So why don't I eat meat?

Why why why indeed. Oh such a good question...

Since at various times I get asked this question and it takes me about 10 minutes to give any sort of answer I think the question deserves, I'm going to have a shot here.

I warn you it's a big shot and will take a while to read. Sorry, you may want to grab a chupa-chup and hunker down.

Firstly, I'm pesco-vegetarian. I eat seafood. Very occasionally I will have some kangaroo when my body feels like it really needs a hit of protein and iron and other things. 99% of the weeks I would have around 2 seafood dishes and the rest vegetarian. I am not vegan. I think that's a nice idea but find the restriction on diet too hard. Also I like my leather shoes and belt and get a lot of use out of them.

So I'm going to break it down into reasons why.

Meat is Murder - background to me as a vego.
Ecological footprint - hooves vs paws vs lentils.
Taste - Spice, variation, polystyrene.
Speciesism - Peter Singer and racism extended logically.
Catch and eat your own food.
Health - chemicals, hormones, or not.

Meat is Murder:

This is a title of a heart-rending song by The Smiths in the 1980's and it inspired both attempts for me to try to turn vegetarian (I am going to use that word interchangably with pesco-vegetarian. There is a difference and I'll go into it later.) " ...Sizzling blood and the unholy stench of Murder" to describe a kitchen in these terms is really harsh, I know, but it's the truth.

The sounds of abbatoir and sawing intersperse this dreamy minor key wander through Morrissey's kitchen nightmare, and it is a heartwrenching tale of murder and barbarism by proxy.

The first attempt I had at the vegetarian diet was while I was still at home under Mum's cooking - and she wasn't the world's most inspiring veggy cook. No offense Mum, I mean you knew how to cook the BEST meals in the Italian and Indian style, but you were feeding a family who loved their meat, and their veg on the side. And you just weren't needing to explore spices and vegetarian ingredients quite as much as I would have needed, because the meat was there to provide a focus. I think that attempt took me about 2 weeks to be forgotten.

Ecological footprint:

There is a concept which I came across at the Powerhouse Museum here in Sydney at a future-oriented exhibition which challenged you to find how much land on the Earth you are personally needing to sustain your way of life.

For example, someone who owns a great hulking metal car and uses lots of fuel is going to have a a larger plot of land going towards their lifestyle than someone who rides a bike and grows their own food.

Take the test here and work out how many Earths you need to sustain your lifestyle. I need 3.7 Earths. That means, if on average everyone used what I used in terms of resources, we would need 3.7 earths. That's less than most Australians, but only about 3/4 of our average. So I'm not doing very well. Take the test here for yourself.

Why am I going into this? Because meat eaters, specifically cows and other hooved animals use lots of land and are fairly inefficient little protein makers. They take lots of husbandry to rear, feed, then kill, transport, cut up, package, and get to your fridge or freezer, or McDonalds. That's a lot of steps and a lot of land devoted to it, which can't be used for anything else, and so to me it seems that should be a luxury, not the basis for a diet.

That's actually why I eat kangaroo if I eat red meat. First, it is a wild animal and has had a free life in all probability. Also it's paws have not contributed to soil erosion. Also one roo feeds many people. It's usually culled, and killed with one shot. And it's a lean, high protein meat so you don't need to eat much. Sorry to all you Skippy fans protective about roo, but it's actually very tasty!
Which leads me to...

Taste:

I think that when I opened myself to the glory that is SPICE it actually became possible to create a varied diet for myself which was still pesco-vegetarian. Back when I worked in the kitchen at the Eagle on the Hill Hotel in Adelaide, under the marvellous French chef Patrice, I learned so much about the joy of spice that I wondered how I had ever lived without it. The joy of saffron, cinnamon, coriander, and the rest... mmmm...

Now I really love to add spice to my meals. I like to have ginger, turmeric and honey with warm soy/milk at the end of a night. Make a Thai Tom Yum soup from scratch with lemongrass, chilli, garlic and the rest. Add basil to sandwiches (good to ease flatulence problems too) and generally be a spice slut.

