Dear HCN,
After reading Stephen
Gies’ tirade against hunting (HCN, 10/26/98), I felt compelled to
clarify the logic in his ethical position. From his letter, his
position can be summed up in two statements: 1) Killing and eating
domesticated animals is ethical, and 2) Killing and eating wild
animals is unethical.
That is, it is ethical to
kill and eat the following animals: animals whose conception has
been planned and whose birth has been induced; animals that have
been branded, castrated, dehorned, ear-tagged, inoculated and fed
hormones; animals which may have denuded stream banks, damaged
fisheries, reduced water quality and disrupted native plant and
animal communities; animals which have been packed into cramped
feed-lots, fed grain that required large amounts of agrochemicals
and fossil fuels to produce, and made to stand in their own
excrement, posing further risks to water quality; animals which are
herded into packed railroad cars or semi-trailers and transported
great distances, burning fossil fuels all the way; animals that are
killed by one person, skinned by another, and further processed by
numerous other people and machines until they are handed to you on
a Styrofoam tray neatly wrapped in cellophane, its life taken
ultimately for the sake of the food economy. It is ethical to eat
these animals; it is for such a purpose that they
exist.
Conversely, the actions that I took two
weeks ago to supply the meat in my freezer were unethical. Driving
only 60 miles from my home to walk alone through a blizzard, four
hours into the wilderness, was the beginning of my unethical act.
Following a wild creek down to a meadow and enjoying the sounds,
smells and sights of animals that had never before seen a human
preceded the realization of my unscrupulous goal. Finally, after
the crack of the rifle, my evil deed was done. Pausing to
personally thank this animal for allowing me to use the energy that
she had stored grazing on the lush meadow behind me did not make up
for my immorality. The culmination of my depravity was when,
holding this animal’s warm heart in my hands, I reflected that our
species is not above, is not apart from, the ecosystem; we are
inextricably connected to and wholly dependent upon the environment
around us.
Mr. Geis’ moral: It is OK to kill and
eat animals, as long as you are not the one doing the
killing.
Jeremy
Gingerich
Fort Collins,
Colorado
This article appeared in the print edition of the magazine with the headline Hunting: Whose hands are really bloody?.
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