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Buddhism on a Plate
the case for buddhists to go vegan Samacitta, Birmingham Buddhist Centre
This article appeared in Shabda, the Triratna Buddhist Order’s
monthly journal, in November 2011. Reprinted with permission.
This is one of an occasional series of essays on the Dharma
published by thebuddhistcentre.com, home on the web for the
Triratna Buddhist Community.
Articles are accepted on the basis that they relate directly to
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Suggestions for future publications are welcome, please contact
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Buddhism on a Plate
the case for buddhists to go vegan Samacitta, Birmingham Buddhist Centre
This article appeared in Shabda, the Triratna Buddhist Order’s
monthly journal, in November 2011. Reprinted with permission.
One of the practices for the arising of the Bodhicitta is to
contemplate the sufferings of living beings and, sadly, there are
plenty of different kinds to contemplate. Relieving suffering is
surely a concern for all members of the Triratna Buddhist Order,
but faced with the huge range of urgent problems in the world,
where does one begin? It would be naive to suggest that any one
approach will be the solution to them all. Moreover, any action
taken to relieve suffering in one sphere is likely to have
implications in another, both positive and negative. The picture
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is horribly complex. Understandably, we tend to engage more
with those issues that touch us personally.
What is it for you? Is it climate change, famine, conflicts, poverty,
species extinction, over-population, drug trafficking, water
scarcity, HIV/aids, the widening gulf between rich and poor,
corruption, pollution, child pornography, bear bile farming, the
plight of the honey bee, natural disasters, dictatorships?...Here, I
would like to discuss the issue of food production and factory
farming from a Buddhist perspective. This issue is both global
and individual, both abstract and concrete.
Firstly, let us consider some fundamental principles of Buddhist
ethics in general.
Secondly, I will introduce the problem itself as I understand it.
Thirdly, I shall borrow an idea from Steven Covey's 'Seven Habits
of Highly Effective People'. And fourthly, I will attempt to apply
both the Buddhist ethical framework and Covey's model to this
particular global issue. Then I will make some general points
before concluding.
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1. Buddhist Ethics in general
Firstly, as Buddhists, we undertake to abstain from taking life
and from harming living beings. We recognise that all sentient
beings can suffer just as we can suffer.
'All tremble at violence, all fear death. Putting oneself in the place
of another, one should not kill nor cause another to kill.' -
Dhammapada 129
'All tremble at violence, life is dear to all. Putting oneself in the
place of another, one should not kill nor cause another to kill.'
Dhammapada 130
Our metta practice can awaken a sense of connectedness to other
living beings, and an identification with their experience. When
you feel connected to other living beings through metta, you can
empathise more easily with their experience and if you are
aware of their suffering you want to relieve it - urgently - just as
if it were your own suffering. The starting point and basis for all
ethical conduct is the First Precept, that of non-harm or loving-
kindness.
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Secondly, Buddhist ethics are progressive.
The Precepts are not a tick-list; we can always go further with
any one of them. They are our guidelines for training in the
spiritual life, something we become more and more skilled at.
The Dharma is 'Opanayiko' meaning 'leading forward', 'leading
onward', 'progressive'. You don't achieve perfection all at once.
Thirdly, Buddhist ethics are ethics of intention
The mental state with which an action is performed is the main
factor determining the ethical quality of that action. Intentions
are a karmic force, not to be underestimated. Even if we only
form an intention to become more skilful in some area of
practice, there will, in time, be positive consequences both for
ourselves and for others.
So Buddhist ethics are based on non-harm or loving kindness,
they are progressive, and intention is crucial.
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2. The problem: just what is wrong with factory farming?
In a nutshell, factory farming strives to produce the most meat,
milk, and eggs as quickly and cheaply as possible, using the
minimum amount of resources possible, resulting in unnatural
and abusive conditions for the animals involved. This article is
going to take a peek behind the scenes of factory farms. Many
different species are farmed commercially but here I will look at
just two types of ordinary everyday farm animals: poultry and
cattle. Let us consider first how they would live naturally.
Chickens are complex, intelligent birds who would normally
roost in trees, search for tasty food by scratching and pecking the
earth, dust-bathe to keep their feathers healthy, and engage in a
range of fascinating social rituals. They have a powerful nesting
instinct.
