You can have your veggies and eat them too ! (2006)

From Issue 20 of the World Socialist Review

The practice of vegetarianism — or non-practice of animarianism* — is not new to humanity. However, one could argue that it has never been more important. World hunger, inhumane and filthy methods of meat production, and the spread of livestock diseases both new and old are forcing many who would never consider abandoning sinking their teeth into a steaming hunk of flesh to give the idea a second thought. There are many kinds of vegetarians, ranging from impostors to the almost monastic avoiders of any food product of animal origin. This lifestyle is admittedly difficult; from meat-lover’s restaurant menus to relatives who have to cook me something extra (and have my eternal gratitude), to the usually absurdly high-priced products offered in the supermarkets.

I will try to show how vegetarianism in socialism makes sense and pass along some of the general benefits of the lifestyle, without attempting to convert you. There are people and organizations out there that can help you if you have questions or want more details on the nutritional aspects of meat-free lifestyles.

One of the concerns about meatless diets is protein. Actually, a balanced Western diet includes four times the recommended amount of protein for an average healthy adult, so leaving out the meat isn’t going to kill you. In fact, I don’t track where my protein comes from, and I sort of don’t care, because I know that there are sufficient quantities in many plant-based foods, the chief being the soybean. This is exactly where the herbivores get it and they do just fine.

Incidentally, this introduces an area where I think vegetarianism and socialism cross — at the cessation of the waste of matter and energy involved in transforming plants into meat. A good rule of thumb to estimate this waste is the “ten percent pyramid,” with humans on the top and the little greenies on the bottom. Only ten percent of each pound of “eaten” is successfully converted into “eater.” The rest is waste in the form of uneatable or indigestible matter and heat energy lost during chemical conversion. Therefore, it takes about ten pounds of plants to produce one pound of animal, and ten pounds of animal to produce one pound of human or other carnivore.

A Happy and Livable Planet

A little math tells me that if I was a carnivore, it would take 250 x 10 x 10 = 25,000 pounds of vegetable matter to produce a meat-eating version of me, but only 2,500 pounds to produce me as an herbivore. Abandoning meat as a food source can optimally increase the nutritive capacity of agriculture ten times, thus reducing our dependence on it! When socialism rolls around, the elimination of waste and hunger will surely be both primary goals for the creation of a happy and livable planet.

A socialist future like the one I dream about will also have a lot less pain and suffering than the current offering. I’ve done my homework, and without getting into details, I can say that there is a lot of that going on in the meat industries. Plants, in contrast, don’t feel pain. They cannot for the obvious reason that they do not have brains, or any nervous systems at all. And no, the cows and pigs are not going to reproduce out of control if we stop using them for food.

There are environmental impacts as well, the most serious of which is the pollution caused by the wastes of animals grown for food. This has to go somewhere — and usually, untreated livestock waste is dumped into the nearest body of water, unlike human waste, which is in most cases required by law to be treated before release into the environment. The impacts of farm animal waste are significant — I’m not going to quote statistics, so you can research this if you want.

The impact of fertilizer is even greater; however, this problem does not completely go away if meaty diets eventually disappear. Fertilizer will still be necessary to grow crops, but mindful socialists will not be forced by the pressure of the market to produce the most, the biggest, and the best — only that which is needed. They can take care that the effects of the fertilizer they do use are reduced and monitored by careful farming practices, efforts made easier by a cooperative agricultural model and not a competitive one. Meat processing facilities have environmental impacts as well. Since it seems impossible for capitalism to maintain clean and efficient slaughterhouses, those places remain vectors for disease and contamination. Shockumentaries still pop on the tube every once in awhile, reminding us, however ineffectively, how filthy meat processing actually is.

In sum, the benefits of a vegetarian society can go hand in hand with the desires of a socialist society. A widespread vegetarian lifestyle can play a significant role in reducing energy demands, pain and suffering, and the negative effects of agriculture on the environment. The environmental and medical impacts of a meat-centered culture are well documented even if they are generally ignored; and even though the psychological impacts may be harder to measure, they still contribute, in my opinion, to making the world a little more violent than it needs to be.

