But if many people went vegan then they'd significantly extend their life expectancy, increasing the number of consumptive years in their lives. Could we install a "terminator" gene in new vegans to curtail this problem?

Actually, healthy people eating good diets probably have greater awareness of their environmental impact and, thus, reduce their consumption accordingly.

As a vegan, I wouldn't mind more people joining my dietary activist mission. Need any recipes?

I've been a vegetarian for over a decade, and have raised my kids vegetarian as well. In most parts of the US, the adjustment is easier now than ever before. I've taken a much greater interest in herbs/spices and have a couple organic+heirloom gardens in my yard. Herbs for my pasta travel about 20 feet, on foot-power, to the kitchen. Needless to say, they're fresh.

That said, I'd go back to eating fish/meat if my survival depended on it, I lived in a remote place, hunted & fished, etc. But I live in a major metropolitan area, so -- as the author suggests -- we should find reasonable ways to lower our ecological footprint based on where we live. A vegetarian diet is one of them. Buying local food is another.

Check out the CSA (community supported agriculture) movement also. My town has public vegetable garden plots for a low yearly rental price, and they're quite popular: always filled up.

I've found vegan too be too restrictive for my lifestyle, and sometimes worry that there may be something more important than either vegetarianism or the omnivore lifestyle. That is, the old social order that existed for millenia between early humans and their prey. Animals were spiritual brothers and sisters, sacrifices were made to placate them, etc. -- not soulless assembly-line products. We need to get back to a deep ecology understanding/respect, vegetarian, vegan, or not.

Another vegan here and just overjoyed to see this article! I'll give it the widest circulation I can manage. I'll send it out in emails and carry copies with me wherever I go. This piece made my day and will save the world, if I have any power at all to effect change.

Beekeeper ...

Here is another really useful link about this topic:

http://www.drmcdougall.com/misc/2006nl/dec/truth.htm

I have been a vegetarian for over 30 years (not vegan - honey, cheese & yogurt are core) for ethical reasons. Friedrich's statement And don't forget that more than 10 billion animals are killed each year in the U.S. alone to feed our meat addictions. We're talking about an awful lot of suffering is soooo lame. He clearly has never visited a abattoir (slaughterhouse) if this is the only ethical reference to heinous and sadistic acts against nature.

OK, so what's the next step? Clearly, encouraging Americans to eat less meat is going to have negligible effects on their behavior. What can we encourage our polititians to do that might push the American people in the right direction? Stop subsidizing the meat industry, maybe? Require higher safety standards, thus making meat more expensive?

I have always wanted to ask a vegetarian this question:

Are you against animal flesh as food, or are you just against wasteful, energy inefficent, drug filled, modern methods of agriculture (primarily USA agriculture)?

The typical vegan seems to lump these together like they are one in the same, yet this is a false association.

I have an agricultural textbook from 1800's that states:
-feed grass to cows
-cows poop out 90% of the grass
-put the cow manure back onto the fields
-hay field is actually better off than before, and farmer ends up with a cow.

I like raising chickens, I like seeing them run around and eat insects. I like throwing out my kitchen vegetable scraps out to them. I like what their manure does to my vegetable garden. They love the pulp from my veggie juicer. I don't like killing the individual chicken, but I do it , because I see their flock as part of a bigger process. In fact, even the chickens themselves only really care about the flock. Chicken will often kill a sick one, to protect the flock. They are very social animals and have a highly complex society within their group. I mainly have them as layers, but I do kill and eat them.

How does all this make me some cruel beast that has no respect for life???

I will tell you one thing, as a self-sufficient farmer I have a great respect for what the animal gave up to feed my family, and I use what they gave up carefully and completely - (with the help of my dogs).

What the entire process gives me, is a sense of my own personal mortality, and it makes me feel a real part of the great cycles of nature. Its all part of such a vibrant and alive cycle. Death is part of that cycle.

I think a lot of this animal rights talk comes from city people who upon taking on a pet dog or cat, end up living in such close contact with it, the pet takes on more and more human characteristics.
On the farm, a dog is a dog, and a cat is a cat. They have the room and environment to be what their biology tells them to be.

For instance, cats, when left to themselves, are natural born killers. They are not like the Aristocrats from Walt Disney.

Go ahead and live in your Disney dream world if you want.

He mentions representatives of the U.S. government -- isn't Dennis Kucinich a vegetarian? Any others?

Or maybe he means they should be promoting it more ... either way, nice article!

I will add to what tech2 is saying. We have a small farm, and we grow a garden and raise small numbers of healthy, happy animals. One day, one of the animals gets taken out away from the others and quietly, in the most respectful way possible, becomes nourishing and delicious food for our family. I do not appreciate being associated with those urban carnivores who are supporting the industrial meat system.

Mr. friedrich may be operating with the best of intentions, but does he not recognize his own extremism? Might he be doing more to raise resistance to his cause than he is helping it?

