Keith S. Taber
A recycled man
I am a scientist and well aware that I am – in a corporeal sense – composed of many billions of bits which have been recycled myriad times. At the level of molecules, ions, electrons and the like, bits of me have in the past been parts of other humans, various other animals and plants, in the rocks, soil, seas. Bits of me have been sneezed, urinated, bled and sweated out of many others who had use of my quanticles before me. No doubt my components have been parts of worms and bacteria and dinosaurs and dodos. Some of my bits are extraterrestrial, having drifted in from other parts of the solar system. Ultimately, much of me is stardust, as all the carbon and oxygen and nitrogen etc were forged in nuclear furnaces in a previous generation star.
Use of butchery products in banknotes
So, it may seen incongruous that I was disappointed, disgusted, and even surprised, that the Bank of England has decide to continue its recent innovation of making its banknotes from a mixture which includes some products of animal butchery. The polymer used in the new notes contains a small amount of fats sourced from animals killed for human use and profit. This was inadvertent, and when discovered there was an outcry, and a consultation.
Although most people in England are not especially concerned that their new notes contain meat products, a number of groups objected and this not only included vegetarians and vegans, but members of some religious groups who are subject to rules about which animals they can consume and handle. Nondescript dead mammal fat products are not something they wish to handle, even as cash.
Given that there was originally no deliberate decision to use butchery products in banknotes, and there was such a strong objection to the accidental development (well people must have known, but not the Bank), and given that usually England is a fairly liberal place where religious groups and eccentric people like myself are at least tolerated, I strongly expected a change in policy: but the Bank has contacted me (and others responding to the consultation) to report that "After careful and serious consideration and the extensive public consultation, the Bank has decided that there will be no change to the composition of polymer used for future banknotes. … The new polymer £20 banknote, to be issued in 2020, and future print runs of £5 and £10 banknotes will continue to be made from polymer which contains a trace amount, typically less than 0.05%, of additives derived from animal products".
Taking an ethical stand
I feel let down by the Bank of England, which clearly does not seek to take into account the reasonable (if to others somewhat picky) views of the full range of people it is meant to serve. Shame on you Mark Carney and your colleagues. You have betrayed many of the people in this country who believe that convenience sometimes needs to be balanced against taking an ethical standpoint, and that in England we sometimes stand up for the beliefs and concerns of others – even when they actually seem a bit quirky to us.
Most people have no qualms about eating and wearing (and gluing with, etc.) the worked-up products of killed animals, even if today few people in England are prepared to do their own hunting and killing and butchery. I am a vegetarian on aesthetic and moral grounds. As a scientist, I know there is no absolute difference between humans and the rest of the animal kingdom. I find meat disgusting, and the idea that animals are put to death so others can enjoy eating them as disturbing.
Purely as an analogy, consider how an anti-slavery campaigner must have felt at the time when most of their peers – most decent, honest, caring, God-fearing, people they knew – seemed to think that slavery was a perfectly reasonable, economically justifiable, activity. Or when polite society thought it was appropriate to hang someone for stealing food for their starving children – after all, if you do not make an example, then before you know it all the poor will be stealing rather than starving quietly, and where might that lead?
An immoral act
The bank notes will not look or smell or feel of meat – but they will contain materials deriving from the commercial exploitation of animals killed because people think they are tasty and that living things can just be treated as economic resources to do with as we wish. (There is no strong global economic argument for the meat industry as we could feed the world more effectively with arable farming.) So, to my mind the new banknotes are unacceptable tokens of immoral actions. Deliberately including rendered animal corpse products into banknotes is, by my own personal ethical standards, an immoral act.
Most readers will no doubt think I'm quirky. After all, I've no problems with being made of bits of all those dead animals because they did not become part of me by a deliberate act (by myself or agents working for me) of taking life from other creatures – unlike the new banknotes. I'm very aware of my own mortality, and the precious gift of experience in this world. I do not expect other animals to experience life just as I do (I cannot be sure of that even for other human animals) but to be animate is have some level of experience that is ended by being used simply as material for human greed. I do not know what it is like to be a bat (or any other non-human animal, but Nagel (1974) famously chose this example to pose the question), but I can empathise with what it might be like to suddenly be denied being one to become food, or shoes, or banknotes.
I'm happy to be considered quirky all by the meat-eaters out there – except for those of you who think it is okay to eat, say, pigs and cows and – maybe – horses; but not cats or dogs…at least my quirkiness is systematic and coherent as any good scientist's quirkiness should be.
Source cited:
- Nagel, T. (1974). What Is It Like to Be a Bat? The Philosophical Review, 83(4), 435-450.
First published 15th August 2017 at http://people.ds.cam.ac.uk/kst24/