Tony Pink

* This is not an actual scientific term, but then neither am I.

Letter: Escape to happiness (1986)

Letter to the Editors from the December 1986 issue of the Socialist Standard

Escape to happiness

Comrades,

As a party member I would like to ask what purpose was served by the publication of Sputnik's article in the October Standard. As far as I can see no socialist viewpoint is advanced, rather the contrary; to suggest that "scraping the meat off the plate" is a practical attitude to vegetarians is obtuse and. in practical terms, counter effective. Further, stereotyping of the kind employed can do nothing other than alienate interested neutrals. A propagandist of experience must surely know that stereotypes are no more effective when purportedly factual than avowedly imaginary. Although this should make no difference, the article is not even funny; on my reading it did not even raise the involuntary and quickly regretted chuckle sometimes elicited by sick jokes.

If I did not know that Sputnik had published excellent articles under another name. I would suggest that he sends his next offering to Punch, a magazine long renowned for bridging the gap between seriousness and humour by eschewing both.

John Usher 

London SW4

Reply:

We have received many letters in a similar vein and note the points made

Editors.

Vegetarianism, Capitalism and Socialism (1945)

From the May 1945 issue of the Socialist Standard

Vegetarians may rightly claim that Diet is an important factor in maintaining a healthy organism, but— many other factors, such as Air, Clothing, Housing, Rest, Mental Serenity, etc., all play their part as contributary factors in causing Health or Disease.

Health, therefore (even as a relative term), does not merely depend upon the question as to whether one derives sustenance from the Vegetable or Animal Kingdoms, but also upon many other complex conditions.

Even were Diet the determining factor in Social Health (and we do not belittle the part it plays) and an Agricultural policy was universally adopted, would the vegetarian products of such a policy be available to All? Would workers and their families receive an adequate supply of fresh vegetables, fruits and nuts according to their needs? Or would they merely receive the quantity which the cash equivalent of their “Butcher's Meat" would buy? From the viewpoint of the working class there would still remain the problem of “making ends meet.” whether on a vegetarian or flesh diet.

The November issue of the "Vegetarian Messenger” (official organ of the Vegetarian Society), publishes an article relative to war time food production, showing the economic advantages of an agricultural policy, and the Ministry of Agriculture's statistics are quoted. Chief among these is the figure for total increase in arable land over 1939 figures, which is given as 63.3 per cent. It has taken a war to prove the economic Advantages of Vegetarianism ! Further on in the same article we read that . . . “These large decreases in livestock indicate that the exigencies of war do not permit of the extravagant policy of rearing large numbers of animals for food consumption.” (our italics). Exactly! The cost of production is ever the determining factor as to what will be produced in Capitalistic Society and what is food, but fuel used in the production of that other commodity, Labour-Power? So that, in weighing up the advantages that may accrue from an agricultural policy, we are of the opinion that the scales would turn in favour of those who BUY Labour Power, not those who SELL it and a cheaper worker would be doubly welcome if also a healthier one!

Whilst we may agree that a balanced diet which contains all the natural vital elements and vitamins is preferable to the “fleshpots,” we realise that until such a diet is available to the majority of mankind according to their needs and not according to their income as at present, small benefit can accrue for those who “live to work.”

Another factor to be taken into consideration relative to a flesh diet is the danger of contamination by foot and mouth disease. During a debate in the House of Commons on the subject, Mr. Turton (M.P. for Thirsk and Malton), stated there has been 126 reported outbreaks of this disease during the first ten months of 1944. (Hansard, November 17th, 1944). (our italics). Comparing above figures with those for the last war. Major York (member for Ripon), gave the number of outbreaks for the years 1916/1920 as 170. He went on to say . . . ,"There must have been nearly that number during the present year. That comparison alone, shows that there is a very serious situation.” Unlike Mr. Snadden (The Hon. member for West Perth, whose statement that “Foot and Mouth disease is a dagger pointing at the heart of our post war agricultural policy.” Hansard, November 17th, 1944, we are not concerned in alleviating the problems of our master's system, but are very much concerned in putting an end to the system which produces such problems.. Foot and Mouth disease is aggravated by war, which is inherent in the capitalist regime. The health of the working class, who hold no share in livestock or any other industry, will in the long run, depend upon their conscious knowledge of their slave position in society and their attainment of Socialism. Until then, their health will remain as it is, in jeopardy, despite any meagre benefits as a resultant of dietetic reform, restricted as it is by income.

