Sadly I have a day job – and it is beyond tedious. Recently though, the monotony was tempered by the arrival of a new team member who just happens to be a vegan of the ‘activist’ variety. We’ll call him Gan for the purposes of this article.
Gan is about as hardline as they come, but he is also a polite and likeable man whom I quickly discovered is only too happy to spend a fair chunk of the working day thrashing out our philosophical differences. We are both passionate and personally invested in our beliefs – he makes banners and placards, I shoot stuff and eat it afterwards – and the combination inevitably produces some very interesting debates.
Thus, while my work output has shrunk considerably these past few months, my insight into the minds of human herbivores has grown. I have essentially been engaged in a prolonged and fascinating interview with a vegan, and I’d like to share it with you.
Feed the birds
I knew Gan was vegan about two days after he turned up – the cafeteria lacks suitable options. Still, it wasn’t until I overheard him discussing the ethics of killing and eating another living thing that I decided to state my own position. Gan believes that killing and eating an animal cannot be morally justified under any circumstances.
I interjected to ask how he felt about eating meat in the context of deer management. He looked up from his screen puzzled, and asked what I meant. I explained to him how deer are controlled and why (over-population, destruction of forestry and agriculture, prevention of disease and road traffic accidents – you know the score) and put it to him that in this situation the only truly moral thing to do is to eat the resulting meat. This was all news to Gan, and after he had mulled things over for some time, the conversation progressed along the following lines.
Gan: “Who decides how many deer is too many?”
Me: “Ecologists, conservationists, food producers, people engaged in measures to mitigate climate change, the government.” Gan: “Well I disagree. Animal populations regulate themselves naturally.”
Me: “They might if we hadn’t removed their natural predators, provided them with an abundant food source and taken away half their habitat with buildings and infrastructure. As it now stands, they definitely don’t.”
Gan: “OK, so it’s our fault for interfering with nature in the first place. Do we never learn? We need to leave them alone.”
Me: “Funnily enough, that was done in a Dutch study and, unwittingly, on a bit of land PETA owned and labelled as a safe haven for deer. The results were not pretty.”
Gan: “OK, but there must be other options. This is just another excuse to hunt and kill for pleasure.”
Me: “They tried sterilisation with a deer population isolated on an American island, and it was so ineffective the numbers actually increased.”
Gan: “We still don’t have the right to interfere with nature. I’m sticking to my belief here.”
Me: “Do you agree with the conservation of endangered species?”
Gan: “Of course.”
Me: “It’s OK to feed birds?”
Gan: “Obviously.”
Me: “So actually you do believe we have the right to interfere with nature.”
Gan: “Errr…”
After this exchange we spoke more about the ecological impact of deer and, at his request, I sent over some research on the subject. He still cannot make peace with the fact that shooting deer is the most effective and humane solution, but he does at least recognise the problem.
In many cases wildlife management is simply fixing an imbalance created by humans. Gan’s knowledge of the countryside is limited. Consequently he tends to oversimplify complex issues, such as believing that if we leave nature alone it will look after itself.
I’m more vegan than you
The same lack of knowledge was evident when I suggested there is a slight hypocrisy to veganism when you take a closer look at arable agriculture. He looked more than a little uncomfortable when I explained the menagerie of animals and insects that must be controlled so that crops can be grown with any kind of reliability. Unsurprisingly, when I asked what the vegan solution would be, he made vague noises about mysterious “other methods” that can work with nature.
Me: “Like what? Cover 20-acre fields in mesh so that nothing can get to it?”
Gan: “I’ll have to come back to you later on this one.”
Me: “I look forward to that.”
I have a tongue-in-cheek theory that it is more ‘vegan’ to eat a deer than it is to eat a loaf of bread. When you eat a deer, one animal dies. When you eat a loaf of bread, everything with a pulse in a half-mile radius of the field dies. On a scale of one to vegan (with one being a massacre and vegan being no animal deaths), a carnivorous human who only ate venison would score more highly than Gan. He doesn’t find this argument particularly amusing, but he doesn’t have much in the way of a comeback either.
