Salty skin

I am currently taking a paper at University about Animal Welfare Law.

Instead of going on a massive stream-of-consciousness rant about all the issues I am now mulling over after each class, I wanted to talk about a relevant issue which faces us all:  whether or not to eat meat.

At present, I am about three weeks into a trial period of vegetarianism, which is to span across the length of my course.  I told myself that by the end (two weeks time) I would have come to a decision about my long term position.  Either way I go I want to have a complete understanding of why I do (or don’t) eat meat.

The problem this presents though, is that a lot of thought is needed. On the one hand you are willingly cutting out an entire food group for life. The alternative is eating animal flesh (which is slowly starting to repulse me at a basic level), not to mention fuelling an industry plagued by inhumane practices and a complete disregard for the status of animals as sentient beings.

New Zealanders are big meat eaters.  Steve Braunias devoted seven brilliant columns to his love of steak (The beef and Liberty series).  In the first he writes:

Rolled rib roast, fillet, scotch fillet, T-bone, porterhouse, sirloin, rump, silverside, shank, shin, brisket, blade – no matter how you cut it, beef is good. God eats beef. Vegetarians dream of beef.  

Which I suppose presents another issue for me to consider: can your moral position truly overcome your fundamental hunger? Will I be dreaming of beef? Envying my meat eating friends and taking stray whiffs of their dinner for fun? Or would it become ingrained and habitual: meat is abnormal, its smell is stifling, 
its appearance is sweaty. 

Does it matter? 

Watch this space.

xx

Yip, I ate a lot of little sea creatures in Japan.