I

t is easy for vegetarians to consider themselves morally superior than to the meat-eating crowd.

It is easy to dislike meat simply because it is the most mainstream food item in almost every culture and civilization.

In modern times, the voice of the gospel of vegetarianism has grown louder not least because of the ill that is modern cattle farming.

Industrial farming, which raises 65 billion animals worldwide, contributes directly to global warming by releasing greenhouse gases into the atmosphere in a greater amount than that of the entire global transportation industry.

A 2006 report by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), found that animal agriculture is responsible for 18 percent of all human-induced greenhouse gas emissions, including 37 percent of methane emissions and 65 percent of nitrous oxide emissions.

But those are just numbers. They won't change the minds of the steak and burger loving majority. It is easy to find a vegan locked in an unwinnable battle against the unbelievers.

The main argument goes something like this:'We evolved eating animals'¦that's how our brains got big,' or maybe this: 'There is nothing wrong with killing animals for food. The Tanakh does not say it's wrong, the New Testament doesn't, the Koran doesn't.'

That's a debate that I am not going to win so I've stopped making arguments about why people should be vegan. (I still get mad though if I find my wife has bought too much factory-farmed chicken.)

But finally I see an opening with the Beefgate scandal now wreaking havoc in the Prosperous Justice Party (PKS).

I feel vindicated. This has been consistent with my creed that you are at least conservative, if not wholly uncultured, if you eat meat. Of course I don't say this out loud very often lest I ruffle some feathers in a nearby religious establishment.

The salacious details of the scandal ' senior party members distributing their ill-gotten bribe gains to female escorts, dangdut singers, swimsuit models ' only go to show the close relationship between meat and one of most primitive instinct of the human being.

The running joke has been that Hitler was a vegan and yet he killed more than six million people, but all this talk of politicians cavorting with young women paid with money from trading meat sounds too good to be true.

We often hear the cliché that a certain group of men gains their sexual prowess from regularly consuming meat in large quantities.

The politicians at the heart of Beefgate certainly have no problems rigging the system to increase meat imports, so why would we think that they might have a second thought before eating meat and encourage more consumption of meat?

If anything, more meat will help people become more religious.

Meat, white meat, red meat is the staple of religious festivities. Inflation shoots up during Ramadhan and Idul Fitri when the consumption of meat reaches its annual peak.

The price of live cattle will soar through the roof come the Muslim day of sacrifice. Reducing the supply of meat, based on their logic, is blasphemous.

But, at what cost? Hospitals full of patients suffering from diabetes and cardiac arrests? The overheating of our planet? And closer to home, politicians exchanging meat for more 'meat'?

But then again, when it comes to meat, men, and always men, have always broken the rules.

The practice of giving an offering to the deities has been designed so that the portion of animals we sacrifice has traditionally not been the flesh but their smoke.

The Prometheus legend is usually read as a story about man's hubris in challenging the gods and that the theft of fire has been a great boon to civilization.

But Hesiod's Theogony has a different take on the legend.

Prometheus incurred Zeus' wrath by playing a trick on him during the ritual sacrifice of an ox. Prometheus hid his best cuts of beef inside a nasty looking ox stomach but wrapped the bones in an attractive layer of fat. Zeus was duped by the glistening fat and chose the bones. Zeus got angry and retaliated by hiding fire from man, making it difficult, if not impossible, for men to enjoy their meat. Prometheus then stole the fire and began his eternal damnation.

There's has been so many crimes since the dawn of time committed for the sake of meat and I don't want to be any part of that.

' M. Taufiqurrahman