Butcher in Parliament: Mike Egger and the Meat Debate

SVP National Councillor and butcher Mike Egger (33) has difficulty mentally categorising even the simplest things correctly.

Already a year ago, the Federal Food Safety and Veterinary Office (FSVO) had set a course for the future with its new food pyramid.

Mike Egger’s line of argument is a textbook example of intellectual complacency and moral blindness.

That Egger describes the FSVO proposal as “missionary work” would be almost amusing if it were not so transparent. He constructs a drama that exists only in his mind:

• Nobody wants to ban meat.
• Nobody wants to educate parents.
• Nobody wants to re-educate children.

Yet Egger reacts as though officials in Bern had personally arrested his refrigerator.

That is not a political argument — it is a reflex reaction. And one that reveals just how little substance lies behind his outrage.

While Mike Egger theatrically speaks on blick.ch of “dietary freedom,” he firmly closes both eyes to what meat consumption actually means:

• Violence
• Suffering
• Exploitation
• Environmental destruction
• Burden on children’s bodies and minds

These aspects apparently do not exist in Egger’s world. He defends meat consumption like a relic of the past. A symbol he places above every ethical consideration. Every year, more than 80 million farm animals are slaughtered in Switzerland for the sake of unhealthy meat consumption, which is an enormous driver of health insurance premiums.

A politician who does not even mention violence in food has failed to grasp the core of the debate.

While Mike Egger goes round in circles, common sense has long since formulated answers that go far beyond his thinking:

• Violence in food poisons the mind.
• Meat makes you sick.
• Food without suffering educates people toward compassion.
• Animal food clouds the mind, makes one irritable, and lowers consciousness.
• Purity begins with eating.

These teachings are older than any political reflex Mike Egger will ever have.

While he clings to meat like a drowning man to an old plank, cultures have understood for millennia: those who want peace must eat peace.

Forcing meat upon children is not freedom — it is intellectual stagnation. Children always prefer the apple to the rabbit. Everything else is conditioning. Children do not need meat rhetoric.

Children need:

• Peace
• Security
• Clarity
• Purity instead of meat
• Food without suffering
• an environment that fosters compassion, not numbness

Egger ignores this entirely. He places the right to meat above children's right to a nonviolent, peaceful world. This is not only outdated. It is irresponsible.

The truth is bitterly simple: it is not about children. Not about families. Not about health. And certainly not about consciousness.

It is about the artificial preservation of a cultural reflex that has long been obsolete. At a time when the world is crying out for peace, sustainability, animal welfare, climate and environmental protection, and compassion, Egger sits down and seriously fights for more meat in kindergartens.

This is not politics. This is a denial of reality.

The FSVO recommendation is not a mandate, not a dogma, not an attack on freedom. It is a step toward consciousness and peace.

Egger wants to pull us back into a dark past that no longer functions.

But the future belongs to those who have understood what common sense has known for millennia: nonviolence is not a moral luxury. It is the foundation of all progress.

And those who fail to recognise this have nothing to offer in the nutrition debate — and even less in the future — but noise.

Meat is an important component of a healthy diet. It contains iron, zinc, vitamin B12, and many other nutrients that are important for the development of the human body. With a consumption of one kilogram of meat per week, we are far from overconsumption. That is why I also oppose this insufferable meat-bashing. Mike Egger – National Councillor SVP

That may apply to a dog, but certainly not to humans. Meat is energetically dead matter and therefore not a healthy food for body, mind and soul. Mike Egger would only need to take a close look in the mirror, and he too would notice the anatomical differences between a true carnivore and a human being. Many people already feel ill at the sight of blood, let alone a dead animal carcass. Dead bodies have a repulsive effect on us. Of course, a human being can eat anything, but that does not make them a rubbish bin.

Humans do not have true canine teeth and claws like those that carnivorous animals possess in nature. Carnivores have sharp, pointed front teeth for tearing, but no chewing molars for grinding. Carnivores generally swallow their food whole without chewing and consume it raw. By eating meat, we force the body into an unnatural diet for which it was never designed. A diet contrary to genetics, as advocated by Mike Egger, has only disadvantages and promotes cancer and other diseases. Meat is at best a filler in times of hardship, but hardly a food for human beings. Cattle, meanwhile, developed mad cow disease.

Our anatomy therefore does not display the typical characteristics of a highly specialised carnivore.

The science is unequivocal: high meat consumption drives up chronic diseases, and with them the health insurance premiums that we all have to pay. Anyone who still pretends today that meat is a harmless habit is covering for a system that causes billions in costs, makes people ill and causes animals to suffer on a massive scale. The meat industry conceals its true costs, while the population must bear the health and financial consequences. It is high time to call this destructive business model what it is: a lasting risk to health, society, the environment and the future.

You can help all animals and our planet with compassion. Choose empathy on your plate and in your glass. Go vegan.