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Humane Meat? A Contradiction in Terms.
People have become increasingly aware that virtually all of the 10 billion land animals slaughtered in the U.S. each year for their meat, eggs and milk are terribly mistreated . In fact, routine farming practices are so abusive that they would warrant felony animal cruelty charges were they done to cats or dogs.As a result, huge numbers of compassionate people have joined the ranks of the vegetarians. Some, however, have looked instead to meat from animals treated less badly, which they call "humane meat." This raises three questions. First, is there such a thing as truly "humane meat"? Second, would consuming only humane meat satisfy the demands of ethical living? And third, do we, as individuals, have good reason to promote "humane meat" rather than vegetarianism?
Not only are many of the humane labels -like "Swine Welfare" and "Animal Care Certified"-entirely meaningless, describing animals treated in nearly exactly the same way as unlabeled products (see PETA's discussion at GoVeg.com ), but please ask yourself a basic question: Would you be willing to cut an animal's throat? For most of us, taking an animal's life is anathema; we just wouldn't do it. Of course, all of us could spend an afternoon shucking corn, watch a cornfield being tilled, or take part in every other aspect of getting plant foods to the table.
But how many of us could spend an afternoon cutting animals' throats, or even watching it? And then ask yourself in what other areas of your life do you pay others to do things you find too repulsive? And how ethical is it to pay someone to do things that are wholly unnecessary and too atrocious to watch?
We have no nutritional need for meat, eggs or milk. Eating meat means, quite literally, eating a corpse. It means robbing the animal of her or his life, and then devouring the body. Animals are all made of flesh, blood and bone, just like we are; they have the same five physiological senses of touch, smell, sight, hearing and taste. They are more like us than they are different.
People like Albert Einstein and Leo Tolstoy argued this very point, that using our power to harm the weak and innocent-on an issue as essential to who we are as eating-is fundamental to all moral action. Tolstoy summed it up by saying, "Vegetarianism is the taproot of humanitarianism." Einstein spoke of the human arrogance that considered ourselves apart and superior to other species, calling this justification for exploiting them "a kind of optical delusion of consciousness." He pleaded that "our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion," calling for "the evolution to a vegetarian diet." How can we try to create a better and more compassionate world while dining on the corpses of defenseless victims, each time we sit down to eat?
Perhaps the most critical point, though, for those who oppose factory farming and modern slaughterhouses, is that your decisions influence others, and your decision to eat any meat at all (even if the meat is from producers that are less abusive) will cause others you know to eat factory farmed meat, where they might otherwise not have.
I've been a vegan for 20 years now, and in that time, I've convinced many friends and acquaintances to follow my lead. Each one of these individuals saves just as many animals as my vegetarianism does. In other words, my example has exponentially multiplied the good for animals of my own decision. But the reverse is also true: By not advocating vegetarianism, all those saved animals would have, instead, suffered terrible lives and died horrible deaths.
Most people look at someone eating "humane" meat and simply see a fellow meat-eater; they are not likely to change their own diets, in part because for most people meat is meat, and in part because eating "humane" meat is far more difficult than eating vegetarian. Every restaurant and supermarket has food for vegetarians, but fewer than one in 10,000 (literally) has "humanely" labeled meat.
I want to be clear that, as I've argued before, working for improved living and dying conditions for farmed animals is a critical element in the animal rights movement, and I spend a large portion of my time, day in and day out, working to change the way animals are raised and slaughtered. Victories like the banning of gestation crates in Oregon, Arizona, and Florida are real victories for animals. Burger King's decision to give preferential option to chicken plants that slaughter animals in a controlled atmosphere is praiseworthy, and Whole Foods' commitment to real change for farmed animals should be celebrated. We can't just ignore their suffering, as people who care about animals. And of course, eating meat from animals who are not gratuitously abused is better than eating meat from animals who are.
But for individuals who care about cruelty, vegetarianism is the only choice. Vegetarianism makes a statement against oppression at every meal. It is incredibly fulfilling to know that, where you can, you are promoting practices that are kind, rather than cruel, and helping to create a society that is life-giving, rather than life-taking.
Remember, it's not a matter of putting animals ahead of human beings. Vegetarian advocates are simply suggesting that meat-eaters not ignore the concerns of animals entirely by dining on their corpses.
It's not that much to ask, and lives are depending on us.
Bruce Friedrich is vice-president for campaigns, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA). Before coming to work for PETA, he spent six years running a shelter for homeless families and soup kitchen in Washington, DC. He has been a progressive activist for more than 20 years.
80 Comments so far
Show AllI've been vegetarian since 1982. I attended my first anti-vivisection protest outside the biology building at UC San Diego, in the spring of 1985, when anti-apartheid demonstrations were taking place on our campus.
I first got interested in promoting vegetarianism in mainstream society after reading John Robbins' Diet for a New America (1987). Nominated for a Pulitzer Prize, it makes veganism seem as reasonable and mainstream as recycling.
For example: half the water consumed in the U.S. goes to irrigate land growing feed and fodder for livestock. Huge amounts of water are also used to wash away their excrement. U.S. livestock produce twenty times as much excrement as does the entire human population; creating sewage which is ten to several hundred times more concentrated than raw domestic sewage.
Animal wastes cause ten times more water pollution than does the U.S. human population; the meat industry causes three times as much harmful organic water pollution than the rest of the nation's industries combined. Meat producers are the number one industrial polluters in our nation, contributing to half the water pollution in the United States.
Joanna Macy, author of Despair and Personal Power in the Nuclear Age, depicts the advantages of America moving towards a vegan diet in her foreword to Diet for a New America:
"The effects on our physical health are immediate. The incidence of cancer and heart attack, the nation's biggest killers, drops precipitously. So do many other diseases now demonstrably and causally linked to consumption of animal proteins and fats, such as osteoporosis...
"The social, ecological, and economic consequences, as we Americans turn away from animal food products, are equally remarkable. We find that the grain we previously fed to fatten livestock can now feed five times the U.S. population; so we have become able to alleviate malnutrition and hunger on a worldwide scale...
"The great forests of the world, that we had been decimating for grazing purposes, begin to grow again. Oxygen-producing trees are no longer sacrificed for cholesterol-producing steaks.
"The water crisis eases. As we stop raising and grinding up cattle for hamburgers, we discover that ranching and farm factories had been the major drain on our water resources. The amount now available for irrigation and hydroelectric power doubles.
"Meanwhile, the change in diet frees over 90% of the fossil fuel previously used to produce food. With this liberation of water energy and fossil fuel energy, our reliance on oil imports declines, as does the rationale for building nuclear power plants..."
Joanna Macy goes on to admit, "This scenario is wildly, absurdly utopian. It is also clearly the way we are meant to live, built to live." What could possibly make it a reality? "It is this very book!"
Paul McCartney also says, "If anyone wants to save the planet, all they have to do is just stop eating meat. That's the single most important thing you could do. It's staggering when you think about it. Vegetarianism takes care of so many things in one shot: ecology, famine, cruelty. Let's do it! Linda was right. Going veggie is the single best idea for the new century."
When I first read Diet for a New America, I thought it could have the same kind of impact on mainstream American society that Frances Moore Lappe's Diet for a Small Planet had in the '70s.
The number of animals killed for food in the United States is 70 times larger than the number of animals killed in laboratories, 30 times larger than the number killed by hunters and trappers, and 500 times larger than the number of animals killed in pounds.
A fellow animal activist in San Diego, Tricia Fernatt, felt as I did: since the vast majority of animals are being killed for food, why are we wasting our time on peripheral issues? Shouldn't veganism be the main focus of our movement?
And Diet for a New America tied it all together. The Worldwatch Institute estimates that if Americans reduced their meat consumption by just 10 percent, it would release enough grain and soybeans to feed over 60 million people.
In writing his expose on the meat industry, John Robbins has been compared to Rachel Carson, Ralph Nader and other whistleblowers. In Diet for a New America, he demonstrates how all the various causes that concern the left: skyrocketing health care costs, a sustainable energy policy, hunger, malnutrition, etc. are all taken care of in one fell swoop by a vegan diet.
I had the opportunity to meet John Robbins in September 1988. It was one of the most inspirational moments of my life!
He was heir to the Baskin-Robbins fortune. He renounced it at a young age. He traveled to India, opened a yoga ashram in Canada, etc. He spoke of Gandhi and nonviolence. His son Ocean Robbins founded Youth for Environmental Sanity (YES!) and is also dedicated to promoting veganism.
I asked John if he would try and get the American Left to support animal rights. He told me that he had sent a copy of his book to Mother Jones, a left-liberal periodical published in San Francisco.
Many on the Left are beginning to take a stand in favor of animal rights. Joanna Macy spoke at the San Francisco Green Festival, in November 2005. In his 1990 updated and revised edition of Animal Liberation, Australian philosopher Peter Singer writes that many of the political parties leaning towards the "Green" end of the political spectrum in Europe were beginning to oppose animal experimentation.
John Robbins elaborated further on the economic waste of raising animals for food in May All Be Fed, which my brother gave me for Christmas in 1992. Oxfam, the international charity, reports that in Mexico, 80 percent of the children in rural areas are undernourished, yet the livestock are fed more grain than the human population eats!
Meat consumption in Taiwan increased 600 percent between 1950 and 1990. In 1950, Taiwan was a grain exporter; in 1990 the nation imported, mostly for feed, 74 percent of the grain it used. Twenty-five years ago, Syria was a barley exporter. But in the intervening years, livestock have consumed increasing amounts of the country's grain. Now, despite a phenomenal 1000 percent increase in the land area devoted to producing barley, Syria must import the cereal.
John Robbins spoke before the United Nations in 1994, where he received a standing ovation.
