VEGETARIAN, YOU HAVE BLOOD ON YOUR HANDS

Politics is the art of controlling your environment.
Hunter S. Thompson

There are few things we hate more than radicalized vegetarians spewing vitriol against meat eaters as murderers. It’s like a crazy person screaming at the rain.

We know that vegetarians have their hearts in the right places, but their argument is a loser. It is truly sad. All that wonderful, fanatical vegetarian energy… wasted! People eat meat like cats eat canaries. Period. And trying to stop that is absurd.

The truth is, if hard-core vegans and vegetarians had put their efforts into fighting for humane farming and not into waging a war against eating animals, or wearing leather, THE CARNIVORE’S MANIFESTO probably would never have been written, and they would have been spared one more salvo against their movement.

Trying to stop evolution is ridiculous. We are carnivores — and have been hunting since we learned to walk on two legs. No amount of singing, dancing, preaching, protesting, or proselytizing is going to stop people from killing and eating animals.

Paul McCartney has written some remarkably optimistic music, but when it comes to his vegetarian politics, Sir Paul has done more harm than good by chirping about a non–meat-eating paradise. He’s tilting at windmills. We love the idea of Meatless Mondays, which he promotes, but ultimately he’s taken everyone’s eyes off the real enemy — the cruelty of corporate farming and the poisoning of our food chain. It’s irresponsible, and all it does is help divide and polarize vegetarians and carnivores who could be working together to stop cruelty to animals while supporting an alternative.

And while we’re at it, PETA should stop spending money fighting fu r— that message has gotten through loud and clear. They are not going to change that many more minds. Their efforts should be geared toward Perdue, Smithfield, Cargill, the oligarchs of Big Ag and cruel factory farming. Those are their enemies. Dumping paint on a socialite in fur doesn’t impress me. Embarrass the board of directors at Perdue and I’ll write you a check right now.

And enough about foie gras. Seriously, California outlawed foie gras — as if that would have an impact on global eating? What they should have been fighting for is bigger cages for egg chickens, access to sunlight for pigs, and cameras in slaughterhouses, which would have been a big win for everyone.

One example of misguided vegetarian orthodoxy: A restaurant is only considered vegetarian if there is no meat served on the premises at all. The result is “vegetarian restaurants” that serve by-and-large utterly boring, tasteless, mushy hippie gruel. Just because you are “vegetarian” and have some wind flutes on the stereo does not legitimize poorly cooked soba noodles with goopy tahini and a Styrofoam salad.

There is no reason to sacrifice taste and pleasure for a bogus green badge of courage. Any good restaurant should be able to deliver a wonderful, seasonal, delicious, completely vegetarian meal. When vegans come to our radio station at Roberta’s Pizza in Brooklyn, we offer them the pizza rosso — just tomato sauce and garlic, totally vegan and completely delicious.

One more thing: Quit calling tofu “turkey dogs” or “sausages” or “burgers.” It’s worse than nonalcoholic beer. It confuses the message to the converted, and the pretense annoys everyone.

We love vegetables — as we’ve said before, if fast food were all that was available, we’d go down the herbivore path, too. In fact, if you consider how much we rail against factory-farm and commodity meat, THE CARNIVORE’S MANIFESTO is probably the single greatest argument for vegetarianism ever published.

Want to make a serious change toward a more humane food chain? Quit trying to build a moral high ground on top of a pile of quinoa and sprouts — vegetarians and omnivores need to work together for the ethical treatment of animals.

By Patrick Martins (with Mike Edison) in "Carnivore's Manifesto:Eating Well, Eating Responsibly, and Eating Meat", Little, Brown and Company, USA, 2014, excerpts p.111-113. Adapted and illustrated to be posted by Leopoldo Costa.

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