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To Be Or Not To Be A Vegetarian Is The Question

By Dr Sophie Jayamaha

Meat consumption and vegetarianism are both two ends of the same stick. 
They are both created by people for the same reasons, thinking that both are right.
Being right is only one of the reasons and you will find the other as you read.

But this billion dollar question has no such simple answer or one right answer. 
Let's look at the big picture.

All vegetarians are not vegetarians because they love animals. Most vegetarians do so because of health reasons. Many animal lovers are also meat eating people. They eat meat because they too believe it provides nutrition and also they love the taste.

Humans kill animals for various reasons and most people who kill animals are not the ones who eat them. They kill to sell and killing animals is a legal and acceptable trade which is a significant source of economy of certain countries such as USA, Argentina, Australia and New Zealand.

If people don't eat animals then there is no trade. But animals would be in peoples' diet because people are fed with inflated information enticing them with false benefits, tastes, recipes to cook delicious meat dishes and irresistible offers with low prices. 

People feed on what feeds the market. Vegetarianism is also driven by the marketing tactics. Market forces decide the ratio between the vegetarians and meat eaters.

If we want to make the right choices, we need to make sure that the market is fed with the truth and not lies. The information that feed the market are formulated with greed twisting the truth to make profits. 

People are easily persuaded by lies dressed up as truth. The world have been misled and persuaded by lies to organise even wars killing millions of innocent people.

There is some truth that certain animal products have good nutritional values. But one can argue that all nutrition requirements can be fulfilled by plant-based diets. People can get nutritional deficiencies such as Vitamin B12 deficiency, if they are not educated on what combination of plants would provide a complete diet. Similarly, complete meat-based diet also has deficiencies. eg. Scurvy or Vitamin C deficiency. The fruits and vegetables are the main source of Vitamin C for us.

 Animals are killed not only for food. If we put the reasons for animal killing in a scale from most to least number of animals getting killed it will look like this.
  1. For trading as meat or fish for consumption 
  2. Trading animal parts such as skin, horns, tusks, teeth etc
  3. As a hobby, hunting, fishing, gaming, animal fights, racing ( they get killed in the fight or kill them. when they are too weak to fight or race)
  4. Animal culling to protect poultry and agricultural produce eg. Foxes, Kangaroos
  5. To avoid danger (snakes, bares wild carnivores)
  6. Hardly any animals are killed for violence. Humans kill other humans more than animals for violence. 
Is vegetarianism about loving animals? If animal love is the basis of being a vegetarian, they must also engage in saving animals who are killed for other purposes as mentioned above. Most animals are killed for greed.  The goal then, has to be not being a vegetarian but saving animals from all forms of peril. Then there will not be killing for greed and feeding the market with lies to feed the human greed. 

Love doesn't mean loving only animals, but also loving all nature's creatures including humans, plants and all living beings.  

Some choose to be vegetarians for religious purpose based on a belief that killing of any form of sentient being causes bad karma. Religious practices are not based on love but beliefs and traditions. Beliefs do not necessarily reflect the ultimate truth which can only be known by complete transcendence of all beliefs and views. 

Others believe killing is unethical and immoral and that is also a view point. 

Scientific basis for being a vegetarian is not standing on moral grounds but only on the ground of its benefits for health and prevention of diseases. Both health and disease can be outcomes associated with food or lack of it. In a drought where no plant food is available to you, meat could be the only food available for human consumption. Would you not be grateful to the animal who provided food to kill your hunger? If a large number of people are dying of famine, and only animals are available for human survival, would you not feed on animals to save yours and other people's lives? That is for a need rather than for greed.

While animals are killed in large scale to satisfy human greed while all sources of food is in abundance, being a vegetarian does not serve an important role to save animal lives. Greed and lies arise through the ignorance that obscures the truth. If we realise that humans, animals, plants and all other living forms are interconnected with one another helping each other for survival and not separated from each other, the ignorance would be replaced by wisdom, greed would be replaced by love and the lies will be replaced by the truth. The truth and wisdom will decide what is right or wrong. 

The truth can come in many different forms. It can come either as a vegetable or a piece of meat. The truth that emerges through clarity would form the basis of wisdom. To be or not to be a vegetarian is determined by wisdom.  Wise decisions never get stuck in one end or the other or in an extreme view point. 

Sophie Jayamaha

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