The American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (ASPCA) now encourages vegetarianism, the banning of fur, and the eventual end to all animal research, not just "cruel" animal research. The Humane Society now supports vegetarianism.
With allies in both political parties and across the ideological spectrum, the animal rights movement has been able to score some great successes, regardless of which party controls the White House or Capitol Hill.
In the mid-1990s, Vegetarian Times reported that the animal rights movement is now a permanent part of the American political landscape.
In a 1995 issue of Harmony: Voices for a Just Future, a "consistent ethic" periodical on the religious left, Catholic civil rights actiivists Bernard and Rose Mae Broussard of Starthrowers wrote that wars in the human kingdom will never cease until we end our war on the animal kingdom.
I had the opportunity to hear John Robbins speak at a Unitarian church here in Oakland, CA several years ago. The church was PACKED! John writes in The Food Revolution (2001):
"The revolution sweeping our relationship to our food and our world, I believe, is part of an historical imperative. This is what happens when the human spirit is activated.
"One hundred and fifty years ago, slavery was legal in the United States. One hundred years ago, women could not vote in most states. Eighty years ago, there were no laws in the United States against any form of child abuse. Fifty years ago, we had no Civil Rights Act, no Clean Air or Clean Water legislation, no Endangered Species Act.
"Today, millions of people are refusing to buy clothes and shoes made in sweatshops and are seeking to live healthier and more Earth-friendly lifestyles. In the last fifteen years alone, as people in the United States have realized how cruelly veal calves are treated, veal consumption has dropped 62 percent."
As PETA pamphlets from the '80s used to say, "A nonviolent philosophy begins at breakfast." Factory farming IS diabolical. "Humane slaughter" IS an oxymoron. I commend Bruce and PETA for taking a stand against animal cruelty. To become a vegetarian or a vegan is to carry the campaign against "cruelty to animals" to its logical conclusion.
Certainly we could stand considerably less meat in the average American diet. Even if we do not all go to a 100% Vegan or Vegetarian diet, most Americans eat 10 times more meat than is healthy for them. There is plenty of great healthy food.
Besides the animal rights aspect of this, there is the environmental impact. It takes much less land to grow food for people than it does to grow food for animals for people so the people can then eat the animals.
Humans had to eat meat to survive the last ice age - that when we got started. It's an ancient habit!
It'd be very helpful to members of both the human and animal kingdoms if everyone had the simple facts at hand- that could help them to make more informed decisions.
It would also significantly upset the status quo, requiring meat workers, heart surgeons, & restaurants to find other lines of work.
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Consider that:
1) The human digestive system has everything in common with those of non-canivores animals (horses, bulls, cows) and is characterized by flat teeth and a long intestional tract.
2) The digestive system of carnivores (cats, lions, tigers) have short intestional tracts and sharp teeth.
Putrid, rotting dead animal flesh passes very quickly out of the short intestine of a cat, but it passes very slowly - unnaturally out of the long intestine of human beings.
I believe that most cattle ranchers and people in the dead animal flesh business are republicans who love G.W. Bush.
It seems that most people who are open minded enough to consider all the facts, who reduce or eliminate meat from the diets will feel much better as a result.
http://www.meat.org/
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Any non-organic veggies and vegans who read this - are encouraged to GO ORGANIC and to avoid non-local, heavily processed foods. Stop supporting manufacturers of pesticides, preservatives, and other harmful chemicals!
You deserve organic! It will become the norm.
"Organic farms do not release synthetic pesticides into the environment — some of which have the potential to harm local wildlife.
Organic farms are better than conventional farms at sustaining diverse ecosystems, i.e., populations of plants and insects, as well as animals.
When calculated either per unit area or per unit of yield, organic farms use less energy and produce less waste, e.g., waste such as packaging materials for chemicals."
Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Organic_foods
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PETA has become such a orgazination of freaks, the FBI is monitoring them, considering PETAs connections to the known terrorist organization, the ALF (Animal Liberation Front - the ones that blow things up).
PETA forced R&D to stop on a cure for AIDS, this year, because a dozen monkeys might have died in the testing. 45 Million people thank you for that one PETA.
I just don't get these violent, agressive, cult like PETA people. Let the Humane Society do their work and stop running around stroking the emotions of clueless American housewives, with emotional pictures of cute furry animals.
The more the Left is saturated with PETA Crazy's, like BruceF the Author here, the harder it's going to be to get the Republicans out.
vasurmurti,
Nice essay, but unfortunately you left out the part that many primates (chimps, baboons, etc...) eat meat on a regular basis.
This arguments that say "primates do this, therefore we should be doing it" don't wash as far as I am concerned The premise is wrong.
We humans are free to do what we want. Its all a personal choice. We have to accept that and decide for ourselves how we want to treat our bodies.
IF a person is a logical sort, he or she might decided to look at how we are made internally, and make a choice regarding diet:
Argueably fruit, vegetables and grains are very good.
But, as has been already said - meat can be digested as long as it is preserved and cooked properly.
Therefore the "health" arguement (be vegetarian because its healthier) seems to be questionable.
To say that "I am a vegetarian and I feel better" is fine for you. I know people who have lived to be over 90 and ate a traditional diet and I would argue clean air and water is what did it.
Anyway I look at it, the root thinking of this article, and most of the radical vegan responses, is purely religious in nature. It has all the markers:
1) an absolute certainty that "I am right and everyone else is wrong"
2) absolute intolerance for anyone holding a contrary view.
3) an urge to go out to the "unconverted" and preach how killing all animals is wrong and that eating no meat is healthier.
What scares me is what could come next. Radical religious type belief systems are responsible for most of the genocide, wars and destruction on this earth.
http://www.themeatrix.com/
This is a huge and loaded topic but not as simple on many fronts as presented by vegans. I am also, as the author is, deeply concerned with all these issues but let me make a few basic points:
1. It is absolutely true that cruelty that is extended to animals in our food system is unexcusable and appalling but...
2. If we talk about sustainable food production shucking corn will not do. A sustainable farm production can be only accomplished with a combination of small mixed, synergistic farms that always involve livestock and pastures. Animals have been and always be part of the cycle of food production. And if you look at vast areas of semi-arid land as Canadian prairies, they will best produce food if returned to their original pasture state.
3. Healthy indigenous cultures always had their special dense foods that were absolutely essential for their health and for producing strong, healthy children. These were always of animal origin, just check Weston Price Foundation, it is an eye opener. It is hard to deny the presented findings, even by vegans. http://www.westonaprice.org/index.html
4. It is true that most of us cannot even watch slaughter (I admit, I can't). But this is more about our alienation from reality than any inborn reactions. For those who farm the traditional way, this is absolutely no issue and they are not cruel people who most often show great respect and appreciation of their livestock. We just lost it.
5. The whole Nature is about one species eating another. Sure, some eat only plants but that is not the point because our biological makeup makes our omnivorous and not plant eaters.
What is missing from our food picture is RESPECT for animals. A difficult thing to find in our hearts if we hardly have respect for other people. Isn't it true that since these animals are in our care, we owe them good life? Not necessary long (the motion that any individual life must be extended at any price is our cultural invention), but good.
There are some ethical options for meat eaters, I think. Is it wrong to eat meat from an animal that spent its whole healthy life on pasture, capable of displaying its natural behaviours and then humanly slaughtered (possibly by a mobile slaughter plant)?
Each one of us may start the process with making such commitment. It may not be perfect solution but we don't live in a perfect world. And there is one more thing. There is a difference between eating meat as a special food that has our high respect and loading in hamburgers twice a day.
Get more interested with food options that may be present or you may help to build with small scale local pastured livestock. You may not only address your ethical concerns regarding animal welfare but help building lifeboats for the future in even more important aspects of our lives (localization of food supply, sustainable agriculture, helping survive the very few real farmers that are still left, etc.) Never mind eating truly healthy foods to help your own health. But connection of all these issues with our dear health is another story. One even bigger and less understood.
If Bruce Friedrich would confine his remarks to the proper treatment of animals and stop the ridulous nonsense that we do not need meat and we are eating dead corpses he mught get farther. I guess all seafood and birds are off limits also.I have raised both grain and cattle all of my life and took the best care of animals under my control. It is unfortunate that factory farms have come into existence both for the animals and also for the people that can no longer take care of them the way nature intended. We cannot stop all cruelty however as when one animal, bird, or fish eats another it is not a pretty sight. His efforts for ethical treatment are proper concerns but let`s not disrespect people who raise animals for food and include meat in their diet. I would personally rather raise grain to feed animals for food than for supplying fuel for large gas guzzling vehicles. Those vegetables we love are also dead after they are harvested for food so maybe we should all exist on some kind of power packed artificial pills. The world is a violent place and we should first concern ourselves with proper treatment of humans, and secondly with doing what we can for the animals well-being. It is not ethical to have many people including children without enough food of any kind to eat, much less a good balanced diet.
Oh ffs, don't you people understand that plants are living beings too? It's been shown time and time again that plants have some reaction to what we would consider suffering, but because they don't have eyes to look into like we do, it just doesn't matter? Foolish, that's as human-centric of a concept as any cattle ranch.
Us higher order life forms MUST consume OTHER LIVING THINGS to survive? Is it fair? Irrelevant, complain to nature if you don't like it, but I can't find a suggestion box.
It's like xenophobia, we don't give a shit about the plants because they are too different from us to matter. We can only care about the animals because they are enough like us to build and empathy bond, but that bond is hallow if you don't realize it's only there because they are similar enough to us and wouldn't be if were were built differently.
In short, if you REALLY feel that you cannot cause any suffering through your food consumption, start eating rocks, and hope you find one that magically is able to sustain you, because you're BUILT to destroy life in order to sustain your own. I'm sorry to be so blunt about it, but it's the absolute truth.
so, if i understand, i can only be a vegetarian by subscribing to Bruce Friedrich's way of thinking.
