The conversation usually goes something a bit like this:
“Yeah, I’m a vegetarian.”
“But that looks like fish you’re eating.”
“Oh yeah, I eat fish.”
Immediate questioning will usual follow and occasionally heated debate as the “vegetarian” and their interrogator cover the issue of what is an animal and whether fish feel pain. But the simple definition is:
“A vegetarian does not eat any meat, poultry, game, fish, shellfish or crusteacean, or slaughter byproducts.”
Simply put: no dead things. Vegetarians do not eat fish.
“There is ample evidence in peer-reviewed scientific journals that mammals experience not just pain, but also mental suffering including fear, anticipation, foreboding, anxiety, stress, terror and trauma,” says Revd Prof Andrew Linzey, director of the Oxford Centre for Animal Ethics and author of Why Animal Suffering Matters.
“The case for fish isn’t so strong, but scientific evidence at least shows that they experience pain and fear. Anyone who wants to avoid causing pain should give up eating fish.”
But there is a wider problem of identification.
“Fish don’t invoke the same compassionate response that a calf, lamb, piglet, or duck does,” says Ms Gellatley. “We are mammals, we relate much better to other mammals. When we see a pig in a factory farm and you can see that animal is in pain that has a very direct effect on people.”
Fish-eating vegetarians used to have their own term- “pescetarian”- although it seems not to be in common use today. But, Ms Gellatley says, there is a rise in the use of a new term for the part-vegetarian.
“The name ‘flexitarian’ is coming into use. It’s fairly meaningless really.”
There is a view that after a period of healthy growth in the 1990s, classic vegetarianism is now stagnant. It rose from 0.2% of the population during World War II to 1.8% in 1980, according to the consumer research company Mintel.
The firm’s most recent survey suggested 6% concurred with the statement “I am a vegetarian”. But the Food Standards Agency’s recent Public Attitudes to Food Issues survey found just 3% of the population was strictly vegetarian, and 5% partly vegetarian. Viva cites a survey done on behalf of the Linda McCartney vegetarian food brand which suggested a figure of 10%.
One of the reasons it’s so hard to assess the level of vegetarianism is because of the multiple definitions of the term. It is clear, however, that meat-free and meat-substitute meals make up more and more of what we eat. The marketers and the activists are dealing with new groups of people, known as meat-avoiders and meat-reducers. Outside those who have a clear philosophical platform for eschewing meat, there are increasing numbers of these people, either cutting down on meat or trying not to eat it where possible, but without necessarily ever calling themselves “vegetarian”.
Mintel categorises 23% of the population as meat-reducers, people attempting to eat less meat, probably mainly for health reasons. Another factor is climate change- livestock rearing produces methane, which is 23 times more powerful than carbon dioxide in global warming terms, according to Lord Stern. It identifies 10% as meat-avoiders, people who plan to eat little or no meat but sometimes lapse, and who might well accept the ethical basis of vegetarianism.
“More than a quarter of people say they eat less meat than they did five years ago. There is a shifting change in the diet,” says Ms Gellatley. “A third of our membership are meat reducers.”
But despite the health messages about certain kinds of meat, and the arguments over the amount of energy it takes to produce meat, a large majority of people are still eating it, and a many have a serving every day.
