I’ve had a nagging prick of conscience lately about eating meat. The more time I spend with my dog the harder it is for me to justify killing any sentient animal just so I can eat it with french fries. My dog has thoughts. Like, real thoughts, beyond the instincts of eating and shitting and sleeping. He calculates and plans. He has empathy. He carries a spectrum of ‘feelings’ from joy to depression. He knows he’s alive. In principle, there is no difference between my bulldog, a cow, a chicken or a pig. I simply view one as my flesh and blood child and the others simply as flesh and blood - this definitely doesn’t sit right in my mind.

The culture of meat in this country is overwhelming (and delicious). There are too many disgusting accounts of the meat and poultry industries and it makes me gag to think about it. But I think I have a deeper problem than ‘how’ the animals are raised and slaughtered, it’s the ‘why’ that keeps nagging at me. I believe in the food chain, the harvest, hunting and gathering and pigs on spits at luaus. I understand the evolutionary importance of our ability to kill for sustenance, but it still feels wrong to raise an animal just so I can eat it later. It just doesn’t seem right. But then again, this whole concept of “right and wrong” doesn’t exist in nature. If we’re all just animals we can go and hunt and slaughter whatever the hell we want. Nature truly doesn’t give a fuck. The great irony here is that my dog only eats food made from organic, farm-raised Canadian salmon. So make of that what you will.

When it comes down to it, meat is an addiction. I know in my mind that I disagree with it, but I do it anyway. I’m addicted. I mean, really, what am I gonna do? Eat a tofu burger on Independence Day? Never. Well, maybe. One day. Don’t hold me to it. Probably not. Forget I said anything. And don’t tell my wife. But really, I don’t know what to do. Try the weekday vegetarian thing? Only eat organic, humanely raised, grass-fed animals? Only eat non-sentient animals like fish and shrimp? Just never eat anything good and die? God I could go for some fried chicken right now. 

I try to stay away from ranting vegans and zealot eco-freaks on issues like this, so I started reading Melanie Joy’s book, Why We Love Dogs, Eat Pigs and Wear Cows: An Introduction to Carnism. Seriously, social psychology can explain everything in 3 minutes (sociology majors unite!). 

Also, read a great interview with the author in Good Magazine:

“When you’re born into this dominant, carnistic culture, you inevitably absorb the system’s logic as your own. In other words, we learn to see the world through the lens of carnism. Carnism conditions us to disconnect psychologically and emotionally from the truth of our experience when we eat meat (and other animal products). It allows us to disconnect the meat on our plate from the living being it once was. When people sit down to a plate of beef stew, they’re not thinking about the cow that it came from. They’re not saying, “I’m eating a dead animal.” They’re saying, “I’m eating food,” and therefore they’re feeling no disgust. However, if that same person were fed a guinea pig or swan, they would likely not be able to help but envision a living being, and feel repulsed eating that animal.”

And yes, I recognize the flip-flop I’m doing here considering things I’ve written in the past. That was fun to write and I love flip-flops.