What most Vegetarians fail to realise is that diet and health are determined by the Method whereby ALL wealth is produced.

At present we live in an era of private ownership of the means of life. Goods are produced for sale and only with a view to profit. Those who produce everything, own nothing (comparatively), and those who own everything, produce nothing. The worker sells his physical and mental energies and receives in return sufficient to allow hint to replenish his lost energy and reproduce his kind. This process goes on, “from the Cradle to the Grave," there is no escape. Neither by adopting a vegetarian diet, nor by concerning ourselves in the administration of their master’s system, will the workers emancipate themselves from ill health, poverty, war and unemployment. There is a far bigger problem than diet to solve, that is, the struggle for Social ownership of the wealth that is socially produced. So we see that the road to health is also the road to Socialism.

Workers! Get busy, start filing your chains by joining the Socialist Movement.

G. R. Russell

Letters: Let them eat meat (1995)

Letters to the Editors from the May 1995 issue of the Socialist Standard

Let them eat meat 

While substantially agreeing with Adam Buick’s analysis of the question of animal rights in the April Socialist Standard and in particular with the view that in a non-profit socialist society of production for use cruelty to animals can be expected to stop, I cannot agree that in such a society most human beings are necessarily going to continue to eat meat, as the article states. They may of course, but then they may not. And it is not a good argument to say, as the article does, that they will because they always have done. History shows perpetual change in human ideas and practices and one of the main points about socialism is that it will allow people to transform many aspects of the societies they have lived in.

Furthermore, it is not part of the Socialist Party’s agreed case that in socialism people will eat meat. This is a detail one can only speculate and express a personal opinion on. It should not therefore appear as other than a personal opinion in a journal whose articles express the agreed view of the organisation.

And how different in the end is what Adam Buick says from a recent anti-vegetarian letter in the Western Mail which stated: "In truth, it [an end to the farming of animals] will never happen because you want your chicken and chips, your lamb cawl and your Sunday roast."? 

Howard Moss,

Swansea

Reply:

The article wasn't "anti-vegetarian". It didn’t criticise people for being vegetarians. Quite the contrary. It said that vegetarianism was a perfectly legitimate personal choice (which had been made by some Socialists) and that the debate would continue into socialism where individuals would make their own choice as to whether or not to abstain from eating meat.

As you correctly point out, the Socialist Party as an organisation has no policy on vegetarianism; we are neither for it nor against it. We don’t presume to tell people what they should eat and what they should not eat; that’s a purely personal decision, it's entirely up to individuals as individuals. This implies, however, that some will choose to abstain from meat while others won’t. We equally respect both decisions.

Will this diversity of decision continue into socialism? You say that to answer "yes" is merely to give a personal opinion, but it can also be seen as—and was meant to be so taken—a reasonable assumption that can be made equally by a vegetarian as by a non-vegetarian.

But if some people are going to eat meat in socialism then animals are going to have to continue to be raised to be eaten in socialism. Not to have faced this, in an article on animals rights, and to have replied "the problem probably won't arise because by then we could all be vegetarians" would have been a cop-out. Besides, it would have infringed the neutrality we as an organisation maintain between vegetarians and non-vegetarians.

Editors

Hunting and killing at Tescos

Dear Editors,

As a Socialist Party member and a vegan, I'm afraid that I am forced to take issue with some of the points raised by Adam Buick in his article "Do Animals Have Rights?" (April Socialist Standard).