There are a lot of people out there who cannot imagine sitting down to a meal without meat. If we could just begin by helping them to realize that there are a lot of other tasty things out there to eat. If what Mr. friedrich says is true, then surely getting a hard core meat eater to have meat only three times a week would have as much benefit as going from an SUV to a small car.

I think most Americans just eat too much anyway. We treat food as another addiction rather than as a life-giving fuel.

The article didnt even talk about the impact on wildlife. Wolves were wiped out in much of North America because of the meat industry.

I dont think there was ever an old social order in which humans were respectful of other lifeforms. The relationship was based on exploitation("lets sacrifice to appease the animal gods so there will be a plentiful herd next year."). Humans had less technology to use to be exploitive--so they were more grateful to Nature when they could catch and kill, or harvest a crop. But when domestication came along--things just got much worse(was it respectful to be sacrificing 100 cattle to Zeus?).

The old social order also included human slavery and war--so we need to look beyond this frame. Romanticizing the past is dangerous. Pythagoros was a vegetarian long before factory farming existed. He saw enough reasons to be vegetarian even then.

The Inuit had no qualms about making money off the fur trade of their "brothers." There is a Manitoba tribe that would capture beluga whales for aquariums and they would answer criticis by saying: the Creator gavce us these creatures--we have the right to kill them if we choose to."

No different than a Fundamentalist Christian who believes in Manifest Destiny. The supporters of the human slave trade also argued that the cretor gave them the right to rule others.

The Makah tribe of the Pacific Northwest also claimed that the grey whale was their "brother," and yet the Makah word for grey whale translates roughly as "devilfish."

So this is all human supremacist bs.

Humans want to compare themselves to wolves and tigers--but those animalsare born with all the tools to hunt. Humans are not. Paul Watson was right when he said that humans are more accurately necravores--eaters of the dead. But they always feel they need to glorify themselves so they mock vultures and jackels when they themselves engage in the same behaviour.

As for Tech2 -the reason you are a cruel human (notice I didnt say beast) with no respect for life is because you kill when you dont have to. Not like some accidental process--but deliberately. Calculated. A wolf or cat has to kill other animals to survive--tis natural. Humans dont. That's just the facts. And it contradicts basic morality and a doctrine of fairness and justice to say its ok to kill and cause sufering when it can be easily avoided(because how can you then say that its wrong for someone who has a different type of moral code to discriminate agaisnt other humans--as occurs all the time as a natural course of Nature).

It doesnt matter if you like feeding chickens, that isnt a defense for the exploitation and unnecessary killing.

The fact that you dont like killing chickens shows that you arent hotwired to be a predator. The conscience creeps in.

So, you are the one who has a Walt Disney view of the world unfortunately. You want to say you believe in justice and fairness, and yet you keep slaves. You want to say war is wrong, and yet you kill unnecessarily.

As Leo Tolstoy ,a former hunter turned vegetarian and writer of War and Peace observed, there will always be war as long as there are slaughterhouses.

As for esarge--there is nothing extreme about trying to stop an ecological catastrophe or eliminate unnecessary suffering. :)

all the arguments on this issue and any others can be found here:

http://animalvegfaq.tripod.com

what i would like to know is if all of the citizens of the united states become vegans, would there be enough food to feed them all? enough ariable land? is organic a requirement? would the industrialize farming business still be in effect? such as trucking food into the cities? how much land does it take to feed a family of four all year long?

PETA and farmers often paint one another as extremists, and this can cause a hardening of reactions (actual extremism), but it's not productive. We shouldn't call vegans "extremists" because for them it's not all that extreme. Indeed, most of the world's religious orders over history have dietary rules as well, most often surrounding meat.

There are several reasons: health, ecological efficiency, ethics, religious rules, income level (meat is one of the more expensive foods), etc.

I'm also a big fan of squeamishness. I've got no problem touring an auto factory, brewery, paper mill, recycling plant, etc. But to those folks who eat meat and yet aren't interested -- or could not handle -- touring a slaughterhouse or factory animal farm, I think they're living a lifestyle based on "out of sight, out of mind". To those rural people who hunt for food (not sport), not too squeamish to clean out deer themselves, are not wasteful, etc. I have a much higher respect. Killing for mere sport, and raising animals as industrial products in terrible conditions, are the larger issues here.

Let's not paint this as unreachable extremes, there's no room for discussion when it's black vs. white.

jbs: It's been fairly well-researched that a vegetarian lifestyle (India I think has been a case example) requires far less land utilization than the indirect method of obtaining calories: needing to grow feed for animals, losing some of the caloric/energy due to their simple breathing/growing/shitting/etc. and then reclaiming some of the calories at slaughter.

I've been a vegetarian since conception, and I am now not only a vegan, but a raw food vegan. It is a better, healthier, and more ethical way to live; it is a sign of progress that some of our species gets to this point, and I hope more people reach this point soon. Eating, raising, hunting, or buying animals is a crime to the animals, to human health, and to the environment; it doesn't matter the scale or the place.

kelmer: you make some good points. I am in no way defending the industrial food production system. I don't like for animals to suffer either. We make sure our animals have the best lives possible. The thing I object to is the sweeping, hyperbolic terms that you frame things in.

