Vegetarian

Photo Credit: Lost Tulsa (Flickr.com)

“Come on, Betty,” said Roger. “Try some.”

He held up a fork with a piece of his steak on it, red and dripping with bloody juices. Betty moved her garden salad out of the way and gave him a sharp look.

“I know what steak tastes like,” she hissed. “Don’t shove it in my face.”

Roger shrugged and popped the fork in his mouth. He gave a contented sigh, smiled and sunk into his seat  a bit. “So good,” he moaned, and then picked up his knife, plunged his fork into the steak and eagerly began cutting another bite.

“I should have never let you talk me into eating here,” Betty said.

“Well, it’s your own fault you don’t eat meat,” Roger replied. “The rest of us don’t have to suffer.”

“You say it like I have a disease or something,” Betty said.

“It seems pretty sick to me, yeah,” he said, and then popped another piece into his mouth and began to chew. “Nature designed us to eat meat. What’s the big deal?”

Betty frowned. “I didn’t realize it was your turn to be the meat evangelist,” she said. “Was that the whole point in bringing me here? To throw all this in my face?”

Roger shook his head as he cut another piece. “Nope,” he said. “We came here because they serve a great steak, and steak was what I was craving. Simple as that.”

Betty decided to begin eating her salad, and the conversation lulled for a moment. Finally, she said, “I don’t think you realize what a temptation this is for me.”

“Oh?” Roger said. “You can have a bite. I won’t tell anyone.”

“No, it’s just that…” she sighed. “I used to love meat. If you’d have told me that I would become a vegetarian a couple of years ago, I would have told you that you were crazy. But the more I looked into it, the more I learned about what they do to those poor animals, the more I realized that I couldn’t keep eating meat unless I was willing to kill it myself. And you know, I wasn’t. So what other choice did I have?”

“Well, Jesus ate meat, so I think it’s OK,” said Roger. “Animals don’t have feelings like we do, you know.”

Betty sighed. “You say that, but I don’t think it’s true,” she said. “My cats definitely have feelings. So does your dog.”

“Well, kind of,” Roger said. “But that’s not really the same as, you know, cows and pigs and chickens. They’re not too bright.”

“Chickens aren’t,” said Betty. “Cows are pretty much all about eating. But pigs are smart. They’re one of the smartest types of animals there are.”

“Pigs? Really?” asked Roger. “Well, too bad. I’m not giving up bacon.”

“Not that it should matter how smart they are anyway,” said Betty. “We don’t eat animals because they’re smart. We eat them because we can grow them up to get really fat and then produce a bunch of unhealthy meat.  And then, we have so much meat that we wind up throwing a lot of it away, or using the by-products for all sorts of terrible things. It’s a horrible thing to do. We don’t show any respect to the animals, we torture them and butcher them, and then we package their pieces up so they don’t even look like animal parts anymore.”

Roger shrugged. “Yeah, but they wouldn’t even be around if we weren’t eating them,” he said. “We give them life so they can be food. The ecosystem can’t sustain them unless we’re out there feeding them and taking care of them.”

“Well, and that’s another problem,” Betty said. “Cattle farming is really bad for the environment. It puts a lot of methane gas into the air, it creates bad ecosystems where bacteria and viruses thrive, which means it can spread disease.”

Roger polished off his steak. “Yeah, well,” he said. “It doesn’t matter. I’m not giving up meat.”

“I know,” Betty said. And she went back to her salad.

2 Comments

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  By larry, January 25, 2010 @ 1:07 am

  Here’s a good video on the subject: http://meat.org

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  By SeanJJordan, January 25, 2010 @ 6:55 am

  Thanks, Larry. While the story above is a work of fiction (and I am not a vegetarian myself!), I have often wondered if I should be one due to the enormous animal cruelty associated with the meat industry.

  My wife and I obtain most of our meat from her stepdad, an active bowhunter who treats the animals he hunts kindly. We feel this is a fair compromise. If deer aren’t hunted, they quickly get overpopulated and start spilling onto the roads. Their herds have to be thinned, and there’s no reason to waste their meat.

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