We need to love the animals we eat and stop making their lives hell, argues Tom Hodgkinson. Tom raised, killed and ate his own pigs, and discovered that meat is not murder, it's justifiable homicide
There are many excellent arguments for vegetarianism. I was one for ten years. A pro-vegetarian argument is that if we didn't eat meat, then we could grow more grain and feed the world. But one suspects that it isn't meat eating that is the problem so much as modern day greedy, profit driven industrial capitalism, and that the same bandits would be running the show with the same results even if the whole world was persuaded to become veggie.
Another very strong argument for being veggie is that in so doing, you reduce the size of the market for factory-farmed meat. But eating meat that you yourself have cared for yourself is a different matter. My vegan friend Graham told me that he did not really have a moral objection to what we did. His veganism is part of a general attack on exploitative capitalism. Small scale farming is a way of grabbing back some control over our food production from the big guys.
And if you are going to eat meat, then you should take responsibility for its welfare, either by keeping your own animals or buying meat from people who treat their animals to a good life. This is the position of the philosopher Roger Scruton, who writes, "Duty requires us therefore, to eat our friends". In an essay arguing for a compassionate meat eating or what he calls "conscientious carnivores", he outlines a vision of morally correct meat eating, which is actually a description of what all country people in the UK did till very recently as a matter of course, and still do in more traditional cultures such as rural Mexico or Vanuatu:
"The animal brought to the table will have enjoyed the friendship and protection of the one who nurtured him, and his death will be like the ritual sacrifices described in the Bible and Homeric literature - a singling out of a victim, for an important office to which a kind of honour is attached."
And really, if we can do it, so could anyone. The amount of land needed to keep two pigs is tiny, and the amount of work is tiny, too. We fed them and scratched their backs and stroked them and talked to them twice a day. Keeping them was a great pleasure and eating them an even greater one. I'd recommend it to anyone.
While writing this article, I received a visit from the local environmental health officer. He informed us that we'd done was illegal. You are not allowed to kill and share your own pigs or eat them with friends and family. A new law, which came in two years ago, says you have to take them to the slaughterhouse. So be warned: by following a millennia-old tradition, you are now breaking the law.
Do you think you can be a compassionate carnivore? Or is meat always murder? Join the debate here
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Hugh wants everyone to make the switch to free-range chicken
