The classic scenario which meat-eaters choose to present to veggies when discussing their dietary choices is, ‘if you were stuck on a desert island and there was nothing else to eat, would you eat meat?’. Until recently, I had a very clear response to that question: of course I would. That would be an entirely different situation in which choosing to eat meat would be a life or death decision – I wouldn’t have a choice. Furthermore, in this situation, many of the environmental consequences of the modern meat industry would not apply, as I would not be cutting down trees to make room for farms, or breeding animals for slaughter and generating dangerous levels of methane. In addition to this, the health issues linked to meat-eating would not be so significant when stuck on a desert island, eating animals is evidently going to be less detrimental to your health than eating nothing at all.
Recently, however, as I was browsing the non-fiction section of Waterstones, I came across Eating Animals by Jonathan Safran Foer. I picked it up and flipped through a few pages and I was stopped in my tracks by a story about his Jewish grandmother, who was homeless, but refused to eat meat to save her life because it wasn’t kosher on the basis that, ‘if nothing matters, there’s nothing to save’. I began to wonder about how applicable this is to being a veggie stuck on a desert island. How far would I go to stick to my values? In our culture of TV survival experts such as Bear Grylls glorifying the extreme measures of doing and eating anything in an attempt to preserve your life, where does the line between determination and selfishness lie?
For example, if two friends were stranded on a desert island with nothing to eat, would it be considered acceptable for one to murder the other and eat them in order to preserve their own life? Or, if you were stranded with your mother, partner or child and they died from the island’s conditions, would you feel able to eat the corpse of your loved one to preserve your own life? Would you eat your pet dog? In these situations, it seems that even in a life or death situation there are still moral boundaries that should not or cannot be crossed in the attempt of self-preservation. It all seems to boil down to how much we, as individuals, feel that the preservation of our lives are worth. Is my life worth the murder of another human? Is it worth enduring the moral damage of the experience of eating the dead body of a loved one? In these situations, is it worth crossing these boundaries to save my own life?
The same questions can be raised when considering whether or not I would eat meat if I was stuck on a desert island. Is my life worth the taking of another? How much do I think my life is worth? Why am I so important that another creature should die so that I can live? So now, at the end of this ramble, I can conclude that I don’t know the answers to any of these questions and I cannot say for certain whether or not I would eat meat if I was stuck on a desert island with no other form of sustenance. (Sorry). However, I have come to the realisation that the answer to the question that I thought was logical and obvious is not as logical and obvious as I had initially thought.
If you are interested in reading Foer’s book, follow this link to Amazon: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Eating-Animals-Jonathan-Safran-Foer/dp/014103193X
Edited by: Tia Ralhan
Sources:
http://www.primalsurvivor.net/worst-bear-grylls-survival-advice/