I realize I’m getting into this rather late and many of my points have already been made very well, but I wanted to add my voice. I was amazed that the only letter The Nation saw fit to actually print was the one which first stated that answering each point would take too long, and then acknowledged contradictions in her own vegetarianism--thus giving Lazare the opportunity to respond with a sarcastic comment and completely ignore the glaring contradictions in his own arguments (nothing against Ms. Welford’s points, just an odd choice for the only letter printed).

First, let me say that I see no contradictions in my own vegetarianism. I avoid animal products of any kind out of my commitment to do no harm to any creature (human or otherwise) and to leave a light footprint on the earth. I do not see this as “defeatism”; I do see it as part of my strong sense of well-being and kinship with all life on earth.

Ms. Welford was right, refuting each point in Lazare’s article would make for a very long letter, so I will focus on only two. First, his comments reveal him to be either appallingly ignorant or willfully dishonest about the conditions in which our “food” animals are kept. Yes, the “slow food” and organic meat advocates believe we can raise animals humanely in order to eat them, but this ignores the economies of scale--McDonalds is not going to make billions of burgers out of organic, “sustainably raised” beef.

Organic meats serve a niche market (of those who want to eat meat but don’t want to feel guilty about it, perhaps?). The reality of today’s animal “husbandry” does not involve animals living serene lives and then dying from a “painlessly slit” jugular--it involves chickens with their beaks cut off crammed six to a cage too small to open their wings, sows living in concrete stalls so narrow they cannot turn around, cattle broken and dying in transport to the slaughterhouse then often hanging from one broken or dislocated leg waiting for that throat to be slit. If Lazare sincerely believes in that “rangy old rooster,” perhaps he needs to visit a few more factory farms (and not on a tour led by their corporate leaders) to become better educated.

Secondly, and perhaps even more important in today’s context, tossing aside the environmental devastation caused by animal agriculture as “Malthusian myths” is at best egregiously irresponsible. That the planet is truly in crisis is no longer in dispute among competent climate scientists, and our carnivorous ways contribute to climate change in myriad ways (cutting down rain forests and methane from cattle are just two). Even were that not the case, pretending that the consequences of meat-eating -- pollution of water tables with waste from factory farms and feedlots, the enormous waste of water involved in raising animals for food, the desertification of prime agricultural or forest lands due to grazing animals, and on and on -- are trivial matters is at least stupendously shortsighted.

I used to appreciate Lazare’s writing; but since he has shown himself to be either willing to write on a subject about which he is completely ignorant, or to absolutely disregard facts that do not agree with his preconceived notions, I am afraid that I will be unable to trust his opinion on any subject in the future.

Avilee Goodwin

Richmond, CA

It often takes me a while to get caught up on all the book reviews in The Nation, but I try to read them all, because for the most part they are literate and informative. Then there are the ones like Daniel Lazare's anti-vegetarian screed, thinly disguised as a book review. People have already asked here, in several well-written "bletters," why Lazare is so hostile to vegetarians and vegetarianism. I believe that the answer can be found in his last sentence. Lazare is apparently something of a gourmet, and this class of people tends to believe that if something can be eaten, it should be eaten, provided it is prepared by a third-generation chef and served in or with an expensive wine. Still, a little guilt often manages to penetrate the fog of chloresterol and alcohol (which, believe it or not, Mr. Lazare, most vegetarians don't abhor when it isn't made using animal parts) that seems to permeate the epicurean brain. This greatly irritates the gastric hedonists, often to the point of attacking that which makes them feel guilty. Lazare's piece has been largely refuted already, but those who still can't see, for example, that nonexistent beings have nonexistent interests, might want to check out the FAQs, originally written by me for usenet, that can be found on the main page of my website. I doubt that Daniel Lazare will be moved to reconsider his menu-based etehics, but others on the left may find food for thought.

