Well Done: Meat and its challengers.

From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic, a roughage curtain has descended across Europe. In Italy, the number of vegetarians has grown from 1.5 million to 2.5 million in just the past year. Demand for beef has been in free fall across the Continent-down 75 percent in Italy, down almost 50 percent in France. British newspapers report that it is hard to find steak on a menu in major capitals from Scandinavia to the Iberian peninsula. The reason for the spreading carnophobia is obvious and understandable: Mad-cow disease, foot-and-mouth disease, and pictures of thousands of slaughtered sheep and cows have dampened appetites.

And the animal-rights movement is taking advantage of the situation. In Germany, where the number of self-professed vegetarians has doubled to 6.6 million since the outbreak of mad-cow disease, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) is moving free "vegetarian starter kits" like soy hotcakes. As usual, PETA's PR campaign takes no prisoners: They have signed up various German celebrities, launched an ad blitz, and pushed the idea that the current troubles are retribution for man's sinful meat-savoring past.

For decades, the French have done wonderful things with veal, rabbit, venison, and other cute-animal products. But even they may now be turning their backs on this heritage. European newspapers and American newsmagazines have made a huge fuss over the fact that acclaimed Parisian chef Alain Passard has decided to drop all meat from the menu at his trendy restaurant, L'Arpege. Passard believes that "evolution" requires that humans move on to "explore a new domain called 'The Vegetable.'" He believes that adventurers in this new realm-who once paid $300 for a meal of duck or sweetbreads-won't hesitate to spend similarly on "the simple onion, the simple carrot, even a turnip." He considers the development of a meat-free cuisine a matter of securite alimentaire, or "nutritional security."

Vegetarianism is much less popular in the United States, in part because our meat supply is safe, but its acceptance on the cultural left has been growing for years. Combine that with the inevitable media-driven hype of the next U.S. meat-industry scandal-whatever it may be-and with the fact that the U.S. is historically the chief importer of Europe's bad ideas, and it's clear that we will very soon have to take vegetarianism seriously.

The media and PETA have done an impressive job "educating" the public about why we shouldn't eat animals. It's hardly a coherent and consistent argument, but it's no less effective for that. Some say we shouldn't eat animals because they have rights, just like you and me. PETA founder Ingrid Newkirk explains: "When it comes to feelings, a rat is a pig is a dog is a boy. There is no rational basis for saying that a human being has special rights."

Of course, this is a stolen base of grand proportions. After all, since when do feelings confer rights? And besides, when it comes to feelings, rats and human beings aren't the same. When was the last time a rat sympathized with the fact that you flunked algebra? Sure, dogs have been known to take a bullet for their owners (one of the reasons you shouldn't eat them), but my dog has yet to feel the slightest outrage over the capital-gains tax.

There's no shortage of cults in the vegetarian movement, including my favorite, the "fruitarians," who will eat only nonrefrigerated, uncooked, barely washed, room-temperature fruits. Their website explains, "If you eat cooked foods and in particular flesh of animals, then your body is automatically poisoned and you condemned to develop in yourself a lot of low quality of thoughts, feelings and emotions" (sic). The fruitarians believe, somewhat paradoxically, that fruit is great for you because it is "alive," that-like some vegan vampire-you absorb the life force of the fruit. At the same time, they eat only fruit because they believe that killing a plant simply for food is wrong. It's a bit like being pro-choice and believing that abortion is murder.

After the PETA people and the health nuts, the next most belligerent group in the movement is, unsurprisingly, the eco-vegetarians, who point out, legitimately, that Third World forests are cleared to make way for cattle ranges. But this argument is the easiest to contend with. First of all, these are the same people who are determined to do away with plastics, the internal-combustion engine, and reliably flushable toilets. They simply don't like development of any kind, in this case the ability of very poor people to finally achieve their dream of eating meat regularly.

The truth is, there is no single rationale to which all vegetarian zealots adhere-because the movement resembles more a diffuse religion than a coherent political argument. Whether they deify their bodies, the earth, or animals, the "give peas a chance" partisans operate on first principles that are fairly immune to rational debate. When animal-rights guru Peter Singer says that "mere difference of species is surely not a morally significant difference," one can either spend hours debating the sleight-of-hand in the words "mere" and "surely," or one can simply say, "I can't argue with you."

At the same time, few people are making the positive case for eating meat. No intelligent discussion of vegetarianism can ignore this simple fact: Cows taste good. As one friend puts it, if God didn't want us to eat cows He wouldn't have made them out of steak. This is not a trivial point. Cows, like other livestock, are in many ways man-made creatures designed over thousands of years of husbandry to provide a ready supply of meat. If vegetarians had their way and everyone "converted" (their word) to a meatless lifestyle tomorrow, it wouldn't be like Muppets walking home after a long day at the office; there is no "natural" ecosystem for the millions of unemployed cows and chickens to return to.

More to the point, humans have a taste for meat for a reason: We were meant to eat it. Our teeth, for example, are the Swiss Army knives of the animal kingdom, divided in equal parts for eating T-bones and the vegetable accompaniment of your choice. Meat provides necessary proteins; vegans need to take supplements to get them. A British fruitarian couple goes on trial this summer because their baby died from the malnutrition that comes from eating the diet of a spider monkey.

Chef Passard, the self-appointed French minister of nutritional security, claims that not since the 1650s has a reputable (read "French") chef attempted to create a complete cuisine entirely out of vegetables. While this smacks of the sort of unprovable declaration we'd expect from a French chef-"Only cowards use store-bought creme fraiche!"-it's entirely plausible for one simple reason: Nobody wanted a chef to create a complete cuisine out of things that we usually use to soak up the gravy. While techniques have surely improved over the last few decades, throughout history saying "vegetarian cuisine" was like saying "Shaker orgy" or "sober Oktoberfest." Indeed, almost all of the famous 20th-century vegetarians-Gandhi, Hitler, George Bernard Shaw-were unconcerned with the tastiness of their diets. "Eating is not a pleasure to me," Shaw said, "only a troublesome necessity, like dressing or undressing."

This gets to the heart of why the vegetarians will have a rough time converting much of America to their cause: There's always been too much pride in the self-denial of vegetarianism. Food is among the most important, wonderfully satisfying things in our lives. It is more constant than sex and-unless you're Bill Clinton-you can share it with more people. Vegetarian ideologues get too much satisfaction from denying themselves this enjoyment; it is New Age culinary celibacy.

There is a legitimate case to be made that, in a statistical sense, we eat too much meat; this is not surprising in a wealthy and hedonistic country. Meat was a luxury for much of man's evolutionary history, and eating it every day, or every couple of hours-as I do-is probably not the best thing in the world for you. But surely, in a culture where "whatever floats your boat" is found in the penumbra of the Constitution and the legalization of PCP and heroin has gained traction, eating bacon shouldn't be considered outlaw activity. Besides, Bertolt Brecht had it right in the first place: "Grub first: then ethics."