“Absolute purists should be living in a cave. Anybody who witnesses the suffering of animals and has a glimmer of hope of reducing that suffering can’t take the position that it’s all or nothing. We have to be pragmatic. Screw the principle.” (Ingrid Newkirk, PETA president, Time, 8/23/10)

In what PETA (and Peter Singer) endorses as an eminently practical approach to diet, many people are turning to quasi-vegetarianism (though Gary Francione dissents). Meatless Monday (“to improve personal health and the health of our planet”) is an idea attracting attention from renowned chefs and suburban moms alike. Time reports that Wolfgang Puck, Jose Andres, Mario Batali, et al. are not only celebrating vegetarian dishes for health and the environment, but also for the diversity they bring to the table. Andres: “I love meat, but it’s boring.” This, of course, is not an animal rights message (see Why Become a Vegetarian?), but noteworthy nonetheless.

Meatless Monday is also being promoted by Madison Avenue icon Sid Lerner (NPR, 8/9/10). Initially motivated by high cholesterol (which he attributed to animal fat), Lerner now touts the various health benefits of meat reduction, though he remains unapologetic about enjoying it. His goal is to make meat more condiment than centerpiece, especially for hospitals and schools (the Baltimore public school system embarks on its second year of Meatless Mondays this month). Predictably, the meat industry is not amused, believing the campaign to be an animal rights ploy wrapped under the guise of health consciousness. Oh well.

Graham Hill of TreeHugger has proposed the Weekday Vegetarian program (short speech here). Explaining the adverse effects of meat production (including, in a refreshing exception to others in this article, massive cruelty), Hill offers a compromise: no faces during the week, your choice on the weekend. And an occasional slip here or there is not world-ending. Because animal exploitation is not the priority (he says in Time, “a great steak is just amazing”), he can still feel good about his greater contribution to the planet while enjoying a sirloin on Saturday. Still, his logic is sound: “After all, if all of us ate half as much meat, it would be like half of us were vegetarians.”

Relative to long-term historical prices, today’s meat is cheap. Factory farming is efficient and allows more people than ever to dine on animal bodies. Time reports that “the average American over a lifetime consumes 21,000 animals,” and “we eat 150 times as many chickens a year as we did 80 years ago [per capita meat consumption has increased 8% since 1970].” So, meat is affordable, accessible, and firmly entrenched in the SAD and food pyramid. Change, as Ms. Newkirk alludes to, may need to come incrementally.

I love food. And while I can appreciate an initial skepticism on changing lifelong tastes, becoming vegetarian (or vegan, for that matter) is not nearly as difficult as some (Graham Hill) portray. It does not require extraordinary self-discipline and should never be mistaken for asceticism. If anything, my dietary horizons have greatly expanded over the past nine years. But the problem with Meatless Mondays and Weekday Vegetarians (and Vegan Before Dinnertime) is the focus. A simple question for Puck, Lerner, and Hill: Do animals have intrinsic worth and moral relevance? If yes, then exploiting them for our pleasure (food) is a gross injustice, regardless of planet and health ramifications. In fact, I would argue that the conversation about meat’s wrongs should begin and end here.

There are four primary reasons people espouse the vegetarian lifestyle: for the environment; for humanitarianism; for personal health; and, of course, for animals. These reasons will assume a different order (or none at all) depending on whom you ask. Is it possible, though, that some vegetarians are not overly concerned with how animals are treated? In Time’s How to Feed the World by Going Veggie, there is not a single reference to the suffering of factory-farmed animals. Not one.

Eben Harrell writes: “I don’t eat bacon cheeseburgers. About three years ago I gave up red meat and pork. I am American, and brother do I love bacon cheeseburgers. But I decided that as part of the imperfect project of trying to live a decent, moral life, I could no longer chow down on bacon cheeseburgers. I could not put my preference for the taste of a certain type of protein above the hunger of starving babies, or the imperative of tackling climate change.” So, his “decent, moral life” apparently stops short of any obligation towards other species.

Harrell reminds of meat’s flaws: more greenhouse gas emissions (18%) than all of transportation combined (14%), destruction of the rain forests, and the grossly inefficient use of resources. He says, “In a world where hundreds of millions of people go hungry, we snatch food from the mouths of starving babies and feed it to plump beasts.” And what of compassion for the 50 billion sentient beings slaughtered annually? Silence.

There are, Harrell asserts, other possible proactive measures humans can take: growing meat in vats, new farming technology, and less waste. Yet, it is his “ethical” diet (he is not a strict vegetarian, by the way) that gives personal gratification: “So altruism, in a sense, can be self-serving and liberating. That’s an alignment of incentives that even the most red-blooded, meat-loving American could appreciate. (Man do I miss bacon cheeseburgers though).”

Why, if the end result (less meat consumption) is the same, is this important? First, an environmental or nutritional vegetarian could, in theory, still countenance other forms of animal exploitation (research, entertainment). My message (animals have moral relevance) and Harrell’s message are not the same. His intentions appear beneficent, but are actually quite selfish (his health, man’s planet). Second, if the basis for vegetarianism is not a moral duty towards livestock, then what happens if/when the environmental, humanitarian, and nutritional paradigms are altered? What if meat production becomes more efficient and environmentally friendly (Enviropig)? What if we curb population growth and do not hit the projected 9 billion by 2050 (when meat demand is expected to have doubled)? What if meat becomes healthier (think how often dietary advice has changed in our lifetime)? Where, then, would this leave animals? Matthew Scully once wrote: “Factory farming isn’t just killing: It is negation, a complete denial of the animal as a living being with his or her own needs and nature. It is not the worst evil we can do, but it is the worst evil we can do to them.”