Michael Cerkowski

Mechanicville, NY

As a vegetarian for twenty-three years, I have long been exasperated with people who take it upon themselves to denounce vegetarianism. I've been told that God created animals for humans to consume. I've been told that Jesus ate meat. I've been told that our teeth and our digestive systems prove we were made to eat meat. I've been told that humans have to eat meat to survive. I've been told that the savage behavior of predators justifies our own savagery. I've been told that Hitler was a vegetarian (as if--what?--a steady diet of Big Macs could have averted the Holocaust?). I've been told that slaughterhouses use humane methods. I've been told that animals don't feel fear or pain. I've been told that nobody gives a shit if animals do feel fear or pain. I've been told that meat is too tasty to live without. I've been told that, well, plants have feelings, too.

Daniel Lazare makes some valid points in his February 5 review of Tristram Stuart's The Bloodless Revolution, but he also trots out several of these same old arguments. He then ends his essay by smugly implying that vegetarians are missing out when they refuse life's great carnivorous pleasures, such as eating "some rangy old rooster that's had more lovers than most of us can dream of." On the heels of such a breathtakingly ridiculous justification for eating meat, Lazare dismisses vegetarians as a frivolous group who spend their lives "wallowing in the silly defeatism of a diet of tofu and sprouts." Sigh.

Rather than joining those who have wasted precious energy trying to refute arguments like these, I will say, simply, that I am at peace with my decision. I acknowledge that there are contradictions like the ones Lazare points out in his article, but I stand by my choice. I will live, quite happily, as a vegetarian for the rest of my life. Where's the "silly defeatism" in that?

Theresa M. Welford

Statesboro, GA

As our basket descends with increasing speed toward the fiery lake, we can continue "to celebrate humanity's ongoing struggle to create abundance out of scarcity" and we can invite more to join in the celebration; It is by all lights "better than wallowing in the silly defeatism of a diet of tofu and sprouts."

After a time, when the basket finally arrives and everyone disembarks with dismayed astonishment and shock (shock!), I will be there, welcoming all and reminding each that we had been warned. But hey, wasn't that celebration grand? To die for? Especially the chicken?

Tim Dirkx

Madison, WI

I just recently became a vegetarian. I am also a Trotskyist, so I can "hammer and tongs" on both subjects. Daniel Lazare's review of a book about vegetarianism is somewhat lame. It looks like meat-eaters are having a harder and harder time defending the practice.

Unfortunately, humans are animals. And the smarter animals like pigs or dogs or dolphins are about as smart as two- or three- year-olds, and sometimes smarter than the humans who eat them. They feel pain. They have emotions. So, unless you believe in bogus ideas like the "soul" there is very little that separates us from them, except our, in degree, superior social organization and varieties of intelligences.

Animals, of course, excel in many physical skills, like hearing and smell and sight and strength, etc. Meat is also, with an advanced diet, more unhealthy, especially red meat. Many meats are also unsustainable.

The whole world will not, and actually cannot, be chowing down on the same level of meat that Americans enjoy. So meat is going to fade from its central importance in the economy, just as oil will. For these reasons--ethics, health and the environment--I think there are better choices.

Would you eat your pet? I don't think so. How about your baby? Only if you are hungry enough, right?

Greg Gibbs

Minneapolis, MN

Perhaps Mr. Lazare who would have us think flesh-and-blood-(meat)eating has given us extended and happier lives but how much time has he spent inside cancer units, cardiac surgical rooms, kidney wards, or breast cancer units?

How much time has Mr. Lazare spent on "farms" where infant calves are chained at the neck in rows of tiny crates, on slatted floors, unable to move, love, play, live, or be free because we humans steal their mothers milk?

How much time has he spent living by the many waste lagoons that dot this nation, filled with tens of thousands of tons of pig manure? Has he ever ventured to the dumpsters behind egg "farms" where millions of male chicks who are not ground alive for feed and fertilizer, are hatching and left to die? Has he randomly visited (if allowed) the kill floors of this, "civilized" nation's slaughterhouses, where sentient animals who feel trauma and agony just as we do, are beaten to restraining devices, hoisted by their hind legs, and chain-sawed apart?

