Posted on 06/07/2009 1:02:11 PM PDT by Still Thinking
Tomorrow, public officials in the Flemish city of Ghent will observe a new weekly “holiday” that’s been making international headlines: “Veggiedag.” Civil servants and elected politicians will eat meatless meals, and the streets will be littered with city-sponsored anti-meat ads. Now that the people of Ghent have two Veggie Days under their belt, we’ve been curious to know how the weekly anti-meat parade is catching on. And according to this TIME magazine report, the answer is “very slowly.”
Eben Harrell describes the scene in Ghent last Thursday:
While most restaurants owners and residents I spoke to had heard of Veggie Day, few had any plans to embrace the concept. A local rib shack, Amadeus, was doing brisk business, and many people openly ate hot dogs on the street.
Bustling rib shacks and conspicuous hot dog consumption – not exactly a PETA paradise.
From an environmental standpoint, of course, this lack of enthusiasm doesn’t matter much. As several experts have pointed out, giving up meat is highly overrated in the eco-friendly department. But if forgoing the Flemish beef stew once a week is practically useless as an ecological exercise, why bother?
As one delicatessen operator told Harrell, Ghent’s meatless Thursdays are good for something: lip service.
Wim De Kinder, owner of the upscale Traiteur Grimod delicatessen, said he tried to introduce vegetarian fare two years ago after learning of the environmental cost of livestock production, but he couldn't shift enough product to make it profitable. "I can't be expected to make a loss for the sake of principle, however worthy," he says.
Like ingredient bans, zoning ordinances, and meaningless food labels, Veggie Thursdays are an unsustainable gesture – a nod to a cause it will never achieve. And just as De Kinder is expected to take a loss for his city’s meatless holiday, someone pays for bans, labels, and other symbolic food policies.
On a lighter note, can you gues the name of the Norfolk, VA neighborhood in which you'll find the headquarters of anti-meat industry thought leader PETA? Yep. It's "Ghent." You can't make this stuff up.
What amuses me is what I call the “PETA paradox”: They feel that we are no better than animals because we are simply another type of animal (”a pig is a rat is a dog is a boy”).
But guess what? All the “other animals” kill other animals for food, self defense, etc. So if we’re morally just another animal, why shouldn’t we act just like them and strive like they do to be the baddest species on the block?
PETAphiles belief that we should treat animals differently than animals treat each other implies that we’re DIFFERENT, in fact MORALLY SUPERIOR form of life with responsibilities the animals DON’T have. So which is it going to be, PETA?
You will pry the wurst from my cold dead hands.
Belgians are never gonna give up their meat.
“people openly ate hot dogs on the street.”
How long until that’s oulawed?
“I can’t be expected to make a loss for the sake of principle, however worthy,”
At least capitalism still lives in the heart of one deli owner.
LOL!
PETAs biggest failure is not putting efforts into the development of non-meat food that actually tastes good. This is because vegetarianism seems to be less devoted to meatlessness than it is to “mortification of the flesh”, as it used to be known.
Not eating meat isn’t good enough. Eating must be a burden, food must taste bad, and any semblance of joy must be stripped from mealtimes.
There is plenty of things that meat eaters don’t particularly care for in meat, that make eating meat less enjoyable. Gristle, veins, globs of fatty tissue, toughness, often times bones, etc. But nothing comes close to meat as far as taste, flavor, and richness.
Even some of the better meat substitutes, such as Quorn, are oriented towards “healthy” food, not good tasting food. There is no reason it could not be blended with animal fats to improve its taste, nor have other qualities found in “less healthy” foods, like sugar, salt, and other additives.
Because taste is the bottom line.
“My opinion is that the media is the main
supporter of healthy eating. We’re certainly
not hearing it from our customers”
— Andrew Puzder, CEO of Hardee’s and Carl’s Jr.
Bizarre, I still eat meatless on Fridays for religious reasons. Cheese, beans, rice, whatever. But somehow, I don’t think PETA would approve...
Well now, the result of last week’s competition when we asked you to find a derogatory term for the Belgians. Well, the response was enormous and we took quite a long time sorting out the winners. There were some very clever entries. Mrs Hatred of Leicester Said ‘let’s not call them anything, let’s just ignore them’ ... and a Mr St John of Huntingdon said he couldn’t think of anything more derogatory than Belgians. But in the end we settled on three choices: number three ... “The Sprouts” , sent in by Mrs Vicious of Hastings... very nice ; number two..... “The Phlegms” ... from Mrs Childmolester of Worthing; but the winner was undoubtedly from Mrs No-Supper-For-You from Norwood in Lancashire... “Miserable Fat Belgian Bastards.”
This story makes me want to go out and slaughter a cow in celebration!
Vegetables are what food eats!
“If God didn’t want us to eat animals, why did he make them out of meat?” — Homer Simpson
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