Slow Life Blog from the Lake District
  • Home
  • About Me
  • Contact Me

Becoming Sarah Palin – The Ethics of Vegetarianism

30/7/2012

0 Comments

 
Picture
One of the glorious moments in Kate Rawle’s highly entertaining book The Carbon Cycle was when she arrived in Alaska and turned into Sarah Palin. As a vegetarian, Kate had struggled to find suitable food on her 4,553-mile journey through America but found herself questioning her vegetarian principles when she met the moose-hunting Alaskans. This is what she wrote: “I was finding something deeply attractive about the hunting culture- when it was associated with people who lived in these places and who shot to eat or to be safe…
This is almost what I’m looking for I thought, almost the place to stay awhile… My response to these hunters took me a bit by surprise, given that I’d been a vegetarian for a good twenty years… I would, in fact, be happy to eat meat occasionally if it was raised “traditionally” with a low environmental footprint and with very high animal welfare… If I lived here I thought, I’d want to go hunting and let the experience- and my emotional response to it- help me think it through. It was an odd conclusion to reach”.

Kate had become a vegetarian after reading Peter Singer’s Animal Liberation. “It was the description of how intensively farmed animals lived out their lives as much as the argument that really got to me. Chickens in tiny cages so tightly packed together they could not stretch their wings”. It was a revelation which changed her life. She became a University lecturer teaching environmental ethics, doing her best, as she said, to be a mini Singer. On her ride across America Kate eschewed meat but relied heavily on eggs and cheese, often from burger joints. She describes with relish her meals in the wild south: “Huevos rancheros was my mainstay in cafes throughout New Mexico. It has to be up there with the best biking meals ever. Beans, potatoes, eggs, tortillas, cheese and chilli (green or red). Vast portions of course.” I wondered about all that eggs and cheese. The eggs will have come from chickens in tiny cages, the cheese from dairy cows whose male calves will be routinely shot after birth- a topic which is as gruesome as any she is likely to find. There’s a logical disconnect here which I was surprised to find in a philosophy lecturer.

In the Slow Life we agree with Kate that it is morally wrong to eat meat which has been produced unethically. The important point, to use her words, is that the animal is raised traditionally, with a low environmental footprint and with very high animal welfare. Kate lives here in the Lake District, and this is something we can achieve very easily here. The trick is never to set foot in a supermarket or fast food joint and choose your supplier carefully. You don’t have to become Sarah Palin in Alaska.
0 Comments



Leave a Reply.


    ​About Slow Life

    The idea of Slow Life is to take the principles of Slow Food, which are “good, clean and fair”, and extend them to life in general.

    Here in the Lake District, the air is clean, the pace is slow and the atmosphere is calm. If we don’t grow food ourselves, we can buy it in friendly small shops, where you know the quality is going to be the best.

    This blog is a celebration of the Slow Life, with forays into the world of design, music, the arts, gardens, and my particular weakness, Japan.

    Archives

    June 2017
    December 2016
    August 2015
    May 2015
    August 2014
    July 2014
    June 2014
    May 2014
    April 2014
    March 2014
    January 2014
    December 2013
    November 2013
    October 2013
    September 2013
    August 2013
    July 2013
    June 2013
    February 2013
    January 2013
    December 2012
    November 2012
    October 2012
    September 2012
    August 2012
    July 2012
    June 2012
    May 2012
    April 2012
    March 2012
    February 2012
    January 2012
    December 2011
    November 2011
    October 2011
    September 2011
    August 2011
    July 2011
    June 2011
    May 2011
    April 2011
    March 2011
    February 2011
    January 2011
    December 2010
    November 2010
    October 2010
    September 2010
    August 2010
    July 2010
    June 2010
    May 2010
    April 2010
    March 2010
    February 2010
    January 2010
    December 2009
    November 2009
    October 2009

    RSS Feed

Home   |   About Me   |   Contact Me

Jonathan Denby's Slow Life blog from the Lake District

© Copyright Slow Life 2020. All rights reserved   |   cookie policy    |   Site by Treble3
  • Home
  • About Me
  • Contact Me