EMAIL SIGN UP!
Most Popular This Week
Popular content
Today's Top News
Nuggets and Hummers and Fish Sticks, Oh My!
Why Vegetarianism Is the Best Way to Help the Environment
In 1987, I read Diet for a Small Planet by Frances Moore Lappé and -- primarily for human rights and environmental reasons -- went vegan. Two decades later, I still believe that -- even leaving aside all the animal welfare issues -- a vegan diet is the only reasonable diet for people in the developed world who care about the environment or global poverty.
Over the past 20 years, the environmental argument against growing crops to be fed to animals -- so that humans can eat the animals -- has grown substantially. Just this past November, the environmental problems associated with eating chickens, pigs, and other animals were the subject of a 408-page United Nations scientific report titled Livestock's Long Shadow.
The U.N. report found that the meat industry contributes to "problems of land degradation, climate change and air pollution, water shortage and water pollution, and loss of biodiversity." The report concludes that the meat industry is "one of the ... most significant contributors to the most serious environmental problems, at every scale from local to global."
Eating Meat Is the No. 1 Consumer Cause of Global Warming
Al Gore, Leonardo DiCaprio, and others have brought the possibility of global cataclysm into sharp relief. What they have not been talking about, however, is the fact that all cars, trucks, planes, and other types of transportation combined account for about 13 percent of global warming emissions, whereas raising chickens, pigs, cattle, and other animals contributes to 18 percent, according to U.N. scientists. Yes, eating animal products contributes to global warming 40 percent more than all SUVs, 18-wheelers, jumbo jets, and other types of travel combined.
Al and Leo might not be talking about the connection between meat and global warming, but the Live Earth concert that Al inspired is: The recently published Live Earth Global Warming Survival Handbook recommends, "Don't be a chicken. Stop being a pig. And don't have a cow. Be the first on your block to cut back on meat." The Handbook further explains that "refusing meat" is "the single most effective thing you can do to reduce your carbon footprint" [emphasis in original].
And Environmental Defense, on its website, notes, "If every American skipped one meal of chicken per week and substituted vegetables and grains ... the carbon dioxide savings would be the same as taking more than half a million cars off of U.S. roads." Imagine if we stopped eating animal products altogether.
Eating Meat Wastes Resources
If I lie in bed and never get up, I will burn almost 2,500 calories each day; that is what's required to keep my body alive. The same physiological reality applies to all animals: The vast majority of the calories consumed by a chicken, a pig, a cow, or another animal goes into keeping that animal alive, and once you add to that the calories required to create the parts of the animal that we don't eat (e.g., bones, feathers, and blood), you find that it takes more than 10 times as many calories of feed given to an animal to get one calorie back in the form of edible fat or muscle. In other words, it's exponentially more efficient to eat grains, soy, or oats directly rather than feed them to farmed animals so that humans can eat those animals. It's like tossing more than 10 plates of spaghetti into the trash for every one plate you eat.
And that's just the pure "calories in, calories out" equation. When you factor in everything else, the situation gets much worse. Think about the extra stages of production that are required to get dead chickens, pigs, or other animals from the farm to the table:
- Grow more than 10 times as much corn, grain, and soy (with all the required tilling, irrigation, crop dusters, and so on), as would be required if we ate the plants directly.
- Transport -- in gas-guzzling, pollution-spewing 18-wheelers -- all that grain and soy to feed manufacturers.
- Operate the feed mill (again, using massive amounts of resources).
- Truck the feed to the factory farms.
- Operate the factory farms.
- Truck the animals many miles to slaughterhouses.
- Operate the slaughterhouses.
- Truck the meat to processing plants.
- Operate the meat processing plants.
- Truck the meat to grocery stores (in refrigerated trucks).
- Keep the meat in refrigerators or freezers at the stores.
With every stage comes massive amounts of extra energy usage -- and with that comes heavy pollution and massive amounts of greenhouse gases, of course. Obviously, vegan foods require some of these stages, too, but vegan foods cut out the factory farms, the slaughterhouses, and multiple stages of heavily polluting tractor-trailer trucks, as well as all the resources (and pollution) involved in each of those stages. And as was already noted, vegan foods require less than one-tenth as many calories from crops, since they are turned directly into food rather than funneled through animals first.
