The Right To Be Eaten?

Top British TV naturalist Dan Bellasco has caused consternation after expressing his controversial views on meat eating versus vegetarianism in a national newspaper. “Come on, it’s about time that we started counteracting all this vegan and veggie propaganda: animals like to be eaten by us humans,” he told the Sunday Bystander in a recent interview for its weekly lifestyle magazine. “No, really.  Just bear with me on this – in order to understand this properly, we need to start by looking at ourselves, particularly at those periods of history where we had cultures that practiced human sacrifice.  Many of those victims went willingly to the sacrificial altar.  Why?  Because they considered it an honour to give their lives to a higher form of life – their deity.  It was the pinnacle of their existence, with their blood sacrifice uniting them with their god for all eternity!” According to the naturalist, beloved by TV viewers for his many animal documentary series, animals similarly see humans as a deity to whom they will willingly sacrifice themselves. “Look, it is obvious that to animals we are clearly a god-like higher life form, capable of all manner of miraculous acts (miraculous to them, that is) and sitting at the top of the food chain. We’re able to dominate all other species of animals, regardless of their size or strength,” he opined in the magazine article. “So, naturally, in their primitive minds, the ultimate service they can provide for us humans, is to allow us to eat them.  Don’t let those vegans and veggies tell you any different!”

Bellasco’s comments have, inevitably, been met with hostility, particularly from vegetarians, vegans and the anti animal cruelty lobby, who have all condemned his words as being ‘ill informed’ and those of a ‘brutal primitive’. The Sunday Bystander, a news outlet known for its support of liberal causes, has also sought to distance itself from the naturalist’s comments, emphasising that they represent his personal views and are not endorsed by the paper. The vegan community in particular feel that Bellasco deliberately misrepresented them in his interview in order to hold them up to ridicule. “Let’s not forget that these daft buggers eschew drinking milk, because it is somehow ‘cruel’ to milk cows (or goats) and therefore also reject yoghurts, cheeses, cream and other dairy products.  Bloody ridiculous,” he told the newspaper. “Again, these animals enjoy being milked – we’re doing them a favour by relieving them of the burden of all that milk they produce.  Not only that, but they probably also probably get a sexual thrill from having their udders manhandled.  I mean, human women certainly do – just ask any bird, a bloody good ‘milking’ of their knockers is guaranteed to get them off! They love it – and, face it, humans are just animals, too.”

According to the naturalist, vegans and vegetarians have no-one but themselves to blame for the intensification of the animal self sacrifice cult. “That’s the irony – the vegans and veggies are the ones who have helped promote this notion that we are somehow superior to the rest of the animal kingdom and therefore shouldn’t be beholden to our primitive lust for flesh,” he claimed in the interview. “Their quest for moral superiority (which is what these creeds are really about, rather than having anything to do with health benefits or a belief in animal welfare), is what has helped to encourage those lower animals to see us as divine and therefore want to sacrifice themselves to us!”  Bellasco believes that the vegans and vegetarians want to ignore the reality of nature, where animals quite happily devour each other with no moral qualms, in the name of survival.  “Herbivores are there to be eaten, I’m afraid.   Looked at from a different perspective, it’s all part of natural selection: predators only take the lame, the slow, the stupid from the herd, eliminating their genes from the reproductive pool and ensuring the improvement of the breed,” he declared in the Bystander.  “But we as humans are, apparently, above all of this.  Which is where the vegans and veggies are going wrong – we’re just animals ourselves.  Smarter than others, perhaps.  But that smartness has evolved, ironically, as the result of our predatory instincts: stalking prey takes ingenuity, particularly when you don’t have the speed, strength, claws or teeth of your competitors.”

Bellasco has allegedly suffered a violent backlash since the publication of the interview, apparently targeted by militant vegans while out for a run in his local park. “Just as I came level with the allotments that border one side of the park, this bunch of weirdos dressed as vegetables jumped over the fence and started accosting me with vegetables,” he told his local newspaper, The Reigate Weekly Cleaver. “I can tell you, a turnip is bloody painful when smashed over your head by a maniac dressed as broccoli. Once they got me on the ground, the one dressed as leek tried to force feed me raw cabbage leaves, screaming ‘Eat something nutritional for once, you meat-eating scumbag!’ But I refused to swallow!” Bellasco claimed that he later sought revenge, believing that he recognised one of his assailants, storming into a local vegan cafe swinging a frozen leg of beef, with which he assaulted the owner. He is due to appear before the magistrates court next week. Noted celebrity chef Harry Fritters, famous for his pure meat cuisine, has come to Bellasco’s defence, denouncing both vegans and vegetarians as hypocrites. “If eating meat is as repugnant as they claim it to be, then why do they spend so much time trying to develop vegetable-based meat substitutes which taste just like the real thing,eh?” he asks. “The truth is that they can’t get enough of that sweet taste. Because that’s why us normal people like eating meat – it just tastes so good! Whereas vegetables, well, it doesn’t matter how you cook the bloody things, boiled, steamed, roasted or even raw, they just taste like shit! If we weren’t meant to eat animals, then why do they taste so delicious?”

Leading nutritionist Neville Pring, of the East Grindstead School of Vegetable Welfare, meanwhile, has criticised both Bellasco and Fritters for their apparent assumption than man is primarily carnivorous. “The fact is that, like most of cousins in the ape world, we are actually omnivorous,” he points out. “It’s also worth noting that early humans quickly moved from a predatory, hunting, lifestyle to an agrarian one, growing crops and other plants to meet their dietry needs.” Bellasco, however, is dismissive of such arguments. “Yeah, I know that we’re actually omnivorous, but the fact is that people only eat vegetables in emergencies, when meat isn’t available,” he contends. “Many of our cousins in the ape world might well be peaceful vegetarians, but they lack our intelligence, our creative capacities, our language and intellect, our art and culture.  All the things that make us human and supposedly superior to those other animals.  So, if you want their lifestyle, hanging around in trees, picking your arse, exposing your genitals and flinging your shit at other people, then sure, be a veggie or a vegan. Otherwise, just accept that animals want us to eat them and indulge their idolatry and make them happy and enjoy all the benefits of civilisation that flows from eating meat.”