat!) They also stayed away from
seafood and chicken (which some don't consider
to be "meat"). I always told people we
just wouldn't eat anything that "had babies"
and that seemed to clear things up. That is
except for those who wanted to argue about
whether or not vegetables/fruits/plants "had
babies"....!!
kathy