It's not all simple and pure like you may think. For example, if you raise chickens, and they run around the yard, will soon find that you have too many roosters (they fight and make the hens miserable). Why does nature do this? Well, I suspect it is a numbers game, and the roosters are considered somewhat expendable - they are expected to sacrifice themselves for the hens. And male sheep - if you don't do something quick about those testicles, you're going to have problems. And a flock of ducks, let them reproduce, and soon there will be too many. I have no problem thinning out the animals when it's time - butchering can be an experience bordering on the sacred.

Like it or not, humans have had a long relationship with domestic animals. We depend on them, and they depend on us. And we are long past the point where nature is the only factor. We humans have taken responsibility and are managing and manipulating the earth now. I agree that industrialization and greed have completely perverted a lot of things, but as it is said, "abuse is not a valid argument against responsible use."

Whatever mess we have found ourselves in, we have to start from where we are. Your fantasy is that somehow you could force large numbers of people to go cold turkey - maybe some UN mandate? I am suggesting a somewhat more reasonable comprimise that will not seek to alienate and demonize my fellow beings.

Paul Bramscher: you are right about the energy intensity of INDUSTRIAL meat. However, that is only if you are talking about feeding the animals things that WE can eat - like grain, which I believe should not be fed to cattle anyway - it makes them unhealthy. When animals like goats and sheep eat tree leaves, weeds and grass - things that we cannot digest, your argument breaks down. If you think about sustainable agriculture, and doing with what you have, sometimes animals are essential for the overall success of the farm. (manure for plants is one big benefit) I don't mean to sound defensive, but a lot of us out here in the rural areas feel like the urbanites are trying to wipe out our way of life when they really don't know anything about how food (essential to all of us!) comes to be.

Tech2,
I think your meat diet might be aggravating your hostile response to a thoughtful discussion.

I LOVE ANIMALS! They taste great.

Wake up people, we are omnivores. Like almost all other animals, we are programmed to eat meat.

"Wake up people, we are omnivores. Like almost all other animals, we are programmed to eat meat."

It is a choice, and based on the evidence, meat is not the best choice.

Tech2 alluded to the carbon cycle. Most of the carbon released raising animals has originated from atmospheric carbon in the form of plants consumed, so the net carbon increase over time is minimal. Compare this to the burning fossil fuels. Carbon is extracted from the ground and turned into gas, so the net carbon increase is much larger.

The statemnt "raising animals for food is responsible for more greenhouse gases than all vehicles in the world combined" is true, but it's deceptive. It's important to consider the original source of the carbon.

This is a big topic which reaches into many different facets of human life. Here's just a few quick notes to some of the points raised:

"To whit, more than 260 million acres of U.S. forest have been cleared to create cropland to grow grain to feed farmed animals; farmed animals are fed more than 70 percent of the corn, wheat, and other grains grown in the U.S. ... (etc)"
--Yes, I have known for the last 30 years that, worldwide, the land given over to produce protein via animals is much less efficiently used than when land is used to grow vegetable proteins.
~ Many rain forests would not be being cleared, even as we speak, -where it not for the quick crops grown there for animal protein. (and then abandoned, as the poor soil often can't support more than one crop).

"If that's not enough to make you feel a little queasy, consider this: Consuming animal products isn't just making the environment sick—it's making us sick, too..."
-- Apart from the **physical** effects, there are emotional effects too. Long-term research has shown how meat eaters are, in the main, more aggressive than vegetarians. Studies in US gaols showed that when inmates were fed non-meat and less junk food diets, the prisoners became less aggressive and more 'civilised' in their general demeanour.

_______________

jgr4 says:
"OK, so what's the next step? Clearly, encouraging Americans to eat less meat is going to have negligible effects on their behaviour..."
--(see above comment)

" I have always wanted to ask a vegetarian this question:
Are you against animal flesh as food, or are you just against wasteful, energy inefficient, drug filled, modern methods of agriculture (primarily USA agriculture)?"
--Answer: both!
Being a lifelong veggie (and raising my kids the same way) has win / win pay-offs. My lads are as strong as young oxen! They don't suffer as many health probs as their peers, they are more conscious and caring of animals and the environment generally, they are sensitive and intelligent beings who really care!
~ Increased risk of cancers and bowel complaints is also a side-effect of too much [red] meat eating.

_____________

"He mentions representatives of the U.S. government — isn't Dennis Kucinich a vegetarian?"
Answer: Almost! -- Dennis is a vegan, -that means no animal or even insect food (=honey)!
It's not easy, but hey, -in his case it has certainly not affected either his, nor his beautiful wife [Elizabeth's] intellectual prowess or courage!

__________________

"...How much land does it take to feed a family of four all year long?"
Answer: If you eat vegetarian diet, your family could very easily live off 5 acres, probably much less.