Firstly, it is highly debatable whether humans "have always eaten meat". There is a good body of evidence to suggest that early humans lived primarily, if not solely, on nuts, fruits and berries—a reasonable assumption, given that we are descended from herbivorous primates. The length of the human intestine, as compared with the much shorter bowels of obligate carnivores in, say the cat family, suggest that it is designed to deal with slowly digested vegetable matter rather than fibre-free meat.

Secondly, it is disingenuous to compare a human being eating meat to a fox eating a rabbit—as I have already stated, certain animals are obligate carnivores who cannot derive sufficient protein from plant sources. Human beings are not—and we are capable of making moral choices regarding our diet. In any case, visiting the meat counter at Tesco scarcely equates to hunting and killing one’s own food!

Adam Buick is, of course, quite correct to state that animals are cruelly treated largely because of the need for farmers to produce profitably. However, does he seriously believe that sufficient meat can be produced to satisfy the world's population even under socialism without the need for some kind of factory farming? Readers are doubtless familiar with the arguments that land can be used far more efficiently to produce plant proteins than to raise animals—that's even allowing for the intensive farming of animals which we all know takes place under capitalism. How much more inefficient in terms of land use would it be to attempt to farm only free-range animals?

Further, I would suggest that, just as farmers are compelled under capitalism to try and make a profit, so most of those who work in the meat industry do so in order to survive rather than because they enjoy it. With the need to work for a wage being removed by socialism, how many people will be prepared to continue killing animals when other essential and more rewarding work needs to be done? Those who wish to eat meat will of course be free to do so—however. they may well find that's this necessitates killing it themselves as few other people will be willing to do it for them.

Finally, Adam Buick is doubtless aware that vegetarianism is already growing at a rapid rate— particularly among young women. This means that’s more and more children are being brought up as vegetarians, which will almost certainly accelerate the trend. I feel that’s Adam Buick's comment that's "most humans are obviously going to continue to eat some meat" will be proved wrong quite soon— possibly even within his lifetime. 

Shane Roberts,

Westcliff-on-Sea, Essex

Reply:

Have humans "always eaten meat"? That depends on what you mean by "humans". Members of the existing—and only surviving—human species. Homo sapiens, have always eaten meat. We evolved not more than 100,000 years ago. but preceding species of Homo had been eating meat for many hundreds of thousands of years before that.

Going back even further, it is indeed true the now extinct species of upright-walking apes from which we are descended would have been mainly, but not exclusively (since even today chimpanzees eat meat, when they can get it), eaters of nuts, fruits, roots, etc. But at some point our ancestors began to add more and more meat to their diet. Most anthropologists see this changed diet as a key factor in the evolution of pre-humans into humans. Richard Leakey, for instance, writes in his book with Roger Lewin, Origins Reconsidered: 

  “Although some anthropologists argue that regular meat eating was a late development in human history. I believe they are wrong. I see evidence for the expansion of the basic omnivorous hominid diet in the fossil record, in the archaeological record, and. incidentally, in theoretical biology . . .
   "The initial expansion of brain size in hominids. which established the genus Homo, was more mundane. It concerned an adaptation that required more complex behaviour: the hunting-and- gathering way of life in embryo. But it also fueled itself, in a kind of positive feedback. Part of Bob Martin’s thesis about a species' ability to afford a large brain is that it must have a stable environment. stable in terms of food supply. Stable and nutritionally rich. The robust australopithecines managed to stabilise their food supply in the new prevailing environment 2.5 million years ago but their tough plant foods were not rich nutritionally. By broadening the diet to include meat, early Homo achieved both stability and rich nutrition. Meat represents high concentrations of calories, fat and protein. This dietary shift in Homo drove the change in pattern of tooth development and facial shape. The links in the chain join up yet more closely.
  “Our ancestors achieved this dietary shift through technology, and thus opened the road to the potential—but. remember, not inevitable—development of yet bigger brains."

In other words, modern anthropological research and theory confirms the 19th century view, as summarised by Engels in The Part Played by Labour in the Transition from Ape to Man, that “with all due respect to the vegetarians, man did not come into existence without a meat diet”.

