Vegan/Vegetarianism was Re: Cheese

[Guest guest]

Here is a long article, but one of the best I have ever read on veganism/

vegetarianism. It's by a former vegan, and she outlines just why veganism

just does not make sense. It's worth the time it takes to read it.

D.

moderator

The Blood Moon

By Prentice

" Those animals which I use for riding and loading,Which have been killed for me,

All those

whose meat I have taken, May they attain the state of Buddhahood very soon! "

Ladakhi prayer, translated from the Ladakhi by Helena Norberg-Hodge1

In mid-autumn, when the air is growing colder and the nights longer, comes the

Blood

Moon. Also called the Hunter's Moon by indigenous peoples in the Eastern

woodlands,

this phase of the year marked a time when northern dwellers of many cultures

would work

to ensure that they had a store of meat to last them through the winter. They

did this by

hunting wild game or slaughtering farm animals. It was a time of year when blood

was

shed.

The subject of meat eating is one of the most controversial topics among people

who care

about food, ecology, spirituality, human culture and the lives of animals.

Deciding not to

eat meat is often either the first or the most profound decision a person makes

about their

diet in response to political or spiritual convictions.

As a teenager, I became convinced that eating meat was wrong on many levels. It

was

cruel to animals, bad for the earth, and an irresponsible indulgence in a world

that could

be better fed with grains and beans. I felt that being a vegetarian was clearly

more evolved

than being a carnivore, and what I wanted desperately, at the age of fourteen,

was to be

evolved--to be more mature, to be older, to be wiser, to be more spiritual. My

vegetarianism did indeed take on a spiritual component as I came to think of

eating meat

as eating death, and began to consider it a primitive, base and immoral thing to

do. I loved

life; I would not kill for my food.

As a vegetarian, I went out of my way to eat what I considered to be nutritious

food. I

cooked for myself and was careful to combine whole grains with legumes. But

despite all

my efforts, I was not very healthy. When I got to college, I began to get

chronic glandular

infections and take multiple courses of antibiotics. Whenever I went home for

vacation I

would collapse with an illness.

Halfway through my third year of college I decided to take time off and go to

Thailand to

work in a refugee camp. Thai cooking utilizes fish sauce in almost every dish,

and I

decided not to attempt the impossible by trying to avoid it. I added fish back

to my diet. In

Thailand my health improved tremendously--I had more energy and better digestion

than

I could remember having had in ages. The Thai food I ate everyday tasted fresh

and full of

life and goodness, and while I missed cooking, the food available in small

roadside

eateries was delicious, and felt and tasted like homemade.

But after my return to the US, my health worsened again. I began to suffer from

terrible

eczema, double-periods, PMS and debilitating cramps. Finally, when I was

twenty-five

years old, doctors found a cyst the size of a grapefruit on my left ovary and I

had it

surgically removed.

Not for the first time, acupuncturists told me that I should start eating meat.

One

specifically suggested that I begin eating lamb. I couldn't imagine it! Eating a

baby sheep-

-it was impossible. But I was desperate to get well. As I looked back, I had to

admit that

in ten years of vegetarianism, I had had ten years of declining health. I began

to feel a

powerful desire to be nourished. And it seemed that what I needed could only

come from

the flesh and blood, the death, of another animal. And so, for the first time in

ten years, I

ate a steak. And I felt that I had never tasted anything so wonderful. I gave

great thanks to

the cow that had died that I may live, and experienced the profound sense of

being

nourished I had been longing for.

Adult Knowledge

As I began studying traditional diets, I found myself in the midst of a paradox

that cast

suspicion on my earlier notions

of spirituality and food. In reading about indigenous foodways, I read about

cultures that

had a profoundly intimate relationship to the spiritual world, people for whom

daily life

activities were imbued with a spiritual intention and meaning, people for whom

the

universe and its creatures were respected, and in some cases held sacred. And

yet they ate

meat.

I could not buy the line that these ancient cultures were " primitive " or

" unevolved. " Many

of their ways of life struck me as being based on an understanding of life that

is much

more evolved than the Western industrial paradigm. It is related to the Tzutujil

Mayan

concept of kas-limaal--mutual indebtedness--beautifully described by shaman and

writer Martín Prechtel: " The knowledge that every animal, plant, person, wind,

and season

is indebted to the fruit of everything else is an adult knowledge. " (Emphasis

added.) I

began to see that this indebtedness inevitably involved death--it was impossible

for it not

to.

