Food with Thoughts?

The conversation was not generally the kind that takes place on the steps of a Unitarian church. But here were three of us, all members and over 50 (whether that is relevant I don’t know) discussing the virtues of freshly-killed meat and how good it tastes.

Many inside would agree that fresh food is good and that organically grown vegetables are to be preferred. What they would have thought given the number of vegetarians and vegans, about our assertion of the superior flavor of some animal that has recently left its happy foraging grounds is not hard to imagine.

And yet, there we were, hunters, small town kids, people who know how to use a gun. For my part, having grown up on a farm, we didn’t have our own cattle butchered and packaged for home consumption. But people purchased a half a side or a side of beef and for flavor it is simply matchless when stacked up against the stuff laid out under lights designed to heighten the red color of flesh that has been pumped full of water.

There is that ethical dilemma as we realize increasingly that other animals can use tools that chimpanzees engage in war and in ritual murder. People in Africa eat monkey meat a fact that gets discuss in how the aids virus crossed from the jungle primate population in to humans. The higher primates all show some intelligence. So how far down on the chain of life is it OK to eat sentient beings? We haven't really come close to needing to make the decision. Those who eschew meat avoid it all; they don't have a threshold about what to eat.

Other species don’t ask these questions. Crocodiles do not engage in internal debates about devouring someone who enters their world. The fact that a young woman from the same address as our church, Morristown, N.J., on vacation in India recently ended up as a meal for one of these reptiles reminds us that they have no qualms. Being eaten is not on our list of expectations of things that can go wrong on a trip. But however rare such a fate is these days, it's still one that humans can experience.

We are living proof that intelligent creates can be eaten. However, we haven’t had to face the dilemma of ourselves eating a species that has great cognitive ability, even if not up to human standards. When we aim at a deer, it doesn’t yell, “Hey I don’t go around hunting you, do I?"

But suppose on some planet while hunting a meal we come across a slow witted, but tasty creature. And as we aim, it looks at us and says “please don’t."