If killing animals is the objection then why does the author mention eggs and milk (and I assume milk products like cheese) along with meat??
As expected-irrational defensive responses from the meat eaters who claim to be for social justice.
Here's the reality:
A)You cannot feed 6 billion people with livestock unless they are locked up in factory farms. Creating new pasture lands and new water supplies for tens of billions of livestock aint gonna do unless you love deforestation and wildlife destruction(look what happened to wolves and buffalo thanks to ranching). Its basic math.
B)Saying animals have always been a part of food production is erroneous--by such reasoning we should just accept child abuse-it has always existed too-as long as humans breed we will have people beating their children. Ditto for war.
C)Traditional farms are cruel. Factory farming didnt exist in Tolstoy's day--in fact--he was a hunter so he understood killing better than most. Killing when you dont have to is cruel. Period.
D)Healthy indigenous cultures--the noble savage myth. Plains indians used to drive herds of buffalo off cliffs-the term buffalo jump comes from this--and leave them crippled to die. They only took what they needed. The Makah whalers kept human slaves--and forced them to do dangerous fin tying. Please--lets get rid of this romantic notion that somehow everything was paradise back then. Just because one group of humans came along and exploited another group of humans doesnt mean the group being exploited were saints.
E) You cannot respect animals when you kill them by choice not need.
F) Plants are alive--but what about fruit? Ever hear of fruitarianism? You dont need to kill plants to be a healthy non meat eater--but for the sake of argument--let's say its unavoidable--so we have to kill something to survive. So by your dubious logic--since we cant avoid some form of killing we shouldnt even try right? We should just eat animals too? But why stop there?
Humans have been preying on other humans for just as long as we have been eating other animals--so why try to curb that natural behaviour too? its part of the Natural order just as much as meat eating is and you cannot prove otherwise. Rape, homocide, theft, child abuse, war--its all natural too.
This is what destroys the human supremacist-"meat eating is ethical" argument.
It nukes it.
Because...Racial and religious supremacists use the same reasoning as human supremacists--they believe their group as they define it is superior to all others--based on arbitrary standards of value conveniently determined by them--who stand to benefit from the discrimination. White supremacists believe christian whites are better than other groups--according to God and nature.
But human supremacists are saying--hey! Dont discriminate based on race or religion! Do it on the basis of dna--because that's what really matters. But that's just as arbitrary as skin colour. Nature doesnt care--the universe doesnt regard humans as superior--if we were--then volcanos would surely not be able to spew lava onto us--and sharks would get paralyses when they try to bite a human swimmer--because our superiority would have to be obvious--inherent--demonstrable in Nature. But it isnt.
Human supremacists dont want to accept REALITY--that humans preying on other humans is natural--but they whine like babies when it is pointed out that they are just as mortal as other life--and this idea of Lower" and "higher" lifeforms is a laugh--we all die dont we? I doubt very much a maggot tastes the difference between a PHD and a high school drop out.
Being vegetarian is simply taking a more consistent form of ethics to its natural conclusion--trying to be as compassionate and as fair as possible as opposed to the alternative--which is serial killer anti-social selfishness. Which most people would not support. Its practical ethics.
The "humane" meat movement is dangerous--because it is similar to what you have with cockfighting. imagine if someone said we shouldnt try to ban cockfighting--we should instead try to develop spurs that are less sharp so the roosters dont hurt themsevles as much when they are forced to fight each other(another byproduct of livestock agriculture along with rodeos and bullfights--all examples of respecting nature according to their supporters).
One thing Friederich has wrong though--the biggest problem with "humane" meat is the word humane, which is a human supremacist term. It implies that being kind and good is a "human" quality--while suggesting that to be wicked is inhumane--or nonhuman. Just another example of infantile human arrogance--humans are the most wicked animals on the planet. I have never heard of cats creating arenas to watch other cats playing with mice. Compare that to what they did in the Roman Colliseum--where you could watch people being forced to fight each other--men, women, children, blind people. When it comes to cruelty humans are definitely the best at it.
Meat eating will only stop en masse when humans have destroyed the ecology to the point where they cannot sustain it. But the plus side is that war and child abuse and other forms of human vs human injustice will continue as well--because Nature doesnt play favorites. Some humans may want to deny they are part of Nature--but as Poe wrote, the play is the tragedy man, its hero, the Conqueror Worm.
Every possible argument on this topic can be found here:
http://animalvegfaq.tripod.com
Bobus August 4th, 2007 12:41 pm
2. If we talk about sustainable food production
Although I regret to admit that I have not yet been able to convert to veganism I must take issue.
Raising cattle for consumption is a non sequitur. It produces negative returns in all but financial profit. It is another example of the very few profiting at the expense of the many.
kelmer August 4th, 2007 2:21 pm
Completely agree.
Thanks for the link.
Within the balance of the Natural World predation is necessary to prevent overpopulation. But human greed is grossly OVERpopulating and destroying this biosphere Earth nobody can live without. It is suicidal madness.
I agree with kelmer as well. "Indigenous people" are not an example to follow. I've been a vegetarian my whole life and a vegan for seven years; it is what is best for the environment, best for land usage, and best for my own health. We need to grow our food directly in beautiful gardens and orchards, not fill vast amounts of land wastefully with dull grass.
When I was a little child, I thought chickens and other species were delightful creatures. I have been a vegetarian for over two years now. Once in a blue moon I have a corn dog, but that's only because I can't find a vegetarian hot dog that tastes good. I feel a bit guilty afterwards.
I've read that if people would quit eating meat, wars would cease. It seems we absorb the anger from being killed from the animal's flesh after we eat it. Meat eaters are more aggressive than vegetarians, I've heard.
If not eating meat would prevent war, I'm for it.
Let me respond to some of the comments placed by the holy warriors for veganism and against meat eaters
- The last thing needed is to accuse each other when we share, I hope, some very basic concerns. This is all about finding some sense in this world that is so utterly screwed up. The truth is that there are no good solutions, which makes any discussion of the well-intended so difficult.
- Feeding the 6 billion (more than that, we are growing). Yah, we heard that many times. A good idea only entirely unrealistic. Three points about it:
1. The first law of ecology is that the more food is there, the higher is the population of a species. Works like a charm on the human example. More food is not solution and most of us who have any interest in these topics must know it by now.
2. Roughly 80% of us are made from oil (so to speak) and excessively mined soil nutrients by the oil-based food system. When oil goes, so must people. Absolutely cruel, unthinkable but simple logic. Even if anyone switched to vaganism, how much longer will this last? It is just the matter of timing and not of principle.
3. Just realize what has been happening when so many of the "feed the world" advocates so quickly embraced biofuels. Having a choice of driving the car or "feeding the world" what are we choosing? In this context is driving a car or living at our level of consumption ethical?
- All advocates of eating only plant food indirectly endorse our mono-culture industrial agriculture that have been doing ecocide of all various ecosystems and effectively heading towards global destruction. It is not so simple to eat soy and corn products and feel good about it. It is a much bigger issue.
- A statement that all livestock production doesn't make sense from a larger human or ecological perspective is clearly wrong. Surely, the whole industrial system of grain-fed intensive livestock production is. But animals have always been part of any eco-system and praries would not be prairies if not for bison being part of it. It is just the matter how one grazes and how many animals can be raised without damagind ecosystem. Please, don't put it all into one bag.
- Indigenous people. Response didn't refer to what I wrote. Please, pay attention. This was not about ethics of killing animals but about what was central to their life sustaining diets. But when contemplating the cruelty of pre-civilization people, let's remember that the cruelty and pain was differently seen in their cultures then it is in ours (the only one right culture!). They personally were ready to accept much more pain than anybody of us ever would. These were much different cultures that need to be seen in their entirety with objective perspective. But it is not about arguing about their cultures. It is about the place of animals in our biologically defined diets.
When I was a boy my father required me to behead a chicken for dinner, a job I detested more than any other; but he thought it was a natural part of my education. Instead, in later life, I decided to give the animals a break and henceforth refused to pay anyone to do the dirty work necessary to put a tasty burger or fried chicken on my plate - and my health immediately improved as well as my peace of mind.
This article is very well argued; it's unreal to me that progressives are not vegans, at least in the first world. This article is good, but I'm even more taken with the environmental argument. It's worth noting that if you are really worried about killing plants, you'd do them a favor by eating them directly, rather than by cycling them through animals--it takes 20 calories of dead plants to get 1 calore from a dead animal, which is the ultimate in wastefulness.
The vast majority of the calories consumed by a chicken, pig, cow, or other animal goes into keeping that animal alive, and once you also add to that the calories required to create the bits of the animal that we don't eat (bone, feathers, blood), you find that it takes about 20 calories of feed into an animal to get one calorie back out in the form of edible fat or muscle. That is, it's twenty times more efficient to eat the grains, soy, or oats directly, rather than to feed them to farmed animals so that we can eat those animals.
Can you imagine ever, even once, taking 19 plates of spaghetti or 19 bowls of rice and tossing them in the trash? That's what eating meat represents—it's like throwing away 19 units of food for every unit you consume. By definition, someone who does this is not an environmentalist.
But it gets worse: E, the respected environmental magazine, noted in 2002 that more than one-third of all fossil fuels produced in the United States are used to raise animals for food. Think about the fossil fuel required to get dead chickens, pigs, or other animals to the table: (1) to grow massive amounts of corn, grain, and soy (with all the required tilling, irrigation, crop dusters, and so on); (2) to transport (on gas-guzzling, pollution spewing 18-wheelers) all that grain and soy to feed manufacturers; (3) to operate the feed mill (these use massive amounts of resources); (4) to truck the feed to the factory farms; (5) to operate the factory farms; (6) to truck the animals many miles to slaughter; (7) to operate the slaughterhouse; (8) to truck the meat to processing plants; (9) to operate the meat processing plants; (10) to truck the meat to grocery stores; (11) to keep the meat in the refrigerator or frozen section of the stores. Every single stage involves heavy pollution, massive amounts of greenhouse gases, massive amounts of energy, and so on. Obviously, vegan foods require some of this as well, but vegan foods cut out the factory farms, the slaughterhouses, and multiple stages of heavily polluting tractor-trailer trucks, and all the resources (and pollution) represented at each of those stages.
