Bruce Friedrich, PETA Vice President, thinks noshing on chickens is unethical. Do you?

Upon first glance, it was apparent that the people attending the PETA debate last weekend were an crunchy bunch. The scent of patchouli wafted out from Science Center D, and inside the blue double doors, debate snacks of the spinach tortilla-and-hummus variety were eagerly gobbled up by Birkenstocks- and corduroy-clad attendees.

All mocking aside, though, the audience was, on the whole, unrepresentative of your typical Harvard kid. Firstly, they had trekked out to the Science Center (Good lord!) on a rainy Saturday afternoon.

Secondly, they did this for the express purpose of listening to Bruce Friedrich, PETA vice president, argue that people should ethically treat animals (duh), while Harvard Speech and Parliamentary Debate Society member Wesley Hopkin counter-argued that people can ethically taste animals.

So, how’d it turn out? Was it super-intense, resulting in hummus and all-natural tortilla chips splattering the walls? Was everyone so persuaded by Friedrich that, the moment the debate concluded, they immediately rushed out to CVS to stock up on Odwalla bars and Soyjoy? All that and more, after the jump.

Friedrich took the stage first and asked the audience for a show of hands. Who here is vegetarian? About 40 percent raised their hands. Who here eats meat? About 50 percent raised their hands. (The other 10 percent, we’re guessing, were busy drawing pro-peace symbols on their Nalgenes and missed their cue.)

The Noice would like to pause for a moment to remark on how… normal-looking Friedrich was. Dressed in a button down shirt and khakis, one would never know just from appearances that he spends his days pondering the rights of chickens.

Anyways, he then launched into his argument that eating animals is unethical, which he split up into three easy-to-digest points:

*Eating animals is bad for the environment
*Eating animals contributes to global poverty
*Eating animals equals cruelty to animals

“There’s no such thing as a meat-eating environmentalist,” Friedrich thundered, before putting up a slide of his pet cat Gracie (“The most perfect cat in the world!”), juxtaposed with a picture of two chickens snuggling.

“What’s the difference between Gracie and Charlotte and her friend?” he asked. (We’re assuming that “Charlotte and her friend” meant the chickens.)

The differences, The Noice thinks, are plentiful. Firstly, you don’t normally name the animals you eat. Secondly, chickens taste good. Well, cats probably taste good too, except you can’t buy their legs smothered in sauce by the bucketload. Thirdly, cats are expensive. And we pay enough for HUDS as it is.
After the thunderous applause for Friedrich’s argument subsided, Hopkin took the stage, admitting, humbly, that he had no snazzy PowerPoint or fancy statistics and graphs. What he had, instead, was an appeal to our emotions and ideas.

Who’s to say an animal deserves the same rights as humans? Given the choice between harming a dog and harming a human baby, would we not choose to save the child? Animals, he said, do not reason on the same level as humans, cannot make moral judgments, and thus do not fit into our social contract. The words “utilitarian,” “social contract theory,” and “inherent” were tossed around quite a bit.

In the end, it was probably Friedrich that received the louder applause, which The Noice will interpret as meaning that he won the debate.

However, the argument is far, faaaar from settled. If it were as easy as eating = doing the ethical thing, wouldn’t we just be fruitarians, and avoid killing anything, including plants? If vegetarianism is indeed healthier, why does meat taste so damn good? Do I really support world hunger, am I “ethically culpable,” to use Friedrich’s words, by choosing grilled chicken over tofu?

Oh, man, that’s some heady stuff. Thankfully, The Noice thinks, the problem is solved by just being at Harvard. As HUDS meat is usually inedible, we’re basically forced to nosh on Boca burgers and do the ethical thing, anyways!

Image source: Wikimedia Commons