dead baby bird and diet

[adrienmundi]

I just moved a dead baby bird from the middle of our driveway to the base of one of my favorite trees, with a shovel and a quiet, but still heartfelt, "I'm sorry, little one". A distant part of my mind wondered what my neighbors would think if I started crying, but it was safely at arm's reach.

Strangely, this got me to thinking about food, about my relationship with what I eat. I ate chicken today for lunch, but almost wept at the sight of a still fuzzy dead bird in my driveway. I don't think it's just proximity, that it was my home, and I don't think it's detached compartmentalization (despite the very careful work of most of the food industry to distance omnivores from the source of their meat).

There is an entire class of animals I won't eat because they come uncomfortably close to my understanding of human intelligence (octopus, pig, crow, squid, monkey, elephant, dolphin, whale, etc); there is the class of animals I won't eat because of safety (cow, too much fish or sea bugs); animals I won't eat, or eat less of, for environmental reasons (red meat, fish again, caged chicken). All of these feel like valid reasons for me, and I'm pretty OK with my stance there. It's when I get into thinking about not eating some or all animals out of compassion that I stumble.

I think, unless it was a matter of simple survival, if my choice was killing an animal myself or eating greens, I'd be a vegetarian in a quick second, but I'm not sure that's just about compassion; I'm strangely prissy about things, particularly about things that should be inside bodies being outside. It's not that I'm not compassionate, I don't think. But, if that becomes an important criteria, where does that leave me, exactly? I have very warm, personal feelings for many plants, and this only grows with time. If I let that guide me, my sense of connection, empathy and compassion to living things, I wouldn't be able to eat anything. I don't say this as a justification for the meat industry (which I really dislike, but of which I still decreasingly partake), or to excuse my own taste for certain foods (I gave up pulled pork, for gods' sake), but as a genuine sticking point in my own ethics and diet. If anyone's experienced similar, I'd be keen to hear it.

Comments

[arjache.livejournal.com]

I felt a similar conflict when I got a tomato plant^[1] I eventually concluded that, while I still am unsure how I feel about eating leaves and grains, it is at least ethical to eat fruit and nuts, since they are pretty much intended to be eaten as a means of seed dispersal, and for most kinds of fruit don't really cause any trauma to the plant when harvested - especially given they'd eventually fall off on their own accord anyway.

Although, I suspect I'm not much better in the general food ethics department, so take that with a grain of salt. I generally keep vegan at home, with some occasional egg consumption, but when eating out I'll eat meat because I can't digest dairy and it's very hard to find non-dairy vegetarian options.

[1] Which, sadly, I managed to kill, but that's another story.

[adrienmundi]

Yeah, I've heard of "fruititarians", but I'm not sure I can easily convert for reasons of lazy convenience as well as my own weird blood sugar issues (a mild hypoglaecemia). I don't know, it's tricky.

[scottopic.livejournal.com]

Insofar as they have consciousness as we understand it, plants 'understand' their position in terms of consuming and being consumed. I think this is true for animals as well, but YMMV.

[adrienmundi]

I'm not sure I quite follow, but I'd like to. Are you speaking of personal experience/insight, of studies, or of something else?

I have a hard time understanding why humans are the 'top' of the food chain. I mean sure, we're eaten by microorganisms when dead, but it takes a lot until then to sustain us. Again, not saying we necessarily deserve less, but why do we deserve more? I don't think there are easy answers.

[arcticturtle.livejournal.com]

I am hypocritical, in that I can't handle slaying anything but explicitly evil invertebrates (horseflies, mosquitoes), or even finding it dead, yet I'm not a vegetarian.

I had to cut down two healthy trees last month, too, because they were crowding and rotting our roof. I felt awful, evil, destructive. I've never felt the same with regards to other plants because... I guess I feel it's their purpose. We're not coming to plants minding their own business and destroying them, we're making a place for them, planting them, growing them, harvesting them, and saving seeds to continue the cycle, actually helping them proliferate overall. With more hesitation, the same concept applies to farmed animals. If nobody wanted to eat farm animals, after all, they would become extinct.

Really, I've got one set of standards intellectually - I don't believe, intellectually, that killing animals for food is wrong. (I do believe that it is wrong to treat them indecently while they're alive, so I do try harder and harder to stick to meat that I know wasn't factory-farmed.) But the emotional standards kick in for anything I'd have to do personally.

[adrienmundi]

I get the perspective about propagation, from the point of view of the species, but is that right for the individual members? I think I'd probably care a lot if someone managed the human species that way, particularly at my expense or the expense of my loved ones. Maybe that's individualcentric, but I am an individual, and dearly love some other individuals, so it's hard not to let that affect me. I just don't know.

[arcticturtle.livejournal.com]

Well, I'd say it's not so much individualism as equivalence of humans and nonhumans. I think there's a lot we have in common, but we're not equivalent, so it's OK to look at nonhumans from a less individualist standpoint than I look at humans.

But that's probably part of why I can accept it happening abstractly if I'm not personally involved, because I know that cowkind will continue to prosper, but if I get personally involved with an individual cow it shifts my focus there.

If our species had reached the point where we couldn't survive by ourselves, and our options were 1. extinction or 2. survival as a domesticated, periodically harvested species... well, I'm sure there are some SF stories about that.