________________

The world as a whole also would benefit from less meat eating: --at present a lot of poor countries around the world produce crops which are just for export, - these are high protein products which are then sold as cash crops to richer countries for animal feed.
There's a problem here: - the people of those poor countries should be eating that protein, but they need the cash, so... it gets exported...

____________________________________

BTW: If you eat meat and go to somewhere like India (with a high proportion of Hindu veggies) they will probably smell you coming! :) Meat eaters exude a particularly unpleasant odour from their skin and breath, which veggie folk can often detect at a distance. (And carnivore's faeces is also a lot smellier!)
Don't believe me? – Just compare the smell of horse dung to that of a cat or dog!
_____________

There are many myths about meat eating: It 'makes a man of you' and 'puts hairs on your chest? (-very fetching if you're a woman!) In fact, the amount of female hormones and antibiotics meat producers needlessly pump into meat (just to fatten quadrupeds and fowl up, to gain bigger market prices) is giving many men breasts. ~ Nice boobs you have Mr Macho! :)
_____________

Truth is, we don't' actually **need** meat in our diets, -it's an indulgence.
Americans are generally more 'solar plexus' orientated than some other nations, (viz: they often centre on their belly areas more), -be it emotionally or gastronomically. This is a stage many tribes go through. before people rise up towards more cerebral activity...

Take a look at veggie and vegan folk and you'll likely observe that they are 'brighter and more sensitive' than 'average' folk. The converse is sorta true, in that 'dull' people are invariably meat eaters. (-This does not -of course, include the many millions of highly intelligent folk who eat meat, but it has a thread of truth running through it).
__________

Some societies are obliged to eat meat: (e.g.): the Inuit and some mountain-region Tibetans, etc, who live in areas where there's not enough vegetable matter growing to sustain human life...

++++++++++++++++++++

To those who have access to esoteric wisdom they'll know that the worst (most harmful) aspect of meat eating, is in gorging oneself on blood products. Blood, in itself attracts 'dire entities' (-to coin a phrase). Historically that's one of the reasons why some tribes (e.g.) N.A. Indians drained their meat of blood, then smoked it over fires first.
Ditto the Semitic (Arabic) tribes and their Halal. -or Jews and Kosher meat. Ancient peoples were generally more clairvoyant than us today, and could see the gross 'entities' which are attracted to blood, which gave rise to those old traditions.

Also: Animals at the slaughter houses can smell the blood, and telepathically pick up on the 'fear vibes' from their fellow creatures. Fear releases adrenalin into the blood stream, which (I have heard) is then ingested by those who eat meat. Thus, you are eating the 'fight or flight' chemical, and thus meat eaters are more prone to irrational fears (??)

++++++++++++++++++++

Finally, in the past, there's been a lot of self-righteous put downs of meat eaters by those who abstain from meat, (see George Bernard Shaw et al) but a very wise teacher from Tibet once said, (in planetary terms): "It matters more what comes *out* of your mouth, than what goes into it!"

In the 70's the slogan, "You are what you eat" was often quoted.

They had a point methinks!

Visit www.Meat.org to see what animals go through for the meat industry. Visit www.GoVeg.com/eco to learn more about the environmental consequences of meat-eating. Progressives really should be vegetarians. Great article.

Funny, I didn't realize that there is such a thing as a "typical vegan." As a collection of people, the vegans I know are all over the spectrum in attitudes and morals. The only common thing is a concern for unnecessary killing among "ethical vegans" (I am one of them).

I have met vegans who are one or more of ethical, pro-animal rights, pro-environment, and religious, but none of them gives me the impression of being a "typical vegan."

I haven't read the 5 MB PDF referred to in this story yet, but I would find it quite likely that even if all farm animals were grazed (which by the way isn't possibly going to meet the world demand for meat - why do you think humans inventing agriculture went along with a population explosion?), that it could still be worse for global warming than responsible farming on that grazing land. Cows produce a large amount of methane which causes much more global warming than CO2. I guess other animals might be better - I haven't seen the numbers.

If everyone were vegan, I believe we could get by with a lot less farmland than we use now and instead of grazing the rest with animals that aren't part of the natural ecosystem, we could move more land back to nature preserves. This is the primary reason I've been vegan for the last 10 years (vegetarian for another 15) - I have no issues with killing all the unwanted farm animals (or those stupid burros in many Southwestern ecosystems)

Dara Parsavand

"Wake up people, we are omnivores. Like almost all other animals, we are programmed to eat meat."

Is this a joke Powerslave?

"almost all animals" - huh? what then, are herbivores, pseudo-animals?
"programmed" - who programmed you? your parents, society, god, the two co-equal supreme beings, or are you just conflating capability of doing an act with a directive to do so?

"killing for mere sport and raising animals as industrial products."
Mr. Bramscher is on the right track here, these are the fires that need to be put out ASAP.

Kelmer,
I admit that you have correctly identified a premise in my statements; a premise that you have described
as a belief that there is a hierarchy of life, with me at the top.

