Well Done: Meat and its challengers

National Review, April 30, 2001 by Jonah Goldberg

From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic, a roughage curtain has descended across Europe. In Italy, the number of vegetarians has grown from 1.5 million to 2.5 million in just the past year. Demand for beef has been in free fall across the Continent-down 75 percent in Italy, down almost 50 percent in France. British newspapers report that it is hard to find steak on a menu in major capitals from Scandinavia to the Iberian peninsula. The reason for the spreading carnophobia is obvious and understandable: Mad-cow disease, foot-and-mouth disease, and pictures of thousands of slaughtered sheep and cows have dampened appetites.

And the animal-rights movement is taking advantage of the situation. In Germany, where the number of self-professed vegetarians has doubled to 6.6 million since the outbreak of mad-cow disease, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) is moving free "vegetarian starter kits" like soy hotcakes. As usual, PETA's PR campaign takes no prisoners: They have signed up various German celebrities, launched an ad blitz, and pushed the idea that the current troubles are retribution for man's sinful meat-savoring past.

For decades, the French have done wonderful things with veal, rabbit, venison, and other cute-animal products. But even they may now be turning their backs on this heritage. European newspapers and American newsmagazines have made a huge fuss over the fact that acclaimed Parisian chef Alain Passard has decided to drop all meat from the menu at his trendy restaurant, L'Arpege. Passard believes that "evolution" requires that humans move on to "explore a new domain called 'The Vegetable.'" He believes that adventurers in this new realm-who once paid $300 for a meal of duck or sweetbreads-won't hesitate to spend similarly on "the simple onion, the simple carrot, even a turnip." He considers the development of a meat-free cuisine a matter of securite alimentaire, or "nutritional security."

Vegetarianism is much less popular in the United States, in part because our meat supply is safe, but its acceptance on the cultural left has been growing for years. Combine that with the inevitable media-driven hype of the next U.S. meat-industry scandal-whatever it may be-and with the fact that the U.S. is historically the chief importer of Europe's bad ideas, and it's clear that we will very soon have to take vegetarianism seriously.

The media and PETA have done an impressive job "educating" the public about why we shouldn't eat animals. It's hardly a coherent and consistent argument, but it's no less effective for that. Some say we shouldn't eat animals because they have rights, just like you and me. PETA founder Ingrid Newkirk explains: "When it comes to feelings, a rat is a pig is a dog is a boy. There is no rational basis for saying that a human being has special rights."

Of course, this is a stolen base of grand proportions. After all, since when do feelings confer rights? And besides, when it comes to feelings, rats and human beings aren't the same. When was the last time a rat sympathized with the fact that you flunked algebra? Sure, dogs have been known to take a bullet for their owners (one of the reasons you shouldn't eat them), but my dog has yet to feel the slightest outrage over the capital-gains tax.

There's no shortage of cults in the vegetarian movement, including my favorite, the "fruitarians," who will eat only nonrefrigerated, uncooked, barely washed, room-temperature fruits. Their website explains, "If you eat cooked foods and in particular flesh of animals, then your body is automatically poisoned and you condemned to develop in yourself a lot of low quality of thoughts, feelings and emotions" (sic). The fruitarians believe, somewhat paradoxically, that fruit is great for you because it is "alive," that-like some vegan vampire-you absorb the life force of the fruit. At the same time, they eat only fruit because they believe that killing a plant simply for food is wrong. It's a bit like being pro-choice and believing that abortion is murder.

After the PETA people and the health nuts, the next most belligerent group in the movement is, unsurprisingly, the eco-vegetarians, who point out, legitimately, that Third World forests are cleared to make way for cattle ranges. But this argument is the easiest to contend with. First of all, these are the same people who are determined to do away with plastics, the internal-combustion engine, and reliably flushable toilets. They simply don't like development of any kind, in this case the ability of very poor people to finally achieve their dream of eating meat regularly.

The truth is, there is no single rationale to which all vegetarian zealots adhere-because the movement resembles more a diffuse religion than a coherent political argument. Whether they deify their bodies, the earth, or animals, the "give peas a chance" partisans operate on first principles that are fairly immune to rational debate. When animal-rights guru Peter Singer says that "mere difference of species is surely not a morally significant difference," one can either spend hours debating the sleight-of-hand in the words "mere" and "surely," or one can simply say, "I can't argue with you."