GEN185 The Torah pictures Adam and Eve’s Edenic diet as consisting of [this verse]. According to our people’s sacred myth, animal flesh was not permitted to humans by God until after the Flood; and then, apparently, only as a concession to human frailty
Genesis 9:3. Vegetarianism is the Torah’s ideal. If meat is later allowed, the principle of
tzaar baalei chayim, of not causing needless suffering to an animal, is yet upheld. Passages in the Torah such as those that require the working animal to rest along with its owner on the Shabbat
Exodus 20:10, prohibit the slaughter of an animal and its young on the same day
Leviticus 22:28, forbid one to eat before one’s domestic animals have been fed
Deuteronomy 11:15, prohibit yoking together the larger ox with the smaller donkey
Deuteronomy 22:10, and prohibit the muzzling of one’s ox when it is treading grain
Deuteronomy 25:4, all serve to establish
tzaar baalei chaim as an
ikar g’dolah, as a major guiding principle. Now consider: in creating the rules of
sh’chitah, of “compassionate slaughter,” the Rabbis of the Talmud were more stringent about the taking of certain animals’ lives than about the taking of others (e.g., fish are not subject to the rules of
sh’chitah). Why? I am going to guess because of the Rabbis’ intuitive understanding that the more developed an animal’s consciousness, the more susceptible it is not only to physical but also to psychological suffering. When Jews consider their diet today, I would argue, it would be reasonable likewise to give added consideration to the effect diet has on the suffering most especially of animals of more highly evolved consciousness, to give the highest consideration to those animals that stand to suffer the most. From this perspective, there is no question that a diet that includes meat means suffering for the one animal on this planet most susceptible to suffering. That animal is the
human animal. And that’s the bottom line of this argument: a meatless diet is the most ethical for a human being to follow because it is the diet that causes the least amount of suffering in other human beings. … Over one billion people on the planet are either starving or are chronically undernourished. That’s about one-sixth of the entire world’s population. Indeed twenty million people—twenty million! – die each year due to hunger. Three out of four of those are children. With the effects of climate change already upon us (unprecedented droughts, the disappearance of lakes and rivers, vast stretches of formerly fertile farmland turning to desert), those already staggering numbers are sure to go up, and dramatically. Right now in the United States alone, more than half of all water consumed goes to support animal agriculture. Given what climatologists tell us is coming, we will very shortly simply not have enough water to sustain that anymore. Animal agriculture is inefficient in the extreme. Ever been on a farm? Animals eat a
lot. You’ve got to invest eight to twelve pounds of grain for every one pound of edible beef you get back. Unbelievably inefficient. If we gave up our meat-based diets, simply stopped raising animals for food, all of those crops we are now raising to feed those animals would be sufficient to feed every starving man, woman, and child on the planet. Judaism obligates us to address this issue. And with respect to those who are starving to the point of death, our moral obligation to act is, of course, an even higher one; the issue rises to the level of
pikuach nefesh, the obligation to save human life. (By Mark Sameth, "I'll Have What She's Having": Jewish Ethical Vegetarianism") SACTAB 230-2
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