When there is a new idea in the air, it suddenly seems to be everywhere all at once. In fact it is usually an old idea that has been hanging around up there for an eternity anyway, waiting for some random combination of coincidences to give it a new spin.
This season’s new idea, sure enough, is not a new idea at all. Jesus was said to be for it, as were (and are) the Buddha and the Dalai Lama. On the other hand, there is some evidence that Abraham and Muhammed were against it.
Mahatma Ghandi and Mother Theresa were definitely for it. Henry the Eighth, the Prince of Wales, the Kaiser and Attila the Hun were strongly against it.
Miles Davis was forcibly for it. “If horses can eat grass and stuff like that and still grow big and strong and run fast, why the hell shouldn’t I?” is more or less how he used to rasp out his feelings about it.
It, of course, is the philosophy and practice of vegetarianism. And nothing could have given the idea a more potent new impetus than recent images of the mass slaughter of beasts in England. The image, and the philosophy behind it, were enough to permanently turn your stomach.
But even before satellite television brought these graphic images into our front rooms, other agencies had already been positioning themselves in the debate.
South African novelist JM Coetzee had recently released a slim volume called The Lives of Animals, whose elderly protagonist turns her beliefs against the killings of animals for human consumption into a personal crusade, argued at the highest academic levels.
As with many personal crusades, hers is one that got on a lot of nerves, including those of her family, for its seeming self-righteousness. Nobody likes to be lectured at from the high moral ground, especially when the arguments from that high moral ground are hard to flaw.
Then there was the British/American movie blockbuster Chicken Run. This, if you will pardon the expression, was a bird of a different feather – loud, funny, poignant by turns, pulling out all the stops to provide “good family entertainment”, with a couple of strong messages in there which you could take or leave, depending on your temperament.
Chicken Run is a formula Hollywood adventure about good triumphing against evil. In this case, however, even though the chicken who saves the day and leads the hapless, salt-of-the-earth British chickens to safety, happens to be an all-American hero (played, ironically, by the all-Australian Mel Gibson) the evil that is being confronted is a far more subtle and modern affair.
The cast of animated plasticine chickens were fighting to save themselves from falling victim to the designs of the farmer, and particularly the farmer’s nasty and heartless wife, who were planning to turn their plodding chicken farm into a lucrative, hi-tech chicken pie factory that would coldly dispatch hundreds of innocent chickens a day.
These animated characters made us feel more for the chickens as individuals than the most earnest documentary could have made us feel about the fate of millions of beasts living out a brief and tortured existence as battery hens. It is only afterwards, when you have left the cinema and gradually get past the warm feeling of seeing your talking heroes survive to fight another day, that it hits you that the drama was in fact about the plight of those very feathered, but voiceless, victims that we take for granted every day.
Or is that reading too much into a brilliantly crafted and ripping, big screen yarn?
As I said, once the idea is around, everything seems to add fuel to the impact it has started to make on your mind.
Almost every child I know, including my own, has had a moment of personal crisis when confronted with the reality that those cute and fluffy lambs and calves and chicks are what actually become the food on your plate. Some become temporary vegetarians. Others stay vegetarian for the rest of their lives.
The vast majority of us feel a short-lived sense of shame and outrage, but very soon slip back under the comfortable cloak of convention. It is the same thing when we are constantly bombarded with statistics about the appalling conditions under which 80% of the world’s population actually lives, and the understanding that we who are privileged to live in the relatively fast lane are, willy-nilly, part of the problem rather than part of the solution. It takes too much of a super-human effort to go against the grain of a dominant culture, to make an individual stand.
I will probably never have enough strength of will to become a good vegetarian, although from time to time, when I try, I truly wish I could.
Last week, amid all the hours of televised wisdom about strategies for combating Britain’s massive outbreak of foot-and-mouth, there came an unlikely intervention from Scandinavia that might well have done the trick.
A Swedish pig farmer was explaining in his pleasant way why Swedish farms were not likely to suffer the same fate as their British counterparts. Hygienic conditions and humane practices were the key, he said.
“Humane practices” includes keeping piglets with their parents for the first five weeks of their lives. Thereafter they are never introduced to animals other than family. They are made to feel comfortable, secure and unstressed the whole of their lives – until, that is, the time comes to yank them on to a conveyor belt by a hind leg and send them down that roaring chain saw of an assembly line to their premature deaths.
Somehow, the premeditated horror lurking behind that apparent show of kindness had more impact on my thinking about vegetarianism than any other image during the week. But, the flesh being weak, we are yet to see where it leads.
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