The more I began to learn about food and agriculture, the more I began to

understand how

much death is involved in the raising of food--whether grains and beans, fruits

and

vegetables, milk and eggs, or meat. At a popular organic farming training

program here in

California, one of the jokes among the students is, " If you want to be a

vegetarian you

have to kill, kill, kill. " To grow fruits and vegetables organically, farmers

must protect their

crops from the wide range of pests that attack them, till the soil so that the

planting can

be done and harvest crops in an efficient manner. All of these activities

require killing

creatures, sometimes in large numbers. Gophers are one of the biggest pests that

threaten

fruit and nut trees in California, and the diligent organic farmer kills gophers

by the score

every day.

A friend of mine who is a student in the program decided after years of

vegetarianism to

start eating meat again, largely because of what he had read about the work of

Weston

Price. His first meal of flesh consisted of stewed gophers. He figured that

since he was

already killing so many of them in the course of his farming work, he might as

well receive

the nourishment they have to offer. A gopher, it turns out, does not yield a lot

of meat and

takes a lot of work to prepare for cooking, so it is unlikely that he'll make it

a regular

meal. But he was very glad for the experience.

Barbara Kingsolver captures the essence of this " adult knowledge " beautifully in

her book

Prodigal Summer. In one passage rancher Eddie Bondo and ecologist Deanna Wolfe

are

trying to communicate to each other their perspectives on the life and death of

animals:

He shook his head, got up to collect two more logs from the woodpile, then shook

his

head again. " You can't be crying over every single brown-eyed life in the

world. " " I already

told you, that's not my religion. I grew up on a farm. I've helped gut about any

animal you

can name, and I've watched enough harvests to know that cutting a wheat field

amounts

to more decapitated bunnies under the combine than you'd believe. "

She stopped speaking when her memory lodged on an old vision from childhood: a

raccoon she found just after the hay mower ran it over. She could still see the

matted gray

fur, the gleaming jawbone and shock of scattered teeth so much like her own, the

dark

blood soaking into the ground all on one side, like a shadow of this creature's

final,

frightened posture. She could never explain to Eddie how it was, the

undercurrent of

tragedy that went with farming. And the hallelujas of it, too: the straight

abundant rows,

the corn tassels raised up like children who all knew the answer. The calves

born slick and

clean into their leggy black-and-white perfection. Life and death always right

there in

your line of sight. Most people lived so far from it, they thought you could

just choose,

carnivore or vegetarian, without knowing that the chemicals on grain and cotton

killed far

more butterflies and bees and bluebirds and whippoorwills than the mortal cost

of a steak

or a leather jacket. Just clearing the land to grow soybeans and corn had killed

about

everything on half the world. Every cup of coffee equaled one dead songbird in

the jungle

somewhere, she'd read.

He was watching her, waiting for whatever was inside to come out, and she did

the best

she could. " Even if you never touch meat, you're costing something its blood, "

she said.

" Don't patronize me. I know that. Living takes life. " 2

With this simple phrase " living takes life, " Deanna Wolfe tries to express

something in

plain English that is difficult for modern Americans to grasp. The concept might

be more

effectively expressed in the language of a mythologically literate culture. In

ancient Greek,

for example, there were two different words for " life " : bios and zoë. As

Hyde

explains in his book The Gift: " Bios is limited life, characterized life, life

that dies. Zoë is

the life that endures; it is the thread that runs through bios-life and is not

broken when

the particular perishes. " 3 On one level, the phrase " living takes life "

expresses the concept

that all living things rely on the death of other living things. On another

level, it expresses

the truth that zoë life, life in the biggest sense of enduring life, Life with a

capital L,

requires the sacrifice of bios life, the particular lives of living creatures.

Zoë takes (kills,

consumes, eats, sacrifices, requires) bios. A core understanding of this " adult

knowledge "

lies at the heart of many spiritual practices and religious traditions

throughout the world.

Death extinguishes a particular life, of course, but it doesn't extinguish Life.

Life endures

and transcends death.

When you see everything around you--all that is animal, vegetable or mineral--as

being

imbued with Spirit, as being alive and sentient, as carrying with it a crucial

and inseparable

part of the Whole; when you view all of life as being inextricably

interconnected by a

thread, a spark, of something Divine, you cannot help but understand that that

great

beautiful Creation involves death and decay just as certainly as it involves

birth and

resurrection. Everything is indebted to everything else. Every part of Creation

is indebted

for its life to the other parts of Creation that have died and decayed so that

it might live.

The Western mind has developed a detachment from earth-based and mythological

worldviews; and, along with that, it has developed hierarchical moralistic

categories of life.

We hold human life to be the most precious--at the top of the hierarchy. In

times past we

consciously ranked human lives according to race, gender, religion and social

status. This

is no longer socially acceptable, but we may still do it subconsciously.