Cattle are herbivorous, herd-dwelling, social animals. Easily
domesticated, they generally behave like 'gentle giants'. What
they mostly want is what all of us want - food to stop hunger,
safety from danger, freedom from disease and pain, contact with
others of the same species, and the opportunity to engage in
natural behaviours like reproduction and nurturing their young.
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Just like human mothers, cows have a strong maternal instinct;
they are devoted to their offspring and highly responsive to their
needs. Cows appear to be extremely patient because they will
keep munching, plodding, standing and waiting in all sorts of
conditions and environments without complaint and it is all too
easy to assume from their placid behaviour that they are
contented.
How do the descendants of these ordinary creatures live today?
The green pastures and idyllic barnyard scenes of years past are
a fantasy. On today's factory farms, cows, calves, chickens,
turkeys, ducks, geese, and other animals are confined in huge,
stinking, windowless sheds for the entirety of their miserable
lives. Sometimes they are unable even to turn around. Giving
them space for their comfort is uneconomical, and depriving
them of exercise conveniently means that all their energy will go
toward producing more milk, eggs, and flesh. They are never
allowed to raise their offspring, root in the soil, build nests nor
do anything that is natural and important to them. They are
subjected to selective breeding which results in massive
distortions such as 'drumstick' thighs and oversized breasts in
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broiler chickens, so that their genetically manipulated bodies can
barely support their short lives. Even before they reach the
abattoir, animals on UK factory farms die every day by the tens of
thousands, of neglect, disease and even of thirst and hunger. This
is no exaggeration!
Then there are the terrors of the journey to the abattoir.
Chickens are grabbed with bone-crunching speed by workers
paid by the number of chickens loaded within the shortest
possible space of time. They are rammed roughly into crates and
loaded onto lorries which, these days, are enclosed to keep the
doomed, miserable creatures out of sight of other drivers on the
motorway. Upon arrival at the abattoir, they are shackled upside-
down, and thus they enter a conveyor-belt of horror, to be
scalded, electrocuted and finally sliced apart.
The kill floor for cattle, where the unfortunate beasts are also
hung up for 'processing' is no less gruesome and bloody.
Interestingly, in June 2011, Animal Aid mounted a successful
campaign to introduce CCTV cameras in UK slaughterhouses
www.animalaid.org.uk/h/n/CAMPAIGNS/slaughter//2420// in
order to introduce some kind of brake upon the worst instances
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of animal abuse and sadism in what must be one of the most
brutalising environments on earth.
Obviously, working in any part of this hellish industry is as
unethical as is working in the arms industry, or trading in drugs,
alcohol or poison.
There are numerous health issues regarding meat, eggs and
dairy products. Cittapala outlined some of them in his article,
'The Compleat Vegetarian' which can be found on his website at
www.cittapala.org. But this article focuses mainly on the ethical
issues from a Buddhist point of view.
In a talk given in April 2010, Ratnaghosha states,
'...sometimes Buddhists are in danger of elevating the subjective
and ignoring the objective...However mindful we are, however
much bliss and rapture we experience in meditation, there are
some things which are just plain wrong and cannot be purified
from the inside out, so to speak.' ('Another Look at Right
Livelihood')
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In The Ten Pillars, under the First Precept (p.63), Sangharakshita
writes,
'Observance of the First Precept will, in fact, naturally result in
one's being a vegetarian.'
But - is vegetarianism enough?
If we can empathise with animals farmed for their meat and if we
can decide to give up meat-eating for ethical reasons, then we
must be capable of empathising with animals who are farmed for
their offspring, their body parts, and other extracts from their
bodies such as their milk, eggs, bile, feathers, fur, skin, trotters,
tusks, horns, etc. Sometimes, there is a vague assumption that
because animal products such as eggs or milk are only by-
products of the meat industry, their procurement does not
directly harm the animal itself. But the animal is still being
exploited in every way imaginable throughout its unnatural and
painful life.
