Student - 29 september 2011
Proposition: Eating less meat is essential for a sustainable society
Marlies and Jillis discuss about meat.
Most people know this by now, but many just carry on happily eating meat, saying ‘yes, but it's so nice'- and that is the main argument I hear in these discussions. Pretty sad that that is more important to many people that the environment or animal welfare. I am not against meat-eating, but a slight reduction shouldn't be so difficult. It's a question of getting used to it and finding some tasty veggie recipes.
Jillis responds: Please just let everyone decide for themselves. If you don't want to eat meat, fine. But if I eat it every day, that's my business. I don't have to justify that to you. Some people have to learn to respect the choices made by others. If everyone did that, life here in the Netherlands would be a lot more pleasant.
Jillis: A sustainable society is absolutely essential. If the ever-increasing world population carries on consuming at the same levels, our natural resources will soon be exhausted. However, as a liberal, I do not believe in finger-wagging, and certainly not in the kind of prohibition culture typical of the CDA, for example. Everyone should be free to decide for themselves how much meat they eat. I can imagine that meat will get more expensive as the price of inputs rises, but if someone chooses to go without a new jacket or a holiday in order to treat themselves to a beef steak, that's up to them. So I just ignore moralizing left-wing groups such as the Green Left or animal rights organization Wakker Dier, and personally I find the witch-hunts against meat-eaters that they try to stir up quite scary.
Marlies responds: You call it moralizing, I call it appealing to people's sense of the responsibility we all share for this earth. You say that we need to change our patterns of consumption, but I wonder how you want to achieve that if you are not allowed to point out to people what the consequences of their choices are.