Once I learned about herbs and spice it was time to tame the tofu. Depending on what you do with it, yes, it can be polystyrene foam. But it can be marinated in soy, beer, chilli, fish sauce and garlic overnight and thrown onto the barbecue or frypan and made a damn tasty part of your dinner. At the moment, tempeh (a dark brown pre-marinated soy bean patty) is a satisfying heavy protein for me, with its own delicious taste.Lebanese food, Indian food, Thai food, Italian food. You can explore these wonderful culinary influences and not even think about meat.

If you want to know about vegetarian cookbooks, look no further than Moosewood restaurant cookbook. It comes out every year and has guest chefs all the time from around the world. "Sunday's at Moosewood" is the book I know and love.

Speciesism:

There is a strong movement against racism in Australia and in many progressive societies. People are generally becoming more tolerant of diversity and intolerant of ill treatment of minorities or those from different backgrounds. It is recognised by many that people are very similar on the inside, whatever the outside looks like they still feel pain, still like to be happy, and still exist in the interdependant web of life.

Well to me the same can be said for animals. If you discriminate against animals and contribute to their unhappiness, short and painful life, and then premature death, it's something you need to weigh up - decide if you can contribute to the injustices done to animals.

Veal is a case in point. The word actually used to describe a calf who was taken from its mother before it started to eat grass - when the calf meat starts to get slightly tougher. The most sought after and "best" veal is light coloured - anaemic, but tender meat. However to get the best veal that means placing the creature in a sun starved pen. Sections of the veal industry worked out that they could keep the animals away from the light and grass, standing in tiny pens with slotted floors, so tiny that the veal is stopped from sleeping, or having anything else to do. The more restrictions on movement, food and light, the highest grade veal. What this did to the minds of the calves, deprived of mother, sunlight, grass, sleep or open space, is mindboggling. Since I could never with a conscience contribute to such a crime, it is easy for me to give up veal.

Other animals have confinements and pain too. They don't tell you about it on the package of meat. Read Peter Singer.

Catch and eat your food:

Once upon a time at scout camp(yes stop laughing) I and my group, or patrol, were given a live chicken and some vegetables and told that it was dinner. That was a memorable day - by turns hilarious, disgusting, macabre, surprising, and eventually somewhat triumphant. I discovered what the guts of a chicken looked like, and Shane Bradley discovered that you need to make sure your knife is very sharp before you try to slit a chicken-neck.

It taught me the difficulty of dealing with killing and treating a creature for a meal, and how the ugly parts of the process are removed from plain view - plucking the bird, killing it, gutting it, and cleaning thoroughly. (It was pretty amazing to see 20 tiny egg yokes inside the chicked waiting to be formed into eggs and lain though.) Since then I've thought that this was a great experience and that it should be mandatory for meat eaters!

I eat fish and squid and other sea creatures. Some of which I catch, gut, scale and cook. It feels empowering to do this, but I do certainly feel sad to end a life when I do it. The reason I eat sea creatures and not land animals or birds is that I feel my diet needs the protein sometimes. One day I hope to give up seafood too. But also, when I look in the eyes of a fish, I don't get the same recognition that I do when I look at a cow, or even a chicken. There seems to me to be a level of awareness and brain activity which is higher in land animals.

Health:

It's healthier to have a mostly vegetarian diet. Your body can process the food more easily and keep itself running better, not get so clogged. It's cheaper too, for your wallet and the environment. And you ingest far less unknown chemicals and hormones. Who knows what effect a lot of chicken or bovine growth hormones have upon young children, on their physical and mental development.

Also, when a cow follows its friend up the ramp towards death, with the walls getting tighter and it hears screams, and realises it will die, its glands inject adrenaline - chemicals - into the bloodstream. The chemicals are from fear, and they sour the taste of the meat somewhat. Not a nice description, sorry, but true. Not chemicals I want in my body, which is after all, my temple.

It's possible to eat a mix of beans and rice together, and get proteins which you get from meat. Eating the beans OR the rice won't do it. Food combination is a lost art. Ayurvedic (Indian natural medicine) won't mix dairy and seafood together. Have you ever noticed the noises your stomach makes after a creamy fish pasta or tuna mornay? Not so good. Here's a semi-technical pdf on it.

Our teeth are often raised as an argument for eating meat however there are more "chewing and grinding" teeth in our mouth than 'tearing and ripping" teeth. Humans have developed past this anyway with our relatively affluent society here in Sydney able to eat meat at every meal, or with no meals.

Whew! you made it. How is that beef jerky tasting?