We have no idea what a world of carnivores would look like. Except that it wouldn’t look anything like the present. Author Paul Roberts attempts to take a peek into this cloudy crystal ball in “Carnivores Like Us,” a story in this month’s Seed that’s drawn from his new book The End of Food.
We all know by now that the net environmental impact of a globalized American diet would be devastation. We also know that Asian meat consumption is rising far beyond our cultural expectations. Apparently, “vegetarian diets had less to do with health or spiritualism than with economics: In nearly every country where meat consumption was low (even in countries such as China, where some Buddhist practices encouraged vegetarianism), per capita intake has paralleled economic development.”
For the first time, as Roberts points out, “meat-eating [has] graduated from the category of lifestyle choice to that of collective responsibility.” Nearly everyone who’s paying attention agrees that something’s got to be done. Problem is, nearly no one agrees on what, or even on what lens to look through. Here’s a lengthy quote from Roberts, but it nicely cuts to the heart of it all.
For example, many who approach meat from a largely ethical standpoint, such as animal rights, argue for a completely meat-free culture; others accept some level of meat-eating as long as the animals are produced using ‘free range’ or other humane methods. Among consumers motivated by health concerns, meat eating may be acceptable as long as livestock are fed organic grains or better yet, are raised on grass. The eco-friendly consumers, meanwhile, might tolerate a steak as long as the cow was raised on a carefully rotated pasture (to avoid erosion and over-grazing), or on a local ranch, thus reducing the ‘food miles’ traveled and the associated carbon emissions. And yet, for all the awareness, and despite the eagerness of the food industry to exploit these concerns with a full range of ‘correct’ meats (organic, cruelty-free, local, even soy-based), the result has been a confusing cacophony of choices whose benefits—to health, to the animals, to the planet—are hard to discern.
Hard to argue with that, at least.
I have no idea why people insist on using the word carnivore in contrast to vegetarian, when discussing human diets. People who eat meat, as opposed to vegetarians, are not carnivores, they are omnivores. Man cannot live by meat alone.
My understanding (and I could be slightly off-base here) is that there are very few lay Buddhists (i.e., non-monks) who follow a vegetarian diet in mainland China (or most other Asian countries with a large Buddhist population), though many lay Buddhists might eat vegetarian food on certain days. I have heard that Buddhist vegetarian food is fairly popular in Taiwan (and there is at least one Taiwanese branch of Buddhism that follows a strict vegetarian diet), but I don’t know if many people eat a vegetarian diet all the time, and whether this is a religious thing or an economic thing.
It varies from region to region, but most of the Chinese I’ve spoken to (quite a lot) do not really understand the concept of vegetarianism (other than possibly in the Buddhist sense, which, in its strictest incarnation, prohibits egg, onion, garlic, and chili, among other things). I don’t think it should be surprising that this is primarily an economic thing. As China becomes a wealthier country, people who have had to struggle (many of whom haven’t been able to afford to eat meat on a daily basis) mostly aren’t thinking about the ethics of eating, or about the health aspect, but are just enjoying the fact that they can eat meat more frequently.
I traveled in China recently, and with the help of my gf (who is a native Mandarin speaker and is relatively patient about dealing with my food needs) I was able to (mostly) find stuff to eat when I was in Shanghai (home to one of the oldest vegetarian restaurants in China), and in a more rural area in Fujian Province, but I am sure I ended up eating some animal products that I didn’t know about. Even though they knew I was a vegetarian, she literally had to explain to her relatives why I couldn’t eat (for example) chicken flavored MSG.
@Caitlin – I think sometimes it’s because omnivores think it sounds tougher or more anti-vegetarian to call themselves “carnivores”.