The most atrocious is the “all life equivalent” rationale; see vegans are only concerned with animals, but what about plants and bacteria? Oh no, never thought of that! Certainly living things are killed to make tofu! Surely the solution is to eat a cheeseburger and say a few prayers in honor of the one hundred or so bovine animals that may be ground up in a single patty.

No, of course no one argues that we consume industrial animal food (and other products); people are supposed to buy grass fed, pastured, cage-free, local farm blah, blah, blah etc. since everyone on the Internet with an opinion apparently does so. Supermarkets, fast food chains, and 99.9% of restaurants serving animal products to consumers from the industrial food system are a figment of my imagination.

It’s interesting that the only way to trump the concept of non-exploitation of animals is to advocate universal organism rights. But you would think the practice would be equivalent to being a Jain monk whisking a broom before him lest he step on any life form. Jains assign a sort of point system sentience to everything, including rocks that are assigned with sentience level of one. Oh look, early vegans who thought about “all living things” centuries before humanity began honoring the sacrifice of Christ. The modern practice of “honoring all life,” if advocates even bother to practice in any halfway consistent manner, doesn’t seem all that remarkable from mainstream animal consumption patterns, except for the layer of mysticism that doesn’t serve any practical purpose.

Everything dies, so may as will exploit and kill. How profound. Surely this will shake the bedrock of Western thought.

I have to remember to keep my sense of humor at such diversions. As Henry Salt put it in Seventy Years Among Savages (p. 173):

“The ‘mystics’ were often a great joy to us; for example, Mr. J. W. Lloyd, author of an occult work called Dawn-Thought, expressed himself as follows ‘When I go afield with my gun, and kill my little brother, the Rabbit, I do not therefore cease to love him, or deny my relationship, or do him any real wrong. I simply set him free to come one step nearer to me.’ Here was Brer Fox again, only funnier. We suggested to Mr. Lloyd that ‘ Brawn-Thought’ might be a more appropriate title for his book.”

On a related note, Jonathan Balcombe was recently on the Diane Rehm Show:
http://thedianerehmshow.org/shows/2010-03-16/jonathan-balcombe-second-nature

The interview was fine until the host took callers. Listening to those tired old arguments was grueling. I couldn’t believe Balcombe actually had to answer those inane comments and kudos to him for being as polite as was. Once “I’m-not-Native-American-but-I-play-one-on-the-radio” guy came on describing his brand of shamanism it really diminished my hope for the future of humanity. Seriously, why did NPR even let that caller on the radio? And in those types of animal discussions why is there always, always, a deer hunter that calls in?

Rhetorical questions of course. I’ll wrap up with another quote from Salt (p.169):

“It was said by Gibbon, that it was the privilege of the medieval church ‘to defend nonsense by cruelties.’ Nowadays we see the patrons of sport, vivisection, butchery, and other time-honoured institutions, adopting the contrary process, and defending cruelties by nonsense. And by what nonsense! I do not know where else one can find such grotesque absurdities, such utter topsy-turvydom of argument, as in the quibbling modern brutality which gives sophisticated reasons for perpetuating savage customs.”

It's completely self-contradicting.

No, what we should eat is a matter of common sense. And to say that it's a matter of "personal conscience" admits that it is a moral issue, and hence there is right way and a wrong way to approach the situation to which our conscience can direct us. "Personal conscience" either means our inner sense of what is right, or it means nothing, and is just a smoke screen for "personal preference."

What astounds me is how evil shows up more often cloaked as goodness than as obvious wrongdoing; it cannot take the light itself, and doesn't want to be seen in the light by others. "The banality of evil" (thank you for the apt phrase, Hannah Arendt) pretending to be spirituality, peace, honor, and, yes, even conscience.

No matter what the "denomination", sect, or mystical cant – It's all the same fable created to appease whims. And yes – Pollan and his ilk all worship at the same sacrificial alter. They are *happy*! "The Great Spirit" is happy! And so are the animals for they have been "honored to serve" their "purpose".

None but a heretic could possibly challenge this cozy arrangement! So those with a conscience? Beware of molten lead!