'Why are you a vegetarian?'

In the last 22 years, I have been asked the question 'Why are you a vegetarian?' countless times. I think it would be fair to say that in two decades no one has ever not asked me this question as soon as it has come up that I am a vegetarian. Usually at dinner time.

It's unusual to be asked one's opinion so directly. But very rarely have I felt able to provide an honest answer to this direct and seemingly straightforward question; and when I have answered honestly, I have regretted it. So I have pursued a number of different strategies to deflect the question, none of them quite satisfactory from my point of view.

My standard answer at this point is probably something like: "I've been a vegetarian for so long now it's mostly just habit. I don't think of meat as food. It just suits me." This has the advantage of being true on all counts, but it is pure deflection nonetheless. It moves the conversation along to other topics much better than some other possible replies I have tested over the years, such as 'Eating meat is totally abhorrent' or 'I think the real question is, why do you eat meat?' These, I have discovered, are show-stoppers.

Interestingly, my reticence seems to encourage people to make suggestions about my reasons: most commonly they suggest it may be 'a health thing' or 'an ethical thing'. More recently, an 'environmental thing' has become a popular idea, no doubt inspired by Guardian articles declaring that if we all became vegetarians then it would stop global warming in its tracks.

I have always been keen to reassure people that my own choice to be a vegetarian does not imply that I think they should be vegetarians or that their eating meat offends me. I have noticed, though, that very few people have actually considered either of these possibilities. They take it entirely granted that it is vegetarians who have the explaining to do. Eating meat is just normal.

This no doubt explains the self-assurance with which they ask 'So why are you a vegetarian?' They cannot imagine a response which would represent a challenge to their own eating habits. They don't ask the question in the expectation of a revelation. It's more like asking why someone has had an extreme tattoo or piercing: 'Why are you a vegetarian?' means 'Why in heaven's name would you do that?' or 'What kind of a weirdo are you?' (The well-known prevalence of tattoos and piercings amongst vegetarians doesn't help me here, of course).

Keen to not to be considered a weirdo, I have deflected the question. I don't say: 'That's a very personal question' or 'What's it got to do with you?' I don't say 'Do you know you are the 342nd person to ask me that question and for this reason I want to kill you and eat you.' I don't say 'Why are you such an idiot?' or 'Are you really such a hick that you've never met a vegetarian before?' I take a deep breath and say: "I've been a vegetarian for so long now it's mostly just habit. I don't think of meat as food. It just suits me."

So why am I a vegetarian?

It's a difficult question to answer in the types of situation it is most often posed, because it is the wrong question. It makes being a vegetarian seem like an isolated choice based on an individual preference - to eat meat or not eat meat. It turns it into, at best, a sort of leisure activity ('So why do you like wind-surfing?') or, at worst, a consumer choice ('So why do you prefer Coke to Pepsi?'). I think most people would grasp that, if you have just found out someone is deeply religious, your very next words probably shouldn't be 'So why do you believe in...?' Because it's rude to put someone on the spot about something like that.

'Something like that' being - something ethical. Something that reflects deeply held convictions. Something that is not small talk. Something you shouldn't ask about as if the response is immaterial to your own lifestyle.

Yes, I am a vegetarian for ethical reasons. But the reasons are not particularly to do with eating meat. I don't think eating meat is unethical. I don't think killing animals to eat them is unethical. I do think that consuming meat in the way Western societies do is unethical: factory farmed on a massive scale in appallingly cruel conditions, processed and packaged in a grotesque, barbaric dance that reduces nature to nothing but raw material and dehumanises us all in the process.

I believe that the ethics of human behaviour should be assessed by looking at how the weak and powerless are treated, not at how the most affluent live. And few are as weak and powerless as domesticated animals in relation to humans.

I believe that life and death are a serious business, and that if we don't respect suffering and death then we cheapen and corrode all our positive values and meaning. The meat industry is an unbelievable regime of suffering that devalues all life in treating death so cheaply. It is a massive nihilistic black hole sucking meaning out of human existence. (One of many, mind you, and so it is important to keep this in perspective. I have seen animal rights posters that compare factory farms to concentration camps in Nazi Germany - I think that is a poor analogy and extremely disrespectful to the people who were actually in concentration camps).

I believe that by refusing to be a part of this inhumane and barbaric activity, I am living a more ethical life. More importantly, I believe living an ethical life is important, full stop. And for that reason, I don't see being a vegetarian as essential or necessary for everybody. I have not felt, for example, that my wife and I need to raise our daughter as a vegetarian. There are many ways to live a more ethical life, and it's different for everyone. Being a vegetarian, for me, is pretty easy because of the time and place in which I live. (That's not to say that being more ethical has to be difficult!)

So my vegetarianism is ethical but it is not Utopian: I don't look forward to a future in which everyone is vegetarian; and I certainly don't identify that future with the march of Progress. I don't believe in Progress, and certainly not in the moral progress of humankind. (A future where people didn't ask me why I'm a vegetarian all the time would be good though.)

Maybe that seems contradictory - why try to be ethical if you don't believe in moral progress? Why make an individual stand if you expect the collective outcome to be unchanged?

I don't have 'answers' to these questions, but here's what I think: if I see an old woman in the street fall down, and no one else is around, what do I do? I help her, or, at least, I hope I do. Maybe I help her home or to a hospital, or call an ambulance. I don't say to myself 'She's old, she'll be dead soon anyway. I'll just leave her because helping her will make no difference to the future well-being of the human race.' In other words, I act ethically even though my actions will not contribute to a future state where everything or everyone is somehow more ethical. I do the right thing in a given situation even though it will not improve the world.

We will all die, and the Sun will one day explode, destroying this entire planet - and the whole human race will be long gone before that. But this is no reason to contribute, today, to the brutal deaths of living creatures. To think so is the purest nihilism. On the contrary, it is because we will all perish that living ethically is so important. It is only through our actions in the present that we can give life any meaning, even if it won't last for long. There will be no final reckoning. Nothing comes later.

Now, what's for dessert?

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