In order to boost milk production in cows, they are forced to
produce calves. But the calf is not simply sent out to play in the
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fields, leaving the mother to get on with being milked by us. It is
removed from the mother within a few days of its birth, causing
extreme distress to the cow who begins bellowing desperately
for her lost calf. This is a deeply traumatic event in the life of a
new mother. The calf is then slaughtered for its meat. Veal is
considered to be better quality if the meat is white, so the calf
may be imprisoned for the three months of its short, tortured life
inside a crate which is barely larger than the calf itself (1 foot 10
inches wide by 4 feet 6 inches long), isolated from its mother and
from all contact with any living beings, bovine or otherwise, and
fed a liquid diet which ensures that instead of developing
muscles, its body is kept in a state of prolonged infancy and its
flesh remains white rather than becoming pink or red.
Meanwhile, the grieving mother cow will soon be impregnated
with her next calf. Her body has been manipulated to produce
milk in quantities that are totally superfluous to the natural
needs of her offspring so all her physical energy is channelled
into milk production for humans, at the expense of her own
health. The stress of carrying udders equivalent to the weight of
a full-grown man typically causes leg and foot problems. In this
way, a dairy cow is worked so hard that she can barely sustain
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the way in which she is forced to live and tends to be 'spent'
before she reaches her second birthday, despite the fact that her
natural lifespan would be 25-30 years. The picture of an
emaciated, exhausted cow with heavily bulging udders that are
painfully infected with mastitis gives some idea of what is really
going on in the lives of what people like to assume are 'contented
cows'.
Eggs are mass-produced in similarly intensive conditions. All
egg-laying chickens will come initially from a hatchery and in the
vast majority of cases the male chicks, which are useless to the
industry, are disposed of by being ground up live in gigantic
mincers. The females are then channelled into huge chicken
sheds where the overcrowding is so severe that they will never
have enough room even to stretch their wings, let alone fly. They
will be subjected to extremes of temperature and unnatural
cycles of light and dark. They will suffer from their confinement
and overcrowding and many will die from suffocation, crushing,
and all manner of illnesses such as broken bones and tumours.
Before arrival, they are debeaked because the conditions they
must live in can lead to cannibalism and feather pecking. In the
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sheds, they are unable to engage in any of their natural
behaviours or develop social relationships with one another as
they would in the wild. Sometimes they desperately try to bury
themselves underneath the bodies of other hens in order to gain
some cover for egg-laying. Once egg production declines,
typically 12 months, they are considered 'spent' and those who
have survived will be slaughtered for use in pies, soups, etc.
Some vegetarians take comfort in labels such as 'free range' and
'organic' but unfortunately, these labels afford very little
protection for the hens. The 'organic' label has to do with the
amount of drugs permissible in the hens' feed, which affects the
chemical substances in their eggs. As for 'free range', Jonathan
Safran Foer points out in 'Eating Animals' that 'You can keep a
dozen turkeys under your kitchen sink and torture them every
day, and still qualify for the free range label.' In terms of animal
welfare, these labels are almost meaningless. Some people will
argue that there are many farms in the country where the
animals are treated quite well - but virtually all the animal
ingredients in the foods you buy from the supermarket, or in the
meals you order in restaurants, come from factory farms.
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Even on the best and kindest family-run small-holdings, animals
are still being treated as 'meat' rather than as sentient creatures
who have a right to their own lives. Recently, I happened to see
part of a TV programme called 'Countryfile' which obviously tries
to present farming in a positive light. The cheery farmer, who
was pleased with his second lambing season of the year, talked in
a completely matter-of-fact way about how quickly the cute little
lambs would be fattened up and 'ready for the table'. All farm
animals are being exploited and all will end up on the kill floor of
an abattoir, probably before they reach adulthood.
The Buddhist position on how to treat living beings is perfectly
clear because 'All tremble at violence, all fear death. Putting
oneself in the place of another, one should not kill nor cause
another to kill.' - Dhammapada 129.
Furthermore:
'One who, while himself seeking happiness, oppresses with violence
other beings who also desire happiness, will not attain happiness
hereafter' - Dhammapada 131
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In the egg and dairy industries, animals are kept alive for years
on end in conditions of violent oppression, in order to obtain the
products of their bodies. Arguably, such cynical and ruthless
exploitation causes even more suffering than does the meat
industry. Those animals who are farmed directly for the edible
meat in their own bodies are, in many ways, the lucky ones.
In the Ten Pillars (p.61), Sangharakshita writes:
'Observance of the First Precept means that, as a result of our
imaginative identification with others, we not only abstain from
actually killing living beings but operate more and more in
accordance with the love mode and less and less in accordance
with the power mode.'
