Should Vegetarians Eat Meat?

Ezra Klein has a call to arms about the unfortunate practice of restaurants making their vegetarian option some grilled vegetables. Grilled vegetables are a nice side, they are not a meal. As Klein points out, a vegetarians is not someone who just loves vegetables per se, but "is someone who doesn't eat meat."

But in a contrarian article for Slate (is there any other kind) Christopher Cox suggests another thing the vegetarians can eat other than the dreaded Grilled Vegetable Plate. That something is meat. Yes, in an article provocatively titled "It's OK for vegans to eat oysters" Cox posits that vegans and vegetarians should be able to scarf down oysters. He brings forth the two main reasons to be vegan: using animals for food is harmful to the environment and causes them to suffer. Neither of these reasons, he claims, apply to oysters. The impact of oyster farms on the environment is de minimis and oysters themselves live off of plankton. In addition, oysters have no central nervous system so they're unlikely to feel pain. Basically, oysters are just oddly shaped plants.

So, will the next Frugal Veggie post be a recipe for oysters? No. Despite Cox's argument I'm not convinced.

First up is challanging the premises of his argument. Do we know for sure that oysters are ecologically sustainable? Certainly, eating farmed oysters is better for the environment then eating, say, farmed salmon. But Cox does not really marshall a lot of proof in his article. Additionally, while it is true that oysters lack a brain they do have a nervous system. It's a bit facetious of him to compare the situation to plants, as we don't know that plants can't feel pain either. That may be so, but we do know that plants don't have nerves and oysters do have ganglia. This uncertainty is probably enough to make me not go out and eat a bunch of oysters.

But uncertainty can be solved by more investigation, and what if I delved deeper into this issues and discovered that oyster farming, say, actually helps the environment and oysters feel no pain? I guess my main concern goes back to the Klein quote above, vegetarians do not eat meat. I think the whole "not eating meat" thing is very important to my identity as a vegetarian. Look, it's arguable that a person who is otherwise a vegan but eats oysters is "better" (quote unqoute) then I, as I'm adding to environmental degredation and animal suffering with the milk I glug down and the cheese I consume. But that person isn't a vegan. It may sound like I'm just being obsessed with labels here, but labels are important. Labels give a quick and easy way for the rest of the world to know how to interact with us. Allow the term "vegetarian" to encompass eating meat and then the restaurant won't be bringing over the Grilled Vegetable Plate as a vegetarian option but will be bringing over an ethically raised steak that was killed painlessly.

Bottom line, if you're going to eat oysters – good for you. More people should eat more oysters. But if you want to do that, you're not a vegan. Call yourself, I don't know, an ethical pescetarian or a bivalvegetarian or don't attach labels (if you don't like labelling).

Of course, I'm only postponing the debate here. The really interesting stuff happens when we can grow meat in vats a la The Space Merchants (No, Margaret Attwood did not come up with this for Oryx and Crake). Every argument for oysters is amplified for vatted meat and every argument I have against it is diminished. Vegetarianism could be reduced to an aesthetic choice, which is not really a good reason for causing extra work for people at restaurants and dinner parties.