The Morality of Eating Living Things

 

Today I worked on campus, and at lunch I took a walk with my colleague. There was a guy with a table set up with all kinds of stuffed dogs, and my colleague stopped to talk to him. He said he was selling dog meat from a local farm, and she said, "I don't have a pet," and he said, "No, this isn't dog food - it's dog meat." I asked if this was a PETA thing, and he said, "Why would you ask that?" so I said, "You'll say why is it bad to eat a dog but okay to eat other animals? But I say, why is it okay to eat plants but not animals?" He said plants don't feel pain, and I said that's not what studies have shown - they do feel pain. I started to walk away, and he hollered after me, "But animals scream in pain!" I kind of wanted to say, "Oh, so their pain is real because they scream at a frequency you can hear?" or, "You're still a hypocrite unless you only eat nuts and fruit," but it didn't seem worth arguing with him. My colleague thought even what I said was too much arguing, but we need to eat other living things to survive, so where do you draw the line? Other humans? Dogs? All animals? It's kind of arbitrary.

Here are the things I bought at the antiques mall on Saturday.

The necklace with the "miracle pendant," an old rosary with no starting beads and a centerpiece featuring the Sacred Heart, a rosary with a relic of St. Dominic's wood (whatever that is) in the crucifix, and the cheap necklace configured like a rosary. I think it was a rosary and someone undid it, so I'll just "re-rosary" it when I can find a good crucifix to put on it.

Famous Hat