This is not a reason, we hasten to add. why people should not be vegetarians. One of the features of human behaviour is flexibility and we could all become vegetarians if we chose to. even though our distant ancestors had to eat meat for this flexibility to evolve. If this happens. as you seem confident it will, then Engels would no doubt see this as a neat example of the negation of the negation. 

Editors

Socialist cops & prisons?

Dear Editors,

Having read Adam Buick’s "Do Animals Have Rights?", I now know why so many animal rights activists so deeply distrust socialists. Of course neither human workers nor animals are born with natural rights. Such rights as they enjoy are the results of centuries of bitter struggle; by virtue of its power the capitalist class has the right to do anything it can get away with including exploiting animals and workers on a massive scale. Just as socialists want an end to the exploitation of workers so the animal rights movement wants an end to the exploitation of animals. Many want both as is evidenced by the slogan “Animal Liberation. Human Rights—One Struggle. One Fight!"

Adam Buick appears to oppose suffering and cruelty, but what can be more cruel and involve more suffering than raising an animal with the utmost care and kindness and then killing and eating it? If a socialist world is to be one without suffering and cruelty then the imposition of suffering and cruelty on animals by humans must end! And the debate isn’t just about the higher land mammals—it’s about sea mammals, insects, fish, reptiles and amphibians all of which appear on somebody’s dinner table. And “eccentrics" is a term of abuse not a scientific Marxist category, many people regard socialists as eccentrics but that does not invalidate socialism anymore then the alleged eccentricity of the animal rights movement rules out its argument.

On what evidence does Adam Buick base his claim that humans have always eaten meat and will continue to do so? The shape of our teeth, our lack of claws, the length of our get. the tiny genetic difference between ourselves and the vegetarian great apes, indicates the diet of the first humans was vegetable and that meat eating was a fairly late development caused possibly by food shortages resulting from climatic changes. Furthermore. many people do not associate the burger on their plate with the animal from which it comes. Many become vegetarian when they discover the shocking truth. And when was Adam Buick last on a farm? Farm animals aren't fed on vegetation and scraps unacceptable to humans—they’re fed on grains and beans which could be used far more efficiently by being eaten by humans. And it makes better economic sense to rear goats and sheep on marginal land for their milk rather than their meat.

It’s nice to know vegetarians will be free to put their case in a socialist society. But what if we employ civil disobedience? Will socialist cops kick and baton us and throw us into socialist prisons? And what of blood sports, vivisection and the trade in fur, skins and shells? Will such horrors continue in a socialist society?

Adam Buick is right when he says the problem is capitalism and socialism is the answer. But if he is to convince animal rights activists of this his critique needs to be far more informed and sympathetic.

Terry Liddle

London SE9

Reply:

What are you talking about? There won't be any cops or prisons in a socialist society. Nor will there be any trade in furs or anything else.

Editors

Calling an old comrade

Dear Editors,

I admired Paddy Small (Letters. March Socialist Standard) for his craftsmanship, his steadfastness to his principles, his support of his union and of the Socialist Party. I owe him a personal debt for guiding me to the Socialist Party and for helping me to acquire a Socialist library and helping me to understand it.

I would like to contact him again, so would it be possible to insert the following appeal in the Standard:

"Dear Paddy. 

Your recent letter to the Standard has really opened the floodgates of my memory. I would dearly like to write to you and share our experiences since last we met. Please write to me at: 26 Fig Street. Dromana. Victoria 3936. Australia.

Yours Aye. Joe Richmond." 

Do Animals Have Rights? (1995)

From the April 1995 issue of the Socialist Standard

  The case for not being cruel to animals rests on the fact that this is not in the general human interest, not on the theory that animals have some inalienable natural rights. But the profit system prevents what is in the general human interest being applied.

The short answer is no. But, then, neither do humans.

The idea that humans have inalienable rights inherited from the “state of nature” which supposedly existed before they made a “social contract” to set up organised society is nonsensical. Humans have always been social animals. We wouldn’t have become human if we hadn’t been, since the main features which distinguish us from other animals—tool-making, abstract thought, speech— evolved, and could only have evolved, in and through society.