Nevertheless,

cannibalism is our strongest taboo. It is not okay to eat other people.

We also place a high value on the life of animals that we feel closer to--such

as dogs, cats,

horses and monkeys--and we will often have taboos against eating them. Next down

in

our hierarchy are animals with whom we share many biological characteristics,

particularly

land mammals. They have eyes and ears and noses like us, and if we are sentient

then they

certainly are. This unconsciously influences the decision of many people to not

eat red

meat. The flesh of mammals reminds us of our own flesh. Birds are another step

down the

hierarchy, fish and reptiles are further down still, and insects are below

that--we give

them very little moral value.

Once we have descended down the rungs through the world of animals, we come to

plants. As a culture, we place some value on trees, which seem more like us

because they

live longer, and so seem to have a memory. Besides, they are big. We are always

impressed with size when it comes to nature, valuing whales over sardines,

redwoods over

oaks, and lions over bobcats. Most plants, though, fail to command our sympathy.

Few

people hesitate to eat a carrot, although doing so kills the bios-life of that

plant.

After descending through the rungs of the vegetable world, we reach the world of

microorganisms: bacteria, yeasts and molds are parts of the living universe that

we cannot

even see. If we hesitate to eat them it is only because we are afraid they may

make us ill,

not because we feel any moral compunction about their demise. Similarly, we give

little

thought to the morality or the karma of eating salt or drinking water.

But a traditional culture that lives in close and intimate relationship with the

land has a

very different approach to valuing life. These groups believe everything in the

natural

world has its own sacred nature. Water is a sacred living thing, as are trees

and plants,

animals, mountains, yeasts and the moon. All are imbued with Life--zoë--even if

their

biological life--bios--is not perceptible. To say that it is moral to eat a root

but immoral

to eat an animal, then, makes little sense--both are alive. A hierarchy may

still develop in

such a culture, but it will be a hierarchy based on how great of a gift that

thing is

perceived to be to the community that depends on it. Where people depend upon

corn for

survival, it will be honored and given a special importance in the culture.

Where they

depend upon the salmon, salmon will be given an exalted status. A precious body

of water

may be considered a great gift, or the leaves of a particular plant, or the sap

of a tree, or

a deposit of metal, or stone, or salt. In Tibet, traditional saltmen take a

yearly month-long

pilgrimage to a salt lake high in the Himalayas to hand-harvest salt. Following

tradition,

they perform ritual prayers of gratitude to the goddess of the lake, make ritual

offerings to

her, speak in a sacred, secret language during the journey, and uphold a high

moral

standard of conduct as they near the lake. 4

Perceiving a part of the natural world to be a great gift does not preclude

eating it, but it

does ensure that it will always be eaten with gratitude and thanks to the

spirits who bring

it into the lives of the people who depend upon it. Sometimes a taboo against

eating a

particular animal will develop to protect another food that comes from that

animal. The

most common example of this is the taboo against eating beef--or restrictions

about

when it may be eaten--when a community is dependent upon the dairy products that

cattle provide. Other animals come to be considered unclean or ritually

proscribed for a

variety of reasons, and thus there are taboos against eating them. In many

indigenous

cultures, certain clans are prohibited from eating particular animals that are

in some way

totemic for them. To eat that animal becomes a form of cannibalism, but it is

never all

animals that are thus designated.

Divorced from Nature

Of course, there are myriad reasons why people become vegetarians, but often the

impulse grows out of a legitimate objection to how animals raised for food

production are

treated. It is bad enough that we don't perceive corn or water to be a gift; how

much

worse when it is an animal that can look at us and blink, that sleeps, eats and

cries out

when in pain, just like we do? In American agribusiness, we fail to view our

livestock as

gifts, and see them rather as units of production without sentience. The

commodification

of animal products--not only meat but eggs and dairy as well--has led to a

profound

devaluation of the animals we raise within our industrialized food system. They

lead tragic,

confined lives, cut-off from the other aspects of nature--grass, earth,

sunlight, sky, rain,

fresh air, night, morning, day, dusk. They have been severed from the larger

context of

Life, of zoë, and of the beautiful interdependence and entanglement of

existence. They are

only one step removed from being machines, and so their biological death, the

death of

bios, does not echo with an affirmation of zoë, of Life. It echoes with

grief--hollow and

cold and tragic and full of loss.

All creatures live some kind of life and die some kind of death. We don't really

want to

look at this fact because we live in a culture that deals only indirectly with

the reality of

death. Because we are so divorced from nature, we are handicapped in our ability

to

understand the world mythically, metaphorically or spiritually. Because we are

so used to

having control over our environment and being able to manipulate it, and because

we rely

on a literal and mechanistic understanding of how that environment functions,

death

seems to us a tragic and a frustrating business. We see it as a finality, as an

ending, rather

than as a threshold or a transition.

