Opinion: Message for an Anti-meat Activist

Society will eventually come to recognize the moral wrongs of eating meat but only when an alternative arises

Photo byDiego Ortiz on Pexels

The encounter described below is entirely fictional.

The street was raucous with a protest taking place on one side of the road and irritated passersby shouting back from the other side. Homemade signs reading “MEAT IS MURDER!” and “SPEAK UP FOR THE VOICELESS!” bobbed up and down within the mass of hollering protestors. They were mostly young people, teenagers, and to a person they all bore marks of a counter-culture: tattoos, dyed hair, piercings, etc. An angry older man stopped for a moment to hurl invectives from his side of the street and to urge them to go home.

On that same side, a middle-aged man in khakis, a white button down, and a brown coat emerges from around the corner. He’s taken aback for a moment by the rowdy crowd across the way, but soon continues his walk, until a young woman’s face catches his eye — she looks upset, on the verge of tears, as she yells her message aloud. His face contorts into one of pity as his gait begins to slow, until he stops walking altogether. He changes direction, and begins to make his way across the two-lane street.

As he gets nearer, she notices that this stranger is heading directly towards her. She trains her eyes on him, and her demeanor grows apprehensive. He approaches her slowly and warily, hands out in front, as if to say, “I mean no harm.” As he draws in closer, he begins to speak, voice straining to be heard through the surrounding clamor, “You’re not wrong! You’re just before your time!”

She seems confused, unable to make out what he said. He gestures with his head for the young woman to move down the line some to where it’s quieter, and though her face reads as if she’s unsure, she decides to follow along. They reach the outskirts of the gathering, and she asks, “Can you repeat what you said back there?” He repeats, “You’re not wrong, you’re just before your time, but, unfortunately, there’s nothing you can do here.”

She asks, “What do you mean?” He responds, “The world never changes because it should. It changes because it has to or because it’s easier to. And the conditions are not there yet for this cruelty to come to an end.

“Winston Churchill, with all the prominence of his position and all the eloquence of his speech, could not convince the Americans to intercede in Hitler’s march across Europe — only an attack on their homeland could. The Civil War was a war between those who benefitted from slavery and those who did not. If all but the slaves benefitted from it, it would be ongoing to this day. No systemic wrong has ever been righted on the basis of principle alone.

“Either the wronged have made life difficult for those who could make a change, or the issue itself came to be a thorn in their side in someway or another, but mass sacrifice does not happen except when there is perceived personal advantage. No society has ever experienced an altruistic revolution or moral awakening. Where there has been a change of heart en masse, it has always been in response to the exigencies of the times. The moral argument had always been around, and always been ignored, until fate finally happened to align it with the pragmatic argument.

“You think these people will simply be convinced to change? No matter how we adorn ourselves,” he says while gesturing to his clothes and pulling at the flap of his jacket, “we are animals. You would sooner convince a dog to give up its favorite food than humanity. Both will only be convinced when there is an alternative that is more cheaply gotten, more readily available, or tastier.

“The average person laughs at it now; they mock protestors like yourself. And these are the very same people who will also laugh at Descartes’s absurd assertion that animals feel no pain. Hit a dog with a stick in front of them, and they’ll call you a monster for it, but bleed 1,000 cows to death, and they dismiss it as ‘natural.’

“They do not maintain their beliefs and behavior because of a lack of awareness or prodding. Each of them knows, to a larger or lesser degree, the horrors of factory farming. At some point —on tv, if not in person — they have seen the fear and the suffering of the animals. They know that their young are separated from them, and forced into mechanical contraptions that treat them not as living things, but as a means to an end and nothing more.

“They have heard of the studies of the animals’ brains and behaviors. They know that mammals can love as we love. They know that the emotional part of the brain is not specific to humans. They’ve heard that pigs are as smart and personable as dogs. And if they do not know it, let them visit the farm and see joy in the eyes of a young calf as it runs about, or the fear on the face of a wary piglet as it scurries away from some possible threat to find its mother.

“They will go home today and pet their dog or cat, and speak ill of whomever would dare mistreat such an animal. Then, they will turn and take the flesh of a slaughtered pig, cook it, and consume it. They are not deaf to your shouting. They are not blind to the evidence. They don’t care because they benefit from not caring.

“It is not only other species that suffer — though the crimes against those animals that we raise for the slaughter will stay as a moral stain on humanity’s record for all of time. They ignore abuses against their fellow humans just as easily. Guarantee them a better, or more affordable, or more quickly delivered product, and they will find a way to excuse any mistreatment of the workers who were exploited to make that possible.

“Do you know when humanity will put an end to the horror that is factory farming and meat-eating in general? When there is a simpler, cheaper alternative. Fortunately, it is on the horizon. Soon, we will make meat in laboratories, and we will have the product without the cruelty.

“This will still not put an end to the atrocities in a day. The factory farmers will do what they can to fight the development of an alternative. They’ll defend their system of murder to the end, and they’ll weaponize their power in order to impede progress. But if the day should come when a similar product can be brought to market for cheaper — which one would expect shall come, as it is a lot of work to rear an entire life-form just to kill it — then we shall see the end of this.

“And on that day, every generation to come will look back at those that preceded it as monsters. They will look back at us how we look back at the slavers, or at those who would marry off children, or at those who would invade and pillage neighboring lands. This is our mortal sin that so many simply ignore, as all those before it were ignored, until they too became inconvenient.

“Even now, I can imagine someone coming to defend the act on its merits. They’ll say, ‘But it’s natural, a part of life.’ Illness and death are a part of life, rape and murder are a part of life — look out into the animal kingdom and you will find every atrocity you can imagine. But the human is one who can appreciate the moral consequences of its actions. For this reason, we have made incredible progress in moving away from the savagery of nature.

“For all their arguments and conjectures that it’s ‘natural,’ put a knife in their hand and the innocent animal before them, and watch how many of them would shy away from slicing the throat. Let’s see how many of them are prepared to peel off the skin and pull the organs from what was alive just prior to the act. They can defend the barbarism, but most of them will not even engage in it themselves. They have no stomach for the murder, only for the meat.

“This is why I came to tell you that one thing: You are absolutely right, and just as right as you are, you are equally helpless to do anything to fix the wrong. If you wish to appeal to the capitalist, find a way to do things that cost less — if it is also morally right, they will then celebrate this as well but never for that reason alone. If you wish to appeal to an animal, give them what they want but in a more enticing way. You’ll never convince them otherwise.

“Fortunately, as you and I stand and converse in the streets, somewhere a person is envisioning a life of luxury for themselves if they can finally bring meat to market in a more efficient way. Their greed and their science will win in the end, and then when everyone is satiated by another means, then and only then will there be a moral reckoning.

“Once no one has to make any sacrifice, all will be in a position to pass judgement on those who came before them and failed to make the right decision when there was no easy alternative. Kudos to you for having open eyes and speaking out at a time when to do so was met with vitriol. You’ll have your day, but it’s not today.”

He looked deep into her eyes and nodded his head, as if to say, “We understand each other, so I’ll carry on now.” They maintained eye contact for a moment, and then the man continued back across the street and on his way.