Can you be a vegan and eat animals?
Whether you can be a vegan and eat animals seems like a bizarre question, like asking if you can be celibate and still have sex. The definition of a vegan is “a person who does not use or eat animal products,” after all. But Christopher Cox makes a good case in a recent Slate article for regarding oysters as compatible with a vegan diet.
Now of course oysters are animals. And vegans don’t eat animals. But why don’t vegans eat animals? The main point of veganism is to avoid causing suffering to sentient beings. A related reason is environmental reasons, since meat-eating is environmentally disastrous, but in a way that’s the same reason — avoiding causing harm. (Some people are vegan for health reasons, although those are not central to veganism, in my opinion — many people would still be vegans if doing so shaved a few months, or even years, from their lives.)
But what if there are animals that can’t feel pain? Cox points out that oysters fall into this category. And what if there were animals that had a neutral, or even positive, environmental impact? Again, oysters fit the bill.
This is what Cox has to say:
Oyster farms account for 95 percent of all oyster consumption and have a minimal negative impact on their ecosystems; there are even nonprofit projects devoted to cultivating oysters as a way to improve water quality. Since so many oysters are farmed, there’s little danger of overfishing. No forests are cleared for oysters, no fertilizer is needed, and no grain goes to waste to feed them—they have a diet of plankton, which is about as close to the bottom of the food chain as you can get. Oyster cultivation also avoids many of the negative side effects of plant agriculture: There are no bees needed to pollinate oysters, no pesticides required to kill off other insects, and for the most part, oyster farms operate without the collateral damage of accidentally killing other animals during harvesting. (Relatedly, although it’s possible to collect wild oysters sustainably, the same cannot be said for other bivalves like clams and mussels. These are often dredged from the seabed, disrupting an entire ecosystem. For that reason, it’s best to avoid them.)
Moreover, since oysters don’t have a central nervous system, they’re unlikely to experience pain in a way resembling ours—unlike a pig or a herring or even a lobster. They can’t move, so they don’t respond to injury like those animals do, either. Even monkish ethicist Peter Singer sanctioned oyster eating in Animal Liberation…
I’m assuming that Cox has his facts right, and that oysters don’t in fact have central nervous systems and can’t feel pain. That wouldn’t be surprising, given that oysters live like plants. Think about it. What’s the point of feeling pain? It’s so that you can withdraw from a harmful stimulus. If, like plants, you’re literally rooted to the spot, then you can’t withdraw from a source of pain, and so there’s no point evolving a central nervous system that can feel pain. A leaf being munched on by a caterpillar may have a chemical response to the damage that leads to increased lignification and the production of nasty tasting chemicals, but that’s not the same as pain.
Now, there’s an interesting thing, here, which is that often ideas of purity and impurity creep into veganism and vegetarianism. People become vegetarian or vegan because they want to reduce the amount of harm their diet causes. But very quickly, for many people, the thought of eating meat becomes revolting. That’s then taken as confirmation of the “rightness” of veganism/vegetarianism, but that, from a Buddhist point of view, doesn’t follow. Just because something feels bad doesn’t mean it is bad. A monk, for example, is recorded as having eaten the finger of a leper that fell into his begging bowl when the leper was making an offering. You or I would find that repulsive in the extreme, but was any harm caused? And was the monk motivated by greed, hatred, or delusion? (He was enlightened, so presumably not). We might flinch from eating food that has even been touched by a leper, but that flinching would actually be unethical — an action purely based on aversion. The ethically skillful thing to do would be to eat food a leper has touched.
There are powerful social and religious traditions of certain foods being pure and impure, and vegans and vegetarians often buy into these cultural belief systems. But properly speaking, such aversions should have no place in either Buddhist ethics or the rational practice of veganism or vegetarianism.
To get away from issues of leprosy, the point I’m trying to make is that just because vegans or vegetarians may have a sense of revulsion at the idea of eating oysters, that doesn’t make it wrong. If Cox is right, and oysters feel no pain and are environmentally beneficial, then vegans and vegetarians should feel free to eat them. (They may have some explaining to do, but that’s another issue.) Rather, these revulsions themselves are unethical, as I once pointed out to a Buddhist who was critical of other people eating veggie-burgers. Veggie-burgers reminded him too much of meat for him to be able to partake of them. But he wasn’t being more ethical by having a revulsion of vaguely meat-like patties, he was being less ethical.
Will I be rushing out to eat oysters? I don’t think so. Long before I became a vegetarian — when I was 16 or 17 — I bought a dozen oysters in Brittany. I gingerly poured one into my mouth, but my throat went into a spasm and I was unable to persuade myself to swallow it. Just to be clear, this is revulsion I’m talking about, not an allergic response. If I had managed to swallow the slimy thing it might well have come straight back up again. I may be braver now, and so if the opportunity to eat an oyster comes up I’m open to giving it a try, but I’m not going to risk heaving up all over a restaurant in order to prove a point.