For as long as humans have assumed superiority and power over animals, they have done the same to each other. If Mr. Lazare considers the violent, bloody, inhumane, unsustainable and cruel meat and dairy based diet as optimal for humanity, why are we threatened by war, pandemics, and environmental suicide more now that ever? Here it is in a nutshell: The relationship between the meat-based resource usage and war is dramatized by the following dialogue from Plato's Republic:

...and there will be animals of many other kinds, if people eat them?

Most certainly, he replied.

Laura Beth Slitt

Bartlett, New Hampshire

I'm quite astonished by Daniel Lazare's comment in his otherwise interesting review of Tristram Stuart's The Bloodless Revolution regarding "how thoroughly Malthusian myths about limits to human productivity have been shattered." This is a comment worthy of George Bush's capacity for denial.

Whatever reasons one might have for not being a vegetarian--and I have many--it is not because we are not coming up against the limits to human productivity. We can produce enough food to feed six billion, but only at the cost of the sustainability of life on the planet. Our land and crops have become innundated by poisons from fertilizers and pesticides. Our air is so full of CO2 that the climate is changing dramatically and dangerously for all life. Our oceans are so overfished that the food chain could collapse in this century. And genocide, once thought unrepeatable after our recognition of the horrors of the Holocaust, has become almost commonplace. Slaughter on a scale unimaginable is the ho-hum topic of the six o'clock news.

Need I go on? We can continue to feed and care for the exponentially expanding mass of humanity and destroy all life in the process or we can begin to recognize and act on rational limits to human growth and development. We can't do both.

Dan Gordon

Eliot, Maine

Daniel Lazare, who reviewed The Bloodless Revolution, should watch the undercover video, Meet Your Meat, on www.GoVeg.com to better understand why modern-day vegetarians chose not to eat meat. The horrible treatment of animals in factory farms and slaughterhouses will make anyone lose their taste for flesh.

Slaughterhouse workers hoist cows upside down by their hind legs and dismember them, often while they’re still conscious. Employees at a large kosher slaughterhouse were even caught shocking animals in the face with electric prods, slicing their throats open and pulling out their tracheas, and leaving them to die slowly. The animals could be heard bellowing in pain several minutes after they were supposedly slaughtered.

Chickens, who are not protected by the pathetic Humane Methods of Slaughter Act, are hung upside-down in metal shackles, their throats are sloppily cut, and they’re often scalded alive in the tanks of boiling water used for feather removal. Pigs are often stunned improperly and they are also conscious when they’re dumped in the scalding water used to soften their skin and remove their hair. The only civilized thing to do after seeing such gruesome footage is to go vegetarian.

Katie Moore

Baltimore, Maryland

When I am asked why I am a vegetarian, I usually respond by asking, "Why do you eat meat?" The typical responses are all mentioned in Mr. Lazare's article: "It tastes good; I enjoy it," and/or some variation of "God said I could; humans are the masters of the earth; animals were put here for our use." Very few people claim that they need to eat meat to survive. And, of course, there are numerous scientific studies which establish beyond question that humans do not need to consume the flesh of other living beings to survive. (Not to mention historical/anecdotal evidence such as that described by Mr. Lazare with respect to non-European cultures which have adopted and practiced vegetarianism for centuries--and let's not forget Dennis Kucinich!)

I next ask the meat-eater, "Do you believe that we humans have an obligation to be kind to non-human animals if we are able to do so?" Virtually everyone responds in the affirmative: Animals should be kept (and killed) "humanely," and persons who treat animals cruelly should be discouraged from doing so. Of course, the meat-eater's response to this question is often dependent upon how close a connection she/he feels to the particular animal: Most meat-eaters react much more negatively to the inhumane treatment of a puppy (especially a "cute" puppy) than to similar treatment of, say, a snake. It appears that even Mr.Lazare believes that humans have some basic obligation not to be unnecessarily cruel: "Certainly," he notes with respect to Kuznetsov's kitten, "pulverizing a poor defenseless creature is bad."

Mr. Lazare does temper this view somewhat by raising a very typical anti-vegetarian "false choice" argument: If a child is threatened by a snake, do we kill the snake or let the child be bitten? Although many a sensible person--vegetarian or not--would simply move the child away from the snake, being a vegetarian does not mean giving up the right to defend oneself or others from an attack--whether the attacker is a human or non-human animal.

