The End of Vegetarianism

A tarp on our kitchen floor is a bloody mess. In the other room, as I type, a cleaver is being pounded into spinal columns. Copious fat renders in a large stainless steel pot and smells faintly of fish. Six or seven other carcasses are buried in a pile of snow outside, awaiting their time under the butcher's knife. Their hides await the removal of fat and the distant promise of waterproof clothing.

After a long wait, the seals have arrived.

Shocked? Most people are when seals are killed. It leads to strong feelings, yelling matches, boycotts, press releases. They are cute so killing them is wrong. The European Union is planning on banning all seal imports from Canada partly motivated by these reasons. Fair enough, Europe is far away and long ago they devastated and removed most aquatic mammals from their shores. With that track record, why let them do it to ours?

But cuteness is hardly a reason to ban hunts arbitrarily. Deer are beautiful, rabbits are cute, chicken have their moments, goats are characters, cows . . . well you can't win them all. But all these animals can be killed by the thousands if not in the case of chickens, billions. But if hunting an animal provides you with the things you need and you enter into a relationship with it, ensuring that its species survives so you may survive, then your hunt cannot be wrong. Zebras provide lions what they need to survive in east Africa. Seals provide polar bears with what they need in the arctic. Plankton must die so that whales can sing.

Humans are not very suited to their environments like lions, whales, plankton and seals. We live in cold places without a layer of winter fat (McDonald's fat doesn't count because sadly, it lasts all year). So we need a little more from our prey. We need to borrow their successful evolutionary adaptations such as warm skin and we can, smartly, make light from their oil. We're differently from most animals in that way, but still very much animals.

When you live in a place, and you really believe in eating locally and efficiently it's important to take stock of your potential sources of food. So if you live in India, rice and lentils make a lot of sense. If you live in Nunavut, caribou and, by the coast, seals and whales make sense. Indians shouldn't really eat seal and certainly Inuit wouldn't last long on beans and rice. And why, with all we know about climate change, would you expend energy to ship these products around the world when the earth already provides all you need where you live? Seriously.

And if you plan to leave behind a habitable home for your children, you'll probably make the most of the "natural resources" at your disposal. So only an idiot, and we are definitely idiots, would kill a shark and only take its fins for Chinese soups. This is so immoral, let alone wasteful, that I have no problem making a t-shirt that says: "Vote for human extinction".

But in the case of large mammals like seals, humans can make use of most of their bodies. Skins can, as mentioned, keep us warm and actually waterproof. Fat can nourish us and provide us with light. Meat, bones and marrow provide protein. Today I wondered if their whiskers could be used as a brush of some kind. I haven't thought of a use for their flippers yet--perhaps a windmill? In light of this, to kill them wantonly merely for their attractive fur is a crime worthy of the death penalty.

And efficiency is an important consideration. Ten seals may provide a group of three humans and one cat with enough food for one year when combined with other sources of food such as mushrooms, cultivated vegetables, perennials, deer, rabbit. Ten lives for three. This is the stuff of life. Think of the millions of plankton that feed one mighty whale or even the thousands of fish consumed by one seal. This is the way it works.

The best part is that seals take care of themselves. You don't have to do anything but hunt them and skin and butcher them maybe a few times a year. Whenever I see a cow, I wonder why we waste our time and energy on these animals.

For meat? Kill a deer or a seal and don't worry about antibiotics, cleaning out their pens, providing them with hay for winter, keeping their water from freezing in winter, building them a barn, birthing calves. 365 days a year. Maybe you don't raise it yourself but you support and believe in a system that does. Why would we waste our time on all this when the world provides us with an abundant source of meat in seals and deer and smaller mammals?

The only thing I can see is maybe milk is that great. But I've gotten by fine without it for close to ten years and I'm probably never going to let it touch my lips again for the rest of my life. Yuck!

So where do all these thoughts lead me? I'm still very much a vegetarian but I'm not blind. I can see the writing on the wall. Chickpeas come from Turkey. Quinoa comes from Saskatchewan. Rice comes from Asia. Avocados come from Mexico. Does this diet make sense knowing what I know about ecosystems and climate change? No, but old habits die hard. I'll probably not start by eating seal but they are an abundant wild food where I call home.

And clearly, as usual when I think about anything these days, I'm reminded that there are far too many humans on this planet. I'm making an argument for us being the top predator (not the civilized top predators that we currently make ourselves out to be) but if we are to accept that role we must accept all that comes with it including responsibility for the lives of those that sustain us and the vital importance of maintaining a reasonably small population.

Ugh, Buddy just caught a mouse and brought it upstairs. At least he's doing his job. Now if only he could lose the sadism and fucking kill it. If only he could read this post.