Economic and physical realities sink in too. Kingsolver’s 9-year-old, Lily, goes into the poultry business, calculating how many eggs and chickens she must sell to earn money for a horse. Death as a part of life — and, especially, eating — is unavoidable. Lily won’t name her chickens, so she can face killing and selling them. Her mother, an unapologetic meat-eater, points out that vegetarians kill living plants, not to mention the insects and field animals that inevitably fall to the harvesting process. “You can leave the killing to others and pretend it never happened,” she writes, “or you can look it in the eye and know it.” As for sweat and mud, no one shies from either. Kingsolver finishes one May evening “aching and hungry” and decides that “labors like this help a person appreciate why good food costs what it does. It ought to cost more.” This is a message Americans can’t hear often enough.
-- review of Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver, her family's attempt to eat only locally grown/produced food for a year
Barbara Kingsolver is a good author and activist sort, but this brief against vegetarians doesn't cut it. The bit about plants -- one person here tries to guilt me by saying they might have some sort of consciousness -- is really a stretch. Who knows if they have some sort of consciousness (honestly, one doubts it), but suffice to say, they have a hell of a lot less than chickens, pigs, cows and the like. Factory farming also requires a grand number of plants to feed those animals, in a quite wasteful matter, so if that is one is serious, you still would have a lot more dead plants that way. The idea is not that vegetarians (or vegans) cause no harm. The point, on the ethical end, is that they try to cause less.
This also applies to the death of insects and field animals. As to insects, again, even Peter Singer in Animal Liberation at first drew the line around shrimp and scallops, even there doing so to give them the benefit of the doubt. Insects (especially some of them, plus arachnids) have value and grace in a fashion (consider bees), and we cannot willy-nilly ignore them (again, bees are quite important to pollination). But, there is a major difference -- and someone with a background in biology like BK knows this -- between them and chickens or even fish (a closer case). This aside from the fact that you aren't directly killing the insects -- there are limits to this indirect harm stuff, but there is something there. And, there are means to reduce it either further.
The vegan would not eat any type of seafood, and most would not eat honey either, which is a good path to take, surely. All the same, I do not find it too hypocritical to draw the line at shrimp, since science provides pretty clear evidence that they have at best primitive nervous systems, and most likely don't feel any pain when they are harvested. Here, there is some validity in noting that agriculture -- especially if you aren't strictly organic -- causes similar harms to animals and the environment overall as the production of various types of seafood. The lobster, especially when boiled alive, appears a somewhat superior case, to be much more wary about. Fish as well, especially how they are killed in the open air.
[An author, discussing her time serving over Iraq, also mentioned the Middle Eastern boyfriend she had before going over. He was a Muslim, but the fact he believed certain things were wrong - premarital sex with her probably included -- didn't mean he abstained from doing such things. We are not gods; it is a question of HOW human we will be. This also is a factor here ... the fact eating shrimp or dairy products sometimes is not ideal is not exactly proof positive that it's therefore fine to have a hamburger, since hey, we jumped off the cliff already.]
The level of field animals killed are no match to the deaths in raising animals for food. And, since you are going to eat the plants anyway, the small extra amount used to provide food to replace the animal products simply will not require too much more of a risk to field mice and the like. Now, I do respect those who truly raise their animals locally -- a large chunk of the horrors of food production (and this is not limited to animals) is mass production, especially factory farming. This does not mean that vegans and vegetarians ignore that whatever they eat in some fashion involves "killing," though some surely try. And, there is a problem all the same with this path. Simply put, people don't differentiate. It promotes mass production as well. People don't generally differentiate. Food is food for them.
Finally, raising animals for food simply never can be truly harm-free. There is some harm to the animals in various ways, if much less than factory farming and the like. Likewise, I do find it morally dubious to raise animals (living things with lives of their own) solely so we can eat them. It was not necessary in this case -- there are other sources of protein and vitamins. And, it surely is not necessary in most cases overall -- for certain societies, it is. Fine enough. Not for us. The daughter here had forget the fact that her chickens were animals comparable to what she might have as pets. This is a useful device for meat-eaters, but this does not make it necessarily okay. We lie to ourselves all the time. The fact that the Kingsolvers overall balance things out in the morality department in ways that put me to shame doesn't change the fact. I'm talking about this one issue here.
I looked at the book, and I'm not sure if it's for me, but Barbara Kingsolver and her family merits much respect. Her essays, novels (including Bean Trees) and other works (including one on a mine strike) are much recommended. But, sorry, as a vegetarian, this sort of easy defense of meat eating -- even from those less wrong than the usual defenders, doesn't cut it for me. Nor is her total brief against television (so noted one of her essays), but hey, I respect her there too. In fact, I find having minority views on various things, including of a moral nature, healthy -- you respect others, even those you disagree with on certain matters, in the process.
Good thing ... I'm an ethical vegetarian. I don't really eat TOO healthy.