Does Cooking Meat Mean you are no Longer Vegetarian?
April 1st 2009 21:00
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Unlike the rest of my family, I am not religious. I still eat meat and often I feel hypocritical as I love animals. On the other hand, one only needs to look at the animal kingdom to see eating one other is part of their survival. So I feel it is okay to kill animals for food – but not for any other purpose unless that happens to be a by-product of the food production process. In other words, I am happy to buy leather products but I would never wear or buy fur products.
Watching my mum cook crab one night, it made me wonder how she could say she was a vegetarian when she continued to kill crabs and cook them. Okay, she’s not the one eating them but she may as well if she’s going to kill them in the first place. Isn’t the whole idea behind vegetarianism the opposition to killing animals for food (or anything else for that matter)?
The other thing which I find incongruous about my mum is she still has her fur coats.
On the other hand, she uses two sets of utensils when she cooks: one for veges and the other for meat. The same rule applies at the dinner table.
When I asked my mum why doesn’t she just cook for herself and leave the meat cooking for my father, she said he’s a terrible cook. Still, if you say you are a vegetarian…
The answer probably lies in how extreme someone wishes to adopt a practice. For instance, I have two friends who switch from meat eating to vegetarianism and back to meat eating. They do this switch every couple of years. Then I have other Buddhist vegetarian friends whose practice of vegetarianism also excludes cooking meat products. They would be horrified by my mum and would probably perceive her as being hypocritical. But none of these friends ever imposed their beliefs on other people, unlike Sharon, a girl I was friends with at school. Sharon loved to go around saying, “Meat is murder” to anyone who would listen. Still, I liked her for the strength of her convictions.
I’m sorry, mum, but I think part of your behaviour is hypocritical. Does anyone else agree?
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Comment by Kleonaptra
Kalikapsychosis
Technically, buddhisim means you cannot take anythings life. That means in the case of veggies and grains, they cannot be 'harvested' but must be finished their life cycle before being processed.
I once thought about becoming a vegetarian, but even lettuce can scream, so it seemed a bit redundant. Now Im on property Ive eaten chickens I raised.
For me, the biggest hypocrisy in vegetarians is dairy products. Everyone thinks its ok, because cows just get milked, and they need to be milked. But what do cows have to do to produce milk? Have babies. Calves are slaughtered on a massive scale through dairy farms - if you visit one, there will always be a full 'calf shed' of little babies waiting for slaughter - so I just think most vegetarians arent seeing the big picture.
Comment by Queenie
Quirky Folk
Quirky Queenie
What is scary is that I think most people - myself included - don't know much about agriculture. I find the idea of eating dairy and being a vegetarian hypocritcal as well.
Comment by Anonymous
In addition to the fact we have tiny canines, an horizontally moving jaw, an herbivorous digestive system, and other qualities such as the need to cook meat before consumption only make the "natural" argument weaker.
You should understand the meat you eat is not from wild animals hunted by wild humans. Rather, this meat is from genetically artificially selected animals brought into this world by humans for the sole reason to die for their meat. I hope you'll reconsider what you think is a morally justifiable position for taking the lives of animals.
Comment by Michelle Sweeney
Competition Queen
I don't wear fur though and growing up on a farm I am well aware of processes that go into agriculture and farming. But it is my choice, I do it for me and I guess over the years have had a fair amount of tut tuts and people trying to get me into deep arguments about my lifestyle choices but I really don't delve into that aspect of it.