Gan is idealistic. He firmly believes we are moving towards a future in which everyone becomes vegan and livestock farming, hunting and shooting cease to exist. However, he rarely has a practical solution for how this plan will be implemented.
I look at food production, wildlife and land management practically and with a keen eye on the wider ecological implications. I understand that a proportion of foxes and corvids might need to die so that rare birds can thrive; a proportion of deer might need to die for woodland regeneration to be successful. I also understand that there are parts of this country where modern arable farming is impossible due to topography or soil type, and that the farmers in these areas still need to generate income.
I asked if he had ever driven through the deeper, darker parts of Wales and seen the tiny, steep-sided fields filled with sheep and cows. They are lush and green and encased in thick, established hedgerows.
Gan: “Yes, it’s a beautiful landscape, why do you ask?”
Me: “Google Arizona monocropping and decide which landscape looks healthier. Little fields and big hedges persist where combining is absent. In other words, where the land is farmed for livestock rather than crops. What do you think will happen to the countryside if people can no longer make a living from the land they own? Will all the vegans come and buy it and run it as a wildlife haven?”
Considering less than 5% of the UK population is vegan, it does seem unlikely.
Again this discussion came back to an ignorance of the countryside. Yes, it can be beautiful. Yes, in many areas wildlife thrives.
No, it cannot just sit pretty. Most land has to pay for itself, which is a fact that Gan and many other vegans struggle to understand, whether that’s concerning farming or grouse moor management. Let’s move on.
More meat, bigger brains
We are omnivores; even Gan agrees with this. However, he does not agree this means we should incorporate even small amounts of meat into our diets. Personally I don’t care either way – we can certainly exist as healthy vegans with some dietary supplements – but we do have meat eating to thank for our success as a species.
The human digestive system has changed and evolved over millions of years, along with the human brain – and those two facts are closely linked. Currently our digestive system is most similar to omnivorous primates like the bonobo. The main difference is the bonobo’s larger colon, which is specially adapted to extract the maximum nutrients from a high-fibre diet consisting mainly of plants. Our smaller, more efficient gut began to develop around 2.4 million years ago, when Homo habilis began to incorporate more animal products into their diet through scavenging.
The biggest changes, however, began with Homo erectus around 1.9 million years ago. Homo erectus is believed to have become a more active hunter who used tools to process meat, along with controlled fire for cooking. A diet higher in calorie-dense meat and fat, along with the use of cooking, which made it easier to digest and obtain nutrients from food, lead to a reduction in gut size and freed up huge amounts of energy. It was this change in energy allocation that facilitated brain growth, which facilitated the advancement of the human race.
Me: “So you see, if it weren’t for hunting and meat eating we wouldn’t be sitting here today in front of our computers, arguing about veganism. We’d be dragging our knuckles and picking at half-eaten carcasses.”
Gan: “OK, but that doesn’t mean we should still eat meat. We are compassionate, modern humans. We don’t need to eat meat to survive. We can make the choice now.”
Me: “Absolutely. You have made your choice and I support it. So does about 3% of the population. My choice is backed up by nearly three million years of evolution.”
Gan: “But how do you justify it when it’s not necessary?”
Me: “There’s a food chain; we’re at the top.”
Gan: “No, animals deserve rights in the same way humans do. Why do you feel we’re superior to other living beings?”
Me: “If you get sick and they offer you medicine, you don’t refuse it because it was tested on animals. If you have a rat infestation, you will use lethality to clear it. You eat bread and drink beer produced by farmers who conduct pest control. Whether you like it or not, you also consider yourself superior to animals.”
It is usually around this point in the conversation that we call it quits, because there is a very good reason I will never see eye-to-eye with Gan. He fundamentally believes that it is wrong to kill and eat an animal, and I don’t. It’s that simple. In many other ways our ethics are closely aligned. We agree wholeheartedly on some things, such as the misery of factory farming. I love wildlife and I care deeply about animal welfare. In fact I prefer to eat hunted meat because I believe it is more ethical.
One thing I’ve learned through my conversations with Gan is that, for the hardline activists, veganism is a religion – a blind faith immune to arguments of logic and reason. I have also learned that respectful discussion can help communicate our own way of life to people like Gan. We will never agree, but one day we just might begin to understand each other