Most Triratna Buddhists choose to be vegetarians for a number
of very good reasons - reasons which apply equally to veganism.
Many of us enjoy reasonable health and would be perfectly
capable of giving up all animal foods out of mercy and
compassion for animals - or at least of moving in that direction.
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3. Steven Covey's 'Seven Habits'
In 1989, Steven R. Covey wrote, 'The Seven Habits of Highly
Effective People', which many Order Members will remember as
a 'buzz-book' in the movement around that time. The subtitle
was, 'Restoring the Character Ethic'. This was a new kind of
success book because it suggested that effective living depended
upon and began with integrating some basic ethical principles
into one's character. Covey taught these principles in terms of
'habits' to be developed, and the first of the habits was: Be
Proactive. To teach this habit, Covey devised a simple model, that
of the Circle of Concern and Circle of Influence.
Within the Circle of Concern are all those issues which interest
us in any way, whereas those issues in which we have little or no
interest fall outside our personal Circle of Concern. Examples of
things outside our Circle of Concern might be the fate of planets
in outer space, or who was in last year's Big Brother contest.
Examples of things inside our Circle of Concern might be our
health, our work, current affairs, public services, global warming,
recycling, the internet, music, eBay...in other words, the full
range of issues which engage us emotionally to any degree.
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Within our Circle of Concern, there will be some things we can do
something about and others over which we have no real control.
Those things over which we do exercise a measure of control can
be delineated within a smaller circle: our Circle of Influence.
Covey's teaching is that proactive people focus their efforts in the
Circle of Influence, whereas reactive people focus their efforts in
the Circle of Concern, resulting in a tendency to blame others and
to feel victimized. Interestingly, Covey suggests that the Circle in
which one focuses one's energy will be the Circle which tends to
expand. So if we can learn to focus our energy within the Circle of
Influence it will increase the effect that we may have on those
issues and concerns that really do matter to us.
4. Buddhist ethics plus Covey, and the problem of factory
farming
Now let us consider the difficult and thorny problem of factory
farming in the world today using Covey's model within a
Buddhist ethical framework.
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Buddhist ethics are based on non-violence - and factory farming
is based on violence to living beings from start to finish. Is this of
concern to me? Do I have any feelings about it? If so, it falls
within my Circle of Concern. Where is my Circle of Influence in
relation to this area? Factory farming is well established in
today's society. Is there anything that I can do, personally, within
my own life, that would have an influence on this situation, if I so
choose?
Buddhist ethics are progressive - and focusing on my Circle of
Influence will make it increase. According to Sangharakshita,
'Non-violence, or Love, is a principle, and being a principle there
is no limit to the number of ways in which it can be applied...no
one is so skilful in his conduct that his practice of it could not be
better. As the most direct manifestation of one's Going for
Refuge, the potentialities of Non-violence, or Love, are infinite.'
(Ten Pillars, p.63).
Vegetarianism is an expression of the First Precept in relation to
food. Can I take my practice of the First Precept any further?
Obviously, this question applies to vegans and non-vegans
alike; any of the Precepts can be practised more and more
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intensively. Veganism is a practice which can always be taken
further, regardless of one's starting point.
Buddhist ethics are about intention. It may be that, for whatever
reason, we cannot adopt a fully vegan lifestyle at this point in our
lives, whether for health reasons or for some other reason.
Perhaps the practice of veganism is simply outside our Circle of
Influence. But that need not be the end of the story. We can still
cultivate an intention to reduce our intake of flesh foods to
whatever degree is possible for us. Our intentions do fall within
our Circle of Influence. Part of spiritual practice is being aware of
the tension between what we would do ideally, and what we are
doing actually - and letting that tension flower into a genuine
aspiration to change ourselves.
In applying a Buddhist ethical framework, plus Steven Covey's
ideas, to the problem of factory farming, I have tried to show that
it is possible and desirable for all Buddhists to move in the
direction of veganism. I am aware that some Order Members will
feel that I am taking an extreme position but, to my mind, the
situation itself is extreme.