Eating Meat Wastes and Pollutes Water
All food requires water, but animal foods are exponentially more wasteful of water than vegan foods are. Enormous quantities of water are used to irrigate the corn, soy, and oat fields that are dedicated to feeding farmed animals -- and massive amounts of water are used in factory farms and slaughterhouses. According to the National Audubon Society, raising animals for food requires about as much water as all other water uses combined. Environmental author John Robbins estimates that it takes about 300 gallons of water to feed a vegan for a day, four times as much water to feed an ovo-lacto vegetarian, and about 14 times as much water to feed a meat-eater.
Raising animals for food is also a water-polluting process. According to a report prepared by U.S. Senate researchers, animals raised for food in the U.S. produce 86,000 pounds of excrement per second -- that's 130 times more than the amount of excrement that the entire human population of the U.S. produces! Farmed animals' excrement is more concentrated than human excrement, and is often contaminated with herbicides, pesticides, toxic chemicals, hormones, antibiotics, and other harmful substances. According to the Environmental Protection Agency, the runoff from factory farms pollutes our rivers and lakes more than all other industrial sources combined.
Eating Meat Destroys the Rain Forest
The World Bank recently reported that 90 percent of all Amazon rainforest land cleared since 1970 is used for meat production. It's not just that we're destroying the rainforest to make grazing land for cows -- we're also destroying it to grow feed for them and other animals. Last year, Greenpeace targeted KFC for the destruction of rainforests because the Amazon is being razed to grow feed for chickens that end up in KFC's buckets. Of course, the rainforest is being used to grow feed for other chickens, pigs, and cows, too (i.e., KFC isn't the only culprit).
What About Eating Fish?
Anyone who reads the news knows that commercial fishing fleets are plundering the oceans and destroying sensitive aquatic ecosystems at an incomprehensible rate. One super-trawler is the length of a football field, and can take in 800,000 pounds of fish in a single netting. These trawlers scrape along the ocean floor, clear-cutting coral reefs and everything else in their path. Hydraulic dredges scoop up huge chunks of the ocean floor to sift out scallops, clams, and oysters. Most of what the fishing fleets pull in isn't even eaten by human beings; half is fed to animals raised for food, and about 30 million tons each year are just tossed back into the ocean, dead, with disastrous and irreversible consequences for the natural biological balance.Then there is aquaculture (fish farming), which is increasing at a rate of more than 10 percent annually. Aquaculture is even worse than commercial fishing because, for starters, it takes about four pounds of wild-caught fish to reap just one pound of farmed fish, which eat fish caught by commercial trawlers. Farmed fish are often raised in the same water that wild fish swim in, but fish farmers dump antibiotics into the water and use genetic breeding to create "Frankenstein fish." The antibiotics contaminate the oceans and seas, and the genetically engineered fish sometimes escape and breed with wild fish, throwing delicate aquatic balances off-kilter. Researchers at the University of Stockholm demonstrated that the horrible environmental impact of fish farms can extend to an area 50,000 times larger than the farm itself.
Eating Meat Supports Cruelty
Caring for the environment means protecting all of our planet's inhabitants, not just the human ones. Chickens, pigs, turkeys, fish, and cows are intelligent, social animals who feel pain, just as humans, dogs, and cats do. Chickens and pigs do better on animal behavior cognition tests than dogs or cats, and are interesting individuals in the same way. Fish form strong social bonds, and some even use tools. Yet these animals suffer extreme pain and deprivation in today's factory farms. Chickens have their sensitive beaks cut off with a hot blade, pigs have their tails chopped off and their teeth removed with pliers, and cattle and pigs are castrated -- all without any pain relief. The animals are crowded together and given steady doses of hormones and antibiotics in order to make them grow so quickly that their hearts and limbs often cannot keep up, causing crippling and heart attacks. At the slaughterhouse, they are hung upside-down and bled to death, often while they are still conscious.
