ANIMAL RIGHTS LAWYER - Maryland, Washington, DC, and Virginia

JON KATZ'S PERSONAL PAGE

VEGETARIANISM - RESPONDING TO THE DISSENTING OMNIVORES

NOTE- The following article is adapted from my reply to a junior high school student who reported on the Vegetarian Resource Group's Bulletin Board that she was having difficulty dealing with a classmate's constant taunts about her vegetarian lifestyle:

The people taunting you about being vegetarian in some respects are doing you a service to enable you in a very constructive way to start spreading the positive word about vegetarianism. So long as these people are not using any physical aggression, the situation is manageable, even though at the seventh grade age it may appear to be insurmountable.

At the age of 38, a vegetarian for 13 years, and a 100% raw vegan for the last 6 months (and 45 pounds lighter from my too heavy weight), I welcome the taunting and questioning at any term. Depending on who's around to hear, where I am, who's doing the talking, and what's being said, my responses include:

1. I believe in doing your own thing; you won't find me expressing anger for your eating dead animals, but you won't find me eating them, either. 2. So, you want me to eat meat? If the meat were your beloved dog Chuck, would you be saying the same thing? 3. I'd love to get a comparison of an exam of your colon and mine. Did you know that meat can take days to get through your mile-long intestine, but that an apple passes right through? 4. I used to eat meat until I was 25, but during my last three years of meat eating, I couldn't reconcile my meat eating with my obsession over human rights. 5. If the bible tells us we can eat meat, does that mean the bible also says that we can eat your dog Chuck or your cat Henry? 6. If we need fish or meat for protein, did you know that most Americans get too much protein, which offsets our bodies' calcium? 7. Before I became a vegetarian, I'd get a few colds per winter. Now, I barely get colds or any sickness, and have more energy than ever. 8. If you say we should taste everything that is served at a dinner party, aren't there things you wouldn't want to eat (e.g., tripe, head cheese, aspic)? 9. You say I'm a suspect radical not to eat meat? Can you name me any true progress for justice that did not involve a portrayal by many people in power of the activists as radicals? 10. No need to feel threatened; this is a personal decision that I make no effort to spread to other people (many people may be doing a pre-emptive attack against potential missionary work by you for meat eating).

11. If vegetarianism is radical, did you know that for centuries, millions of Hindus in India have been vegetarian and very healthy for centuries? 12. If animals have no souls, is it okay to eat your dog or cat? 13. You say that eating meat is the natural order of things, or else the tiger wouldn't eat the sheep? Do you consider yourself a higher moral being than the tiger? If you want to be like the tiger, does that mean you'll kill the sheep yourself, and will eat it right then and there without skinning or cooking it? 14. If it's natural to eat meat, why do we not have the sharp teeth that tigers do, to tear apart raw flesh? Why don't we have the short intestines of carnivorous animals, to enable the meat to leave our systems quickly? Why does meat cause humans so many diseases (colo-rectal cancer; heart disease)? Why should I play roulette that the meat may be from an animal with mad cow disease, or that the meat may be rancid?

Be as positive as possible in the content and tone of your responses, and as gentle as possible. Better yet, win over the skeptics by bringing some of the most enticing vegetarian fare (e.g., mangoes, pineapples, gazpacho, guacamole), and some of the otherwise skeptics might be asking to try your delicacies. If you really want to reduce their taunting, bring extras to share.

ADDENDUM: October 2006

Here is my reply to the Trial Lawyers College listserv about fishing:

Role reversal is of limited use absent reversing roles with the very beings that are eaten, worn, used as cosmetics and a multitude of other household products, used to develop film, used to curdle cheese, and used as soap (that's what tallow/sodium tallowate in commercial soap is) daily by the multi-ton. I rarely get on a vegetarianism soapbox unless asked or taunted (and neither has happened here), but share the following nevertheless, since this is a listserv focusing so heavily on justice: - I became a strict vegetarian 18 years ago after finding no logical basis to be an activist for human rights while still eating other mammals, birds and fish, and after learning that my health would suffer not at all by making the switch, and would in fact improve (and has improved). - The biggest catalysts to my becoming a vegetarian during three years going up and down the food chain were: getting grossed out over this Straight Dope on gelatin production (http://www.straightdope.com/classics/a3_103.html ), and, the last straw, going to a restaurant three months later, after visiting an aquarium, and being unable to order any fish after spending hours with live ones during the day. - A few years later, I passed by the fish counter at an Asian market. For the first time, I learned that a gourmet way to scale fish is to do so alive. The fish was flapping like crazy, so much that it fell to the ground, and the fishman just picked it up and kept scaling it alive. The waiting customer -- ready to cook the fish with turmeric and other condiments -- told me that it's best to pluck chickens alive, too, in that the feathers come out more easily. - I learned at other times that gourmets often cut open lobsters while alive to season them (a common French cuisine method), that many people enjoy eating whole still-live fish as sushi -- at Asian restaurants -- while the gills still gasp for water, and that it's common to boil shrimp alive (in addition to boiling lobsters and crabs alive). - At the TLC, one Warrior told me one reason he initially felt disconnected from me was that he liked to hunt and eat his kill (then again, another told me he felt disconnected from me, initially, because of my love of jazz). Another Warrior initially thought my vegetarianism was a put-on, but later realized that was not so at all. - Warrior Steve Rench, present the whole time I was at the ranch, is a vegetarian, which just goes to show that we're not all a bunch of wooly-headed radicals. - For those who claim that scripture allows them to eat meat, what would be their reply if they were asked if it was okay for someone to slaughter and eat their pet dog or cat? As to the claim that humans are somehow higher beings that are entitled to eat less-developed non-human animals, racists repeatedly claim that people from their race are more developed than people from other races, thus permitting them -- in their view -- to dominate, degrade, and harm people of other races. Furthermore, some people are born with such severe brain damage (sometimes with missing parts of their brain) that they have fewer intellectual abilities and less ability to feel pain than plenty of non-human animals. Out the window go claims of superiority over less capable and less-developed non-human beings. Since I believe that humans evolved from non-human animals, when I ate animals, I ate my closest non-human brothers and sisters other than apes. When I eat plants, I'm further removed from my evolutionary relatives, and plenty of plant food can be eaten without killing the plant (e.g., fruit, beans, nuts, and the list goes on). If people eliminated violence to non-human animals, I'm convinced we'd see less human-to-human violence.