..don’t know where, don’t know when.
So Michael Mansfield QC, a vegetarian, has stated that eating meat should be a crime against humanity in the future. So instead of being handed a menu in a pub with a vegetarian option, in the future you might be handed a vegan menu with a single meat option. Or perhaps we’ll see underground meat eating dens like drinking dens during prohibition. Maybe criminals will shift their focus from cyber-crime to the production of mince.
Few thoughts. If we suddenly stopped eating meat what might happen? We all know about the environmental benefits. People would be healthier too, but what happens to the animals themselves, the rural communities, cultural identity and tradition? There’s a strong case that it would be the poorest communities that would suffer the most too.
What interests me most though is the tone with which such arguments are made nowadays. It is all so angry. People seem to feel slighted if someone else does something they don’t agree with.
“Keep smiling through, just like you always do, till the blue skies drive the dark clouds far away”
The absolutism of it is what strikes me. Eating the chicken I’ve raised in my back yard is a crime against humanity, but no one bats an eyelash at ripping up millions of hectares of land and altering the earth on a global scale for farming.
With age I get more firmly behind the idea that people don’t even totally believe what they’re shouting. They just want to believe hard, publicly profess said belief, and be morally indignant about something edgy.
Tim, I think you have nailed it.
1. Balance in all things.
2. There’s a strong herd thing going on here and elsewhere, that I suspect is based around fear.