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As a good number of Thais participated in the annual vegetarian food festival, some might want to ask what they can do to promote vegetarianism as an alternative to meat and fish. While some of those partaking in the month-long festival are intent on accruing good merit or good karma from a Buddhist perspective, it is equally, if not more, important to consider that people also become vegetarian because they cannot or can no longer gain culinary pleasure from the suffering and death of other sentient beings, namely cows, pigs, chickens, marine creatures and more.

It would be well for even those who crave meat and fish to be reminded that these creatures do feel pain and want to hold on to life. It would be good for their moral and spiritual well-being to keep this in mind. A visit to an abattoir where cows and pigs are slaughtered, or even to an open market where chickens are killed, will nicely illustrate this point.

With so much suffering so that millions can eat, perhaps some Thai meat-eaters may consider switching to vegetarianism on a part-time basis and reflect upon it. One opportunity to reflect upon this issue can be taken by offering vegetarian alms to Buddhist monks instead of meat and fish.

The Santi Asoke Buddhist sect, no matter what one may think of its politics, should be commended for its adherence to vegetarianism. More mainstream Buddhist monks should also endorse vegetarianism, and this perhaps may show the way for more lay people to reflect upon the matter and perhaps influence them to become vegetarian.

While the jury is still out on whether humans, a thousand years from now, will look at mankind's omnivorous habits as barbaric, the debate is a worthy one. Discussion on the merits, demerits and ethics of meat-eating can indeed be found in many societies. In Ladakh, a Buddhist city in northern India, close to Tibet, local residents prefer to partake of one slaughtered cow instead of many small fish, because they regard the life of single a cow and that of a single fish as equal. They believe that one cow can feed a whole village, while many small freshwater fish have to be killed to feed a family.

In New York, one of the latest fads amongst the well-educated and well-off is spending US$10,000 (Bt334,000) to attend a hog-butchering class. Some of these grown-up students claim they feel more in touch with the reality of where food comes from and less guilty if they learn how animals are killed and dismembered and go through the conflicting and complex feeling about it. The New York Times reported on October 25 that not all are convinced, however, and quoted a graduate student in Food and Human Nutrition at the University of Illinois who recently enrolled on a meat-production course: "Animals do not want to die. They can feel pain and fear, and just like us, will struggle to breathe for even one single more second. If you're about to run 250 volts through a pig, do not look in the eyes. It is not going to absolve you."