If we acknowledge that eating the flesh of other living beings is not necessary for our survival, and we further agree that we should be kind to other living creatures when possible, how do we justify taking the lives of other creatures simply for our own enjoyment? This analysis leads inexorably to the answer to the question of why I am (and why you should be) a vegetarian: Because it is the kinder choice.

And make no mistake about it: We do have a choice. Meat-eaters like Mr. Lazare may try to shift the blame ("Hitler was a vegetarian"), but the bottom line is that Mr. Lazare has simply made a conscious decision to treat other living beings unkindly with no justification other than his own personal enjoyment. Rather than make relatively slight adjustments to his lifestyle which would have no negative impact on his health or well-being, Mr. Lazare prefers "a leg of lamb or a proper coq au vin made from some rangy old rooster that's had more lovers than most of us can dream of...." Some may call that clever, jaunty, sophisticated or even funny. But I call it what it most certainly is: Unkind.

Michael W. Jonak

Coon Rapids, Minnesota

It just so happens that eating a lot less meat has much to recommend it, including improved health, better environmental stewardship, animal welfare and the restoration of family farming, to name just a few benefits.

I respectfully refer Mr. Lazare to The Nation's excellent food issue of September 11, 2006. h

The Slow Food movement should not be misconstrued as advocating for vegetarianism; what it advocates is a respect for food, how it is produced and consumed, and those who produce it for the rest of us.

Thoughtful people who opt for an entirely vegetarian diet deserve our genuine respect.

Patrick Bosold

Fairfield, Iowa

After reading Daniel Lazare's article I can only conclude that the man is a complete idiot. Yes, The Bloodless Revolution is a flawed and somewhat frustrating book. A better title might have been, Famous Veggie Kooks. However, to use it as some sore of measure by which to judge vegetarianism in general, as Lazare does, is intellectually dishonest and lazy, and was shocking to read in an article in as fine a publication as The Nation.

As I read the article, I kept hoping to find some indication that the author knew something, or had at least thought about, the matter at hand. Apparently not. Nevertheless, his blind, self-assured certainty is absolute. Much like Dick Cheney's unshakeable faith in his "series of stunning successes" in Iraq.

Regardless of one's reasons for reducing or abstaining from eating meat, no reasonable person can argue with the fact that it lessens the damage that we do to our environment. One need not be an alarmist, merely reasonably well-informed, to recognize that much about the way humanity lives is utterly unsustainable, especially our excessive consumption of meat. By "unsustainable", I mean widespread and permanent environmental damage to the world's oceans, water supplies, arable land, forests, the air we breathe and the very climate upon which we depend for livable conditions.

Livestock produce more greenhouse gasses than all the world's internal combustion vehicles combined? How on earth is a problem like that going to be fixed by the technological advances he assumes are just around the corner? Before writing more on this subject, I suggest he pay a visit to a modern factory farm where as many as a quarter million pigs at a time are raised indoors in crates. Don't forget to stop by the scenic waste lagoon. It's easy to find, even from the next county. Just follow your nose.

Lazare has the health question exactly backwards, as well. Okinawans and other long-lived peoples who have low rates of heart disease and cancer enjoy good health not because they eat meat, but precisely because they eat so little of it. Yes, a little bit of fish and red wine is good for you. How does that support the wisdom of the typical American diet? Many of us are eating ourselves to death on diets of the poorest quality food. A doctor, interviewed on the health effects of "fast food", recently compared eating one daily burger & fries meal to smoking a pack a day of cigarettes.

Mr. Lazare says we should eat better meat, raised under more natural circumstances. Well, great. How much meat will truly sustainable farming actually allow most people to eat? If all animal products were produced or harvested in environmentally responsible ways, then society would revert to the dietary standards of 17th century France, when meat, fish and poultry were luxuries affordable on a regular basis only by the extremely wealthy, and everyone else subsisted on a diet of bread, turnips, and onions.