The suggestion that humans were once isolated individuals who later came together to set up society is logically absurd. How could humans have been in a position to negotiate a “social contract” if they hadn’t first evolved the ability to think abstractly and speak, which presupposes that they already lived in society? But then this theory originated at a time—the 17th and 18th centuries—when the notion of evolution was unknown and nearly everybody believed that humans had been made in their fully developed form by an all-powerful god.

Revolution and the Rights of Man

All the same, the theory played an important role in history. It was the ideology of the rising class of capitalist entrepreneurs and traders and was used by them to pursue their struggle against the arbitrary rule of kings and aristocrats. If humans had innate rights which pre-existed society and the state, and which in fact it was the purpose of society and the state to protect and further, then if the state did not respect these rights humans were entitled to resist and overthrow it and establish one that did. This revolutionary implication of the doctrine of natural human rights was put to good propaganda use by those who led the American Revolution of 1776 and the French Revolution of 1789.

It is this aspect of the theory of natural rights that has attracted those opposed to the cruel treatment of animals. The theory that animals too have inalienable rights which ought to be respected provides a justification for their campaigns, including civil disobedience and in some cases violence and terrorism. But the theory that animals have natural rights is even more absurd than the theory that humans do.

Animals of course do exist in a “state of nature” and, while nature is not as “red in tooth and claw” as the popular myth has it, it is still true that some animals exist by killing and eating other animals. That is the way nature has evolved and is an integral part of all ecosystems. So how, in nature, can an animal be said to have a “right” not to be killed and eaten?

In fact, if “rights” were derived from behaviour in nature some animals could be said to have the “right” to kill other animals. And, since humans are animals that have always eaten meat why shouldn’t they have the same “right” to kill and eat other animals? Or, if they are to be banned from this, are other animals too to be banned from killing other animals? Is the fox to be banned from eating the rabbit?

To be fair, many animal rights activists aren’t interested in the philosophical position their name implies. Their message is much more simple and basic and derives more from the words of Elvis Presley than from Thomas Paine or Rousseau: Don’t be cruel. But this is a message directed exclusively to humans and concerned only with the behaviour of humans towards other animals. In which case it would be sensible for them not to talk as if they thought that animals really do have inalienable natural rights, but to try to convince humans that it is not in the interests of humans to mistreat and be cruel to other animals.

Some animal rights theorists reject such an approach on the grounds that it is “anthropocentric” (human-centred) and leaves open the theoretical possibility of justifying the mistreatment of other animals if this could be shown to be in the general human interest. It is indeed a human-centred approach—this is why we are socialists: we want the best possible world for humans—but there is no reason why this should be at the expense of the suffering of other animals or why in practice it should lead to cruelty to animals being regarded as justified. It will, however, not rule out the conclusion that animals can be raised and killed for humans to eat, as long as this doesn’t involve cruelty.

Cruel conditions

The case that maltreating animals is not in the general human interest could be made by underlining the following two points.

First, that animals, or at least those other animals that the debate is about (only a few eccentrics claim that insects have “rights”), are recognisably similar to us—they’ve got the same basic structure of a head, four limbs, two eyes, a nose, two ears, etc—and, like us, are more importantly sentient beings that can feel pain and show it. To tolerate the deliberate infliction of pain on them is to devalue opposition to human suffering too and so make it easier for some humans to get away with deliberately inflicting pain on other humans. In short, it is to help make for a less humane world.

Second, that animals raised under cruel conditions will not be healthy animals and so will not be good to eat, so defeating the whole purpose of humans raising them in the first place; which is to provide humans with nutritious food that contributes to them having a healthy life.

These are powerful arguments (which have led some socialists to be vegetarians and the rest of us trying to be careful about the food we eat). But if they are so powerful, why don’t they prevail? Why do humans not act in their best interests but still mistreat animals?

