On Fish and Flesh.

The only thing I hate more than people who call themselves vegetarian but eat chicken and fish are people who call themselves vegetarian but feed meat to pets. The former are morons, the later hypocrites. Yet it is the morons whom constitute the greatest fascination purely because the gap between word and deed is so spectacularly wide: if you don't eat cows but still eat chickens and fish then you are not a vegetarian. You are someone who does not eat red meat. And that is all, unless chickens and fish are not animals or the definition of what constitutes a vegetarian has been magically expanded to include flesh consumption.

And while the phrase "I don't eat red meat" does not roll off the tongue with the same proverbial ease as the label "vegetarian", it is not exactly a difficult thing to say, or to understand, not to mention accurate. And this is the point: just what is being conveyed when someone declares themselves to be a chicken eating vegetarian as opposed to someone who does not eat red meat?

In any case I suspect that the self-identified chicken eating vegetarian has more in common with the person who will happily eat meat on the sole condition that the meat in question look as unlike an animal as possible when actually served than with strict vegetarians. It is not so much the idea of eating animals which seems to be disconcerting but rather the act of being reminded of the mechanics of meat preparation, namely killing and cleaning. In the case of bacon, for example, one can like the taste and associations bacon consumption invokes but not like the idea that bacon is nothing but the prepared flesh of a dead pig.

The difference between product and process partly explains the increasing popularity of mock meat, of soy based food crafted to taste and look as much like meat as possible right down to mock rind in the case of bacon, for example, so that only significant difference between actual meat and mock meat lies in process by which a specific food is produced. In this context mock meat is the perfect product for people who like the taste of meat yet find the idea that the eating of meat requires the killing of animals somehow disquieting. This has often made me wonder if the current level of public phobia regarding genetically modified foods as well as certain problematic issues regarding the eating of meat would not only be mitigated but largely erased if slabs of chicken type flesh, for instance, could be grown in some kind of vat in such a way that nothing needed to be killed purely because nothing lived in the first place. And while such an idea raises all kinds of complex ethical questions they do not focus around the killing of animals, or, to be more accurate, do not focus on the ongoing rearing and killing of animals for food.

This is of particular relevance for those raised in a culture where meat is killed and prepared by specialised hands in specialised processing zones largely hidden from public view. For most people in so called Western countries one's entire contact with meat is on the level of prepared food rather than living animal so that purchasing six slices of ham is like purchasing six slices of cheddar cheese: in both cases the purchaser is not confronted with either the raw material or the attendant production processes. In relation to meat this distance is compounded by the difference between purchasing a neatly prepared and pre-packaged lamb chop from a supermarket and watching a butcher prepare the same cut while surrounded by the suspended carcasses of gutted and headless sheep.

But there is a significant distinction between animal and carcass, between something that is in the process of being transformed into food as opposed to something which still requires either killing, as in the case of live crabs, or cleaning and gutting, as in the case of whole fish, with the latter generating the most quibbles regarding the consumption of something that looks like an animal purely because a cooked whole fish still looks like a whole fish: right down to skin, fins and eyes.

The idea of fish consumption also raises the issue of anthropomorphism, of valuing animals according to their closeness to humans in terms of both appearance and behaviour, with the different treatment accorded to dolphins and tuna being the prime example. In respect to seafood I have never heard anyone complain that cooked lobster looks too much like an animal- I have heard many people express reservations about killing a lobster by inserting the wriggling animal into boiling water but such reservations focus on the killing method as opposed to what is being killed. It is almost as if such creatures are grouped in with vegetables rather than animals so that eating shellfish is on the same par as eating pumpkin, a discursive strategy which largely explains why someone could describe themselves as a chicken and fish eating vegetarian without realising they have uttered the kind of statement which could easily function as the definitive dictionary example of an oxymoron. If you find the idea of eating cow and sheep flesh problematic but have no reservations about eating chicken and fish flesh then fine: order the chicken. Or fish. Just don't pretend that chickens and fish are not animals.