Lastly, I would like to remind Mr. Lazare: If he hopes to retain the respect of his readers, he should recall the first rule of writing - write what you know, and know about what you write. That's the difference between a actual journalist and a bloviating comedian like Rush.

Patrick McKernan

Goffstown, New Hampshire

My friends, my neighbors, now The Nation. At dinners in and out, at parties, I never announce that I am a vegetarian and request that everyone do the same. Yet, as people notice what I eat the questions begin. The questions then move to challenges: Do you wear leather? Do you kill mosquitos? I have answers for all the questions and challenges, which I politely provide, though I am tired of it.

My question is this: What is it in YOU, the questioners and challengers that so riles you; that makes you often angry and impolite when all I did was order the salad? Honestly, it has always stumped me and I really want to know.

John Steiner

Manchester, California

Daniel Lazare's review of Tristram Stuart's book on the history of vegetarianism is insultingly dismissive of a very real area of philosophical, ethical, environmental and political scholarship. I'm left to wonder why The Nation chose someone so obviously unfamiliar with this scholarship while someone else could have given a more informed, more enlightened review.

Lazare's trite, tired and overwrought complaints against vegetarianism--too numerous to even list--are easily answered by someone who has actually familiarized themselves with this field of thought. To take just one example, Lazare argues it may actually be more humane to keep domesticated animals meant for slaughter under our care because freeing such animals back into their natural habitat may subject them to greater pain rather than less.

First, vegetarian scholarship long ago problematized arguments based solely on the reduction of suffering, as suffering is impossible to calculate. Additonally, it's now commonly understood and accepted that a life anesthetized of all discomfort isn't necessarily a better life because of missed opportunities to grow, learn, and thrive.

Second, Lazare predictably falls into the same mental trap humanity has been struggling with for thousands of years: the arrogant assumption that we have the right to intervene and reign over the rest of the natural world. A long-standing pillar of vegetarian scholarship has been the call for humility and non-intervention. I ask The Nation that in the future it give the issue of vegetarianism the same level of serious and informed debate and discussion it grants to other political issues.

Margaret Betz PhD

Swarthmore, Pennsylvania

I’m surprised to find that Daniel Lazare’s article does not mention the three reasons I have for being vegetarian: a) good hygienic practice, b) conservation of energy, c) risk assessment.

There have been far too many examples of feed lots, fish farms, and poultry barns yielding diseased or highly toxic product. In addition animals are concentrators of heavy metals, pesticides and pathogens.

The conservation of energy principle suggests that eating low on the food chain requires less energy to metabolize food and leaves more energy for action. Our bodies are not food processing plants but sources of energy.

Living life today has to involve risk assessment. Our culture is over-medicated and looking for the perfect antacid. It’s not a question of how long you’ll live but how are you feeling. If you have faith, trust in the gods; otherwise, play the odds and eat vegetarian.

Tom Aylward

Sonoita , Arizona

As a vegetarian, I found this article so offensive that I cancelled my subscription after being a loyal subscriber for years.

Kaye Beiswanger

Twin Cities, Minnesota

I am a vegetarian but I turned eagerly to read "My Beef With Vegetarianism" hoping to find something thought-provoking. I was disappointed.

Early on Daniel Lazare writes of killing a kitten, "Certainly, pulverizing a poor defenseless creature is bad. But does that mean that dispatching it quickly and efficiently in a modern abattoir with the good utilitarian purpose of feeding the hungry is good?" Why would it mean that, even apart from whether or not it is done "quickly and efficiently"? Think of conditions in "a modern abattoir." Every year about three-quarters of a million calves in the United States alone are chained down so they cannot move and fed a restricted diet so they will remain malnourished. If hurting a young cat is understood to be a bad thing, how might hurting young cows, which have even more complex nervous systems (and correspondingly greater capacities for pain, we might presume), even be all right?

It is also a much more efficient use of land and energy to eat crops, rather than feeding our crops to other animals and eating them, so if "feeding the hungry" were the idea this wouldn't be the way to go about it.

