Sea Kittens? Seriously?

PETA really needs to knock it the fuck off.  I'll be the first person to admit I admire the motives behind the movement; I believe animals should be treated ethically, and I support animal rights.  But sea kittens, PETA?  Kindly go fuck yourselves.

I'm referring here to PETA's latest propaganda campaign, which involves - I shit you not - renaming fish 'sea kittens', in hopes of drumming up sympathy for our benthic brethren.  Observe the following: http://www.peta.org/sea_kittens/index.asp .  The basic premise of the website, and the campaign, is that fish, in general, have feelings and emotional lives akin to those of our household pets, and should be treated with similar accord.  Now, I acknowledge that fish feel pain, and I recognize that they are not merely Cartesian automatons but rather living things capable of suffering.  And I also realize that PETA is targeting children, girls in particular, and the whole concept is youth oriented.  But seriously?  This is fucking ridiculous.

With this whole nonsense, PETA is doing more harm than good, both to itself, and to environmentalism in general.  These people need to think before they act, and specifically think about choosing their battles a little better.  I won't say fish aren't worth defending: yeah, at the the end of the day, getting hooked probably sucks.  That's why I'm not a big fan of catch and release fishing, it seems needlessly traumatic, and for the sole pleasure of the angler.  At least eating a fish lends its capture a bit of purpose, a bit of dignity.  But as far as the cold-blooded, ancestral workings of the piscine brain?  No, fish are not capable of the higher functions of mammals, and that's not conjecture, that's scientific fact.  That sort of comparison if just begging to be picked apart and derided, and so I dutifully have.  Individual rights aside however, there is plenty to fight for in regards to fish.  Like the fact that we are swiftly eating them to extinction.  Not all fish of course, but certainly the delicious ones, like tuna.  Don't fight for the tuna by saying they are the kittens of the sea, cause that is ridiculous bullshit that no one is even going to want to believe.  Fight for them with the bare truth, that they will be gone if fifty years because every asshole in the world can have a cheap tuna salad sandwich at any time of the day.  That's real, that's immediate, that's not juvenilia.  

But even assuming this sea kitten nonsense is solely aimed at children, have the good people at PETA ever actually met a grade schooler of the twenty-first century?  Do not pander to children on important issues; kids today are more mature than ever before, and they need to be dealt with  with a certain amount of respect.  Children are vital in the green movement, and they are prepared to take on responsibilities and change the way they (and their families) live.  But you cannot treat them like infants.  They will see right through it, and if they don't, then their parents will.  And no one likes having blatant propaganda target at their children.  

More than anything, this little stunt is embarrassing.  No one gives a shit about fish.  I wish they did, honestly, but this isn't a perfect world, and to pretend that people are magically going to equate flounder with fido is self delusion on a grand scale.  This is what I mean about choosing your battles carefully.  Fight against fur, fight for better livestock conditions, fight for greyhounds or whatnot, but when you start to spout gibberish about lovable eels and gregarious groupers you make yourself seem like a crackpot.  And treating animals ethically should not be a crackpot endeavor, it should be a serious concern.  With this sort of stunt, PETA burns through goodwill engendered by those of us working hard to instill some modicum of respect in people.  PETA makes a mockery of themselves, and they distract from the serious nature of the issues they themselves advocate.  I mean, sea kittens? Seriously?  Fuck right the fuck off.

The Venison Initiative

I shot and killed two deer this fall.  The ethics of hunting, the choices involved, the act itself, the results; these are all vital topics, and ones worth addressing, though they will for the moment await future posts.  Today I'd like to talk about the final act of hunting, consumption, and how and why a freezer full of  of venison is becoming a more and more crucial part of my life.  

As the planet's most high functioning omnivores, modern man's continued consumption of meat is a decision, not an imperative.  It is, unfortunately, an all too often unexamined decision, one rarely even thought about, much less actively made.  I feel that the blase approach most of us, as members of the developed world, take to the carnivory of our daily lives is inexcusable, an example of willful ignorance of the highest magnitude.  That's why (and this will no doubt surprise some who know me) I have a great deal of respect for ethical vegetarians and vegans.  They have at least looked at the issue and made a definitive choice, and though I don't think vegetarianism is the default moral high ground many see it as, I appreciate and encourage the empathy such a lifestyle displays.  But I've taken up the question of being a carnivore too, have thought about it a great deal, with no small amount of sympathy and information, and still have a freezer full of venison.  

