Heres something that seems to sum up the complicated relationship many of us have with animals: The San Francisco SPCA, a no-kill shelter, is an essential service, as are all animal shelters in the state. Also considered an essential service is the states meatpacking industry, whose sole purpose is to slaughter and butcher animals.

One animal is your friend and the other animal is your food. We can keep this equation very simple by keeping our pets (mostly cats and dogs) in the friend category and putting everything else in the food category. But few things are that simple during this pandemic as the Bay Area negotiates what is essential and what isnt, whats safe and what isnt. And the larger question of who bears the brunt of the coronavirus and who doesnt.

My husband and I have been vegetarians for decades. During E. coli outbreaks (the bacteria is less prevalent in produce although there is still a risk), the scares of mad cow disease (2005), swine flu (2009), bird flu (2015) and various other diseases, Ive always thought, Im so glad Im a vegetarian. Not in some holier than thou way, but in a one less thing to worry about way.

I have written previously about how I became a vegetarian. I could cite statistics showing the benefits of a vegetarian or vegan diet on everything from health to climate change. And certainly those things are important. But even if I take all that away, Im left with this: Alice conversing with a white rabbit in Alice in Wonderland. Mr. Toads glorious adventure in The Wind in the Willows. Or Peter Rabbit escaping Mr. McGregors garden in The Tale of Peter Rabbit. To put it another way: I cant seem to keep just cats and dogs in the friend category. Other animals hop in there, too rabbits, frogs, ducks. Animals simply are not food to me.

I know the animals in those books are an authors invention and perhaps more a commentary on human behavior than animal. But I also know there are people who refuse to acknowledge that animals can express emotions no joy or jealousy. Just try holding onto that belief the next time your dog sees you reach for the leash or the food bowl. Or the next time you spend time petting a friends dog while ignoring your own.

Everyone charts their own course to the dinner table, and for many that course seems to have gotten easier (lots of food and lots of ways to get it) and thornier (the footprint and economics of factory farming, which Merriam Webster defines as: a farm on which large numbers of livestock are raised indoors in conditions intended to maximize production at minimal cost).

A 2018 Gallup poll found 5% of U.S. adults call themselves vegetarian. Not a huge number, but showing signs of growing. Even before the novel coronavirus, plant-based foods were having a banner year with the popularity of Impossible Foods, Beyond Meat and the partnerships of Big Meat with plant-based or cultured meat companies. Retail sales of plant-based foods in 2019 reached $5 billion, according to the Good Food Institute, which supports companies focused on plant-based products. In 2019, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals named San Francisco the No. 1 vegan-friendly city in the U.S. Thats no surprise to anyone who lives here; what did come as a surprise was Nashville at No. 8 and Tulsa, Okla., at No. 10.

In mid-March, when pandemic panic-buying made flour and yeast disappear, retail plant-based food sales surged, according to the Plant Based Foods Association. And its no wonder. The coronavirus has put a spotlight on essential slaughterhouses and their essential workers across the nation, and its a grim picture: workers shoulder to shoulder on production lines, and hot spots of COVID-19 contagion at plants throughout the country. In Vernon (Los Angeles County), workers at the Farmer John plant called for its shutdown last week after more than 150 employees had tested positive for the virus. Whos essential, and who bears the brunt? In a recent opinion piece, The End of Meat Is Here in the New York Times, author Jonathan Safran Foer takes on these issues of the meat industry.

Live-animal markets face similar scrutiny and present an equally hellish picture. Such markets in Wuhan, China, of course, have been cited in one theory of how the virus spread from bats to another animal to humans. But again, the equation is not quite that simple. An April story by Chronicle reporter Kurtis Alexander reported on a study by UC Davis researchers further connecting human intrusion into animal habitats and mutating viruses. Alexander quoted Chris K. Johnson, professor of epidemiology at the UC Davis School of Veterinary Medicine and lead author of the study: Viruses dont cross over the species boundary very easily. The spillover from animals to humans is the direct result of our actions. Its happening all over the world, and has for decades, as we modify the landscape in major ways.

Just last week, a bill that would ban live-animal markets in California passed its first committee hearing. The bill, SB1175, by state Sen. Henry Stern (D-Malibu), would ban imports and sales of live wild animals, such as turtles, bullfrogs and nonpoultry birds, at live markets.

Does being a vegetarian or vegan make any of this go away? Does it help meat-packers trying to pay their bills avoid a deadly virus? Or help Mr. Toad, who apparently is not joyriding around the English countryside in a waistcoat, and is not even sitting in his natural and shrinking habitat, but is crammed into a cage to become our dinner? I dont know.

But being a vegetarian helps me sleep a little better at night, curled up with my husband and my dog.

Bernadette Fay is a San Francisco Chronicle editor. Email: Bfay@sfchronicle.com

Read the original post:
Why meat is no longer essential in the vegan-friendly Bay Area - San Francisco Chronicle