Well, I disagree on your wording here. I am not sure who is on top, but it ain't me. We humans are
bit players in a vast unforgiving landscape. The power of earth scale forces and processes are far beyond our puny attempts at energy concentration and usage. In all aspects...

We humans have proved ourselves to be so different from all the other animals on this planet, that we do belong in a class of our own. And like it or not, we are stewards (not rulers) of this earth.
The choice is how we go about this stewardship. I think we have to admit that we are part of the cycles of this planet, not above or beyond them, and therefore we have to work within how the planet functions. Life and Death are part of the cycles of life. I feel no inconsistency in retaining the ability to kill an animal for food and in having a reverence for life. I am a part of the world, not some ultramoral city dwelling spectator.

Is a dairy cow an unwilling slave forced into hard labour? I don't think so; the family cow is very much
a friend and part of the family.

I think we humans have the right to adopt animals, keep them locked up in an apartment all day, spoil
them like a child, and dress them up and treat them like a human if we want. I personally think that is cruel animal torture, but you have the right to do it if you want.

Whether we like it or not, we humans have the power to build and destroy, the power to create, or neglect.
We have a power so far beyond the other animals on this planet its hard to believe. Can you imagine
a chimp or a dolphin building a scanning electron microscope, or decoding the DNA of a tomato plant??

Stewards not rulers.

Instead of denying the existence of this power, and trying to be just like the other animals, lets
rediscover integrity, and nobility and all things good and wonderful about what we can be, so that
we can use this power for the benefit of everyone.
I think the answer is beyond lentils and rice.

Now I do think I am thinking clearly, but I do admit my mind could be clouded by the effects of undigested (grassfed) beef.

P.S. The older I get, the less meat I seem to want.
So I do leave the door open for semi partial vegan lifestyle.
Can you barbeque tofu?

I've been a vegetarian for 35 years and a vegan for 20 years. I am a city dweller now for 27 years out of a desire to bring the city back into balance. My orientation of the past few years is to raise, gather from, purchase or eat Orchard Tree-ecology based foods because of the ecological services the tree gives to humans, wildlife and the streams, air, soil, temperature or interdependant life-forms of the environment.

As a former orchardist, I understand the rural - city split and honor folks in the country making the best of all their resources, but vegan folks know that living low on the food chain brings great health and life-energy advantages.

For those who refer to historical documents or stories, it is important to distinguish between myths that arise from agriculture (field)-based exogenous (other-produced) civilization (eg later books of the bible) and those that arize from orchard (tree) based indigenous (self-generating) sylvalization (Genesis etc.). We need to distinguish between stories by indigenous people and those told by 'outside' folk describing indigenous refugees fleeing exogenous invasion and ecological devastation.

Before European encroachment and artificial economies like the fur trade hit Turtle Island, even far northern communities lived with massive continental trade for food items such as nuts, corns, amarynth in exchange for their wild-rice, cat-tail pollen, wet-land tubers, algaes, sea vegetables and even some animal-based products. The balance of exchange and knowledge has changed.

The multi-level orchard forest produces 100 times the food and other services than agriculture. The orchard absorbs 95 - 98 % of solar energy and converts this energy through photo-synthesis into useful matter. Field-based Grain and other monocrop agriculture only absorbs / converts 5 %. The orchard sends roots down as deep as the canopy sometimes 200 feet to pump water, minerals and establish an interactive nutrient colony within this realm. Agriculture field crops send roots down only a couple of feet. While the low plants we have appropriated for field monocropping are a natural part of orchard productivity, they are not particularly productive for either food, water systems or ecology.

The meteorological cold created by orchard photosynthesis attracts the warm moisture laden sea winds to the continent. Energy not absorbed from agriculture fields pushes the wind from the continent to the sea and creates desert. Vegetarian and veganism only goes part of the way to a restored Orchard-garden.

The wolf and other higher predators contrary to popular myth eat a huge amount of vegetables, fruits, seeds and nuts in the summer periods. Some indigenous writers even describe the wolf as going off meat for a full moon of the summer. Most reports on indigenous peoples as nomads and meat-eaters are reporting on refugees. Most of these refugees in the American hemisphere came from long established communities, some which can be described as sylvalizations.

IN ANSWER TO:
jbs June 20th, 2007 2:24 pm
what i would like to know is if all of the citizens of the united states become vegans, would there be enough food to feed them all? enough ariable land? is organic a requirement? would the industrialize farming business still be in effect? such as trucking food into the cities? how much land does it take to feed a family of four all year long?

RESPONSE: The vegetarian and more-so the vegan use about one tenth the land (than the meat-eater)to generate a higher quality diet as far as all nutrients are concerned. If we change to an Orchard based diet, then we can reach a one hundred fold efficiency within years and a one thousand fold efficiency within decades to one hundred years. Organic is just more efficient than artificial expensive complex-synthetic chemical inputs. There is more than enough humanure, greywater, rooftops, lawns and green technology to raise our food. Trucking isn't necessary when orchard trees are pumping water, minerals and nutrients from hundreds of feet into the substrate. Indigenous communities have known this for thousands of years. A good read on sylvalization in the Americas is '1491' by Charles C. Mann.