Basically, it is because we live in a society where the overall human interest counts for little. We live in a class-divided society where it is the interest of the minority who own and control the means of production that prevails—and their interest, reflecting the economic logic of the system, is to increase their wealth by making profits.

Animals are abused because it is in the financial interest of those with money invested in meat production to produce as cheaply as possible, in order to remain competitive, even if this involves factory farming, battery-hens and caged veal calves. The rest of the owning class gain too, in terms of not having to pay higher wages and state benefits since the lower the cost of the meat the workers buy the less employers need to pay for their labour power, or the state for their subsistence.

There is no reason to doubt the sincerity of the farmers who say they dislike what happens to their calves after they’ve sold them, but that they have no alternative since they need to gain a living and that this provides a market for their products which enables them to keep their heads above water. It’s not a question them being evil or immoral, but of what the economic system of production for sale on a market with a view to profit forces them to do.

Profit System

It’s the profit system that is the problem. It brings pressure to bear on economic decision-makers to opt for the cheapest methods of production on pain of being driven out of business altogether. If consideration of what is in the general human interest is to prevail, in this field of meat production as in all others, then the profit system must go. It must be replaced by a production-for-use system—which can only exist on the basis of the common ownership and democratic control of productive resources by the whole community.

In a genuinely socialist system of this kind cruelty to animals can be expected to stop as it would have no basis for occurring. The ending of the oppression and exploitation of humans by other humans—and the cruel treatment meted out as a matter of state policy by soldiers, police and prison guards (ask Amnesty for the full details)—will make humans generally less tolerant towards cruelty to other animals.

The vegetarians will of course be free to propagate their case, win recruits and pursue the diet of their choice, but most humans are obviously going to continue to eat some meat in the same way that humans as a species always have done. Humans evolved with the capacity to eat meat as well as vegetables and fruit, and it makes ecological sense to acquire some of our food (which is ultimately stored-up solar energy) in the form of meat, especially in winter times when locally-produced and so fresh vegetables are not available or of animals (like chickens, sheep and pigs) which can eat vegetation and scraps that we can’t.

So, animals will be raised as food, but there will be no pressures to use methods of raising and slaughtering that impose suffering on them. The tyranny of the market and competitiveness will have gone and we’ll be free to employ the most appropriate methods to produce the best quality meat—which implies treating the animals humanely.

Adam Buick

Pathfinders: Meat Into Veg (2010)

The Pathfinders Column from the August 2010 issue of the Socialist Standard

Strange how cultural ideas evolve, or don’t. As far back as records go, four thousand years ago in India, people were arguing about vegetarianism versus meat farming. How one should treat animals depended on how one saw them, and this in turn depended on one’s practical experience of them. The pantheist view of them as sentient beings with ‘souls’ clashed directly with the more down-to-earth farmers’ view of them as brainless kebabs on legs. With the rise of monotheism came an anthropocentric view of nature and animals which has persisted ever since. The Christians repudiated the notion that any non-human creature had a ‘soul’, thus suffering was impossible and any treatment was justifiable. Since then the debate has moved from ‘souls’ to ‘intelligence’ but science for all its advances has not really resolved the question how one should regard, and by implication treat, non-human species. If anything it has blurred whatever species distinctions did exist. Chimpanzees make and use tools, parrots can invent word-phrases, dogs can feel a sense of injustice, and rats can get depressed.

The debate is likely to re-heat. While many parts of today’s developing world are rapidly increasing their meat consumption in aspiration of Western living standards, advanced capitalist countries are coming to just the opposite conclusion. After the success of the pan-European smoking ban, and imminent plans to tax sugar products in an effort to fight obesity, attention is now turning to another key ingredient of the power food and sedentary lifestyle equation responsible for so much pressure on health services.