What About Eating Meat That Isn't From Factory-Farmed Animals?
Is meat better if it doesn't come from factory-farmed animals? Of course, but its production still wastes resources and pollutes the environment. Shouldn't we environmentalists challenge ourselves to do the best we can, not just to make choices that are a bit less bad?
The U.N. report looks at meat at a global level and indicts the inefficiency and waste that are inherent in meat production. No matter where meat comes from, raising animals for food will require that exponentially more calories be fed to animals than they can produce in their flesh, and it will require all those extra stages of CO2-intensive production as well. Only grass-fed cows eat food from land that could not otherwise be used to grow food for human beings, and even grass-fed cows require much more water and create much more pollution than vegan foods do.
Conclusion
The case against eating animal products is ironclad; it's not a new argument, and it goes way beyond just global warming. Animals will not grow or produce flesh, milk, or eggs without food and water; they won't do it without producing excrement; and the stages of meat, dairy, and egg production will always cause pollution and be resource-intensive.
If the past is any guide, this essay will generate much hand-wringing from my meat-eating environmentalist colleagues and, sadly, some anger. They will prefer half-measures (e.g., meat that is "not as bad" as other meat). They may accuse PETA of being judgmental -- simply for presenting the evidence. They will make various arguments that are beside the point. They will ignore the overwhelming argument against eating animal products and try to find a loophole. Some will just call the argument absurd, presenting no evidence at all.
But as Leonardo DiCaprio has noted, this is the 11th hour for the environment. Where something as basic as eating animals is concerned, the choice could not be any clearer: Every time we sit down to eat, we can choose to eat a product that is, according to U.N. scientists, "one of the ... most significant contributors to the most serious environmental problems, at every scale from local to global," or we can choose vegan -- and preferably organic -- foods. It's bad for the environment to eat animals. It's time to stop looking for loopholes.
Considering the proven health benefits of a vegetarian diet -- the American Dietetic Association states that vegetarians have a reduced risk of obesity, heart disease, and various types of cancer --- there's no need or excuse to eat chickens, pigs, eggs, and other animal products. And vegan foods are available everywhere and taste great; as with all foods -- vegan or not -- you just need to find the ones you like.
You can find out more at GoVeg.com and get great-tasting recipes, meal plans, cookbook recommendations, and more at VegCooking.com.
Bruce Friedrich is the vice president for campaigns at People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA). He has been a progressive and environmental activist for more than 20 years.
Comments
Note: Disqus 2012 is best viewed on an up to date browser. Click here for information. Instructions for how to sign up to comment can be viewed here. Our Comment Policy can be viewed here. Please follow the guidelines. Note to Readers: Spam Filter May Capture Legitimate Comments...
124 Comments so far
Show AllThis assessment is essentially correct. Unfortuntely, we are living in the "post-factual" Age. Only perceptions and the "free-market" are rule the public discourse (sarcasm intended).
I read the same book a decade before Bruce, came to the same conclusion, and have been mostly vegetarian ever since. Unlike, PETA, my essential rationale had been more pragmatic than ethical. What more facts do you need to lessen YOUR 'carbon-footprint' upon this planet. Oh, plant a garden, too.
Number 1 problem is overpopulation, why can't we have a campaign making everybody aware of this problem?
We are on a runaway train wreck, but the economy needs population increase to work, so the compliant press never brings up the subject.
The same argument started again and again from the wrong premise. The problem is not with eating or not eating meat. That will not make any difference to the direction in which humanity ship travels to meet its iceberg. It only may divert attention from real issues, can make people feel somehow better and, at its best, slow down a bit acceleration rather than speed of the mounting problem.
The problem is with ever increasing world population and the drive towards higher consumption both effects of ever wider spreading globalizaton. The real issue is what drives the globalization and, if anything is possible to stop, neutrilize or possibly eliminate these forces from our collective human lives. A truly big and fundamental issue. Can this be done? And is the path towards veganism the platform to do it? Can we save 6+ billion people and the Earth at the same time?
