From the butchery down my street
I went to the market to get some fish. The butcher had a whole cow’s head onto the block. He sliced the bottom, cut the tongue out, and put the head on the ground. I was a bit shocked but he and everyone in line looked nonplussed. I eat beef, but I am not accustomed to looking it in the eye. This is extra strange because cows are effectively my neighbors. Yesterday this big pregnant white cow came into the garden to eat some grass. We hand fed it a few mangos and I petted the beast, which was really quite sweet. The thing that gets me is the eyes. Even on the dead cow, the same poignant eyes.
So, is it wrong to eat cows? I like cows. I asked a kid and he said he liked cows and that we shouldn’t eat them. Then I told him that hamburger was cow and he changed his mind. Which is pretty much my dilemma.
There are numerous reasons to not eat beef, chief among them is that it’s not necessary. You can get perfectly adequate protein and pleasure from vegetarian food. Eating beef comes at the cost of animal death, terrible suffering in western industrial farms, severe environmental degradation, etc. The question is not whether one should be veg or non-veg, that is somewhat black and white. My question is, what are the moral gradients of meat?
Obviously, we don’t eat humans. I think we can all agree on that. Is our eating of other meat a gradation on that moral concern? Human evolution began with, uh, stuff and then more complex stuff, fish, reptilian stuff, mammals, monkeys, etc. I will argue that we feel squeamish in the reverse order. There is a core of self-concern, and then a broader widening of the concept of self.
We came from plants a long long time ago, so it is OK to eat them. Fish, old, barely remember the last family reunion, safe to eat. Reptiles, I guess, but still scary. Dinosaurs did turn into chickens and turkeys, however, and those are fine to eat. Then mammals like pigs and cows which – despite being intelligent relatives – are still good to eat. Note that two major religions (Islam and Hinduism) do break off here. Then monkeys, which very very few people eat, then humans, eaten by even less, and finally God, eaten only by Catholics and Anglicans.
Most casual vegetarians or vegecurious like myself will eat along this scale. Eucharist – no, human – no, monkeys – no, beef/pig – maybe, chicken – OK, dinosaur – definitely, fish – sushi? fuck yeah, vegetable – of course.
Beef/pig are both a bit close to home, which is why ethical systems seem to break their carnation off before others. Which I now get. In America you might see cows from a distance, but here I literally have one in my yard each morning. And it’s really cute. It’s got these eyes which honestly look a lot like mine, and they look the same even when its head is severed and on the block. Which is starting to freak me out a little bit. I am simply not used to making eye contact with what I eat. Sometimes you catch a reflection of yourself.
Yes. A lot of Sri Lankans have a hell of a lot in common with cows and bulls, so I completely understand their concern.
Joking aside, I don’t see what the problem is – technically speaking, from a buddhist perspective, you accrue a lot less pau by eating a beef curry than you do when eating something like a haalmesso curry (seeing as all beings are equal and a hell of a lot more lives are lost in the making of a haalmesso curry). Also, beef is a good clean meat, which you can eat with minimal cooking, which you just couldn’t do with pork or chicken.
Read “Eating Animals” by Jonathan Safran Foer
Somewhat related post here tries to answer this moral dilemma of eating or not-eating meat, without referring to any religious moral code.
http://www.secularsrilanka.com/discussions/prasad-s-rants/eating-meat-and-buddhist-moral-code
[quote]
Let’s see how a consequentialist goes about determining whether eating meat is bad or not. Let’s start with the premise that “suffering or causing suffering is bad”. Animals being killed suffer at least momentarily, Suffering could be greater for higher-order animals capable of emotions than lower-order animals like fish. Regardless they all feel pain. In addition to the animal being killed, any other animals having some sort of a bond with the killed animal also suffer. There can be a valid philosophical question “why suffering is bad”. Answering that point from an atheist point of view will make this essay tediously lengthy and unreadable, therefore lets skip that.
When one consumes meat habitually, they contribute to the market for meat. To satisfy the demand of meat, animals will be killed. When you eat more meat, more animals will be killed. When animal farm industry tries to maximize the profits, the living conditions of the animals will be greatly reduced. In those conditions, animals suffer even when they are alive. Thus if you don’t like animals to suffer, meat eating is bad, period! That is rather black and white. However, a consequentialist might not come up with a black and white action plan such as “either I eat meat or I don’t”; rather they might take a stepwise approach as explained in following link ….
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Do you think Buddhism has a Pin/Paw account system or something? Eating a small part of a cow is better than eating a lot of haalmasso? Really?
Displaying a head like that is disgusting. The reason I don’t go to meat stalls is because I hate to see those hanging flanks and stuff, which is bad enough. You don’t feel guilty when you buy a neat little bit at the supermarket counter. You could even delude yourself that it’s not even meat.
This pic will put me off it for a while, but I’ll probably forget soon. (sigh)
I know what you mean about their eyes. They have such expressive, loving eyes. And little calves (veal?) are so cute. :(
You should see the size of them American bulls (mostly bred for culling). Our butchers would never have seen such big ‘uns in their lives.
If vegetarians love cows so much, why do you eat all their food?
“You can get perfectly adequate protein and pleasure from vegetarian food.”
Protein yes (heck, you can get that from a few pills) but pleasure???? I don’t think there’s any vegetable that can come close to an Angus steak, a good pork chop, or a mutton biryani — I think you need to exile your taste buds from your tongue before you can say that.
