A Really Strict Vegetarian

Vancouver Sun columnist Barbara Yaffe recently penned an op-ed column about being a vegetarian in light of the finding of a single cow in Canada that was afflicted with Mad Cow Disease. But Yaffe has a criterion that dictates what she eats that makes even strict vegans look like slackers.

Yaffe likens her conversion to vegetarianism to becoming a Born Again Christian,

I can’t rationalize why I should think of a cow any differently than I think of the four sensitive animals I share my home with. Perhaps bovines aren’t as responsive or manipulative. But what’s the basis for assuming they feel no pain?

Those who start contemplating such things find themselves bound to turn away from meat consumption, and chicken and fish for that matter.

Because such thoughts result in a transformation that, is suggest, is akin to being born again for those who find religion.

Those who aren’t born again think of those who are as a bit bonkers. That’s the way I viewed vegetarians before I became one.

So what could motivate such a religious-like transformation so quickly? What sort of life changing event led Yaffe to change completely the way she views the world? For Yaffe, it was simply watching a movie,

It happened to me and my husband several years ago after watching a video, Babe, a clever flick about a pig that lets the viewers see the world from the animals’ perspective.

The next day, meat didn’t look quite the same. We began pondering the cruel and careless things done to animals to prepare them for our dinner plate. It’s nothing short of torture. If the animals could communicate, what might they say?

I suppose the world can be thankful that, given the hold that fictional films seem to have over Yaffe, that she and her husband were not watching “The Texas Chainsaw Massacre” or “Silence of the Lambs.”

But an obvious problem immediately comes up — how do vegetarians decide what to eat and what not to eat. After all, there are all these people who claim to be vegetarians but also occasionally eat fish or even chicken. Yaffe seems to arrive at an incredibly stringent standard that would be almost impossible to actually follow,

Where do you draw the line, we were often asked; some vegetarians eat fish, for example. We decided anything that had a mother and a father was off limits for consumption. We never looked back or craved our former diet. Which we now see as archaic and inhumane.

So not only does Yaffe not eat animals, but she also avoids plants that reproduce sexually? How does she find out whether the plants she eats were the result of sexual or asexual reproduction (since many plants can use either method)? And why, exactly, is the method of reproduction the key for Yaffe? Would she eat a cloned animal? Apparently.

Yaffe writes that,

Meat-eaters must be people who don’t have much feelings or animals, or folks who don’t think about what’s experienced by animals. They’re in denial.

Or maybe just folks who do not take their religious ideologies from second-rate movies nor attach great moral import to the method of reproduction that an organism uses.

Source:

There is life after cooked flesh. Barbara Yaffe, The Vancouver Sun, June 1, 2003.