GOING “COLD TOFU”
Author of Why Dogs Hump and Bees Get Depressed and Rewilding Our Hearts: Building Pathways of Compassion and Coexistence
While it would be best for the animals—and the planet—if everyone could eliminate consumption of animal products immediately, some people may have an easier time adjusting their diet more gradually. I like to call this approach, going “cold tofu.” Clearly, there are many arguments for why it’s not ethical to kill animals for food. Each of us can make a positive difference in the quality of ecosystems, our own health, and the lives of billions of other animals by changing our meal plans.
A good place to start is with meat produced on factory farms. This type of mass-produced food is the source of untold pain, suffering, and death. Really, they shouldn’t be called farms at all—they are heartless, hellish factories in which billions upon billions of animals die terrible deaths due to greed and laziness. If you eat, for example, five cheeseburgers over the course of seven days, make a pact with yourself to slowly replace a few patties each week with a vegetarian or vegan alternative. A slow transition is better than no transition, and it could actually result in more permanent changes depending on your habits.
As I point out in my book The Animal Manifesto, we all need to ask, “Who’s for dinner?” not “What’s for dinner?” when we’re making decisions about our meals. The word who makes it clear that the billions of food animals killed to feed us are in fact sentient beings. I have found that merely thinking of who might be winding up in your mouth is a helpful reducetarian strategy. There is no doubt that animals suffer and cry out for help when they’re being prepared for meals. The entire process is built on a foundation of cruelty, from the way these animals are raised, to their transportation to the torture chambers of factory farms, to the final days and hours of their lives as they await their turn surrounded by the sights, sounds and smells of slaughter. Not to mention the fact that when the “death blow” eventually comes, it is often delivered inefficiently, prolonging the experience and not instantaneously rendering the animal unconscious as existing laws require. The last paragraph of James McWilliams’s 2015 book The Modern Savage says it well:
What I’m asking you to imagine is thus a movement that requires us to become more emotionally in tune with animals, ethically consistent in our behavior, and better informed about the evolutionary heritage we share with sentient creatures. This movement, whether we join it all at once or gradually, with immediate zeal or reluctantly, will, in the end, triumph over industrial agriculture because it will be, above all else, a bloodless revolution based on compassion for animals, the environment, and ultimately ourselves.
Science clearly shows that factory farming is not sustainable. It is an utter waste of water, land, other resources, and of course, the lives of billions of animals. The award-winning documentary Cowspiracy is another great source for information on this topic. Some would like to see the world become vegan. In my opinion this is a wonderful goal, albeit an unrealistic one. But this doesn’t mean we can’t make significant inroads toward reducing ecological devastation, food-related diseases, and animal suffering. And it’s simple to do. We’re all responsible for the decisions we make about what—or more accurately who—winds up in our mouths. Slowly but surely transitioning into a meat-reduced society is a good place to start.