EATING AS MORE THAN SATISFYING A SIMPLE APPETITE
Eating is a highly cultural event and we eat far more than the mere
messages of nutrition. We define ourselves all the time by what we eat and
what we eat in comparison to others, and where we are seen to be eating.
Food has been used as a means of control in many different ways over a long
time. Sometimes I regret ever having become domesticated, Pet.
It would be a form of discrimination for sure to reserve for one part of
society refined and processed foods which are priced just out of reach of
people on low incomes. I acknowledge that, but i am also pessimist in that
we can do much to change that at this moment. Later, perhaps.
Added to this is the very clear form of eating by low-income people who
will buy processed food (hot chips, pie, coke) as soon as they get some
money. Packet of fags as well. It is probably a form of compensating for
going without and being mariginalised. You know you are broke when you
haven't got a smoke. Solution is not to tax raw food, but to empower
people.
Eating meat is another area where social considerations are paramount. This
is found worldwide (see Levi-Strauss "The raw and the cooked"). We superior
forms of life eat the flesh of others, it is true, but WE eat it cooked
(and others don't)!
So, eating meat is in a cultural category which is important to many
people, irrespective of the soundness of the reasoning of vegans in
defence of lifeforms who are otherwise excluded a voice. But i don't feel a
compelling need to argue the case of keeping mass produced meat GST free.
The whole meat processing industry is on the nose (with the exception of
some organic producers and the few pastoralists who acknowledge and
embrace the co-existence of native title).
GST free raw fruit and vegetables, nuts, grains and lentils etc (plus wheat
and rye flour to make bread) strike me as being some kind of minimum
necessity for people who are not only on low incomes but who will also not
have their "incomes" adjusted upwards to compensate for the latest taxation
experiment.
Where did i put that copy of the Hard Times Handbook?
Bruce
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