I still remember a research that I read many years ago, when I was a vegetarian, stating that almost 90% of the people who were participating to the quiz and were meat eaters at that time said that if they were to kill by themselves the animals that they eat the meat from they couldn't do that. I couldn't do that either and this quiz popped to my mind yesterday while I was fishing.
Usually I fish with artificial bait and all type of metal and other plastic lures that are not alive, but are very tempting to fish due to their shinnies, shape and movements in the water. I am perfectly fine with that. Worms also. However, yesterday I went fishing with some live bait. A few small fish caught and imprisoned in a bucket that served me as a bait for some more big fish. One that didn't showed to eat them.
While hooking those live fish into my fishing gear I felt pity for them and I even felt like throwing up when doing that. Not as much from the image of them being hooked, but more because of me and what I was doing. It's the first time from years of fishing when I really felt wrong for doing that. I really felt like those small fish didn't have to be there in my bucket. They didn't deserved that. They didn't deserved to be killed that way by me.
I still stubbornly used them all, although I had the same feeling with each and one of them. I guess my stubbornness didn't let me waste them. After yesterday I don't think I will repeat this type of fishing with live bait though. I think I am going to stick with the plastics and metals that I've used for years. The fish I catch end up back in the water anyway so I am not doing any harm to them. Except the fact that I am pulling them to the shore for my fun, but I am not killing them. There might be some bad karma linked to this thing also, but fishing is one of my few passions so I am not going to quit it just for that. Live bait, however, I used the last time yesterday.
This fishing experience though makes me think to the food I eat. Although I was a vegetarian for about five years, now, I am eating almost all types of meat so indirectly I am participating to some more cruel killings of pigs, cows and whatever they sale in the grocery stores nowadays so I should feel even more pity for animals. Now, thinking about the research I mentioned in the introduction I believe I would be among that 90% that wouldn't kill for the meat. I feel too much pity for live animals, but I still eat meat and that's the thing that kind of bothers me and it is also in contradiction of what I feel.
Plus, I know that we as a specie are able to choose what we eat and can live fine without meat, in comparison with animals that are doomed to survive on how the nature designed them, herbivores or carnivores, but I found myself almost choosing the easy way. The meat way. That which ended on my table thanks to someone else who's done the dirty job for me. However, I still feel that I am somehow guilty also for the those animals being slaughtered to get to my table and I don't feel OK at all with it. Thus I am thinking that I might be doomed to become a vegetarian again with this type of thought hunting me. Now even more with the image of the small fished in my had.
I don't have problems with the taste of meat. I have problems with their slaughtering. What do you think regarding this topic? How do you feel about it?
Thanks for your attention