Cuban urban communities have transformed their cities in the past decade to raise a majority of their organic foods. Mmmm, imagine fresh foods at hand, streets with bicycles, humidified air and garbage collection in which organic material is composted rather than landfilled. Two birds made free in one act. Permaculture and Collective-intelligence are about complementation of our gifts.

douglas.jack@mail.mcgill.ca

Yeaaa... I've been an ovo-lacto vegetarian 24 years. I think of Dahmer every time I see uncooked meat.

On a similar note:
I think the solution to the Iraq war, and other warfare generally, is that people should be made to eat their kills.

Killing an animal so that you can eat it is an inherently cruel act. However, it is more cruel to the killer than the killed. Killing crudifies the mind and sends it to the hell worlds. Everything is mind and it follows that there are innumerable worlds or states of conscienceness, both heavenly and hellish. Why kill and thereby chose the latter? Choose not to kill and enjoy the heavenly realms instead. No one punishes us, no one rewards us. We do everything to ourselves.

I'm always amused by the argument that, since animals eat each other (except, of course, the animals that most carnivores eat), and humans are animals, human consumption of animals is part of some "natural order" of things. Animals crap, piss and fart when and where its convenient, sometimes eat or abandon their young, and even their mates, can go days, weeks, months, and entire lifetimes without bathing, grooming or cleaning their teeth, couldn't figure out how to use a voting machine, and don't have MySpace accounts. Are these the behavioral standards the human species should adopt as congruent with "natural order"?

I know many vegetarians who are that way on doctor's orders. More power to them. Most of the vegans I have had the displeasure of meating are some of the most sanctimonious, self righteous holier than thou boors that I have met in my life. They are also more intolerant and more likely to prosletyze than any born again Christian.

tech2,

My, my, what a poetic attempt to justify your existence with a bunch of philosophical smoke. You sure seem to enjoy painting your life as living in harmony with the grander scheme of things while bashing on us city folk as detached abusers.

Although, I have a great respect for farmers and the country life, I spent much of my childhood on my grandfather's farm, that doesn't mean that your personal choice in diet makes you more righteous. Stop making this a battle between country living and city living.

Ponder this the next time your are "stewarding" your chickens to the chopping block (since you seemed to miss the point of the article): How much land and resources would it require for all humans on earth to live as you do?

As suggested, maybe it's the meat in your system that clouds your judgment or possibly it's just that you're so disconnected from the realities of the world we live in today.

tech2,

I agree with much of what you said. I'm not sure if you're a regular here or not, but you'll find that vegetarianism is a religion to some of the regulars, and they are very much fundamentalists about it. Some of them don't have much tolerance for other religions, such as Christianity, though.

I have a general question for the vegans/vegetarians. Wouldn't the impact of a person's diet on the environment be a very individual thing? Tech2's chickens eat bugs and scraps, and he probably walks 20 feet to kill them with a hand-held axe. How does the environmental impact of that compare to the vegetarian who eats an apple that has been treated with pesticides and then transported on a ship all the way from New Zealand? Or how can these processed "veggie burgers" I see in the store that have 25 ingredients and sit in a freezer be better for the environment (or even for your health) than Tech2's chicken? If someone has some hard data on this, I would like to be pointed to it.

You meat apologists really don't get it. It's not about environmentalism, health, religion. It's about reducing the amount of suffering experienced by sentient beings. Your callous indifference to suffering is appalling. You do not have dominion over animals. You have stewardship of animals. Be kind to them. Again, killing harms the killer more than it harms the killed. Be kind to yourself.

esarge: Although I've been vegetarian for over a decade, I'm not vegan, and can't necessarily say I'll be vegetarian the remainder of my life. My mother grew up on a dairy/corn farm, and I do some organic gardening myself. Certainly vegetarianism is mainly a disconnected urban movement, and many have no clue about the wonders of manure. But I've also begun a compost bin of my own, and I bet that plant/vegetable debris, coffee grounds, etc. can also make a highly rich soil.

Ron: I agree with the Buddhist slant. It's interesting to note, though, that vegetarianism is an ascetic/monastic vow, not something that most everyday Buddhists in Asia would have ever observed.

In addition to the ecological efficiency of getting calories/minerals directly from plants rather than via surrogates, I agree that vegetarianism minimizes pain/suffering caused to other living animals. I've often posed the question whether, if we discovered an intelligent alien race, would we consider eating it? What if it tasted good? Was bipedal? What, exactly, is the objective criteria that puts some animals on the plate, others in a zoo, and others running wild?

Thanks to vegetarians for trying to make a difference. If we lived in a sustainable society, we could eat meat as we were meant to, but we do not. Limiting our populations to the carrying capacity of the area and capping wealth and power can restore diversity without the wars, famine, crime and plagues that nature sends.

