In the flesh

I am a vegetarian. This term is not as straight forward as it should be, and I’m partly to blame because I am the kind of vegetarian that will sometimes eat fish. Ergo, I’m not really a vegetarian. But, for the sake of this post, let’s just be lazy and call me a vegetarian.

Even worse than being a vegetarian, I am the kind of vegetarian who has read, no, gobbled up really, The Ethics of What We Eat. I’m also a vegetarian who recently watched ten minutes of a non earth-shattering documentary on the BBC that showed tuna in the sea somewhere being slowly suffocated to death in one of those nasty fishing nets that can trawl three quarters of the Indian Ocean in one go. Now I can’t eat tuna.

As a child who spent time on farms getting to know dear Milo before she became T-Bone, and collecting eggs from Little Hen before she made the transition from producer to produce, I know what it’s like to watch farm animals live happy lives scratching in the dirt or chewing the cud and I have no problem with the food chain when it flows like this.

When I’m home in Australia, my reasons for not eating meat (or eggs) are twofold*:
1. I believe I am making a more ethical choice by not eating meat given a) the conditions many animals are raised, fed and slaughtered in to keep the supply of flesh flowing, and b) the negative environmental impacts that result.

2. I believe I am making a positive health decision. Since cutting meat out of my diet (for me, a progressive process) my fruit and vegetable intake has gone through the roof, not to mention legumes and all those yummy things which health people assure us are the nutritional equivalent of attaining nirvana.

Add to that the fact that I just don’t miss the stuff, and it all means I’ll be very surprised if I ever go back to chowing down on a juicy (read bloody) rump steak.

But then there’s this other reason, which Paul McCartney has conveniently already articulated for me: “If slaughterhouses had glass walls, everyone would be a vegetarian” which rears it’s head every time I go to a ‘developing country.’

Taking a walk through Karwon Bazaar, a large market in Dhaka, I found myself once again thinking, ‘I am so glad I’m a vegetarian!’

I couldn’t imagine picking out one of these little guys,




Or one of these comfy looking chooks



Or point to a pound of chicken flesh (see baskets above) that’s been sliced and diced on the market floor and think ‘mmm, that’ll be perfect for tonight's main course!’



Every time I see things like this I'm reminded of just how far removed the majority of people I know are from the food chain. In a country like Bangladesh, it's virtually impossible to avoid, and I think it's a good thing. There is no pretending where your goat curry came from.

It also reminds me that McCartney got it wrong. Slaughterhouses do have glass walls here, and I've never met a single Bangladeshi vegetarian. Not one, in over eight months.

*Oh, and there's that small part of me that always wanted to be a hippie but was (un)lucky enough to be born in the wrong decade with an aversion to dreadlocks which make me think of those huge Irish wolfhound dogs that are interesting to look at from afar but up close are kind of smelly and, well, unpettable. So deep.