The so-called environmentalist who sneers at the person in the massive SUV is, if he eats meat, doing far more damage to the ozone layer than an entire fleet of SUVs.
In another thread, somebody said that HWB was worried about overpopulation. If that's true, to his credit he realized there was a problem there. He's however guilty by association when he doesn't tell his son that there are more humane ways of birth control than killing people.
entelechy
i think your father is to be commended. he taught you well and you made an informed decision.
Half the water consumed in the U.S. goes to irrigate land growing feed and fodder for livestock. Huge amounts of water are also used to wash away their excrement. U.S. livestock produce 20 times as much excrement as does the entire human population; creating sewage which is ten to several hundred times more concentrated than raw domestic sewage. Animal wastes cause ten times more water pollution than does the U.S. human population; the meat industry causes three times as much harmful organic water pollution than the rest of the nation's industries combined.
Meat producers are the number one industrial polluters in the nation, contributing to half the water pollution in the United States. The water that goes into a 1,000 pound steer could float a destroyer. It takes 25 gallons of water to produce a pound of wheat, but 2,500 gallons to produce a pound of meat. If these costs weren't subsidized by the American taxpayers, the cheapest hamburger meat would be $35 per pound!
The burden of subsidizing the California meat industry costs taxpayers $24 billion. Livestock producers are California's biggest consumers of water. Every tax dollar the state doles out to livestock producers costs taxpayers over seven dollars in lost wages, higher living costs and reduced business income. Seventeen western states have enough water supplies to support economies and populations twice as large as the present.
Overgrazing of cattle leads to topsoil erosion; turning once-arable land into desert. We lose four million acres of topsoil each year, and 85 percent of this loss is directly caused by raising livestock. To replace lost soil, we're chopping down our forests. Since 1967, the rate of deforestization in the U.S. has been one acre every five seconds. For each acre cleared in urbanization, seven are cleared for grazing or growing livestock feed.
If the world population triples in the next 100 years, and meat consumption continues, then meat production would have to triple as well. Instead of 3.7 billion acres of cropland and 7.5 billion acres of grazing land, we would require 11.1 billion acres of cropland and 22.5 billion acres of grazing land.
But this is slightly larger than the total land area of the six inhabited continents! We are already desperately short of forests, topsoil, groundwater and energy.
Nor can fish provide any help here. There are signs that the fishing industry (which is already quite energy intensive) has already overfished the oceans in several areas. And fish could never play a major role in the world's diet anyway; the entire global fish catch of the world, if divided among all the world's inhabitants would only amount to a few ounces of fish per person per week.
In short, the idea of feeding everyone on a meat-centered diet is absurd. Even if we resort to extreme methods of population control: abortion, infanticide, genocide, etc...modest increases in the world population would make it impossible to maintain current levels of meat consumption. On a vegetarian diet, however, the world could easily support a population several times its present size. The world's cattle alone consume enough to feed over 8.7 billion humans.
jbs,
Yes.
There are lots of meat eaters working hard in the human rights arena, who are in my view - far more useful to our slowly awakening society than some of the vegetarians who sit at their house all day self absorbed, contemplating their navals.
Progressives must stick together, no matter what they eat or believe. If all the meat eating progressives changed their ideals and goals, we would probably loose 50% or more of our numbers and many of the hardest working and most productive people.
I know a lot of good people who eat dead animal flesh everyday. I haven't in over a decade. It'd be great if everyone realized all the good reasons not to eat animal flesh, but there are some (arguably) more important issues - like stopping political corruption, war, racism, & poverty. The animal rights issues must be dealt with, but I think they'll be worked out quickly after or as, the other more important (in my view) issues are worked out.
If you're standing against political corruption, war, and poverty, that's good enough for me, and I WILL stand in solidarity with you, regardless of what you eat or believe. First things first!
Peace on Earth - Goodwill to ALL!
-----------------------------------
"What comes out of our mouths is far more
important that what goes into them."
Alice Bailey
-a tough issue to speak of in black and white.
Kelmer has 'the reality', Neomunk possesses the 'absolute truth'. -Thanks to Bobus for a reasonable response to an emotional argument.
The Omnivore's Dilemma, by Michael Pollan is the best book I've read on this topic for some time. Fast Food Nation, and Reefer Madness by Eric Schlosser were interesting as well.
Factory farms, at least those that I've seen in Texas are nightmarish specters. But haven't most of our farms become factories? How many calories of petroleum are required to produce a calorie of food on your plate? Who or what was displaced to grow/raise it? How far was it transported? Erosion? Pollution?
Trying to claim ethical righteousness on food issues is a stretch in America and most of the developed world.
How many farms or farmers are you familiar with?
Start there. Location,location,location.
If vegetarianism does not appeal to you on ethical grounds, perhaps it SHOULD appeal on the grounds of food safety. I quit eating meat 17 years ago on the grounds that, if I couldn't kill it (and I can't), I shouldn't eat it (so I don't). I can't say that it was an easy transition for me and I did it cold turkey (so to speak) so that I wouldn't continue on like smokers having just one more cigarette.
In the last ten years, I have been so pleased that I made that decision to quit eating meat. Not just because of the ethical concerns (from which I feel absolutely no fulfilling, satisfaction, interestingly), but for HEALTH reasons. The first time I heard of people dying from E. Coli, I thought it was a bit scary. Since then, it has become, at the very least, an annual event. The meat industry has been deregulated to such an extent that it is not SAFE to eat meat, anymore. At least not the common, grocery store variety. E. Coli won't kill most adults, but it will easily kill children and the elderly. And you ought to read the long term impact on the health of even healthy adults who get a good dose of it. It is chilling.
Of course, E. Coli is nothing compared to the horror of Mad Cow disease. And the meat industry has shown its indifference on this issue. Its unwillingness to make even the most obvious changes that could prevent an outbreak of this terrible illness. The meat industry will not react until there is a human casualty from this disease and by then there will be an untold number of victims waiting to express the illness. Because, in humans, it can take up to 20 years to show up. No cure, of course. Nothing to do but wait to see if you are one of the time bombs. And, if you believe that the government is keeping your meat safe, you had better look at the inspection process since the deregulation bonanza that was Ronald Reagan.
My concern with meat these days is that it is finding its way to the vegetarian diet. That the impact of E. Coli is spreading to vegetarian foods, such as the spinach outbreak. Factory farms poison animals and then allow those animals to spread the poison onto vegetables destined for our dinner tables. Of course, the inspection process is no better for vegetables than meat, so the only solution seems to be less meat production to decrease the odds of infected cows defecating on my dinner :-) Or, of course, the option that I have chosen: Buy Local. I know the people who grow my food, most of the time, and I know how they treat the animals (if any) that share their farms. I know who to turn to if there is a problem. I know that my voice will have an impact in the way they farm, because I am a significant part of their market rather than a nameless statistic for a factory farm.
It takes about 1/16 the space to produce a vegetarian diet as it does a meat diet. It is the healthiest thing for the planet. There is no way around that logic. Yes, we have the teeth of omnivores and it is our history to go either, or both, ways on diet. Yes, humans have long depended on animals, but that certainly doesn't mean we HAVE to. Tradition versus a sustainable future.
www.unknown-arts.org/politics
Almost everyone still confuses two different things:
1) principles behind eating animal products which need to be debated on the basis of our health, ethics, livestock as a part of sustainable farm, etc. and
2) deadly flaws of our industrial food system and particularly raising livestock and processing meat (industrial milk is even worse than meat - for animal welfare and our health).
For anyone progressive and doing her/his own thinking there should be no question that there is hardly anything acceptable about industrial food system until you are mostly interested with cheap food (or, what is called food), convenience and artificial taste. But when it comes to the first question, the story is not so simple. Let's at least admit it. Animal welfare accusations apply fully to the industrial food system but, let's say is it equally clear for animals humanely raised on farms, slaughter in the field for farmer own consumption? You are not a farmer and choices are very limited but that doesn't change the point.
Mainstream propaganda is somehow ingrained in our blood, even when we don't want to admit it or are not aware of it. We might clear it from our bloodstream in one area, but still not in others. For instance, where from do you know that eating soy and industrial plant oils is good for you? Do you know who and how presented this information to you? We need to beware of origins of all such information. But, on the other hand the uncompromised position of well-intended vegetarians is also one sided. I can say that as I was living both ways and understand well both positions and their arguments. But the more I understood, the more it seemed that the mainstream is wrong, for sure, but the vegatarian/vegan position is incomplete, missing some very important points. Yet, if someone wants to eat such diet it needs to be respected but please, don't tell me how much you are right and how much I am wrong. This is way too complex to be so simple.
right on, bruce. thank you!
Barbara Kingsolver's latest book "Animal, Vegetable, Miracle" hits on a lot of the same themes as Michael Pollan's "The Omnivore's Dilemma." Both would be a good read for the hardcore vegetarian/vegans in the room.
"The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way it treats its animals."
~Gandhi~
"As long as there are slaughterhouses, there will be battlefields."
