To eat an alien (or not, that is the question)
10:21 a.m.
First of all, if the alien is actually walking, i.e. alive and breathing (if that is what aliens, in fact, do), no, it would not be permissible. Vegetarians who do include animal proteins in their diet do not normally eat them when they are actually alive. Many lacto-ovo vegetarians will not eat a fertilized egg, but a non-fertilized one is fair game. However, if a vegetarian earthling were to come across a downed spaceship and find therein potted plants which were in fact sentient life but had no idea of knowing this, I could understand his plucking them and adding them to a salad.
Then there was the 1951 horror movie The Thing directed by Howard Hawks, where the alien discovered under the Antarctic ice was made from plant, as opposed to animal, matter. Would it have been permissible for a vegetarian to partake of a feast of roast Thing once the creature was destroyed? That�s a good question in itself, since it opens whole doors on the matter of why vegetarians choose the diet they do.
I am a vegetarian and have been so for quite some time. My diet includes dairy, eggs and fish, and my reasoning is based solely on health and ecological matters. I am genetically disposed to high cholesterol, so I avoid animal fats where possible. An acquaintance of mine is a vegan on the grounds that animals are treated cruelly in the production of eggs and milk. I think she doth protest too much. There has been research to show that plants are sensitive to pain, so wouldn�t it also be cruel to raise plants for consumption when by doing so causes them death and suffering? On the other hand, there are vegetarians out there who will only eat what the plant would normally produce to drop, such as fruits and seeds (this includes many vegetables, all grains and beans), but reject stems (celery), leaves (lettuce), and roots (potatoes, radishes, etc.) since the removal of these items can kill the plant.
Okay, let�s get real here. We need to eat to live. Tigers and polar bears do not question if their prey wants to be consumed, they merely go after the type of food best suited to their digestion. It is only human beings who even question what they have on their dinner plates. Morally it is wrong to kill another sentient creature, but if that creature were already found dead from natural (or unnatural) causes and proved to be good to eat (as in the case of scavenged food), what is there to stop a hungry person from digging in?
Presumably the aliens in question are sentient creatures. Killing them to eat them would be out of the question. If the alien were already found in a crisply roasted state and the hungry person was not a vegetarian, then I don�t see an obstacle to the feast, provided of course that the diner in question was truly starving (as in Alive) and needed to eat that particular individual to survive. But as a vegetarian, I would have a problem with all of this. And how would I even know that the alien wouldn�t poison me in the first place? There are just too many variables.
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