On another forum, someone recently posted that the Buddha’s guidelines about right livelihood are so strict that, accordingly, the only way one could feed oneself would be either to forage on wild plants or to beg. (I’m sorry I can’t site the passage verbatim or direct you to the particular scripture.)
I’m sorry I can’t direct you to any Buddhist bioethics resources.
IMO, the best one can do is to live in such a way as to avoid driving oneself crazy with guilt. For some people, that may necessitate living as a mountain hermit and eating nothing but stinging nettles. However, that seems like an ascetic extreme and, as such, misses the middle way.
In my case, I quit my 15-year career at an agrochemical/pharmaceutical laboratory, and now work in town about 10 hours per week doing odd jobs. The rest of the time, I work on the farm growing as much of my own food as possible, as sustainably as possible. That includes meat we produce and butcher ourselves. It isn’t an activity I take frivolously, but I have to eat something, and I couldn’t possibly grow enough crops on this terrain to feed myself year-round. So the animals forage on pasture and browse, and the occasional sacrifice provides us with nutrients we can’t get from the fruits and veggies we raise.
The animals, in turn, produce manure which is composted for our gardens, so we use no chemical fertilizers. Consequently, the plants are so healthy they more easily withstand predation by insect pests, so we never need pesticides. I am confident that the nutritional content of the food we produce here is of the highest quality, as it is eaten fresh from the rich ground, as opposed to being monocropped on exhausted soil, waxed to create the illusion of freshness, and trucked hundred of miles before languishing for days in a grocery store produce bin.
All of this enables us to minimize gasoline consumption. We get loads of exercise without having to manufacture ways to stay in shape. Consequently, medical expenses are minimal. Since we don’t need to “dress for success”, our wardrobe costs next to nothing. And we are never bored–there is always something to do, whether it’s cutting dead trees for winter heating, weeding the garden, or churning butter.
So even though I don’t honor the “abstain from killing” precept, I am doing the best I can to leave a minimal environmental footprint which, I hope, offsets the harm I do. Perhaps this is all just a rationalization for my personal gastronomic preferences. Still, I can’t imagine for myself any lifestyle that is more middle-way. I don’t feel separate from the livestock we breed and raise–I provide idyllic lives for them and, when necessary, as quick and painless a demise as possible. In return, they provide milk, meat, eggs, manure, offspring, exercise, pasture improvement, mowing, brush removal, insect and rodent control, etc.
As you know, even a vegetarian diet entails a certain amount of killing when fields are plowed, habitats are destroyed, and fresh water resources are depleted. I don’t think there’s much way around it. Behaving with awareness of and gratitude for the creatures we inevitably destroy seems about the best we can do. And whenever we can’t live with ourselves doing what we’re doing, that’s the time to go a different route.
Like me, you are clearly not oblivious to whatever suffering you cause in the course of your work. At the lab, I used to analyze for all manner of radiocarbon labeled compounds in lab animal organs (among other matrices). I also produced an awful lot of hazardous chemical waste in the process. I am relieved that my son is now grown so I no longer need that job for the medical insurance and decent paycheck it provided. Of course, some other employee has taken my place at the lab bench, so it isn’t as though the animals are being spared. And if you were to leave your research, those slugs would most likely still be killed. So it just depends on what you feel you can live with. It seems likely that the research you do could ultimately save lives and alleviate suffering. Viewed in that way, you are may be doing more good than harm.
