雅思阅读第098套P2-A Meat-Eater’s Counter
Reading Passage Two
You should spend about 20minutes on Questions 14-26, which are based on Reading Passage Two.
A Meat-Eater’s Counter
A. You might be forgiven sometimes forthinking that vegetarians are somehow superior human beings. In today’s climateof New Age spiritualism, animal rights, and Mother Earth naturalism, confirmedmeat-eaters must necessarily be categorised as selfish,environmentally-irresponsible, spiritually-deprived gluttons, whose dietary desireis akin to cannibalism. Each lamb chop, carving of roast beef, or chickendrumstick, signifies a brutal execution of a sentient animal, to whosesuffering we remain callously indifferent. Here, I would like to offer somearguments to counter the more extreme claims of the bean-sprout crowd.
B. Vegetarians’ first justification is thateating meat is cruel to animals. But when pondering cruelty, it may pay toreflect on how animals fare in the wild. I was recently watching a documentaryconcerning herbivores on the African plains — where the parasite andinsect-tormented herds lead lives of hair-raising and nerve-jittering bolts anddashes as they are constantly stalked by a range of predators. Now, comparethis to the animals munching grass in our domestic pastures. Our four-leggedfriends, watered, well-fed, and attended to when sick, have an essentiallystress-free and easy existence.
C. But, the vegetarians claim, ourslaughterhouses deal out brutal deaths. Brutal? Let us reflect again on thatdocumentary. At one point, it showed an injured zebra, an animal which wasquickly spotted by a pack of hyenas. The rest was a display of such cruelty andbarbarity that it would make vegetarians think twice before intoning the mantrathat 'nature is good’. Yet being viciously torn to pieces by snapping jaws ismore or less the inevitable end of most animals in the wild. It is simply afact that they do not expire peacefully — they face, instead, brutalising andpainful exits. If not becoming another animal’s dinner, they starve to death,or are victims of floods, droughts, and other merciless acts of nature.Compared to this, the relatively quick and clean death that we humans deliverto our cud-chewing cousins must be considered a privileged way to go.
D. So, eating meat is not 'cruel’ — at least,not compared to the natural world, and in fact can even allow the animals inquestion a certain quality of life that they would almost certainly never enjoyin the wild. But the vegetarians counter that, we, the human species, have ahigher awareness, and should avail ourselves of other forms of food, ratherthan causing the deaths of living creatures. Yet it is worth realising that fortens of thousands of years our species did not have this luxury of choice.Killing animals was essential in staying alive. It is only very recently (interms of human history), that society has reached a stage of affluence wherebya sufficiently high amount of non-animal nutrition can be obtained, and thenonly by a privileged and small percentage of the world’s population. Thus, theargument from moral high ground is, at best, an arbitrary one.
E. But then the vegetarians come out withtheir next core claim to superiority — that their diet is healthier. Eatingmeat is going to have such nasty consequences for the heart, lungs, kidneys,and immune system that we will end up in an early grave. One can agree thatthis may be true for people who eat too much meat, but is it true for those whoeat meat in proportion with an otherwise balanced diet? So many dubious factsand figures are produced to 'prove’ the vegetarians’ viewpoint that I wouldrecommend a quick read of a well-known book entitled, 'How to lie withstatistics’. This emphasises two foundations for statistical validity: gainingtruly representative samples, and eliminating outside variables, both of whichthe green-eaters ignore.
F. It is the second point I would like tolook at. The lean and fit, health-conscious vegetarian doing his daily yoga andnightly guitar-strumming will certainly live much longer, on average, than themeat-eating, chain-smoking, beer-swilling, donut-chomping couch potatoes ofthis world, but not necessarily due (or in any way related) to the former’sabstinence from meat. It is not hard to deduce that those cigarettes, beer,donuts, and sedentary lifestyle are almost certainly responsible for themeat-eater’s diminished life expectancy. For a true comparison, one mustcompare lean and fit, health-conscious vegetarians with lean and fit,health-conscious non-vegetarians, the latter of whom mix moderate amounts ofmeat in their diet.
G. And this is the point. It is almostimpossible in this complex, mixed, and multi-faceted modern society to findenough people who can constitute a truly representative sample, while eliminatingthe many outside variables. Any assertion that statistics 'prove’ vegetarianslive longer must note that these vegetarians have already made (compared to theaverage sofa sprouts) a very rigorous and disciplined health-enhancinglifestyle change, which is probably accompanied with many other similarchoices, all of which are almost certainly the real cause of any statisticaltrends. Factor these into the equation, and so far there is no convincingstatistical evidence that vegetarianism is better for the health.
SECTION 2: QUESTIONS 14-26
Questions 14-19
Reading Passage Two has sevenparagraphs, A-G.
Choose the correct heading forParagraphs B-G from the list of headings.
Write the correct number,i—x, for each answer.
List of Headings
i
Animals attack
ii
Needless killing countered
iii
Better people?
iv
A need for statistics
v
The real cause of longer lives
vi
Untrustworthy numbers
vii
Cruel killing countered
viii
Comparing lives
ix
Quick efficient killing
x
The real cause of early deaths
Example
Answer
Paragraph A
....iii....
14 __________
Paragraph B
15 __________
Paragraph C
16 __________
Paragraph D
17 __________
Paragraph E
18 __________
Paragraph F
19 __________
Paragraph G
Questions 20-23
Complete the table.
Choose NO MORE THAN THREEWORDS from the passage for each answer.
Domestic Animals
Wild Animals
Life is
20 _________________
threatened by numerous 21 _________________
Death is
22 _________________
brutalising and painful.
They
have some 23 _________________
are unlikely to have this easy existence.
Questions 24-26
Complete the table.
Choose NO MORE THAN TWOWORDS from the passage for each term.
Find two interesting terms usedin the text to refer to
One Term
Another Term
vegetarians.
bean-sprout crowd
24 _________________
sheep and cattle.
25 _________________
cud-chewing cousins
lazy people.
couch potatoes
26 _________________
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雅思阅读第098套P2-A Meat-Eater’s Counterhttp://www.tuonindefu.com/?p=2734雅思阅读第098套P2:A Meat-Eater’s Counter