The West African shaman and teacher Malidoma

Patrice Somé gives us some insight into how the people of his culture--the

Dagara--view

death:

For the Dagara people, death results in simply a different form of belonging to

the

community. It is a lesson from nature that change is the norm, that the world is

defined

by eternal cycles of decline and regeneration. Having journeyed adequately in

this world in

your life, you become much more effective to the community that contained you

when you

return to the world of Spirit. When my grandfather, Bakhyè, died, he told my

father, " I have

to go now. From where I'll be I'll be more useful to you than if I stay here. "

Death is not a

separation but a different form of communion, a higher form of connectedness

with the

community, providing an opportunity for even greater service.5

When we think of death as a transition, it is less tragic--in fact, it is full

of Life, of zoë.

Taking the life of another creature is not an inconsequential act in this

context, but it has

a much different meaning when death is viewed as part of a cycle or circle

rather than the

end of a line Indigenous and traditional foodways reflected the knowledge that

animal

foods were a great and precious gift. Hunting game and slaughtering farm animals

were

undertaken carefully and consciously, often in a ritual context. All parts of

the animal were

valued and used by the community, and what couldn't be used was often " gifted "

to some

other being.

Once we accept the premise that living takes life, we can begin doing vitally

important

work: ensuring that farm animals and wild animals have the opportunity to lead a

good life

and die a good death. We need to approach the body of a slaughtered animal more

holistically, ecologically, consciously and spiritually. We have to witness the

lives and the

deaths of farm animals, and to be less squeamish about the truth of what happens

to

them.

Last year I had the opportunity to go to a local farm and kill a chicken myself.

Then I

scalded it and plucked it and gutted it. The next day I ate it. I learned a

great deal by doing

that, and it helped me to accept the mortality of the process. I will never look

at a chicken

the same way again, now that I know each step involved between a feathered

clucking

being running around the barnyard and the pink plucked headless body you see in

the

store. We are so divorced in this culture from all of these steps. This

disconnection is a big

part of what makes it seem possible to step outside of the cycle of life and

death and be

free from the karma of killing for our food. But a life lived on the farm or in

the forest will

teach you otherwise.

On the Blood Moon, may we say a heartfelt prayer for all the animals who are

being raised

in inhumane conditions. May we give great thanks for the farmers and ranchers

who treat

their animals with respect and honor and who care deeply for their welfare. May

we take

the time to seek out sources of animal foods that are raised with respect for

the

environment, for our health, and for the well being of the animals themselves.

May there

come a day when factory farms have been replaced with small scale, integrated,

holistic

family farms where all living things are recognized for being the gifts that

they surely are.

May there be a day when Americans have acquired the adult knowledge that all

life is

dependent upon all other life in an endless circle of giving and receiving,

birth and death,

growth and decay, rebirth, and regeneration. May we find ourselves humble as we

contemplate the miracle of life, and of the Life that transcends death. That

would make

our ancestors proud.

REFERENCES

1. Helena Norberg-Hodge, Ancient Futures, San Francisco: Sierra Club Books,

1991, p. 31.

2. Barbara Kingsolver, Prodigal Summer, New York: Harper , 2001, p.

322-323.

3. The Gift, p. 32.

4. See the documentary film, The Saltmen of Tibet.

5. Malidoma Patrice Somé, The Healing Wisdom of Africa, New York:

Tarcher/Putnam,

1998, p. 53.

About the Author

Prentice is a professional chef, a passionate home cook, and a Weston A.

Price

Foundation chapter leader. She writes, cooks, and teaches in the San Francisco

Bay Area.

This article is excerpted from Full Moon Feast: Food and the Hunger for

Connection, her

first book. Please check out her website: www.wisefoodways.com.

Full Moon Feast: Food and the Hunger for Connection uses old-fashioned, seasonal

moon

names to explore our cultural relationship with food--incorporating history,

ecology,

nutrition, and the wisdom of our ancestors. It contains over 70 nourishing and

traditional

recipes and will be released in March 2006 by Chelsea Green Publishing.

If you enjoyed this article, you may also like: The Myths of Vegetarianism

>

> Many vegans and vegetarians ask me about rennet at the market because

> they are very concerned not to consume anything of animal origin.

> However, most commercially available " vegetable " rennets are GMO from

> specific fungi. Coagulating agents from plant sources such as nettle,

> cardamom, etc. are true plant/vegetable rennets. When I use a rennet, I

> prefer to use animal rennet.

>

> While not foolproof, still good info: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rennet

>