Why chickens?

My wonderful son decided a couple of years ago to become a vegetarian. He doesn't expect me or his mother to do likewise and certainly doesn't proselytize. His primary rationalization for his vegetarianism seems to be that he doesn't want to eat anything that is sentient. That is, that probably feels pain. He will sometimes eat shrimp and clams and even snails and things like that. But he won't eat chicken or beef or lamb and stuff like that. I respect him for his vegetarianism. But when I think about it I also get hung up on the issue of why chickens? Why do chickens exist if they are not meant to be eaten? I mean, after all, chickens are eaten by an extremely wide range of other creatures: weasels, coyotes, hawks, racoons, dogs, wolves, and people, to say the least. I love chicken (although I never eat chicken breasts as they are the most tasteless substance I can think of). So if chickens are not meant to be eaten, what are they meant for? Eating bugs and potato scraps I guess, stuff like that. But there are all kinds of creatures who eat bugs and vegetable stuff so who really needs chickens?

The problem with this line of thought, if you actually think about it, is that all creatures, as far as I know, exist by eating some other thing. You know, little tiny creatures eat plankton (as do whales), other creatures eat the plankton eaters, bigger fish eat smaller fish, and so it goes. Cats eat mice, dogs and coyotes eat cats, wolves and mountain lions eat coyotes and cats and dogs, and so on. Bugs eat other bugs, usually bigger bugs eat smaller ones but that is not an iron-clad rule. I guess we like to think that no other creature eats us but even that is not, strictly speaking, true. Sharks eat us. Even lions eat us at times. In fact, even small creatures like fish eat us if given a chance. So it seems there is a chain of food in which every living fish, animal, or bug seems to thrive on eating some other member of the food chain.

But, you say, what about vegetarians. They only eat vegetables. But do vegetables not have life? Who decides that vegetable life is any the less important than animal life? Animals, that's who. Is that fair? I don't think so. Naturally, if nothing ate vegetables or animals or bugs or fish or whatever life would cease to exist. In short, all life depends upon the death of something else. Well, you might say, what about eggs? If you eat the eggs of chickens you are not killing the chicken. Surely you can see the spurious nature of such an argument. By eating the egg you are preventing the life of another chicken. Well, what about parasites that exist by living on other organisms? But don't parasites, over time, eventually kill their hosts? I simply cannot think or a single creature that doesn't prey on some other creature to sustain their life. Thus, whenever I think about vegetarianism I somehow cannot justify it to my satisfaction.

The fact of the matter is, I like eating, and I especially like eating meat. I understand that eating beef is not an efficient way of creating protein, I understand that we should not be cruel to those creatures we eat (that is, we should kill them with the least amount of pain and trauma), I also understand that we should perhaps offer some ritual of thanksgiving for those creatures who give up their lives for us (like, for example, a prayer to the great mystery for each deer or buffalo we harvest). I am not clear on just when a creature is sentient and feels pain. How about oysters? Clams? Lobsters? How do you know what, if anything they feel? How about that carrot that is pulled cruelly out of the ground after having sunk its roots there for months? There are religious types in India and such places that carefully sweep the ground in front of them to insure they will not kill anything. They eat rice. How do you get rice without killing something?

I guess this is all too difficult and confusing for me. How about those vegetarians who stand there criticizing me for killing innocent animals and eating meat while dressed in leather belts and shoes? As far as I know there is no way we can keep on living by eating plastic. As I cannot deal with this I guess I'll just go on eating my beef and pork, and lamb, and fish, and milkfish bellies and pork jowels, and tripe (I don't eat tripe) and brains (I don't eat brains), and lutefisk, oysters, pigs feet, and whatever else strikes my fancy. Eat, drink, and be merry!