I dont foresee an immediate future without animal products either. I dont pretend to offer easy answers but surely we should at least work towards not having to rely on animals to survive in ways that cause stress and death (at our hands).
As to the part I bolded, well the way I see it, - We should work towards not having to eat other animals, because we are human beings, a higher being, with reason, morals and all that jazz. I know that many people who focus on us ‘being at the top of the food chain’ love the idea of us being predators. Maybe it harks back to when we actually were cavemen? Anyway my point is, as cool as that idea is, fact is we are better than the lions, tigers and crocodiles amongst others who eat other animals because they do not know better.
Well, there are other considerations.
First, fully 1/3 of the world’s useable land is not useable for anything but grass. Same is true of the U.S. We cannot digest grass, period. Certain animals can, including cattle, buffalo, elk, sheep. It is only in utilizing such animals for food that 1/3 of the world’s surface can support human life. So, in terms of the cost to the human food supply, raising of grass-eaters costs exactly nothing. (the grain fed to some is another subject, but suffice it to say that in many instances it isn’t necessary, and in some others it isn’t human-consumable grain)
Second, we are built to have the ability to eat meat. Our digestive tracts mark us as omnivores; like bears and pigs, which can eat both meat and vegetation of certain kinds. Our digestive tracts are dissimilar to those of the purely vegetarian animals. Can we somehow conclude from that that we are NOT designed to eat meat and benefit from it?
Third, the world’s grasslands will not, in the absence of herd animals, turn themselves into park lands or residential neighborhoods. Nature abhors a vacuum, and will fill it if man does not. Before the white man in the U.S. there were approximately as many buffalo out on the prairies as there presently are cattle. Indians on the peripheries and in the few river valleys of the plains starved in the midst of plenty because, by and large, they could not catch and kill those large, swift and very dangerous animals. Billions of pounds of high-quality protein on the hoof all around them, and they couldn’t access it. Only the arrival of horses allowed them to do so on a significant scale. Is there a compelling reason why we should return to the condition of pre-horse Indians?
Fourth, is there a compelling reason why we should relinquish all of that protein to predators which would kill and eat us as readily as they would the buffalo, deer, antelope and elk that would fill the prairies in the absence of cattle and sheep? Predator species breed rapidly to fill any predator void. Is there a truly good reason to relinquish all that nutrition to animals which will, inevitably, receive it instead of us and, on the peripheries of the then-deserted plains, also feed on humans? And anyone who has seen a sizeable animal die of starvation or disease or killed by a predator would never think it an improvement over human meat-processing procedures, as disturbing as those might seem to some.
Fifth, where is the teaching of Jesus in which he tells us not to eat meat? Did he refrain from the lamb at the Last Supper out of principle and were the evangelists so negligent that they did not see fit to mention such a revolutionary teaching? No, they didn’t mention it in the gospels because it was not part of His teachings.
Sixth, everything we put into our mouths, including grain and vegetables, deprives some other living creature of the means to life, though it might be an aid to some. If we didn’t eat wheat, for example, grain-eaters would multiply and eat it instead. If, then, seeing the pointlessness of raising wheat at all, we refrained from growing wheat, it would again alter their ability to live and, of course, affect ours drastically.
Finally, why does anyone think the proteins and other nutrients we get from meat can be replaced for the population of the earth by vegetation alone?
I do not condemn those who, for reasons of penance or as a spiritual discipline, refrain from eating meat, eggs, fish, apple pie or anything else. But it is wrong for anyone to suggest that anyone else is somehow morally culpable for eating those things which God has given to us and very clearly made us capable of utilizing for our survival.
I am glad that I only eat meat or fish!!
