This is an article written by a friend of mine Helga Vierich that I really enjoyed.
This planet has a wide variety of life forms and incredible diversity BECAUSE most living things eat other living things, including ones we classify as "animals". Without the predation, there would have been no life, no evolution and no ecosystem. Without bird-shit, phosphorous would not be recycled, without ferns potash would not be drawn up and recycled, and nitrates would not move around throughout the soil without the actions of the vast underground net of the mycelium.
And without animals and their wastes, the nitrates and other complex organic
materials could not return to the soil through the actions of earthworms and
bacteria... and good soil is in a sense, vastly enriched by worm-poo. Without
the predators, the grazers would over populate and starve, without the grazers,
world ecosystems would not recycle nutrients as well as they do, nor would
individual species of plants get fertilized and their seed distributed far and
wide...
The lion will never lie down with the lamb unless the lamb is dead, and that is
how it should be, for the health of both the family of sheep and the family of
big cats.
We humans, the compassionate predator, entered into a contract with a large
number of species in the course of the past twenty thousand years (some think
longer), and species like the wolf (our domestic dogs), Bos Taurus (domestic
cattle), Tarpans ( domestic horses of all breeds today) and a legion of others
entered the relatively new ecological niche created within the sphere of the
world's first compassionate predator. Many of these species, of both animals
and plants, would never have been as successful had they not entered into the
contract.
Let us not be blinded by the evil results of commercialization of this age old
contract between us and these other species. Turning everything into money has
betrayed these plants and animals as much as it has betrayed all of what is
decent and compassionate about the human spirit.
When we turn our backs on the factory farms and the horrors they have
unleashed, do not also be tempted to turn our backs on our long history of trust
and co-adaptation that created the ecosystem of domestication. It is an
incredibly rich and rewarding ecosystem to live within, and one we have all but
lost in our miserably urban wastelands.
Sure, it is hard on the heart to put an animal down to eat it, but it is
infinitely better than to let these creatures be abandoned to the "wild". The
death and drawnout horror of being eaten alive by parasites or merciless
predators without any capacity for compassion is one of the reasons many now
think animals like sheep and goats and pigs sought out the human sphere in the
first place.
There are some that came early and were always under-appreciated like the cat
and the dog, or even reviled, like the mice and the rats. But now we know that
house mice by colonizing our ecosystem keep other kinds of mice out of it, like
the deer mice that carry the deadly Hanta virus. But now look at how mice and
rats have served us in research and still can be delightful housepets... (and
the story of the bubonic plague is not nearly as simple as some have previously
thought).
And what about house sparrows and chickens and starlings and crows? Pigeons?
Even set "free" they congregate around humans.
The most ancient vegetarian cultures in the world revere all these animals, and
certainly do not chase the domestic animals within their local ecosystems out
into the wilderness or consider it politically incorrect to allow such creatures
to breed and raise their young.
Please not be fooled by the vile "animal rights" arguments for vegetarianism.
Choosing not to eat meat should not immediately mean you must disapprove of
those who do, nor that keeping our place in nature, within a vast ecosystem of
symbiosis with numerous other species, must be rejected.
Animals have chosen to be part of our homes and part of the human ecosystem
niche on the planet, and we have no more right to turn our back on them than we
have to turn our back on the plight of the whales or the plight of the tuna.
The agenda of the present AR movement is an evil and ugly one. No pets to
snuggle in bed with at night, no glorious mornings to see the new calf just
born, no milking the cow while the calf takes the other teats, no playing with
puppies and mornings awakening to the happy crowing of the the rooster as he
calls his flock of plump hens out to feed. No sense of searing tenderness as
one is privileged to watch how carefully he attends the hen with the new family
of downy chicks, blinking in their first view of the morning sunlight world, and
makes sure these littlest one get the first crack at a tasty nest of ants...
Everything neutered. One generation and out. gone. No more poodles, and collies,
labrador retrievers, haughty siamese, cosy angoras, athletic family mousers, no
more pigs who love their backs scratched. No more omelets, souffles or angel
cakes, and no more milk or butter or cheese or yogurt or ice cream. No more
children wide-eyed with wonder to see the nest of baby bunnies for the first
time, no more horse crazy teenagers or watching your daughter ride her first
pony, with an expression of such incandescent joy that it almost hurts the heart
to see it--often through tears. Rescued by the rowdy happiness of the pony
himself, suddenly so careful to keep the novice safe on board.
Well, it is a long way from weeds and manure but it is all the same thing. I
offer it to you all freely. It is not really free, of course. You have to have
compassion and all the qualities that brought the creatures to offer themselves
to join our world in the first place. Care. Love. Wonder. Gentleness. Courage.
All the aspects that hunter-gatherers have, in caring for the animals around
them, drawing them as close as kinfolk and often keeping them from harm.
The road that led, in some times and places, to that one further step we have
come to call domestication.
There was no point when we conquered nature. We are still in nature.
The AR movement would sever that - or try to. Be very wary of this. It is
the last thing we can afford to do, both for the good of our species and for the
health of the planet.
See also the following for more along the same lines:
http://thenewagriculture.blogspot.com/2009/07/domestic-animals-vs-vegetarian_12.html
As an aside to this main note, there is the following information, compiled by a staff writer at the New York Times:
Plants are actively intelligent: What does this mean for vegetarians?
Saturday, February 20, 2010 by: Ethan A. Huff, staff writer
(NaturalNews) Most vegetarians believe that by not eating animals,
they are preserving life. Everyone knows that plants are alive but
they are not viewed with the same level of intelligence as animals
are. As science continues to uncover the complex nature of plants, it
is becoming more apparent that plants are actively intelligent life
that pursue their continued existence in similar ways as do animals.
Research on the subject naturally flies in the face of strict
vegetarianism which often insists that eating animals is murder but
eating plants is just fine. Yet the facts illustrate that the
characteristics of animals used to argue that eating them is murder
also apply to plants. In other words, in order for strict vegetarians
to be consistent in their beliefs, they would also have to stop
eating fruits and vegetables.
Plants are very sensitive to environmental changes and they have many
built-in mechanisms to ward off attackers. They strive to find the
best resources and have been observed to actually anticipate hurdles
to survival and work to overcome them in advance.
According to Monika Hilker from the Institute of Biology at the Free
University of Berlin, plants are intelligent life that communicate
through chemical signals. They are capable of listening, talking,
seeing, and feeling, all senses for which most people think only
animals have the capability.
Linda Walling from the University of California agrees, noting that
animals actively ward off predators in order to survive. Many plants
release chemicals or other deterrents when a bug nips at their leaves
or stems, similar to how the immune system releases antibodies to
ward off infection or disease. Plants are also able to identify
nearby plant competitors and alter their growth patterns away from
other plants.
Researchers from Pennsylvania State University analyzed plant
responses to predators and found that in less than 20 minutes, a
plant being eaten by a caterpillar was able to convert carbon from
the air into a chemical compound designed to deter the caterpillar
from continuing. It appeared to perform this task entirely from scratch.
Plants also send signals that are the equivalent of a cry for help,
often attracting predators of their predators who snatch up the
attackers and eat them. This is just one of many ways in which plants
communicate with the living world around them in order to survive.
Rather than serve as a point of contention, the facts about
intelligent plant life merely call into question the alleged ethics
of eating only plants rather than animals. Both are intelligent
creatures designed to maintain survival. Humans are even more
intelligent creatures, choosing to survive by eating plants, animals, or both
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