Role reversal is of limited use absent reversing roles with the very beings that are eaten, worn, used as cosmetics and a multitude of other household products, used to develop film, used to curdle cheese, and used as soap (that's what tallow/sodium tallowate in commercial soap is) daily by the multi-ton.

I rarely get on a vegetarianism soapbox unless asked or taunted (and neither has happened here), but share the following nevertheless, since this is a listserv focusing so heavily on justice:

- I became a strict vegetarian 18 years ago after finding no logical basis to be an activist for human rights while still eating other mammals, birds and fish, and after learning that my health would suffer not at all by making the switch, and would in fact improve (and has improved).

- The biggest catalysts to my becoming a vegetarian during three years going up and down the food chain were: getting grossed out over this Straight Dope on gelatin production (http://www.straightdope.com/classics/a3_103.html ), and, the last straw, going to a restaurant three months later, after visiting an aquarium, and being unable to order any fish after spending hours with live ones during the day.

- A few years later, I passed by the fish counter at an Asian market. For the first time, I learned that a gourmet way to scale fish is to do so alive. The fish was flapping like crazy, so much that it fell to the ground, and the fishman just picked it up and kept scaling it alive. The waiting customer -- ready to cook the fish with turmeric and other condiments -- told me that it's best to pluck chickens alive, too, in that the feathers come out more easily.

- I learned at other times that gourmets often cut open lobsters while alive to season them (a common French cuisine method), that many people enjoy eating whole still-live fish as sushi -- at Asian restaurants -- while the gills still gasp for water, and that it's common to boil shrimp alive (in addition to boiling lobsters and crabs alive).

- At the TLC, one Warrior told me one reason he initially felt disconnected from me was that he liked to hunt and eat his kill (then again, another told me he felt disconnected from me, initially, because of my love of jazz). Another Warrior initially thought my vegetarianism was a put-on, but later realized that was not so at all.

- Warrior Steve Rench, present the whole time I was at the ranch, is a vegetarian, which just goes to show that we're not all a bunch of wooly-headed radicals.

- For those who claim that scripture allows them to eat meat, what would be their reply if they were asked if it was okay for someone to slaughter and eat their pet dog or cat?

As to the claim that humans are somehow higher beings that are entitled to eat less-developed non-human animals, racists repeatedly claim that people from their race are more developed than people from other races, thus permitting them -- in their view -- to dominate, degrade, and harm people of other races.

Furthermore, some people are born with such severe brain damage (sometimes with missing parts of their brain) that they have fewer intellectual abilities and less ability to feel pain than plenty of non-human animals. Out the window go claims of superiority over less capable and less-developed non-human beings.

Since I believe that humans evolved from non-human animals, when I ate animals, I ate my closest non-human brothers and sisters other than apes. When I eat plants, I'm further removed from my evolutionary relatives, and plenty of plant food can be eaten without killing the plant (e.g., fruit, beans, nuts, and the list goes on).

If people eliminated violence to non-human animals, I'm convinced we'd see less human-to-human violence.

Take care, all. Jon

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