Meat and Evil

Abstract

In a world where meat is often a token of comfort, health, hospitality, and abundance, one can be forgiven for raising an eyebrow at the conjunction “meat and evil.” From another perspective, the problem is obvious: meat—the flesh of slaughtered animals taken for food—is the remnant of a feeling creature who was recently alive and whose death was premature, violent, and often gratuitous. The truth is that meat has a checkered history in the west. From its origin-story in Abrahamic religion to its industrial production today, meat is well-marbled with evil and its minions: sin, violence, injustice, destruction, suffering, and death. My aim is to consider meat’s fitness for a place in the Western history of evil by reflecting on its outsized roles at the bookends of this narrative: meat’s primeval history in Genesis, and its contribution today to ethical and environmental problems of arguably apocalyptic proportions.