Advocating veganism as a remedy for our sick world by people like Bruce Friedrich is ironically typical to our mainstream thinking which they fight. It is about patching symptoms rather than dealing with sources of illness. And as with any symptoms remedies, it makes one feel better. For a while.
No doubt that industrial agriculture is dead wrong and not sustainable but that applies not only to livestock production but also to production of crops. Sustainable models of agriculture that can be not only enviromentally friendly but also capable of sustaining human health in the long term cannot be entirely based on cultivated crops with exclusion of livestock. They need to be small and local. Can such agriculture sustain current human population? Of course not. But is it the question of saving the ship or, unfortunately, just building lifeboat models for future generations? If they get their chance.
Why is it important to make such argument when veganism is, no doubt, a noble pursuit? It is important because the fierce vegan activism put all these people who want to build these food "lifeboats" in a bad light and turns away the urban population from them. This is not a small thing since all these efforts to succeed need support of progressive urban consumers. They need it big way. Do you think that governments and corporations will help? The only thing that can make it possible are urban consumer dollars and support. Articles like this one and people who write them do really harm these efforts, well intended or not.
Bobus is correct, treating the symptoms will not cure the problem. The problem is TOO MANY PEOPLE!!! The graph of population versus standard of living is an inverse relationship. The more people, the lower the average standard of living. Virtually every social ill today has only been exacerbated by the exponential increase in world populations since the beginning of the industrial revolution. I know there were many social ills before, but our advances in technology could have helped us to overcome many of them IF we had maintained the same population as before.
It is 'industrial agriculture' both animal and vegetable that are the problem. Brazil is cutting the rain forest to grow soybeans, much of which is for animal feed I realize, but for human consumption as well.
Vegetarianism isn't for everybody nutritionally or health wise either. I have tried it several times over the past 30 years and I just have to have some meat sometimes or become unhealthy. Animals for food can be raised in a sustainable way.
There are misleading elements in the article as well, the most glaring is that what we don't eat of animals gets wasted, nothing gets wasted. What can't be used for other things besides human food ultimately gets ground up for fertilizer.
The problem with making arguments like these is that folk can tell at face value that they are unfounded in some aspect even if they don't know exactly why, and then you lose your audience and your credibility.
This essay makes perfect sense to me.
Yes, population is also a problem, but how can we not see eating meat (i.e., funneling crops through animals to eat them) as also a big problem?
I've been a vegan for years, and I find the unwillingness of some environmentalists to take this very basic step to be thoroughly perplexing.
Of course, cruelty's also an issue: www.Meat.org.
thank you for this wonderful reminder about environmentalist & vegetarian diet. it's as if we are speaking two different languages. this essay makes complete sense. of course there are many things contributing to global warming but this one is simple & cannot be ignored. wake up people! you'll look & feel a whole lot better too w/out having to schelp those big bellies around. for the earth, nc
If environmentalism means anything, it should mean that we don't make choices that are excessively resource intensive and polluting, and eating animal products is hugely resource intensive and polluting.
The U.N. report concluded that the meat industry is "one of the ... most significant contributors to the most serious environmental problems, at every scale from local to global."
It specifically addressed the contribution of eating meat to "problems of land degradation, climate change and air pollution, water shortage and water pollution, and loss of biodiversity."
The best thing any of us can do to walk more lightly on the earth is to adopt a vegan diet, and it's remarkably easy, as well.
First of all, where does this author make the case for veganism? I don't why I can't eat locally farmed, organic eggs.
Secondly, although I've been a vegetarian for many years (minus the occasional local chicken) I still will never believe for five minutes that a person eating a locally/ethically produced chicken wing is creating a larger environmental impact than some self-righteous yuppie fuck driving a Prius 20 miles to a big box organics store to purchase some prepackaged "organic" vegan food shipped to them from California and made with soy grown in the Amazon.
Bobus/Greenman are right on. Veganism is just a wimpy bandaide, and eating mono-cropped veggies can have an equally devestating effect. Indigenous people ate meat without the same kind of impact due to their respect for their food sources, and their smaller populations. Not to mention the differences between hunting and growing livestock.
