On eating, being eaten, and the uneasy ethics in between
Veganism makes a compelling claim: that humans do not need to eat animals. I am largely in agreement. I eat increasingly vegan, and I object, deeply, to the scale and anonymity of violence in factory farming. And yet, I still eat meat. Not often, and not casually. When I do, it is usually local. It comes from a place I can name, from a life that was part of the same landscape I inhabit. I also respect Indigenous practices of hunting, where the act is not hidden but understood as part of a relationship.
A vegan friend challenged me on this inconsistency. The argument was simple: if we do not need to kill animals, why do it at all? My answer felt insufficient at the time, but it has stayed with me. I countered that animals eat animals. Life feeds on life. The question is not easily resolved by declaring ourselves outside of that pattern. Are we so separate, so superior, that the rules no longer apply? Of course, it is not a perfect symmetry. We industrialize death in ways no other species does, and we distance ourselves from it. That distance may be the real ethical rupture.
Still, I live close enough to the edge to feel the older pattern. On my rural property, my dogs keep watch, barking and keeping coyotes and wolves at bay. Bears come to the apple trees. My house is not just a home but a fortification. When I camp, I hang my food to protect myself. I am not outside the food chain.
The boundary dissolves further when I look closer. Bacteria live on and within me, entire ecosystems sustained by my body. At death, the exchange becomes more visible. Worms, insects, and microbes will do their work. We resist this with coffins and chemicals, as if permanence were an option, but it isn’t. Nature takes us back, slowly and completely. For my part, I find myself wanting to accept that exchange, not as something abstract, but as something literal: to return what I have taken, and to allow my body, in the end, to feed the same world that sustained me.
This does not resolve the ethical tension of eating animals, and it doesn’t make the question go away. But it places it in a wider frame. We are not outside the cycle. We are participants in it, whether we acknowledge it or not.
Last Updated on May 5, 2026 | Published: May 5, 2026