~Tolstoy~
Flesh-eating only makes "sense" if one assumes humans are a naturally carnivorous or omnivorous species. This assumption must first be questioned. My scientific training is in Physics and Applied Mathematics (the square root of 69 is 8 something!). I admit I only hold Bachelor's degrees from UC San Diego. Here is what my research on the subject tells me:
John Robbins, in his Pulitzer Prize nominated, Diet for a New America, writes that the populations consuming the highest levels of animal flesh--the Eskimos, Laplanders, Greenlanders and Russian Kurgi tribes--also have life expectancies averaging about 30 years. Nor can such a short lifespan be attributed to harsh climate. The Russian Caucasians and Yucatan Indians, for example, live mostly on vegetarian foods and have life expectancies of 90 to 100 years.
The populations with the longest lifespans include the Vilacambans of Ecuador, the Abhikasians of the former USSR, and the Hunzas of Pakistan. The most remarkable feature of all these people is that they live almost entirely on plant foods. The Hunzas, for example, eat a diet that is 98.5 percent plant food.
Human beings differ completely from the naturally carnivorous species such as wolves or tigers. Carnivores have a very short digestive tract--thrice the length of their bodies--to rapidly consume and excrete decaying flesh. Their urine is highly acidic and they possess hydrochloric stomach acid strong enough to dissolve muscle tissues and bones. Because they are night hunters who sleep during the day, carnivores don't sweat. They perspire through their tongue. Their jaws can only move up and down and their teeth are long and pointed, in order to cut through tendons and bones.
The carnivores are quadrupeds with keen eyesight and sense of smell. They possess not only the necessary speed to overtake their prey but also have sharp retractable claws which enable them to pull their victims to the ground and hold them fast.
The anatomy of natural omnivores, such as the bear or raccoon, is almost identical to that of the carnivores, except they possess a set of molars to chew the plant foods that they eat.
Herbivorous creatures such as sheep and cattle have a digestive tract 30 times the length of their bodies; they have several stomachs, which allows them to break down cellulose--something humans are unable to do. This is why we can't graze or live on grass. The urine and saliva of the herbivores are alkaline, and their saliva contains ptyalin for the predigestion of starches.
The frugivores (gorillas, chimpanzees and other primates) have intestinal tracts twelve times the length of the body, clawless hands and alkaline urine and saliva. Their diet is mostly vegetarian, occasionally supplemented with carrion, insects, etc.
Flesh-eating animals lap water with their tongue, whereas vegetarian animals imbibe liquids by a suction process. Humans are classified as primates and are thus frugivores possessing a set of completely herbivorous teeth. Our urine and saliva are alkaline, and our saliva contains ptyalin for the predigestion of starches.
Proponents of the theory that humans should be classified as omnivores note that human beings do, in fact, possess a modified form of canine teeth. However, these so-called "canine teeth" are much more prominent in animals that traditionally never eat flesh, such as apes, camels, and the male musk deer.
It must also be noted that the shape, length and hardness of these so-called "canine teeth" can hardly be compared to those of true carnivorous animals. A principle factor in determining the hardness of teeth is the phosphate of magnesia content. Human teeth usually contain 1.5 percent phosphate of magnesia, whereas the teeth of carnivores are composed of nearly 5 percent phosphate of magnesia. It is for this reason they are able to break through the bones of their prey, and reach the nutritious marrow.
Linneaus, who introduced binomial nomenclature (naming plants and animals according to their physical structure) wrote: "Man's structure, external and internal, compared with that of other animals, shows that fruit and succulent vegetables constitute his natural food."
Dr. F. A. Pouchet, wrote: "It has been truly said that Man is frugivorous. All the details of his intestinal canal and above all else his dentition, prove it in the most decided manner."
One of the most famous anatomists, Baron Cuvier, wrote: "The natural food of man, judging from his structure, appears to consist principally of the fruits, roots, and other succulent parts of vegetables. His hands afford him every facility for gathering them; his short but moderately strong jaws on the other hand, and his canines being equal only in length to the other teeth, together with his tuberculated molars on the others, would scarcely permit him either to masticate herbage, or to devour flesh, were these condiments not previously prepared by cooking."
The poet Shelley, in his essay, "A Vindication of a Natural Diet", wrote:
"Comparative anatomy teaches us that man resembles the frugivorous animals in everything, the carnivorous in nothing...It is only by softening and disguising dead flesh by culinary preparation that it is rendered susceptible of mastication or digestion, and that the sight of its bloody juices and raw horror does not excite loathing and disgust...
"Man resembles no carnivorous animal. There is no exception, unless man be one, to the rule of herbivorous animals having cellulated colons. The orang-outang is the most anthropomorphic (man-like) of the ape tribe, all of whom are strictly frugivorous.
"There is no other species of animals which live on different foods in which this analogy exists...The structure of the human frame then, is that of one fitted to a pure vegetable diet in every essential particular."
Professor William Lawrence wrote: "The teeth of man have not the slightest resemblance to those of the carnivorous animals, excepting that their enamel is confined to the external surface. He possesses, indeed, teeth called canine; but they do not exceed the level of others, and are obviously unsuited to the purposes which the corresponding teeth execute in carnivorous animals. Thus we find, whether we consider the teeth and jaws, or the immediate instruments of digestion, that the human structure closely resembles that of the apes, all of whom, in their natural state, are completely herbivorous (frugivorous)."
Professor Charles Bell wrote: "It is, I think, not going too far to say that every fact connected with the human organisation goes to prove that man was originally formed a frugivorous animal. This opinion is derived principally from the formation of his teeth and digestive organs, as well as from the character of his skin and the general structure of his limbs."
Professor Richard Owen wrote: "The apes and monkeys, whom man nearly resembles in his dentition, derive their staple food from fruits, grain, the kernel of nuts, and other forms in which the most sapid and nutritious tissues of the vegetable kingdom are elaborated; and the close resemblance between the quadrumanous and the human dentition shows that man was, from the beginning, adapted to eat the fruit of the tree of the garden."
"Man, by nature, was never made to be a carnivorous animal," wrote John Ray, FRS, "nor is he armed for prey or rapine, with jagged and pointed teeth, and claws to rend and tear; but with gentle hands to gather fruit and vegetables, and with teeth to chew and eat them." According to Dr. Spenser Thompson, "Comparative anatomy and structure of modern man indicate fresh fruit and vegetables as the main food of man."
In The Natural Diet of Man, Dr. John Harvey Kellogg observes: "Man is neither a hunter nor a killer. Carnivorous animals are provided with teeth and claws with which to seize, rend, and devour their prey. Man possesses no such instruments of destruction and is less qualified for hunting than is a horse or a buffalo. When a man goes hunting, he must take a dog along to find the game for him, and must carry a gun with which to kill his victim after it has been found. Nature has not equipped him for hunting."
According to Dr. Kellogg, "The statement that man is omnivorous is made without an atom of scientific support...As a matter of fact, man is not naturally omnivorous, but belongs, as long ago pointed out by Cuvier, to the frugivorous class of animals along with the chimpanzee and other anthropoids.
"The hog is a truly omnivorous animal. Although he thrives best upon a diet of grass or clover, tender shoots, seeds, and succculent roots, he will eat animal flesh, raw or cooked, with avidity when hungry, and he does not hesitate to regale himself upon carrion, after his taste has been cultivated in this direction.
"Man is not omnivorous. He cannot subsist upon grass or raw grain. Taking his food from the hand of Nature, without the aid of cookery, he must confine his dietary to fruits, nuts, soft grains, tender shoots, and succulent roots...It is true he can acquire an appetite for meat, especially when cooked, but practically all animals can do the same. Hunters sometimes teach their horses to eat broiled venison and cows have been taught to eat fish with avidity. Du Chaillu found in the Island of Magero...that sheep and goats were fed daily on fish both raw and cooked."
Dr. Kellogg insists, however, that "cookery is no part of Nature's biologic scheme, and hence the fact that man is able to eat and digest cooked meat is no more evidence that he is carnivorous or omnivorous that the fact that he can eat and digest cooked corn is evidence that he is to be classified with graminivourous animals, like the horse, which are eaters of raw grains.
"The bill of fare which wise Nature provides for man in forest and meadow, orchard and garden, a rich and varied menu, comprises more than 600 edible fruits, 100 cereals, 200 nuts, and 300 vegetables--roots, stems, buds, leaves and flowers.... Fruits and nuts, many vegetables--young shoots, succulent roots, and fresh green leaves....are furnished by Nature ready for man's use."
Dr. Kellogg further notes that "the human liver is incapable of converting uric acid into urea," and this is "an unanswerable argument against the use of flesh foods as part of the dietary of man. Uric acid is a highly active tissue poison...The livers of dogs, lions, and other carnivorous animals detoxicate uric acid by converting it into urea, a substance which is much less toxic, and which is much more easily eliminated by the kidneys.
"Flesh foods are not the best nourishment for human beings and were not the food of our primitive ancestors," observes Dr. Kellogg. "There is nothing necessary or desirable for human nutrition to be found in meats or flesh foods which is not found in and derived from vegetable products."
Zoologist Desmond Morris makes a case for vegetarianism in his 1967 book, The Naked Ape: "It could be argued that, since our primate ancestors had to make do without a major meat component in their diets we should be able to do the same. We were driven to become flesh eaters only by environmental circumstances, and now that we have the environment under control, with elaborately cultivated crops at our disposal, we might be expected to return to our ancient feeding patterns."
In The Human Story, edited by Marie-Louise Makris (1985), we read: "...recent studies of their teeth reveal that the Australopithecines did not eat meat as a regular part of their diet, and were mainly peaceful vegetarians, rather like chimps or gorillas. The popular image of the murderous ape is now as extinct as the Australopithecines themselves."
Dr. Gordon Latto notes that carnivorous and omnivorous animals can only move their jaws up and down, and that omnivores "have a blunt tooth, a sharp tooth, a blunt tooth, a sharp tooth--showing that they were destined to deal both with flesh foods from the animal kingdom and foods from the vegetable kingdom...