The only reason I can think of to justify vegetarianism is religious feelings, and even that is practiced with rather amusing logic. Aside from the Muslim and Jewish taboo on certain animals, most religious aversion to meat is on the grounds that animals have souls and therefore shouldn’t be killed. I don’t think a pig’s soul is more valuable than a salmon’s. However, Hindus hold cows as sacred, so there’s some justification there in not eating beef, but a Hindu who thinks a cow is sacred shouldn’t be killing anything else either. Most Sri Lankans seem to think that not eating beef means you’re a vegetarian. They’re quite cool in eating a plateful of batter-fried prawns, but a steak, horrible! And yes, Shammi, eating a dozen prawns or halmassas is worse than having a few lumps of beef curry if you’re counting souls.
As for quality of meat, here in SL, the best you can get is pork. It’s also healthier than beef or chicken if you get rid of the fat — pork is white meat. Saying pork isn’t clean meat is rubbish — most fish and shellfish eat carrion, and lots lof SL cattle eat garbage, plus 25% of SL beef cattle have hoof-and-mouth disease — as long as the creature isn’t ingesting toxins, the meat is clean.
It’s also quite absurd (though understandable) to not eat certain animals because it goes against one’s cultural sensitivities. The Brits and Germans think nothing of eating cows and lambs but are appalled at the French and Italians who eat horses. The French have no problem eating frogs and snails but are disgusted by southeast Asians who eat rats and grasshoppers. Similarly, the horse-eating Italians can’t understand the dog- and cat-eating Koreans. Sri Lankans who happily gobble down crabs, prawns and lobsters, are shocked by southeast Asians who eat spiders and scorpions (which basically look like crabs and lobsters). Indians who think nothing of eating eels can’t imagine how a Vietnamese can eat a snake. And so on.
In the end, I think you should eat what you like or not, but just stop preaching about it. You might as well write a thesis about how much more masculine the sarong is over the gay kilt.
Its a valid argument, really, from a Buddhist perspective. Which incidentally I don’t really subscribe to, but that’s another matter altogether.
Think about it. All beings are equal in Buddhism, right? So a haalmessa is clearly equal to a cow or even an elephant. Killing a living being gets you pau. I can’t remember much from daham paasal, but from what I remember, killing a living being is regular pau, whereas killing your parents or haamuduruwo is supersized pau. Or something.
Now a few dozen people could be satisfied by eating the meat of a single cow (as in one cow, as opposed to a cow who is not in a relationship), but a few dozen haalmessas have to die for a single person to have haalmessa curry.
So, prathyaksha asuren, eating haalmessa curry gets you significantly more pau than eating a beef curry.
Anyway, whats the big deal? Most of our Sri Lankan Buddhists talk the pious talk and then eat meat, steal, fornicate, lie and booze.
the pic does make me sad – but i don’t think I’d ever give up Mc Donalds.
i think that’s reality for a looooot of people.
Actually it was someone else counting souls, I am more concerned about the animals being hurt unnecessarily, in farms, while being transported and at slaughter. But what you said made me feel a little better, though beef or pork is a rare treat for me, as the rest of the household have either given up or are allergic.
I wouldn’t call that garbage the serve up at Mc Donalds, meat.
lol, concern for ‘the unnecessary hurt’ is actually more hilarious than the counting souls logic
prbly more selfish too (since it buys an individual more moral happiness than when one simply um, counts souls)
To be honest the only decent steak i’ve had here was at the Bavarian.
: ( Thanks a lot, Killjoy!
Hey Indi,
Why is it cool to eat Veg? Plants are living beings. They have cells just like animals. These cells multiply and divide. They don’t have Eyes, and they definitely don’t yell and scream when massacred. Plus without plants no animals could survive. Only they can turn seemlessly plain ol’ sunlight to energy.
So is it just the eyes that bother you?
Boiling water is also unfair I would assume.. you are killing millions, perhaps billions of harmful and harmless organisms. Damn if there was a pin/pau account. We’d all be hell in debt!
If Plants had eyes, I guess they would be hard to eat too huh? Call me weird, but I think its the plants that need saving.
After much pondering, I have calmed myself with the idea that its always been “the survival of the fittest”, whether you liked it or not. In the jungle and in the streets.
I never know what to eat. Good post.
Agreed.
But pork is NOT white meat.
Moral relativism I guess. However, “survival of the fittest” is most of the time misinterpreted as “survival of the ruthless”, or the “survival of the selfish” which is a very wrong interpretation according to the evolutionary biology. Please do a Google search for “Gene centered view of evolution” and look for the word “altruism” in the Wikipedia article at the top.
If you have Sinhala fonts and if you can read Sinhala please have a look at :
http://www.secularsrilanka.com/discussions/prasad-s-rants/understanding-evolution
quote from above article
“????? ?? ???? ???? ?????? ?????? ???, ???????????????, ??? ???? ?? ??? ???????? ??????? ????? ???????-????????? ??? ????? ??? ??????? ??????? ???? ????. ?????? (Oraganism) ???????? ?????? ?????? ?????? ??? ?????? ??? ??????? ?????? ?????? ??????? ?????????? (Richard Dawkins) ??????? ??????????? ???????? ?? “????” ???????? ?????? ?????? (Gene centric model of evolution) ?????? ??. ????, ??????, ???????, ?????????? ?? “????” ?????? ???????? ??????? ???? ???????? ????? ????? ???? ???? ?????? ????????? ?????? ????? ?? ?? ?????? ???? ????? “?????????” ???? ?????? ?????? ????.”
I’m afraid it is. And healthier than our additive-laden chicken.
Oops. sorry about all the “???” marks. Looks like this blog does not support Sinhala fonts
I must say that as a foreigner I was shocked to see how the Sri Lankan Buddhists were so much in veneration of the cow. None of the Buddhists I worked with ate beef. They abhorred it to the point that they really hate people who eat beef and look down upon people who eat beef. It is so important to them that they judge you on whether you eat beef or not. Very surprising if you ask me, but then again I was thinking this same thing happens in India.