No, this is not a paean to the late great Ronald Reagan. I’m referring to Analphilosopher, who claims to be a rigorous thinker, but appears to become addled when he posts on his twin hot button topics, conservatism and vegetarianism. He may reject organized religion and theism, but he certainly displays all the aspects of a born-again fanatic, eager to advance “orthodoxy” and demonize all opponents. As I have pointed out in previous posts, the good Burgess-Jackson’s analyses of political topic are so partisan as to be laughable (for instance, did you know that all liberals are power mad? That’s why I became a farmer - because that is a sure path to wealth and influence). He has posted some thoughtful stuff on animal rights in the past (check back to some of my earlier posts in which I acknowledge some of his strong points), but it appears that his tendency to grossly oversimplify and to paint the world as black and white has bled over into his thinking about vegetarianism, as shown by his latest post, Confusions and Fallacies About Animals Part 9.
Burgess-Jackson’s argument for vegetarianism rests on the concept that animals have rights and claims on our actions. When arguing in this realm, he makes a good point. His real problem is convincing people who do not believe that animals have the same rights as humans. In his latest in a series, he tries to appeal to those who are speciest and believe our only obligations are to other humans. To do so, he compromises his intellectual integrity and attempts to sway his readers with falsehoods.
To wit:
1. Meat-based agriculture is wasteful. “If we are to analyze the real efficiency of animals as food machines, . . . we must add in all grain and other food energy spent in rearing and maintaining breeding animals and all losses resulting from infertility and deaths. When these are figured in, only about 17 percent of the usable grain or food energy fed to a dairy herd is recovered in milk, and only about 6 percent of that fed to a beef herd is recovered in edible meat” (Jim Mason and Peter Singer, Animal Factories, rev. and updated ed. [New York: Harmony Books, 1990], 110 [endnote omitted]).
2. There are human beings throughout the world, including in the United States, who are starving to death or otherwise malnourished. I hope I don’t need to support this factual claim. If you doubt it, do some research.
Both statements are intentionally misleading.
Statement number one should read: INDUSTRIAL meat-based agriculture is wasteful. This is an important distinction. Other forms of meat-based agriculture convert non-edible grasses into products fit for human consumption and prevent erosion by replacing clean-cultivated grain monoculture with soil holding sod. The good professor is aware that not all agriculture is wasteful. He has published my description of eco-friendly farming in his own blog. But he purposefully leaves that important “industrial” qualifier out because he is not really concerned about hunger or the environment ‚ÄövÑv¨ he wants to make people vegetarians. As a point of fact, spreading vegetarianism to third world countries, which rely much more heavily on grazing marginal lands unsuitable for crop production, would lead to both more hunger and increase erosion as people desperately tried to grow more food through slash and burn agriculture and breaking hillside sod.
As a side note: When checking out the propaganda of animal rights organizations, watch how often they conflate industrial farming with all farming. Sensible people are alarmed by the conditions in veal barns and feedyards. The animal-rights folks don’t mention more humane farming methods because they want the public to believe that there is only a black and white choice: cruelty or vegetarianism. To his credit, Analphilosopher published my letter describing humane farming. He later attacked my position, but to do so he had to fall back on the animals = humans argument, which simply doesn’t work for those of us who believe that people and animals are fundamentally different. Which brings us back to his attempt to persuade speciests that eating meat is bad for humans. Having dismantled his first point, let us move on to point two: hunger.
People are starving around the world. Analphilosopher would have his readers believe that if people just stopped feeding grain to cattle in feedlots (a practice I heartily condemn), all that grain would a) still be produced by farmers who no longer have a market incentive to produce the grain, b) would somehow magically be transported to the third world, and c) would magically be distributed to the hungry, skipping over all the political, social, and military hurdles that currently derail food aid programs.
A quick google search turns up a huge number of vegetarian sites that promote the myth of meat = hunger and meat = destruction of the environment. It’s vegetarian orthodoxy. If a college student gave me a pamphlet and tried to proselytize me on the subject, I’d be likely to smile indulgently. I’d probably be more polite to the “Veggianity” nuts than the Chomsky-addled lunatics one often finds on campus.
But Burgess-Jackson disappoints me. He’s a smart guy. I enjoy his blog. I just wish he would apply his philosophical analysis to his own religious dogma.
For further bashing of the meat = hunger meme, please see my “Fisking the Tofu Mystics” post.