"Carnivorous mammals and omnivorous mammals cannot perspire except at the extremity of the limbs and the tip of the nose; man perspires all over the body. Finally, our instincts; the carnivorous mammal (which first of all has claws and canine teeth) is capable of tearing flesh asunder, whereas man only partakes of flesh foods after they have been camouflaged by cooking and by condiments.
"Man instinctively is not carnivorous," explains Dr. Latto. "...he takes the flesh food after somebody else has killed it, and after it has been cooked and camouflaged with certain condiments. Whereas to pick an apple off a tree or eat some grain or a carrot is a natural thing to do; people enjoy doing it; they don't feel disturbed by it. But to see these animals being slaughtered does affect people; it offends them. Even the toughest of people are affected by the sights in the slaughterhouse.
"I remember taking some medical students into a slaughterhouse. They were about as hardened people as you could meet. After seeing the animals slaughtered that day in the slaughterhouse, not one of them could eat the meat that evening."
Author R.H. Weldon writes in No Animal Food:
"The gorge of a cat, for instance, will rise at the smell of a mouse or a piece of raw flesh, but not at the aroma of fruit. If a man can take delight in pouncing upon a bird, tear its still living body apart with his teeth, sucking the warm blood, one might infer that Nature had provided him with a carnivorous instinct, but the very thought of doing such a thing makes him shudder. On the other hand, a bunch of luscious grapes makes his mouth water, and even in the absence of hunger, he will eat fruit to gratify taste."
As far back as 1961, the Journal of the American Medical Association reported that: "A vegetarian diet can prevent 97% of our coronary occlusions." More recently, Wiiliam S. Collens and Gerald B. Dobkens concluded: "Examination of the dental structure of modern man reveals that he possesses all the features of a strictly herbivorous animal. While designed to subsist on vegetarian foods, he has perverted his dietary habits to accept food of the carnivore. It is postulated that man cannot handle carnivorous foods like the carnivore. Herein may lie the basis for the high incidence of arteriosclerotic disease."
Keith Akers in A Vegetarian Sourcebook (1983), responds to the argument that killing animals for food is natural:
"The main problem with this argument is that it does not justify the practice of meat-eating or animal husbandry as we know it today; it justifies hunting. The distinction between hunting and animal husbandry probably seems rather fine to the man in the street, or even to your typical rule-utilitarian moral philosopher. The distinction, however, is obvious to an ecologist. If one defends killing on the grounds that it occurs in nature, then one is defending the practice as it occurs in nature.
"When one species of animal preys on another in nature, it only preys on a very small proportion of the total species population. Obviously, the predator species relies on its prey for its continued survival. Therefore, to wipe the prey species out through overhunting would be fatal. In practice, members of such predator species rely on such strategies as territoriality to restrict overhunting and to insure the continued existence of its food supply.
"Moreover, only the weakest members of the prey species are the predator's victims: the feeble, the sick, the lame, or the young accidentally separated from the fold. The life of the typical zebra is usually placid, even in lion country; this kind of violence is the exception in nature, not the rule.
"As it exists in the wild, hunting is the preying upon isolated members of an animal herd. Animal husbandry is the nearly complete annihilation of an animal herd. In nature, this kind of slaughter does not exist. The philosopher is free to argue that there is no moral difference between hunting and slaughter, but he cannot invoke nature as a defense of this idea.
"Why are hunters, not butchers, most frequently taken to task by the larger community for their killing of animals? Hunters usually react to such criticism by replying that if hunting is wrong, then meat-hunting must be wrong as well. The hunter is certainly right on one point--the larger community is hypocritical to object to hunting when it consumes the flesh of domesticated animals. If any form of meat-eating is justified, it would be meat from a hunted animal."
Finally, even if humans really are omnivores and not frugivores, as some claim (and this claim is subject to dispute: the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine advocates a vegan diet, an end to animal experimentation, etc.), my friend Mareechi Duvvuuri (another Hindu-American!) who once studied sports medicine, pointed out that the diet of natural omnivores is mostly (up to 85 percent) plant food.
If I could only raise all my own food. Industrialization has raised the split between man and animals. 200yrs ago we saw the start of the separation of animals from being at the center of mans existence to being at the farthest outreaches like they are today.
Industrialization also caused food processing to make nutrition-less food in order to fill quota packed for sales with sugars and salts. Almost all grains now, grown with no topsoil, processed to the nth degree, are worthless and indigestible, lacking all natural enzymes. We grew, slaughtered and picked all our own for 200,000 yrs. How can that compare to a stamped out puss bucket of a bloodied corporate chicken? We all just can't eat out anymore, unless you know 'Bill" down the block grew it! Yeah Right!
I'm vegan (for the most part) with a small side of meat. (No sugar treats....O.k. I'm lying but I shouldn't be.) You can be vegan/vegetarian but you will become deficient in some way, I have found out the hard way. Organic is the way and the only way. Work hard, play hard, don't break! It hurts!
To vasumurti: WOW! An amazing and wonderful essay/summary of research! Thank You!
As Yoda says, "Unlearn what you have learned."
Peace
To vasumurti: . . . and human farts smell more like gorilla farts than wolf farts which proves. . . absolutely nothing.
who would have thought so many thoughtful CD/s were vegetarians.However much some of us would like to become vegs,it surely is tilting at windmills in our capatilistic system.We could all eat less meat and drive less etc but the whole world needs to change !if this is to happen.
"You can be vegan/vegetarian but you will become deficient in some way"
Wrong. I've been vegetarian since birth, and have never been deficient in anything. Animal products are not necessary, they are a crutch.
localeater: You failed miserably if your intent was to debunk vasumurti. And to the meat-eaters who say killing a carrot is the same as killing a cow or a human, I commend to you the Great Chain of Being. You may be shocked to learn this, but an animal with a nervous system is a little more alive than a plant without one.
I happen to be reading "The Desperate People" by Farley Mowat today. It's about the Ihalmiut first peoples of the deer in what is now the Hudson Bay region. Without the deer, they starved. Period. Is it wrong for them to eat meat?
While I don't know much about the noble savage idea, I do know they didn't screw up the planet like us vastly superior civilized folk are doing....eating meat or not. And they had a relationship with the life that they took for their own sustenance. Not all meat comes neatly wrapped in a styrofoam carton and plastic. The old ways don't seem too bad to me. A relationship.
30 year life span? Dunno if that's credible or not but who cares? It's not as tho' Eskimos could just pack up and move to Hollywood and the 24 hour a day supermarket.
If this is about right and wrong it's not that simple. Everyone likes a quick black and white answer. Especially if they can come off as morally superior. I'm no exception. I think that's called dogma.
The thing I see in this "conversation" is a complete lack of perspective into the vast array of circumstances that it takes for people to survive in their region. If I live in Hawaii, I can't expect that someone who lives in Duluth Minnesota, should eat mangoes everyday.
Point is. if it's good for you on your land-base it doesn't mean it's good for everyone else on theirs. Also, if it's a healthy diet for you, that doesn't make it a healthy diet for everyone.
There's nobody here arguing for factory farms. That's a no-brainer. Yet I seem to be hearing non-meat eaters reacting as tho' those of us who do eat meat, support Tyson or Foster Farms or some shit. Jeeze. If not eating meat works for you, don't eat meat. If eating meat works for you, then eat meat.
I'm not seeing anyone here saying, "yeah, cut off their beaks, pump 'em full of anti-biotics, overcrowd them, and rinse their feces into the local river, and wrap 'em in non-biodegradable material so that no-one ever thinks it was once alive! Now that's the kinda meal I want!"
Sheesh.
I volunteer on a CSF (community supported farm). I am learning a ton. Like even tho it's organic, it's not good for the land-base. Certain crops would not even exist if it weren't for our intervention. Plus, how about dams? Pretty much all of the farms in my region are irrigated from dams. How is that good for the environment? What do the salmon think of that?
Y'know.....those "savages" might not have been noble, but they sure knew how to forage. That didn't seem to fuck up the landbase either.
Livestock agriculture is far less efficient in its use of land resources than plant food agriculture. This is one of the oldest arguments in favor of vegetarianism. It played a role in Plato's Republic. The poet Percy Bysshe Shelley invoked the argument in his discussions of "natural diet."
Mikkel Hindhede used the argument to help persuade Denmark to adopt a lacto-vegetarian diet when Denmark was blockaded by the Allies as a result of World War I. "If Central Europe had adopted a similar diet," he said, alluding to the disastrous German agricultural policies which emphasized meat production, "I doubt that anyone would have starved."
In her 1971 bestseller, Diet for a Small Planet, author Frances Moore Lappe pointed out that it takes 16 pounds of grain to produce one pound of beef. Most of the arable land in this country is used to grow feed for animals, not people. Mathematics professor Dr. Richard Schwartz, author of Judaism and Vegetarianism, writes about the "insanity" of animal agriculture.
Keith Akers discusses the futility of trying to place the rest of the world on a meat-centered diet in A Vegetarian Sourcebook (1983):
"Much of the land considered potentially arable in South America has low-quality soils and is very difficult to get to. Moreover, any expansion would almost certainly be at the expense of the already rapidly depleting forest areas. The same is true of Africa, where nonforested areas are already experiencing severe competition between grazing and cultivation. In Asia, the Far East, the Near East and Northern Africa, most of the potentially arable land is already under cultivation. So bringing additional land under cultivation is terribly difficult.
"The fact is, most of the easily available land has already been cultivated, and much of the uncultivated remainder could only be brought into cultivation by clearing forest areas, which should be protected. The best land is already taken; why would people cultivate the worst land first?
"Moreover, crop yields in the United States and other Western countries are much higher than in the Soviet Union, Asia and Africa. The 'Green Revolution,' high-yielding crop varieties, and advanced agricultural techniques require a great deal of supporting technology and natural resources which only an industrialized society can provide, or even afford: tractors, irrigation, fertilizers, etc.
