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By Rome Jorge Lifestyle Editor
Are animal rights advocates
overly sentimental about animals? Or does eating meat, wearing
leather, patronizing zoos and leashing our pets make killers,
torturers and jailers out of us?
Critics contend that animal
rights advocacy, most especially at a time many urgent and dire
human concerns, is flawed prioritization and vain sentimentality.
When most Filipino overseas workers could not find any place for
themselves on flights out of Lebanon during the 2006 war with
Israel, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) was
decrying the policy of disallowing evacuees to bring along their
pets. Resources spent promoting animal rights causes mean less focus
and energy on such concerns as human rights, environmentalism and
other advocacies.
Though vegan advocates cite
certain human anatomical features such as the lack of canines and
long intestines tracts as evidence that humans are naturally
herbivorous, humans also lack the large multiple stomachs, food
regurgitation and other adaptations of dedicated herbivores.
Conventional science views human beings as omnivores, credited with
most varied and adaptable diet of all species that includes animal
protein as well as plant produce.
Animal rights advocates contend
that slaughtering animals for food and clothing is brutal. However,
animals themselves kill and eat one another in ways more brutal than
any butcher could.
Philosopher Peter Singer, author
of Animal Liberation, argues that an animal’s rights are equal of
to those of humans, and to consider them as any less is “speciesist.”
Dr. William T. Jarvis, a former vegetarian, counters, “The belief
that all life is sacred can lead to absurdities such as allowing
mosquitoes to spread malaria or vipers to run loose on one’s
premises.”
Most of the creatures that animal
rights activists seek to save from slaughter are domesticated
animals: breeds that owe their existence to human beings. Humans
have bred these animals specifically to be eaten. They are not
natural breeds and cannot survive without human care. In contrast,
environmental organizations seek to conserve wild endangered species
and their natural habitats—a necessity to maintain ecological
balance on which human survival depends upon.
Though zoos are not ideal
habitats for wildlife, proponents argue that these can play vital
roles in the captive breeding of endangered species as well in the
education of the youth on environmental values.
Vegetarians contend that animal
farming is anti-environment. They note that precious resources spent
raising food for farmed animals would be better spent feeding humans
directly. Many grazing farmed animals do not efficiently convert to
protein the plant material they eat and instead occupy huge tracts
of land and consume precious water. Certain animals such as cattle
produce methane—a greenhouse gas that contributes to global
warming—as part of their digestion. And carnivores such as farmed
salmon consume more protein than they produce. However, it is only
with grazing animals that humans can survive on lands that cannot
sustain farming. Farm animals utilize plants and plant portions that
humans cannot digest or find unpalatable. The same logic applies to
fisheries in oceans and rivers.
Though vegans opine that eating
meat is toxic and that consuming milk of other animals and eating
unborn animals as eggs is unnatural, a vegan diet with processed
artificial meat substitutes is even more unnatural. Many plant foods
such as soybeans, red kidney beans and cassava are highly toxic and
deadly when eaten raw. But just like meat, when properly grown and
cooked, these can be safe sources of nutrition. Many vegetable
foods—such as tofu and eggplant that absorb great amounts of
cooking oil fat when fried—are not necessarily healthier
alternatives to meat.
A vegan diet can be nutritious
and even delicious. In practice however, maintaining a balanced
vegan diet can be challenging. When poorly implemented, a vegan diet
can do serious harm, especially to young children who need protein,
minerals and other nutrients for growth.
A multitude of culinary
traditions worldwide would disappear as well as many indigenous and
historical cultural practices such as bullfighting in Spain and
cockfighting in the Philippines if animal rights advocates have
their way. Threatening to take away lechon, kilawin, afritada or any
of our local dishes or desecrating them with meat substitutes can
arguably be considered anti-Filipino.
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