My diet is vegan (plus seafood, which I can't resist), and when people ask me the reason, I always say that its environmental. Thanks for the justification.

Paul Bramscher: Most chickens, cows, pigs, etc would not even be alive if they weren't being raised for human consumption, so that seems to me to be a sensible criterion. We eat those creatures that we choose to raise for that purpose.

In addition, I do not find it cruel to hunt animals that, because of other human actions, have their population all out of whack anyway. For example, we can harvest white-tail deer and get some benefit out of the meat, or we can let them overpopulate until they die of starvation in the woods and ruin the forest and disrupt their own ecosystem in the process. Here's just one reference that describes that very real environmental problem:
http://www.botany.wisc.edu/waller/deer/AREES.pdf

I have no problem with anyone being a vegetarian, but I object to their claiming the moral high ground for it.

Ron: It's fine for you to claim that the issue of vegetarianism is not environmental, but the topic of the article was vegetarianism and climate change, so my question still stands. How can a blanket statement be made that eating meat is worse for the environment than vegetarianism when so much of our vegetarian food is either imported or highly processed?

ceecee: Humans and modern firepower tend to sport-hunt the more desirable/mountable deer, whereas nature would ordinarily check&balance mainly against the old, weak, infirm, etc. Here in Minnesota we have recovering wolf population. And although it sounds cruel, I say let the deer populations die. They'll achieve naturally sustainable levels, weed out their weaker members.

There can be no doubt that there is a moral high ground, though. We forget that we, too, are animals. If we eat pigs, why not people too? If we believe there is no limit to the amount of acceptable suffering or animal factory/slaughter operations, no moral principles whatsoever, then we've lost the respect, understanding, relationships in a natural web, etc. that untold humans have worked out over the millenia. There are indeed moral highs and lows here.

Good points on the processing/importing of vegetarian foods. The answer is to eat less processed food, and buy local when possible. Here in Minnesota, also, we have one of the longest-running and active farmer's markets in the country (St. Paul). In summer months, I buy direct from the grower.

Many of you have made alot of good points.
There is a really great organization called Earth Save whose major focus is helping people transition to a more plant based diet. The founder of the organization John Robbins has written several excellent books which explain how what we eat influences our health, our environment, and the treatment of animals. It includes lots of facts and figures about how much water and land it takes to grow animals for food versus plants. He also has lots of moving stories of how the journey of going from being the heir to the Baskin Robbins fortune to giving it up for simple vegan life has changed him and people he has met. One of the great things about John is that he is not at all self-rightous. His most recent books are the Food Revolution, and healthy at 100. Their site is www.earthsave.org
Clearly, it is better for the environment to cut back as much as you feel you can on animal consumption. Also, it is better to grow your own or buy locally grown foodstuffs and preferably organic when possible and affordable.
A couple of other very educational but also entertaining sites are www.notmilk.com and www.meatrix.com

If overpopulation continues at its current rate, and the major extinction event we're seeing goes as predicted, the only animals left on the planet soon will be man, his domesticated animals, and the small vermin that can live among them. That being the case, cows being useful to us may be the one thing that keeps their species going.

Better for all if *we* became extinct right about now. But it ain't gonna happen. We're going to carry on consuming until all life on Earth pays the ultimate price for our folly. Including us. Let's do what we can, right away, and hope it's not too late. I'll miss sausages, though. :-(

Pattern-chaser

"Who cares, wins"

Good day to you Bruce, Please do come! Finding vegan food is easy, especially in England - http://www.happycow.net/europe/england/index.html One very good plus point for you is that there are still far fewer Bruce's in the UK than there are in some other countries - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_f_p0CgPeyA

I began being a vegan again last December. My regret is that I didn't do it sooner! This time, I will never go back. We live in a planet drenched in blood. I refuse to be a part of it anymore!

Don't be like me and wait years to become a vegetarian. DO IT NOW!!! I promise you, you'll feel better! All that meat is negative energy and when you ingest it, you ingest the negative energy plus all the poisons that might have been present in the animal. A victim of colitis for years, the colitis has vastly improved by not eating meat. More, eliminating cola from my diet with the vegetarianism has almost disappeared the crippling cramps I suffered through every day since 1995.

But even if you want to do something about Global Warming, reject one of the largest sources of it!

HALELUJA!!!! Martha Rose Crow, you have been SAVED! You also sound like a Baptist at revival time.

For answers to many of the questions raised on earlier posts:

http://www.flex.com/~jai/articles/101.html

http://www.vivavegie.org/vv101/101reas98.html

I remain an agnostic when it comes to the morality of eating meat, but there is no question as to its negative impact on the environment. On the other hand, many of these negative impacts can be mitigated. Michael Pollan, for example, in "The Omnivore's Dilemma" talks about an organic farm where grass-fed cattle are rotated through fields, followed by chickens three days later that eat the maggots which occur in the cattle droppings. The anti-biotic-free flocks of cattle and chickens are regularly culled to prevent them from out-stripping their food supply.