"Suppose even these difficulties were overcome. Suppose all this additional land were brought into production, and the technology and fertilizers were provided to bring crop yields up to western standards. Such an agricultural system would hardly survive more than a few years.
"Energy consumption would skyrocket, more than tripling in the less developed countries. Irrigated land presently comprises only 15% of the world's total cropland; but of the new land at least 50% would have to be irrigated. So the demand for water supplies, already overwhelming in much of the world, would increase dramatically.
"Nor can fish provide any help here. There are signs that the fishing industry (which is quite energy-intensive) has already overfished the oceans in several areas. And fish could never play a major role in the world's diet anyway: the entire global fish catch of the world, if divided among all the world's inhabitants, would amount to only a few ounces of fish per person per week.
"In the long run, we are all going to be vegetarians. Doubtless through further exploitation of the environment, we can prolong the period in our history in which we think it is necessary to kill animals for food. But the ecological limitations of this procedure will soon make manifest to all that a vegetarian economy is both necessary and desirable.
"Only a small minority of the world's citizens will ever be able to consume meat at current American levels: the resources to support a more intensive livestock agriculture simply don't exist"
In his book Consuming Passions, Australian philosopher Peter Singer writes:
"The case for vegetarianism is at its strongest when we see it as a moral protest against our use of animals as mere things, to be exploited for our convenience in whatever way makes them most cheaply available to us. Only the tiniest fraction of the tens of billions of farm animals slaughtered for food each year--the figure for the United States alone is nine billion--were treated during their lives in ways that respected their interests. Questions about the wrongness of killing in itself are not relevant to the moral issue of eating meat or eggs from factory-farmed animals, as most people in developed countries do.
"Even when animals are roaming freely over large areas, as sheep and cattle do in Australia, operations like hot-iron branding, castration, and dehorning are carried out without any regard for the animals' capacity to suffer. The same is true of handling and transport prior to slaughter. In the light of these facts, the issue to focus on is not whether there are some circumstances in which it could be right to eat meat, but on what we can do to avoid contributing to this immense amount of animal suffering.
"The answer is to boycott all meat and eggs produced by large-scale commercial methods of animal production, and encourage others to do the same. Consideration for the interests of animals alone is enough justification for this response, but the case is further strengthened by the environmental problems that the meat industry causes...
"Environmentalists are increasingly recognizing that the choice of what we eat is an environmental issue. Animals raised in sheds or on feedlots eat grains or soybeans...To convert eight or nine kilos of grain protein into a single kilo of animal protein wastes land, energy, and water. On a crowded planet with a growing human population, that is a luxury that we are becoming increasingly unable to afford.
"Intensive animal production is a heavy user of fossil fuels and a major source of pollution of both air and water. It releases large quantities of methane and other greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. We are risking unpredictable changes to the climate of our planet...for the sake of more hamburgers. A diet heavy in animal products, catered to by intensive animal production, is a disaster for animals, the environment, and the health of those who eat it."
This one is easy, veggie burgers taste better.
So what's wrong with eating meat? We can obviously see what's wrong with livestock agriculture. Eating meat and raising meat to eat are not the same thing.
If there is a comparrison that is looking for the best way, maybe hunting and gathering is the best. But the best for who? The Earth? Or 6.5 billion humans?
I'm from the perspective that we can't have both. I'll weigh in on the side of the planet.
Hunting gathering- best for the earth. relationships.
Agriculture -good for humans? (the vote is still out) It looks to be horrible for everything not human. And it's arguable that it's good for people.
This ain't a "what form of landbase destuction is better" conversation.
What's more humane? I come in on the side of relationships.
Our manipulation of vegetation to our own ends objectifies that form of life too. There's no relationship other than exploitative.
Friedrich seems to have forgotten that until the rise of agribusiness which occured during the Depression - animals were treated quite humanely and killed in a much more humane way. Now, even the farmer like Joel at Polyface Farms in Staunton Virginia, cannot slaughter his beef without building a facility that is white tile inside and has a special bathroom fro the USDA inspector's use ONLY and has to slaughter 400 head a day before the USDA will approve the use of it. This means that you need to be in agribusoiness to even be allowed to slaughter beef. Not that this is the only meat we should eat, but Friedrich may have also forgotten that it was fat from meats which evolved the human brain to grow larger and become capable of forming groups like PETA. Humans who do not eat meat quickly become unhealthy as well. A balanced diet of fruits meats grains and vegetables with some occasional fungi's is good. The agribusiness treatment of animals is horrid indeed and I would recommend that people get pissed off about it. Read "The Omnivore's Dilemma"
http://www.michaelpollan.com/omnivore.php
and you'll see first hand how there are 2 different food chains that Americans have access to - the industrial and the alternative. The alternative food chains, those which employ older tactics without the use of petro chemical fertilizers, herbicides and insecticides or genetic engineering and steroids; continue to run up against the USDA which is literally in the employ of the likes of ADM, Monsanto, Conagra, & Cargill. I would love to see the people become angry enough to make a change in the way we produce our food. But Mr. Friedman seems to have misplaced his anger for to eat meat is VERY human, and we would not be here had our ancestors not eaten meat.
. . . just got back from 2 1/2 weeks travelling in Northern Ontario . . . think hunting, trapping, fishing . . . not that I do those things. I had a hard time watching a fish die. I have tremendous respect for those who take the full responsibility for skinning, cleaning, cooking, eating what they kill. There is a big difference between sport and supermarket convenience and honouring the animal you have killed. Having said that, I have two Golden Retrievers that I feed a raw meat diet due to allergy issues with kibble -- and even kibble comes from -- you guessed it -- slaughtered farmed animals. On the one hand, I've felt guilty for continuing to support the farming of animals for slaughter through my dogs, but on the other hand, putting the raw meat out twice a day fully mindful of the living creatures who've been sacrificed on behalf of my dogs is perhaps more honest than schlepping out two scoops of kibble without a second thought.
I am reading Barbara Kingsolver's new book right now- I have yet to finish, but so far she has NOT advocated a vegetarian/vegan diet. She is advocating for local, sustainable eating habits i.e. raising your own vegetables, eating locally grown products (including meat).
I would love to see the documentation that states that eating "grains" are good for humans.
...and the last time I checked (.7 seconds ago) I have four sharp teeth.
What about the other species that are NOT quadrapeds (snakes, insects, fish, sharks, whales, primates etc) that eat meat?
I don't believe in causing suffering to any entity- nor do I believe all the other species of the world do, while consuming food (meat).
In our "civilized" world, it isn't an ethical question as far as "should we eat meat" it is "how should we eat meat"?
Things need to change, and there are entities out there trying to change the way people raise, slaughter, buy and eat meat.
Vasurmurti, studying numbers does not equate to a degree in Biology or history so I suggest you research the history of the human diet (and the fact that not just lions and tigers eat meat).
If it is unethical for human beings to eat meat, then is it unethical for a bear, given the fact that a bear COULD live off of berries?
When a lion tackles a zebra on the serengeti, is that unethical or is that nature?
Again "how" we eat meat needs to be addressed. Ask people who study the human body and nutrition, and human behavior and they well tell you that consuming meat is not unhealthy.
And as a side note, I love that we as human beings take no responsibility for the over population of cattle or of human beings.
Wow. Given the number of blog comments, this issue needs more frequent articles and more opportunity to explore the issues.
The issue that I think the author did not mention that is critical is one of energy, thermodynamics and efficiency.
In short, we have a massively unsustainable economy based on finite resources, the primary resource being petroleum. We may already be into the period of 'peak oil' production on a global scale. The end game won't be pretty.
http://www.theoildrum.com/
And meat? It is, if not incredibly cruel, indisputably wasteful. It is, by a FACTOR OF 10, more efficient to eat lower on the food chain, eat plants (grains primarily) directly rather than lose energy (x10) by channeling those calories through animals. And that says NOTHING of the waste of water, the waste of land, and massive burden to the planet's ecology.
Good overview of all the issues:
http://www.sustainabletable.org/issues/
There is no rational reason to eat meat; many rational reasons not to.
There is no charitable reason to eat meat; many charitable reasons not to.
Punk, you're good.
The nutritional advantages of a vegetarian diet are well-known in the American medical community, but are just beginning to gain acceptance in mainstream society. The ethical, nutritional and environmental arguments in favor of vegetarianism have been well documented by author John Robbins in his 1987 Pulitzer Prize nominated book, Diet for a New America, which makes ethical vegetarianism seem as mainstream as recycling.
It's healthier to be a vegetarian. During the period of October 1917 to October 1918, war rationing forced the Danish government to put its citizens on a vegetarian diet. This was a "mass experiment in vegetarianism," with over three million subjects. The results were astonishing. The mortality rate dropped by 34 percent. The very same phenomenon was observed in occupied Norway during the Second World War. After the war, heavy consumption of meat resumed, and the mortality rate shot back up.
The populations consuming the highest levels of animal flesh—the Eskimos, Laplanders, Greenlanders and Russian Kurgi tribes—also have the life expectancies, averaging about 30 years. Nor can such a short lifespan be attributed to harsh climate. The Russian Caucasians and Yucatan Indians, for example, live mostly on vegetarian foods and have life expectancies of 90 to 100 years.
The populations with the longest lifespans include the Vilacambans of Ecuador, the Abhikasians of the former USSR, and the Hunzas of Pakistan. The most remarkable feature of all these people is that they live almost entirely on plant foods. The Hunzas, for example, eat a diet that is 98.5 percent plant food.
