A bullet to Bambi’s brain?

[Re: “Don’t kill Bambi,” Letters, April 2] I agree with essentially everything Manish Patwari has written. Our society does eat far too much meat. However, what inspired me to write my original letter was that it appeared columnist Raf Katigbak had been misled by a proponent of mainstream carnivory.

I think that humans should behave as opportunistic omnivores. In my opinion, that is the most rationally sound and socially responsible dietary strategy. For the most part, it’s a lot less spatially prohibitive to eat veggies. You get more calories per acre, each acre can support more people etc., than by feeding those veggies to an animal, which rather inefficiently converts that former sunlight into steak or bacon or body depending on your perspective.

To steal some concepts from R. Buckminster Fuller, I imagine that if the planet were totally vegetarian, we would have far more potential in terms of the number of forward reaching human days of Malthusian requirements we could meet. However, the complex ecological network of living and non-living things is not quite so prone to black and white laws as meat bad, veggies good.

I can easily imagine, as hopefully any of our fellow readers can, a situation where eating meat would actually increase our positive balance of forward reaching human days, or even forward reaching days of all sentient beings. That is, I can imagine some instances where eating meat is morally correct and a better social move than not doing so.

1) You are dumpster diving and find some bacon that expired that evening. May as well eat it.

2) You hit a deer with your car. Garbage or food? Up to you to decide. You’re going to have to eat something eventually. Will it be the dead deer at your feet or organic lettuce shipped from California?

3) There is an explosion of a nuisance species of predatory animal. The population is out of control and will very shortly cause the extinction of its primary prey, which in turn will cause the collapse of an entire ecosystem. If you start selectively culling the predator, you will stabilize the system and all the biomass and beings that would have died are now saved by you killing the top predator. Now that you have all these dead animals, you may as well eat them rather than drive to the grocery store.

Granted, these are unusual situations, and for certain the concept that eating meat can be a positive social move is really the exception rather than the rule. However, what made me write to Raf in the first place was the fact that someone had hoodwinked him with mumbo jumbo rather than rational thought. We must always be ready to re-evaluate our beliefs and ensure that they are rooted in fact if we are truly going to maximize our collective human potential. There is no room for dogma of any kind in a fully examined existence.

I agree with Mr. Patwari’s general statement that vegetarianism is more socially responsible than carnivory and I agree 100 per cent that North American society is far too focused on the consumption of flesh.

However, since most of mainstream society eats meat, I was hoping to share the information that hunted meat is far better for the ecosystem than its factory farmed counterparts with regards to the environmental impact and the quality of life for the animals in question. I’d rather live free as a deer and get a surprise bullet through the brain someday than live in a cage for a year or so in cramped disgusting quarters going insane and getting injected with hormones. Wait a minute, sounds just like city life?! Except no jazz clubs.

>>Morgan Boenke

Boo Pope

[Re: “Angel: Condoms,” News, March 19] The Pope, all aglow with puritanical fervour, erred once again by stating that condom use helps the spread of AIDS and that abstinence alone can help stop the transmission of this disease.

Abstinence only succeeds with a minority of people. Most unmarried or single people are not going to become asexual just because the Pope wants them to. Sex is too powerful a drive for most people to turn off. More to the point, umpteen men and women in monogamous relationships have contracted AIDS in Africa.

To quote Nicholas Kristof from The New York Times in 2003, “It’s imperative that we recognize that condoms no more cause sex than umbrellas cause rain.”

>>Manish Patwari

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