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The situation today
Because the problem is so huge, there is always the danger of
apathy and inability to connect with the issue. But I believe this
must be due to a lack of knowledge about what is really going on,
and perhaps a failure of imagination. In fact, it doesn't really take
much imagination: despite the efforts of the farming industry to
keep things hidden, sometimes we still do see lorries crammed
full of cattle and sheep on the motorways, or we might catch a
whiff of the odour of the poisonous slurry from factory farms as
we drive past them in the countryside.
We have all heard the horror stories of what happened to Jews
all over Europe in the Second World War. We may have seen
Schindler’s List and The Diary of Anne Frank. People sometimes
marvel that the ordinary citizens of Europe did so little to avert
such unimaginable evil as the systematic transportation and
extermination of millions of people. Even today, people
sometimes ask the older generation of Germans, 'How is it that
you didn't do anything to stop it?' and some responses that have
been reported are along the lines of 'but it was normal, everyone
was part of it, yes we knew it was wrong but what could one
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person do, we had other problems, problems of survival, we
didn't have time to do anything about it...' Of course, the
Holocaust involved transporting and killing millions of people,
whereas factory farming only involves transporting and
killing animals - this is obviously a major difference. I have no
wish to minimize the Holocaust, nor to over-dramatize factory
farming. There are many significant differences between the two
scenarios, but there are some obvious similarities as well. The
main similarity is the systematic violence inflicted upon the
innocent by the more powerful, and the fact that this evil was/is
being conducted on an industrial scale, with the complicity of
society in general.
One interesting difference between the two scenarios is that in
the Holocaust, the main negative emotion driving it was hatred -
hatred of Jews, gypsies, homosexuals and anyone considered to
be unacceptable - whereas in the case of the animals suffering on
today's factory farms, the main emotion driving the animal-
based food industry is human greed and craving. My observation
is that most people don't actually hate animals or consciously
feel any negativity towards them; it is just that their own
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perceived needs and pleasures are given far more weight than
any inconvenient truths about how those needs must be met by
the unfortunate sentient beings who are being exploited. Greed is
just as destructive as hatred; it seals the fate of millions of
helpless creatures whose entire existence is used to satisfy
human craving.
The future
Let us take a more optimistic look at the problem of industrial
animal production and, just for a moment, let us imagine a
different scenario. Let us imagine a world in the future where
animal suffering is taken as seriously for farm animals as it is for
domestic pets today. Let us dream for a moment that the
majority of the world has become vegan or vegetarian, and that
there are no more intensive factory farms crammed full of
tormented and distressed animals. Just as we now no longer
punish criminals by disembowelling them in public and hanging
them, in the same way imagine a more civilized world in which
people generally disapprove of all forms of cruelty. Imagine a
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world in which it is no longer politically correct systematically to
exploit and butcher millions of helpless animals on an industrial
scale. Then imagine how those people of the future will think of
this period of human history, the late 20th and early 21st
centuries, when the scale of factory farming reached its peak,
when powerful corporate interests drove industrial animal
production to the very limits of depravity. Perhaps those people
of the future will ask - 'How is it that you didn't do anything to
stop it?'
According to Bhante, 'The Buddha says that if one has only
compassion for the sufferings of other living beings, then in due
course all other virtues, all other spiritual qualities and
attainments, even Enlightenment itself, will follow.' (The
Essential Sangharakshita p.563). There are many people working
to improve conditions for animals today. See for instance the
ordinary but heroic people on this inspiring 'Mercy for Animals'
video http://mercyforanimals.org/i-am-mfa.aspx . Within our
Buddhist movement, I find it heartening that most if not all of our
retreat centres do vegan catering, and that many of our urban
Centres, including Birmingham, have a policy of buying only
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vegan products for the Centre (apart from dairy milk for classes).
I hope that all my brothers and sisters in the Triratna Buddhist
Order will continue to support this positive trend, will continue
to develop compassion for the sufferings of sentient beings, and
will undertake a progressively more thorough-going practice of
the First Precept by moving more and more towards veganism.
Samacitta,
Birmingham,
November 2011
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Resources
World Vegan Day (www.worldveganday.org.uk) is held on
November 1st annually.
The Vegetarian & Vegan Foundation (VVF) has a million recipes for
such nice things as vegan crème cheese/vegan sour crème/cheesy
sauce and mayo: all at www.vegetarian.org.uk.