tim!: Religion and Red Meat 2003 A crossover study of the primal urges inherent to all of us and how these seep into our churches, schools and playgrounds.
It was just discovered that the Vatican had a 60's era document 'that commands "perpetual silence" and secrecy in dealing with priests who have sexual contact with "youths of either sex or with brute animals."' It makes me sleepless at night wondering how many Catholics are running around using condoms.
Last night I partook of at least a pound of red meat. It was good too. I have a friend who used to bite people's arms, friend's arms, when the urge for meat descended upon her. Something about her molars getting itchy. I don't have quite that level of connection with my intestines, but I do enjoy the efforts of the cow from time to time. I like veal and I like keeping little baby kittens locked in the basement, the dark, wet, frightening basement. No, of course not. I don't even really have a basement to speak of, more of an extended crawlspace. But scaloppini veal with pasta is just so good, it makes you forget how they treated that animal for long enough to enjoy the very last caper. Not sure what a caper is to this day.
This would be a perfect moment to launch my attack on vegetarians and vegans. I am a very big believer in the food chain, and especially how it is that we humans are at the top of it. With the exception of a shark attack, or swimming into a school of piranha, we humans pretty much have the run of the place. Surely this has produced poor results in the past, but I see no reason why we should stop putting baby cows in cages, so their muscles will stay tender and soft. I am being slightly flippant here. What I would like to do is to illustrate why food and politics should never cross, and why people who belong to PETA are maniacs and hypocrites. That lady last week legally changed her name to PETA.com. I'm not sure if the www or the http:// was in there or not. I don't want that lady within 100 ft. of me, for the record.
First, the inherent hypocrisy of PETA. And, for that matter, vegetarians or vegans with such a large degree of consciousness as to the suffering of animals that they not only don't eat or wear animal products for themselves, but they will tell you your business as well. The hypocrisy here is based on the aspect of cruelty which is fervent in PETA applications. We do not condone the slaughter of animals for use in food production or in shoe making. I grant you, this is a simplified view of the situation, but it is a good place to begin. Vegetarians, Pescatarians (people who eat fish, but draw the line at chicken and beef), and Vegans are doing what they are doing for one or both of the following reasons: Health benefits of eating less or no red meat, fatty meat, delicious and flavorful chuck roast, lamb shank and garlic-encrusted meatballs swimming in a tomato gravy with pork tenderloin and hot Italian sausage. Or, two, a political stance that I will not eat meat based on the treatment of said animal prior to, during, and/or after its demise has been met. This is not-for-health, and for our purposes here, political.
The hypocritical part comes in when we look at what the aforementioned actually eats. Assumably it is a diet of vegetables. This includes but is not limited to beans (soy, black, red or kidney), corn (actually a starch but in my book a vegetable all the way), lettuce, rice (again with the starch), and a bunch of other things that grow with merely some CO2 (subscript that 2), and some hv (light) to excite some complex and nearly turn water into wine. Turning CO2 + light into sugar is pretty cool if you ask me. We have strayed. Start with the question. How do you get that can of Goya black beans? How is Soy milk produced? Where is it that corn comes from anyway? Let's start with corn. Corn is planted in rows, for acres and acres. It is grown with care, nurtured, fertilized, watered by either man or nature, given unfettered access to sunlight, and then chopped down by a combine and shot through a tube into a bin behind the combine. Later, it is taken to some processing plant, where it is either packaged as "on the cob", or it is shucked and cleared of its meat, then creamed and placed in a can. It is grown for the expressed purpose of being eaten, much like the modern cow, or pig. It is harvested in a not-to-nice way by a machine with multiple sharp blades. The differences between the corn stalk and a cow are many, but in the simplest sense, are they not both living things? Yes.
The main difference is that a cow has eyes and a corn does not. A cow will bleed if you stab it, while corn does not have blood. The assumption is that the cow feels pain and the corn does not. We do not know this to be true, but since the corn is not a vertebrate animal, and does not have eyes and blood to stain our hands, that this is overlooked. Well not anymore. There is no high and mighty stance here. Are you killing a living thing for the benefit of your dietary concerns? Yes. Is that living thing grown from day one with the expressed purpose of being eaten someday by a human, or even, almost ironically, a cow? Yes.
Now the playing field is even. Moby can stop updating his website with essays about animal rescue and go buy himself a nice pair of leather shoes to jump around in. I like his music, but the politics, please, mind your own.
This has nothing to do with the opening statement, except for the hypocrisy bit. The church is lofty in its goals and preaching, but fails to follow suit with the practice of its own doctrine. There may be stories in the bible about Sodom, and its cousin, sodomy, but was it intended as literal interpretation so that priests in the catholic church could inappropriately touch their alter boys? Hard to say. I'll save my diatribe on religion for another time.
