Well, nothing is wrong with PETA, I guess.
What prompts this post is I just clicked on a PETA tweet to end “speciesism,” and though I don’t entirely agree with PETA, in the comments section I expected to see some good information, decent debate, that kind of thing. Instead, I was ambushed by anti-Peta vitriol in the responses. Well, that isn’t true. I was disappointed in the vitriol, not ambushed by it. I guess I secretly expected it.
The anti-Peta responses were a kind of gleeful celebration of killing for the sake of killing. My steak is bloodier than yours, that kind of thing.
PETA’s point was that humans are animals, no better than other animals. They’re right. Biology has made an irrefutable case that humans are animals, evolved on Earth. We still respect the old beliefs, creation myths and such, because those stories are meaningful to some people, and we’re nice. But the religious stories are objectively wrong. The true believers have deluded themselves. Humans are animals, like pigs, chicken, rattlesnakes, snapping turtles, and kangaroos.
Where I disagree a little with Peta, and where I expected to see debate, is that even though humans are animals, we are not disinterested observers of life on Earth. We are biased. Harvesting meat, in some cases, has a lower impact on the Earth than agriculture.
If I hike into a distant pond and catch some bullheads for supper, I’m hurting the ecosystem less than if I rely on farmed land. That’s because every acre of land we farm is an acre lost to wildlife habitat. Grizzly bears and buffalo don’t roam Iowa anymore because the whole state is farmed. The gardens behind our houses use land too, on a smaller scale.
I like PETA. I may have given them money in the past. I can’t remember. But I also admire the guy or gal who harvests a deer once a year, not for show, but to use every bit of the meat. I’m not going to box myself into an ideology. Life is complex. Questions are complicated.
What I can’t get behind is wanton waste, excess impact, unnecessary killing, and so on. And that’s where I take issue with the commenters who trashed PETA. They were all about killing, bragging about eating meat, posting images of bloody steaks, and so on.
Only a few animals other than humans are bloodthirsty. Killer whales hunt gray whales for their tongues, and discard the rest of the whale. Bluefish, predatory sportfish of the east coast, go on killing sprees in schools of baitfish. They kill more baitfish than they can eat.
Other than that, it’s hard to think of examples of wanton killing. If you’re a lion, why kill all the gazelles at once? You only make things more difficult for yourself in the future. Nature has checks and balances.
And we too, when we are savage, hurt only ourselves.
So, I can’t get behind is Bloody Steak Poster Guy. I mean, really? That’s your identity? Nothing else going for you?
Maybe I need to give money to PETA again.