Pass the Mustard....

Taylor Clark offers us omnivores a little insight into the vegetarian's mind, with an essay at Slate. I found the essay to be insightful in some respects, but a little sad in that it seems to promote the odd moral imperative that we should not kill animals and consume them (and craving a hot dog with mustard)...

Believe me, if obtaining bacon didn't require slaughtering a pig, I'd have a BLT in each hand right now with a bacon layer cake waiting in the fridge for dessert. But, that said, I can also tell you that with some time away from the butcher's section, many meat products start to seem gross. Ground beef in particular now strikes me as absolutely revolting; I have a vague memory that hamburgers taste good, but the idea of taking a cow's leg, mulching it into a fatty pulp, and forming it into a pancake makes me gag. And hot dogs … I mean, hot dogs? You do know what that is, right?

I understand that we don't have to kill and eat animals, but I do have some curiosity as to what we should do with all those cows if we don't. I really feel that sometimes this don't kill idea is dragging us away from a key part of our humanity -- as big time predator of an important food chain. It doesn't seem sustainable to me that we could cease eating meat en masse. I do recognize that Mr. Clark doesn't necessarily advocate for such a large transition, but the whole moral/ethical argument is, in my opinion, weak soup. Of course, we should strive to raise and kill these animals in the least offensive and harmful way, but -- call me a biological conservative -- I think that our traditional role as a predator in our food system is important.

Clark concludes:

Finally, grant me one more cordial request: Please don't try to convince us that being vegetarian is somehow wrong. If you're concerned for my health, that's very nice, though you can rest assured that I'm in shipshape. If you want to have an amiable tête-à-tête about vegetarianism, that's great. But if you insist on being the aggressive blowhard who takes meatlessness as a personal insult and rails about what fools we all are, you're only going to persuade me that you're a dickhead. When someone says he's Catholic, you probably don't start the stump speech about how God is a lie created to enslave the ignorant masses, and it's equally offensive to berate an herbivore. I know you think we're crazy.

Who says we shouldn't say those things to Catholics??? OK, I guess not, and I'll try to be good... My cordial request back to the vegetarians is that they not inform me what is in a hot dog while I'm preparing my homage to the "guts and stuff encased meat products on a bun gods" at the game. I know what's in those dogs (I've made them), and no I don't find it gross. Oh, and please pass the relish too.