Studies done at Yale University by Professor Irving Fisher demonstrated that flesh-eaters have less endurance than vegetarians. A similar study done by Dr. J. Ioteyko of the Academie de Medicine in Paris found that vegetarians have two to three times more stamina than flesh-eaters and they take only one-fifth the time to recover from exhaustion.
In recent years, there has been widespread concern about osteoporosis, which is epidemic in America, especially among older women. The popular myth has been to solve the problem by consuming more calcium. Yet this doesn't attack the root of the problem.
Osteoporosis is caused by excess consumption of protein. Americans overdose on protein, getting 1.5 to 2 times more protein than their bodies can handle. The body can't store excess protein, so the kidneys are forced to excrete it. In doing so, they must draw upon calcium from the bloodstream. This negative calcium balance in the blood is compensated for by calcium loss from the bones: osteoporosis. The calcium lost in the bones of flesh-eaters is 5 to 6 times greater than that lost in the bones of vegetarians.
Excessive protein intake also taxes the kidneys; in America, it is not uncommon to find many over 45 with kidney problems. A strong correlation between excessive protein intake and cancer of the breast, prostate, pancreas and colon has even been observed.
It must be pointed out that meat, fish, and eggs are the most acidic forming foods; heavy consumption of these foods will cause the body to draw upon calcium to restore its pH balance. The calcium lost from the bones gets into one's urine and often crystallizes into kidney stones, which are found in far greater frequency among flesh-eaters than among vegetarians. Studies have found that vegetarians in the United States have less than half the kidney stones of the general population.
The high consumption of saturated fats and cholesterol leads to artherosclerosis—more popularly known as "hardening of the arteries." Plant foods contain zero cholesterol and only palm oil, coconuts and chocolate contain saturated fats. Lowering the cholesterol and fat intake in one's diet lowers the risk of heart disease—America's biggest killer.
As far back as 1961, the Journal of the American Medical Association reported that "A vegetarian diet can prevent 97% of our coronary occlusions." Much has been said about the advantage of polyunsaturated fats as a means of lowering cholesterol in the blood. Unfortunately, this also has the adverse side effect of driving the cholesterol out of the blood and into the colon; contributing to colon cancer. The best way to prevent heart disease is to avoid foods high in fat and cholesterol.
Up to 50 percent of all cancers are caused by diet. Meat and fat intake are primarily responsible. The incidence of colon cancer is high in regions where meat consumption is high and low where meat consumption is minimal. A lack of fiber in the diet also contributes significantly to colon cancer.
It's important to remember that unprocessed plant foods are high in fiber and carbohydrates, while animal flesh has none. The highest incidence of breast cancer occurs among flesh-eating populations; meat eating women have a four times greater risk of developing breast cancer than do vegetarian women. There is also a greater risk of cervical, uterine, and ovarian cancer—all linked to diets high in fat. Men who consume large quantities of animal fat also have a 3.6 times greater risk of getting prostate cancer.
Diabetes is known to be treatable on a low fat, high fiber diet. Incidence of diabetes balloons among populations eating a rich, meat-based diet. Hypoglycemia is caused by the excessive consumption of meats, sugar and fats. Multiple Sclerosis is also treatable on a low-fat diet. MS is prevalent among populations where consumption of animal fats is high and is least common where such consumption is low. A brain tissue analysis of people with MS found a high saturated fat content.
Ulcers occur most frequently in diets which are acid forming, low in fiber and high in fats. Meat, fish, and eggs are the most acid forming of all foods, and animal flesh has no fiber and excess fat. Low fiber, high-fat diets are the principle cause of hemorrhoids and also diverticulosis—which affects 75 percent of Americans over the age of 75. Similarly, 35 percent of Americans are afflicted with some form of arthritis by the age of 35. Over 85 percent of all Americans over age 70 have arthritis, yet it is treatable on a fat free diet.
The United States Public Health Service estimates that some 60 million Americans are overweight. Exercise is helpful, but so is proper diet and nutrition. Foods high in fiber, low in fat and moderate in protein are most conducive to maintaining proper body weight.
Excess cholesterol forms gallstones. Gallstones, as well as gallbladder disease and gallbladder cancer are usually found in people with low-fiber, high cholesterol, high fat diets. Hypertension is virtually unknown in countries where the intake of salts, fat and cholesterol is low. At the University Hospital in Linkoping, Sweden, even severe asthma patients were found to be treatable on a vegetarian diet. Flesh foods in America are also contaminated with coliform bacteria and salmonella. Much healthier alternatives exist.
"I have no doubt that it is part of the destiny
of the human race in its gradual development
to leave off the eating of animals, as surely as
the savage tribes have left off eating each
other when they came into contact with
the more civilized."
---Henry David Thoreau
Some argue that human intelligence has enabled man to transcend his physical limitations and function as a "natural" flesh-eater. If this is true, then we must also classify napalm, poison gas, and nuclear weapons as "natural," too, because they are also products of (misused!) human intelligence. Agriculture and cookery aren't found in nature, either. One might therefore argue if human technology is "natural," then the ethical treatment of animals is equally natural.
"I am the very opposite of an anthropomorphizer," says writer Brigid Brophy. "I don't hold animals superior or even equal to humans. The whole case for behaving decently towards animals rests on the fact that we are the superior species. We are the species uniquely capable of rationality, imagination and moral choice, and that is precisely why we are under obligation to respect the rights of other creatures."
The myth that humans are naturally a predator species remains popular:
"The beast of prey is the highest form of active life," wrote Nazi philosopher Oswald Spengler in 1931. "It represents a mode of living which requires the extreme degree of the necessity of fighting, conquering, annihilating, self-assertion. The human race ranks highly because it belongs to the class of beasts of prey. Therefore we find in man the tactics of life proper to a bold, cunning beast of prey. He lives engaged in aggression, killing, annihilation. He wants to be master in as much as he exists."
The fact that predators exist in the wild does not imply man must automatically imitate them. Cannibalism and rape also occur in nature. Robert Louis Stevenson, in his book, In the South Seas, wrote that there was little difference between the "civilized" Europeans and the "savages" of the Cannibal Islands: "We consume the carcasses of creatures with like appetites, passions, and organs as our own. We feed on babes, though not our own, and fill the slaughterhouses daily with screams of pain and fear."
Moreover, the popular argument that it is 'natural" for us to utilize murdered animals as a source of food does not (ecologically) justify factory farming and raising livestock as we know it today. It justifies hunting. The Native Americans, the Eskimo and other hunter-gatherer tribes have traditionally lived more in harmony with their environment than does modern man in urban civilization.
Vegetarianism is relevant to both our modern world and its religious teachings. The livestock population of the United States today consume enough grain and soybeans to feed over five times the entire human population. American cows, pigs, chicken, sheep, etc. eat up 90 percent of our wheat, 80 percent of our corn, and 95 percent of our oats. Less than half of the harvested agricultural acreage in the United States is used to grow food for human consumption. Most of it is used to grow livestock feed.
In The Wealth of Nations, economist Adam Smith noted the advantages of a vegetarian diet: "It may indeed be doubted whether butcher's meat is anywhere a necessary of life. Grain and other vegetables, with the help of milk, cheese, and butter, or oil, where butter is not to be had, afford the most plentiful, the most wholesome, the most nourishing, and the most invigorating diet. Decency nowhere requires that any man should eat butcher's meat."
Ronald J. Sider of Evangelicals for Social Action, in his 1977 book, Rich Christians in an Age of Hunger, pointed out that 220 million Americans were eating enough food (largely because of the high consumption of grain fed to livestock) to feed over one billion people in the poorer countries.
The realization that meat is an unnecessary luxury, resulting in inequities in the world food supply, has prompted religious leaders in different denominations to call on their members to abstain from meat. Paul Moore, Jr., the Episcopal bishop of the Diocese of New York, made such an appeal in a November 1974 pastoral letter calling for the observance of "meatless Wednesdays."
A similar appeal had previously been issued by Cardinal Cooke, the Roman Catholic archbishop of New York. The Reverend Eugene Carson Blake, former head of the World Council of Churches and founder of Bread for the World, has encouraged everyone in his anti-hunger organization to abstain from eating meat on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays.
"Is this not the fast I have chosen? To loosen
the chains of wickedness, to undo the bonds of
oppression, and to let the oppressed go free?
Is it not to share thy bread with the hungry,
sheltering the oppressed and the homeless?
Clothing the naked when you see them, and
not turning your back on your own?"
---Isaiah 58:6-8
Father Thomas Berry, a Catholic priest, author, and founder of the Riverdale Center for Religious Research in New York, wrote in 1987 that "vegetarianism is a way of life that we should all move toward for economic survival, physical well-being, and spiritual integrity."
I don't think you will find anyone on this site that is for industrial agriculture. Its unethical, cruel, unsustainable, etc. etc....
This author is of the opinion that ANY kind of meat consumption is not to be included in the solution that we are all working towards, searching for.
Moreover, he also mentions eggs and milk products. No animal is killed producing these. And they can be produced humanely, and the animals could die naturally, so what is the problem with these foods?
I cannot understand how a website like this can be such an advocate of free speech, free thought, open society, etc.. etc.. and think that part of an open society is for a small segment of the population to deciede on what everyone can and cannot eat.
Moreover, the criteria of what is not acceptable to eat is solely based on a personal moral outlook that basicly consists of the following principles:
-insects, worms, dogs, cats, thistle bushes, horses, chimps humans, whales, all being "alive" are morally equal.
-to kill anything for the sole purpose of gorging on its corpse is immoral.
These principles are not universal, and hence not being universal are purely personal choices.
I think everyone can agree on things like putting an end to feedlots, poultry that can't walk, and much worse, using animals in medical research, etc... which are all horrible things that have to be stopped.
When I read some of these comments, what comes to mind for me is Pat Robertson, and Jerry Falwell. How can some of you be so critical of people like that, yet you sound just like them???