The Month of Meat.

[rebeccmeister]

I just remembered something I've been meaning to post about for quite a while. My younger sister, sytharin, has been a vegetarian for almost as long as I have (I'm coming up on 9 years as a vegetarian, barring one or two "meat incidences" that I will not go into at the moment), but has recently been considering going back to eating meat for about a month. The Month of Meat, she calls it. She has decided to do this because there are a lot of meat products that she has never eaten as a result of being vegetarian for so long. Sushi, for example. I find it to be quite an interesting concept. The point is clearly not to gorge herself on meat, just to try what's out there so she can make a better informed decision about when to eat meat and when to not eat meat.

This is all rather interesting because it goes back to the philosophical bases for being vegetarian. I believe that many non-vegetarians misperceive the decision to not eat meat and tend to think that all vegetarians are pretty radical about their beliefs. And I have to admit that I have had some extremist vegetarian friends, the people who don't like to eat food that has been cooked on a grill that was used to prepare meat. My family has had a much looser view of vegetarianism, seeing it more as a lifestyle and not as an extremist Thou Shalt Not Eat Dead Animal Products cult.

I've been considering all of this quite a bit because I decided to eat salmon when I was home in Seattle. Salmon is a big part of the food culture of the Northwest, and I would NEVER consider eating it anywhere else in this country, but the salmon that my family ate is the one pictured below:



My mother bought it at the University Farmer's Market from a local fish distributor, and it was served as part of a family celebration.

I tend to be the most militant about my decision to not eat seafood, which is contrary to many other people who call themselves vegetarian. I think that a recent NPR story on a book about the Chilean Sea Bass is a good illustrative example of why I don't eat sea food: land-dwellers have a perception of the world's oceans as a vast, infinite space teeming with life. When it comes to commercial fishing, this couldn't be further from the truth. Sadly, farmed fish are not a good alternative, either. On the other hand, the Monterey Bay Aquarium keeps a Seafood Watch List to help seafood lovers determine which seafoods are sustainably harvested. But I still choose to not eat fish because I prefer to leave fish to those who incorporate it as an important part of their culture or those who LURV it. I live in Arizona; we have no ocean. So this is no place for seafood.

I could write more--returning to the subject of The Omnivore's Dilemma, for example, but I think that is all for now.

/vegetarian soapbox

Comments

[solar-diablo.livejournal.com]

Thanks for all the links. I've found my meat intake dwindling slowly but steadily over the last decade, and I don't see it changing anytime soon. It's been not only a reduction in the frequency, but also in the portion size when I do eat it. I think eventually I'll reach a point where I'm not vegetarian, but only consume sushi or a good steak two or three times a year, and then of course turkey during the holidays.

[mokey4.livejournal.com]

I was a fairly strict (tho not militant) vegetarian for 3-4 years, then in the Peace Corps I ate fish very occasionally and loosened up on caring about whether there were bits of meat in my food. I never liked meat though, so I didn't seek to eat it. Then when I got back from Peace Corps and discovered sushi (about 6 years ago) I started eating fish more often, and I started calling myself a pescatarian. I introduced poultry last november, and now I can no longer claim to be any sort of vegetarian- I am a person who does not eat red meat.

I guess it's kind of a slippery slope. I could easily go back to being veggie, but I mostly prefer veggie foods anyway (with the exception of canned tuna, shrimp, and sushi) and I don't feel that I need the label. I still cook tofu.

The month of meat is an interesting idea though. I have a friend who has been veggie for about 13 years and talks about eating flesh again but doesn't seem to know how to get started. Or maybe she doesn't really want to. I'll mention this to her.

[gfrancie.livejournal.com]

Interesting to note the name Chilean Sea Bass is purely for marketing purposes. It is actually called a Patagonian toothfish but it doesn't sound as sexy to a lot of diners so they just changed the name.
And the fish itself isn't even that tasty in my opinion.

[boolean263.livejournal.com]

Thank you for the seafood watch list! That's definitely good to know. Anyone who'd buy fair-trade coffee would want to peruse this list before shopping for fish.

I've considered going vegetarian from time to time. I like meat, but I could live without it, and I don't want to support factory farming. Of course, the down side to that is that I'd still lose; an increased vegetable matter intake just promotes huge cheap cash crops. Granted, soy plants don't feel the effects of crowding the way chickens or cows do, so it may still be better. But do we have the farmable land mass to support us as a species?

[rainswolf.livejournal.com]

I do'nt see how it's a cult.

If you never eat meat because you think it's ethically wrong, how is that a cult or radical? It's not extremest. It's just ethical consistency.

[rebeccmeister.livejournal.com]

The "cult" remark may have been a tad hyperbolic and inaccurate.

Regarding ethical positions: I try to make it clear that my position is based on an individual's relative ecological impact, not on ethical grounds.

What bothers me the most is this distinction: where does one draw the line between things considered "meat" and "non-meat"? Some people draw a line between land-dwelling mammals and fish. As I just mentioned, I do not. But I do not eat non-fish seafood, either. That includes invertebrates like clams or slugs or snails or shrimp or lobsters or crabs. I do, however, eat insects (mostly involuntarily). They are still animals, and still technically meat. On the other hand, insects are, in general, much more abundant and it is pretty much impossible to avoid eating them. I just cannot buy arguments based on animal-hood or distinctions between meat and non-meat.

Oh yeah--and somewhere in all of this, I should probably add: I never claim to be rational. :)

[rainswolf.livejournal.com]

Sure, you could say everythin gin the world is on a continuum, but I also think there's a difference between eating a fish knowing it's a fish, and accidently eating a bug on a lettuce leaf that you didn't know was there.

IF you're going to dwell in the grey and say it invalidates all definitions then it's pretty hard to have any ethical codes.