Reverence for life

 I want to say something about how we regard and behave towards farm animals — that are raised for our meat or milk or eggs.

First, though, in these days when vegan lifestyle is increasingly advocated as essential for a sustainable future, I want to say something about that, and explain why I am not a vegan even though I hold all life in reverence.

I am not vegan for three reasons.

The first is that I believe mixed diet to be necessary for nutritional health. There's a good article here that carefully explains why vegan diet can be an excellent de-tox and weight loss programme in the short term, but in the long term it tends to create nutritional deficit. Like many people, I don't do at all well on a vegan diet, though I certainly choose to restrict to small amounts my intake of meat (I avoid dairy because it makes me ill), since it is obtained at the cost of an animal's life. Only a little is necessary.

The second reason I'm not vegan is that I believe mixed farming is crucial to regenerative agriculture. There are various online sources of information about this, but I think Allan Savory is one of the best. I'm aware that others have challenged his perspective, but it remains true that animal dunging and trampling in herd movement on open ground (not just forest) is an important contributor to bio-diversity and planetary health. Permaculturists also include an animal component (chickens usually) to their regenerative land projects. I am utterly opposed to huge feedlots and factory farms — as I am opposed to mono-crop arable farming too — but 100% pasture fed animals are good news for the Earth, because to achieve that it is necessary to manage the land regeneratively; poor pasture won't deliver the goods.

The third reason I'm not vegan is that I believe all life is ensouled — rocks and rivers and plants as well as finned and feathered and furry beings. So I believe every being should be treated with reverence and respect; and as we do have to eat something, that reverence must extend to the beings of any species that we farm — and to the land itself, which is holy and belongs to God.

In general, when I see people propose vegan lifestyle, what I notice is that they love the animals — they honour the gentle cows and clever pigs and the chickens who have so much more personality and relatability than most of us imagine. But the thing is, without farms, those animals would cease to be. They wouldn't have a better life — they just wouldn't be born in the first place. I'd guess most animals would rather pass up life on Earth than be born to the living hell of the meat plant, but an animal can be happy in a well-run farm with trees and streams and wallows and a byre to shelter from bad weather.

Also, it's important to consider how animals die. Farm animals are slaughtered in an abattoir. The meat I eat, I buy from small family farms where the animals are slaughtered on the farm, so they never have to endure the stress of live transport and mass slaughter. Death is always a solemn and fearful prospect, but it can be done humanely. 

And the alternative is not living comfortably, for ever. A wild fox, for instance lives for two to four years; in captivity a fox can easily live to be fourteen. Predators, accidents and disease all happen to animals that are not under human care; and their deaths can involve more pain and violence, and be far more protracted, than dying in an abattoir. Best case scenario, dying of old age, if you are a ruminant will probably be from starvation when your teeth fall out.

It isn't simply a matter of life versus death — because everything that is born has to die. It's about how you live and how you die, and how to manage that responsibly, kindly and respectfully.

I eat less meat and pay a premium for the meat I do eat, in order to secure as part of the deal the highest possible animal welfare, and regenerative farming of the land.

But what I want to say here, really, is something about treating with reverence and respect those living beings who die so we can eat.

I saw a video of fishermen — pole-and-line fishing, not trawling, so sustainable and responsible — who took the fish they caught and flung each one back over their shoulder to land with force on the deck of the boat, and there bounce and writhe until they died. That's awful. They should have been killed swiftly and expertly as soon as they were caught.

At Christmas I saw a Facebook post from a local butcher showing a cartoon of two little pigs, one saying to the other "They said they're getting us blankets for Christmas." That isn't funny. It's desperately, unbearably sad.

In the same way, I hate the shop displays or online videos of Thanksgiving turkeys, dressed up as something or used like puppets. I think it's shameful.

It's important to understand that the attitude flows from and relates to the person with the attitude, not the topic they are considering. So someone who mocks an animal in its helplessness destined to die, or ridicules and makes fun of its poor dead body, or laughs at the suffering involved, is degenerating their own soul. They are sick. They are spiritually diseased. And so are we if we participate in this or tacitly go along with it.

So I support mixed farming — I eat meat and fish and poultry and eggs — but I consider that has a responsibility inescapably accompanying it; to treat farm animals with consideration and respect, to honour them, and to regard their being and their death not as a joke or a light matter, but as something holy, a gift of life to us which we should receive with humble gratitude. We should love them. We should love all the Earth.