Vegetarian Star

Lyman VS. Niman

The debate over whether you can be a good environmentalist and still eat meat recently took place between former rancher and author of Mad Cowboy, Howard Lyman and Nicolette Hahn Niman, author of Righteous Porkshop and wife of Niman Ranch founder Bill Niman. The event was co-sponsored by VegNews magazine and Earth Island Institute.

Although both authors agreed that factory farming is devastating to the environment, their views differed, of course, in the impact of small farms on the planet and the ethics of raising and killing animals for food.

Michele Simon, author of Appetite For Profit, took the opportunity on Alternet to use her stance as a vegetarian to give counter arguments for how, regardless of environmental impact, eating animals cannot be justified and there is no “humane” meat.

She mentions Lyman’s argument that keeping animals in better conditions before slaughter does not make the killing any more acceptable, comparing it to keeping Jews in “5 star hotels” and feeding them “lavish meals” before being sent to death during the Holocaust.

Simon uses a similar ethnic argument, playing upon Niman’s opinion that it’s better to keep animals in good conditions on ethical farms than to have them fend for themselves in the wild.

“This sounded chillingly like the arguments for slavery. You know, blacks were really much better off getting free room and board and they weren’t treated all that badly were they?”

Read more at Alternet.

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