As the global meat industry grows, the pressure is mounting. To feed the world’s population on a western meat diet would take 5 planets because it is inherently such an inefficient use of land. It is also reportedly responsible for 18 percent of greenhouse gas emissions, prompting the UN to brand meat production as bad as fossil fuels. Following recommendations from the 2007 Stern report the UN is pushing for a wholesale dietary reduction (‘UN urges global move to meat and dairy-free diet’, Guardian, 2 June). There are already almost ten farm animals for every human alive and the figure is set to double by 2050 while the human population increases by a mere third (See here). Reaction against this blatantly unsustainable growth is surely not an if but a when.

One indicator of the force of the propaganda campaign now getting started is the tendency of some adherents or opponents to overstate or distort the arguments. Never shy of a controversial cover page, New Scientist clearly felt unable to resist doing so with a recent headline grabber ‘What happens if we all quit meat? Why eating greens won’t save the world’ (17 July). But if readers were hoping for a vindication of the meat lifestyle they were in for a disappointment, because the magazine did nothing of the sort. Instead it provided the same damning statistics that it had done on many other occasions, with the rather paltry proviso that there might be a place for a few scrawny chickens living on kitchen scraps and perhaps a few goats here and there on small fractions of marginal land that could not be used for grain crops.

But what of this claim that ‘eating greens’ would save the world? Are there vegetarians so self-obsessed that they go around telling everyone that a soya chunk casserole is the road to earthly salvation? Well, it’s possible. Lierre Keith, a dispirited ex-vegan, seems to have been one of them. She describes the disillusion that drove her to become a born-again carnivore and write a book attacking the very ‘earth-saving’ ideas she had apparently subscribed to for 20 years: “... a desperate and all-encompassing longing to set the world right... to save the planet... to feed the hungry...” (introduction to The Vegetarian Myth, 2009). But more fool her for such grandiose illusions in the first place. Meat reduction could be part of the solution, but it’s not the solution, as any veggie with their finger on the pulse would readily admit.

The Vegetarian Society does argue that meat reduction would reduce carbon emissions, but does not claim that such a lifestyle will ‘feed the hungry’. Just as well, because land freed from meat production would probably not be used for grain production but more likely for biofuels, since engines are owned by people with money while empty bellies are owned by people with no money and who are otherwise known as ‘ineffective demand’. A meat-free diet can’t change this. A capitalist-free diet could.

What will become of the meat and dairy industry in socialism? At present the socialist case focuses necessarily on the emancipation of the human species from capitalist-induced oppression and suffering, while the ethical question of how we should regard and treat animals remains as one of the iceberg of other issues submerged below the waterline. What is clear to socialists if to nobody else is that humanity’s relationship to nature was never really anthropocentric but in fact ‘oligocentric’. Nature and everything in it including the vast majority of the human species existed for the sole purpose, use and disposition of the few members of the ruling elites. In the view of those elites, we humans were simply clever animals. Once this highly destructive oligocentric principle is overthrown, a new ethical framework will inevitably emerge in relation to resource exploitation. Quite what this will be and whether it will become genuinely anthropocentric or alternatively expand to encompass considerations beyond the species barrier is at present an open question. If socialists expect a large-scale meat industry they will have to face the fact that there is no ‘ethical’ way to do this. The New Scientist article points out that free-range farming is the most inefficient method both in terms of land use and greenhouse gas emissions, and argues that intensive factory farming is the only logical choice.

No reasonable person today really questions the fact that animals, or at least farmed animals, are capable of fear and pain. Most people do not visit abattoirs nor do they really want to know what goes on in them, yet there is an unspoken knowledge behind the sterile and sanitized supermarket packaging. As the Nobel Prize winning writer Isaac Bashevis Singer put it in The Letter Writer (1968), speaking of factory farming: ‘In relation to [animals], all people are Nazis; for the animals, it is an eternal Treblinka.’ The rise in demand for ‘cruelty-free’ products in Western countries shows that, given the luxury of choice, people prefer not to be responsible for inflicting such suffering.

At all events, without a global revolution in the way society collectively owns and controls its resources people are never going to get the luxury of choice over this or any other resource question. Unless and until the welfare and humane treatment of humans is first attended to the question of the ethical treatment of animals must remain an issue waiting for its moment. They still shoot people, don’t they?

PJS