In the same paragraph Lazare misattributes the view to Peter Singer that "sentience is the relevant issue...[so] it may be bad to kill a kitten, but it's OK to kill an animal further down the evolutionary scale, such as a frog, a fish or a bug." If Lazare had read Singer he would know he doesn't think it is OK to kill frogs or fish. For that matter he wouldn't even have had to read anything Singer has written, he could have just checked his wikipedia entry, which classifies him in the category "Australian vegans."

Interestingly, later on Lazare refers to vegetarianism as an "ideology," which is akin to Ann Coulter calling it a "theory" in her last book. This gives the impression that vegetarianism is a set of ideas or beliefs, when in fact vegetarianism is only a practice. Everyone who doesn't eat meat is a vegetarian, regardless of how else they differ. Yet he goes on to say, "Vegetarianism is most fundamentally about the importance of not taking life other than under the most extreme circumstances." I could go on about how "taking life" cannot be the issue because vegetarians don't mind taking the lives of plants, or taking the life of a mosquito, and mosquito bites are hardly "extreme circumstances," but this is irrelevant. Vegetarianism cannot fundamentally be about anything other than the decision not to eat meat. Vegetarians have all sorts of reasons as to why they avoid meat. To give you only two examples, I gave up meat last May because I didn't want to take part in a system that brutalizes and slaughters other animals just so we can enjoy the pleasure of eating them. I thought it would be bad for my health at first. Imagine my surprise a few months later to hear from an English woman I was volunteering with that she became a vegetarian purely for health reasons!

Still, after reading about half-way through Lazare's piece, I was surprised to read him refer to Hitler as a "dedicated vegetarian." First of all it doesn't matter whether Hitler ate meat or not. Even if he had been a vegetarian, saying "Hitler was a vegetarian, therefore vegetarianism is wrong," is like saying "Hitler wore pants, therefore wearing pants is wrong." Nevertheless Lazare actually implies this stock example of an association fallacy, saying, "What drew Hitler to vegetarianism were most likely its antihumanist and authoritarian elements." This would be laughable if it were not so scurrilous. It is really disgusting. What "antihumanist and authoritarian elements" could those be? Again, this gives the false impression that vegetarianism is more than the practice of not eating meat.

Later Lazare asserts, "No sane person favors unsustainably produced meat." However, he himself in the same paragraph goes on to dismiss the idea that we ought to be eating less meat. Does he think there is no limit to the amount of meat that can be produced sustainably? Take just beef. Cattle already occupy nearly one-fourth of the Earth's land mass. In the United States a large portion of the grain we grow is fed to cattle, and fully half of all the water our country consumes is used to grow that feed. The beef industry is more wasteful of energy than any other. It is clear that the level of meat production and consumption in the United States is itself unsustainable. It couldn't be enjoyed by everyone in the world. It has been reported that factory farming "leads to deforestation, land degradation, and contamination of water sources and other natural resources. For every pound of red meat, poultry, eggs, and milk produced, farm fields lose about five pounds of irreplaceable top soil." (Stolen Harvest, 2000)

Towards the end Lazare says that "myths about limits to human productivity have been shattered." At this point I can't help but recall something Noam Chomsky once said, and I think it is worth quoting at length: "Modern industrial civilization has developed within a certain system of convenient myths. The driving force of modern industrial civilization has been individual material gain, which is accepted as legitimate, even praiseworthy, on the grounds that private vices yield public benefits, in the classic formulation. Now, it has long been understood, very well, that a society that is based on this principle will destroy itself in time. It can only persist, with whatever suffering and injustice that it entails, as long as it is possible to pretend that the destructive forces that humans create are limited, that the world is an infinite resource, and that the world is an infinite garbage can."

We can no longer pretend that "human productivity" is limitless, and even if some of us don't care about the suffering of other animals that are treated as commodities and killed as soon as it isn't more profitable to keep them alive, they should at least care about how we are leaving the planet to future generations. If Lazare considers this kind of thinking "silly defeatism," then those concerned with the looming spectre of global warming will only consider him silly.

Matthew Provonsha

Lacarne, OH