9 Responses to “Can you be a vegan and eat animals?”
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You’re currently reading “Can you be a vegan and eat animals?,” an entry on Bodhipaksa's blog, bodhi tree swaying
Published: Apr 10 2010
Yours is the second discussion I’ve read of this article, Erik Marcus’s being the other. All are interesting perspectives, and make the point in various ways that we have to act based on facts, logic, and possibly personal revulsion, rather than rigid notions of purity.
None of the discussions address the social aspect of veganism. One of the main reasons I’m a vegan is to influence other people, subtly and kindly.
When the topic comes up in conversation, it usually runs something like this”Wow, you don’t eat any animal products at all? Never?” When I tell them that I don’t, the conversation goes on to why, and how I get my protein, etc. The simplicity and clarity of the answer makes an impression that I hope they will think about later.
If they say “Wow, you don’t eat any animal products at all? Never?”, and I answer that I do eat X because of justification Y, I fear that the power of the conversation will be lost. They’ll tell themselves that I get my protein from X and the I am just a person who follows weird and complicated rules, rather than someone with a message they can consider for themselves.
For this reason I urge vegans not to be looking for exceptions, no matter how much sense they may make in isolation.
I think you make a perfectly reasonable point. Given how eager people are to find exceptions, the idea of it being acceptable to eat non-sentient animals weakens any case for eating oysters. But that in essence seems a political problem rather than an ethical one, not that the two things are entirely separate.
Does that mean that Buddhism wouldn’t necessarily recognise an inherent right to life as opposed to simply a right not to have unnecessary pain inflicted? ie if it is ethically acceptable to eat oysters because they do not experience pain, does Buddhism not attribute to them any intrinsic right to unfettered existence? I don’t have a strong view one way or another, just interested as i would have assumed that intrinsic valuing of existence to be the Buddhist position?
Hi Stephen,
The language of “a right to life” — and of “rights” in general — is very modern and therefore wasn’t part of Buddhism’s ethical foundations. You’re right in thinking that avoiding (intentionally) causing suffering is key. Since plants aren’t considered to suffer, there’s no problem with eating plants. If there is such a thing as a non-sentient animal — one incapable of feeling pain — then it would fall into the same category of moral consideration as plants.
Wait, but if this logic applied, then couldn’t a vegan merely inject a tranquilizer dart into any animal they wanted to eat, remove their capacity to feel pain, kill them then eat them? Surely there’s a little more to it than the capacity to feel pain…
Hi Siegfried,
Ah, yes, it is a bit more complicated than I’d said. In it’s deepest sense, Buddhist ethics is to do with the mental states with which we perform an action. We’re seeking not to act upon mental states of craving, cruelty, and delusion, so that we can cultivate contentment, love, and wisdom. Where the connection with a vegetarian or vegan diet comes in is that we have an opportunity to respect the desire of living beings not to die or to experience pain. Whenever we say, “I’m hungry, I’ll eat some meat,” we’re putting our own desires above those of other living beings. If we know that our actions are causing harm, but do them anyway, then it’s almost certain that craving is involved, and possibly cruelty as well. Oh, and almost certainly some delusion as well.
Reducing all this to “don’t harm beings capable of feeling pain” is a kind of shorthand. It simplifies life but also over-simplifies.
I hope this helps!
Thanks, Bodhipaksa! The clarification was indeed helpful.
Thanks Bodhipaksa, i find it a really interesting debate as a non buddhist interested in animal welfare but not necessarily convinced of all the philosphical or practical arguments for vegetarianism (though in practice that is what I am, just to confuse matters!). Presumably consciousness has a signficant role to play as well as the experience of pain. Ie, a human being who didn’t experience pain would still suffer if killed due to their consciousness of their position, as would most larger animals but i guess it could be argued (though I wouldn’t have a clue!) that dsomething like an oyster does not have any real level of consciousness?
Fortunately I do have a genuine allergy to seafood so I am saved this dilema!
But .. (based more on feelings from practise than scripture) what matters to me is what I think or feel is sentient rather than the biology. I have a responsibility to inform myself both practically (by learning about biology) and spiritually (through ritual and meditation) and then act out of generosity, love and wisdom. There are no rules in this sense. If I were starving and there were oysters and I could eat them then maybe I would but then the same would apply to a rabbit. Rating my own survival above or below the rabbit is a judgement call at the time not a calculation on a piece of paper now.
If we find ourselves working through the tree of life looking at the level of organisation of each of the organisms and comparing them to ourselves to judge whether they are sentient we should maybe look deeply out our motivations and be sure we are using both biology and our personal spiritual understanding to make the judgements.
If I found a teddy bear on the street I would sit him up on a wall where he looked comfortable. I know he is only a toy made by a machine and not a sentient being but I would still treat him with respect/love/kindness. This is part of my practice.
Oysters are a lot like sentient animals. Whether or not they have central nervous systems. We should therefore act accordingly.
BTW the discussion on philosophical zombies comes in here somewhere but I don’t know how to weave it in..
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophical_zombie
I must get back to work and not be distracted!