How I justify that fact is, again, a topic for another day, though perhaps one not too far off.  Suffice it to say, for the moment, that that venison represents to me the right decision.  I continue to be a carnivore, but with some serious caveats: I try to limit my overall consumption of meat, I try to severely limit my intake of agriculturally raised meat (including my dear beloved pork), I try to cut out completely meat raised industrially, and for the next month or so the only meat I am going to only eat is the venison that my father and I harvested from the wild.  This isn't an easy choice, though it may seem a moderate measure at best; I really, really love meat.  Bacon alone represents to me a sort of gastronomic bliss, and it's a severe mental act to say I won't touch it again for a while.  Fortunately I enjoy venison a great deal as well, so I'm not really suffering, and of course I'm not entirely certain we shouldn't suffer a little bit for our carnivorous tendencies.  For me the choice to set these boundaries arises from three general issues: health, eco-social fitness, and ethics.

Health concerns are to me the least important of the three, but worth mentioning none the less.  Venison, while still a red meat and therefore worse than, say, leafy greens, is far superior to its agricultural alternatives.  It's low in fat, high in protein, and higher in iron than beef, pork, or poultry.  As wild game, it's one of the few truly organic foods(assuming the deer wasn't devouring crops sprayed with pesticide, which is a concern), and is at least free from hormones and antibiotics.  While I'd hesitate to call health a major issue for me, it is clearly a factor in my thinking, and rightly so.

What I call eco-social fitness is even more important.  The choice to eat venison, and only venison, has an impact both ecologically and socially, theoretically for the better.  Ecologically, the whitetail deer in Connecticut exists in populations far above the historic and natural norm.  This is a direct result of predator removal and land use issues caused by man; we killed off the wolves and the lions and planted corn and shrubbery as a buffet.  In some areas hunting has a direct beneficial influence on population fitness, and at the very least, the number of deer insures that hunting, as I at least currently practice it, is a sustainable pursuit.  On a larger scale, the fact that the meat I eat is locally produced means that one less ration of beef gets shipped from the midwest (or lamb from New Zealand, a bigger, and unfortunately more delicious, issue), and the carbon footprint I leave is ever-so slightly smaller.  The local aspect of venison consumption has social repercussions as well.  Though not supporting regional agriculture per se (perhaps tangentially as crop pest removal), I did have my deer professionally butchered at a nearby meat locker, in that way supporting a local economy in an ecological way.

Yet the most important issue at stake for me is ethics.  There are many who would say that the act of killing is by its nature unethical, and that argument is in some ways sound.  As I mentioned, I have a great deal of respect for people who critically examine the subject and choose to abstain completely.  For my part I see hunting, and by extension killing, as justifiable practices, under certain circumstances.  I see death as a natural culmination of life, and if not wanton or cruel, I see killing as both forgivable and enlightening.  For my part, killing a deer is a way to connect to place, a way to interact with the natural world in a time when such opportunities are in short supply.  I see myself filling a predatory niche once occupied by the eastern gray wolf, and though that vision is ultimately bullshit romanticism, it is at least environmentally sound.  Assuming then that death is an inevitability, my main concerns are with dignity and suffering.  I try to approach killing with respect for the animal above all things, and though just how I go about that is difficult to put into terms, it's easy to counterpoint with the simple phrase 'factory farm'.  Most animals raised in the US and intended for consumption are utterly bereft of dignity, in life or in death.  With suffering, however, they are overwhelmed. I won't get into the details of intensively raised feed animals, save to say that the scale of pain and misery inflicted is indeed industrial.  I will say how the deer I shot lived, and died: freely, and quickly.  I won't go so far as to say that the deer died instantaneously or painlessly; in most ways death is, and should remain, an ugly and disturbing thing, lest we get too comfortable with it (which, as a society, we have).  But as an alternative to starvation, predation by coyotes, wasting disease, or many of the fates likely to befall a wild deer, I say that an accurate slug from a high-powered rifle is merciful.  Nothing wants to die, not the deer I shot, not me, but in the grey reality of the world, indignity, suffering, are death are not avoidable.  What I can do, what I choose to do, is mitigate those things, to be as natural, to be as, dare I say, humane as possible.  A freezer full of venison may be an odd expression of that sentiment, but if nothing else, perhaps it's a step in the right direction.