Unfortunately, this is not the way that most of our meat is produced. Instead we use property-tax-subsidized lands, which use subsidized water and subsidized inorganic fertilizers to produce subsidized corn which is fed to animals that can't digest it and therefore require heavy doses of anti-biotics which leads to resistant strains of bacteria.

Probably the quickest and most effective way to bring about a mass conversion to healthier and more vegetarian dieting is to eliminate ALL agricultural subsidies. What could be more "conservative" or "market-based" than that?

I am not a vegetarian, although because I live with one, I eat very little meat, but some fish.

Even non-vegetarians could make a big difference by consuming meat in smaller quantities and less often. Also, excessive 'consumption' of food of all kinds, which simply ends up uneaten, wastes resources generally as well as contributing to climate change.

Lemme see if I got this right,

Meat is MURDER.
Meat eaters are MURDERERS.
So MURDER all the meat eaters and end MURDER!

Got it. Self-Righteous Sanctimonious dismissal of all who disagree. How Neo-Con can you get.

Pity folks couldn't put some of that rabid passion into getting rid of Bush. But then we always did a better job of ripping each other into bloody gobbets flesh than making any meaningful changes in our little slave empire.

For tech2 and those of you who have small farm holdings outside of major metros - keep your land, your chickens, your goats, your sheep, and your crops. You'll survive the Great Shattering with all of them. The screaming ninnies will be beating on each other for not being "pure" enough while they starve. How Aryan can you get.

Peace.

luckylefty,
Dear one, --do you need perhaps to lie down for a while? You appear to be having 'an attack of the vapours' there! ;)

You sign off with the word 'peace'.
But did you actually mean it?
And do you have 'peace' within, -or was it just a word?

Certainly, if you read my post (above) on this topic, you will see that I was not attacking you dear Soul, -nor other meat eaters.
And I ended with a quote from a wise teacher who said: "It matters more what comes *out* of your mouth, than what goes into it."

I wonder if you managed to understand what was meant by those words??
No matter what we eat, if we have good relationships with our fellow human beings, this world is a safer, happier place, ~ but if we go around aggressively attacking others, we turn this world into a hell. ~ Which do you prefer?

Buddha, (-not an eater of flesh) once said: "Never was hatred destroyed by hatred, goodness alone put an end to it."
He also said something to the effect of: "Lighting a candle is more productive than cursing the darkness"

I wish you 'peace' Luckylefty.

And... I do actually *mean* that.

xx

Just great to hear all the various thoughts and opinions on this subject. I became a veg in the late 60's when on one of my psychedelic trips out in the Colorado mountains some of my friends where having one of those western cook outs were a whole steer is cooking on a spit. I must of been having some kind of mild psyche hallucination because every time I looked at the cow it seemed alive and screaming in pain and suffering.

My main point is that up until that time I had never met a vegetarian who actually professed to be one. I'm sure I must have met some silent vegetarians but they never talked about it or shared their philosophy with me.
Yesterday my friend and I were talking about the rapidly growing popularity of health foods, whole foods and organic foods. I reminded him that 30 years ago there was no term for "junk" food. There was just no consciousness about it. I remember having arguments with doctors about nutrition and they would claim there is no difference between refined and processed foods (nutrition wise) and whole foods. As always I would say just try eating whole foods for a month, then go back and see the difference in yourself. You are your own experimental laboratory.

It's not about forcing my beliefs on others or making laws that say three strikes of eating hot-dogs at the old ball game gives you life in prison without parole. It's about new knowledge, choice, the ability to change (if and when you/we are ready) and adapting to new situations. We see from evolution that change and adaptation is the main factor in the survival of any given species. Man who has made the most changes (at least externally) in his and consequently the planets environment, desperately needs to break out of some of his stubborn patterns, be they psychological, political, emotional, or wether he has that typical he-man Paul Bonyon breakfast every morning.

What we eat is very emotional, packaged in nostalgia, domestic history, and social familiarity. Were not forcing or asking anyone to change only you can do that. ( I've often fantasized about running into a supermarket when a Christian fundamentalist is shopping and start screaming at the top of my lungs while pointing to his pending purchase of some slaughtered creature: "Murderer.... thou shalt not kill ...... Your going to burn in hell ... or your own oven..."
Naturally I would be locked up. It's not my business to tell others what to put in their bodies I have a hard enough time controlling my own appetites. But thats exactly what these people do in our bedrooms with their antiabortion rants. Their in our bedrooms, in our bodies telling us how many children we should have. If you don't like abortion don't have one..... I don't have them.) If you think eating meat is wrong, unhealthy, or bad for the environment fine and we might share these ideas if someone shows interest (like in this thread), but to become hyper aggressive is counterproductive both for the convince and convincer.

Again lets not condemn, not force, not harangue. Lets look at the potential of dialogue, of the ability to experiment, and to adapt. New ideas present new opportunities, new possibilities.... My question today to myself is what can I change to help myself and therefor the planet and it's family?