Man vs. Squirrel

Upon moving to the Pacific Northwest, I had discovered that there were real people who did not eat meat, by choice no less. I had heard tales in my adolescents of such people, sometimes referred to as vegetarians, but never thought that I would ever meet one. Naturally, I was quite inquisitive upon my first encounter. Coming from a culture where chicken was eaten during more meals than not, it was initially difficult to understand why some people would never touch the stuff. It soon became apparent that there were different beliefs of food taboos in different cultures.
As I am slowly becoming more educated, I find it easier to realize that what I consider as things that are meant for consumption – while some would agree – are considered taboo by others. An easy example is that of the cheese that I eat. Whenever possible, I try to purchase cheese from small producers, but on a college budget, this is not always possible. Some would say that eating cheese at all is not acceptable. I’ve found it difficult in the past to see why someone may not accept a food that I do. I’ve also found that it is important to look at the other side of the coin. I know that I’ve got reasons acceptable to myself not to eat meat, just as someone else has for choosing not to eat cheese.
In our economy, it seems as though a high profit margin is often sought after. Since consumers rarely want to pay more money for the “same” product, means are sought to find the lower prices for raw material. This leads to finding ways which are more efficient in the short-term to produce these raw materials. It is often cheaper to purchase a mechanized chicken feather beater and pay for maintenance than it is to pay people fair wages to manually pluck chickens. Grain is often cheaper in bulk quantities, which provides incentive to raise a large number of cattle, which gets very costly to slaughter and butcher manually.
I think that as a people, the majority of us have never even learned to forage and hunt. We don’t need to pay for food. The price that we pay for food at the market seems to me to be a kind of convenience fee for having someone else gather your food for you. We have “evolved” to a place where eating, one of – if the not the – most important necessity for our own survival, has been pushed to the back burner. We are at a point where it is viewed by many omnivores to be gross to eat a wild animal, killed by themselves or someone they know. Interestingly enough, many omnivores are alright with purchasing meat from a wild animal that was killed by someone they don’t know, as long as it is aesthetically pleasing. Perhaps there is an ethical convenience fee here… Maybe hunting and foraging have become taboo as a result of a social class system, where those not on the bottom have no time to do such things, as they need to make money to survive. It seems to me that a career is an incredibly inefficient work system. If one spends one time foraging, one would find that all work put out yields some sort of income (while still only having to put in about half the hours to survive).
As for myself, I am at a crossroads in my eating endeavors. I have stopped eating meat because everything at the supermarket is from a mystery animal that I never had any knowledge of until I had seen it in on a Styrofoam slab. I am still debating with myself as to whether or not it is ethical to take the life of an animal myself for sustenance. If one delves deeply into the matter, it could be argued that by eating fruits and nuts, one is taking away the life force of another organism. Since a squirrel has no ethical quarrels with eating an acorn however, it tends to make me believe that it is alright for me to eat an acorn as well. But if there are a limited number of acorns, when I eat some, there are that many less for squirrels, and visa versa. One of us would starve. I suppose that it all boils down to finding one’s place on the earth, and whether or not that place involves being eaten, which could be viewed as being fine depending upon your culture.
I would like to recommend the following books to serve as valuable introductions and guides to foraging and the benefits that come with it, and to show that it is not only for nomads and the impoverished:

Barbour, Beverly. The complete food preservation book : how to can, freeze, preserve, pickle, and cure edibles. New York, NY: D. McKay, 1978. Wilson 4W, TX601 .B3.

Mohney, Russ. Why wild edibles? : the joys of finding, fixing, and tasting west of the Rockies. Seattle, WA: Pacific Search, 1975. Wilson 4W, TX357 .M8.