Let's stop trying to convince the world to stop using animal products. It will never happen. However, convincing our meat eating friends to join a CSA is something that might be achievable. A better argument would be to lay the case for minimizing meat in your diet, and tell a person that if they don't think that's for them here's some other options. In northern Michigan we have a wonderful resource (http://www.localdifference.org/) for people to find local food. Let's create these networks in every community.
Three words: local sustainable agriculture. This is the only solution, and check out this article at Mother Jones (www.motherjones.com/news/feature/2007/03/reversal_of_fortune.html) for why smaller sustainable agriculture is actually MORE productive per acre than large scale mono-cropping. See section 8.
We need to stop acting like there's something fundamentally wrong with meat, because until we do that, we will continue to be written off as animal rights whack jobs. The problem is how we go about obtaining our food (veggies and all) through totalitarian agriculture. Read Daniel Quinn for more on this. (Reading Ishmael should be made mandatory in every school).
And for the dirt on why PETA is the last group you should be supporting, and the last group we want on our side, see the story I wrote for my magazine:
http://www.thirdeyemag.com/disneyland.htm
I'm not the most intelligent of persons, and have a big problem with math. But I do have a question. If eating meat causes 18% of global warming emissions and fuel burning vehicles causes 13%, that adds up to 33%. What is causing the other 67%? Is it possible we could have our SUVs, chicken wings, hotdogs and burgers too, if we eleminated 33% of the other 67%? It makes sense to me.
On the deforestation issue, we should all be very concerned about that, especially the rain forests in the tropical zones. You know, last week at a gas station, I saw a bumper sticker on a vehicle that read, "Save a Tree__Eat a Beaver". I almost spoke to the young couple seated in the car but decided to let it pass. They also had a Bush sticker and figured they were probably stupid anyway.
I'm all for saving trees, every year we plant from eight to ten trees on our land, I want to leave something good here on Earth when I'm gone, but I don't believe it is productive to kill beavers to save trees.
Beavers are a vital life form for our land, they build their dams and help to preserve our wet lands and establish new lakes and ponds. I'm certain for every tree they fell, a dozen more will benefit by their good work. It's nature at its best. Besides, beavers are actually rodents and I'm sure the meat would be not any tastier than that of a rat. I do hope this is not a new trend of eating beavers and it doesn't take hold with the younger generation. This is an issue that our media could cover, I bet it would garner some attention, even the presidential candidates could comment on it.
As a long-term vegan who also buys local and organic (local more critical than organic, since reading Pollan and Kingsolver), I don't understand the mentality that says "local meat is better than non-organic big box produce" (or whatever).
Well of course it is, but it's still not necessary to eat local meat, and as the author says:
Is meat better if it doesn't come from factory-farmed animals? Of course, but its production still wastes resources and pollutes the environment. Shouldn't we environmentalists challenge ourselves to do the best we can, not just to make choices that are a bit less bad?
The same reply can go to the people upset about population (so just don't have kids AND adopt a vegetarian diet).
And the person who wants to focus on the other 67% of global warming (which goes to making everything else we buy and operating the buildings for the corporations, etc.). Yes, focus on that, but also stop eating in such a gluttunous way.
Why all the searching for loopholes? I've been a vegetarian for a long, long time. It's really not that hard.
Re: PETA not being perfect, what group is? They do amazing work on a very tight budget. Check out their Web site to see what they're up to: www.PETA.org.
I think some flexibility and balance is warranted here. I'm totally against factory-farmed animal products, but having studied Permaculture, I'm not convinced that veganism is the be-all and end-all it is sometimes drawn out to be. Asking humans to totally disconnect from domestic food animals seems too much like city apartment dwellers, totally disconnected from nature and their food sources.
As one small example: where do you get your B-12? Vegans who do not pay attention to this either eventually get sick, or take supplements, which come in plastic bottles made from petroleum that are shipped from far away.
As another example, more eloquently illustrated by perceptionexperiment, above: is it better to forego locally, humanely produced animal food products, but obtain tetra-packs of soy milk that was factory-farmed thousands of miles away?
I have been a vegetarian for some years, but I find that is in conflict with my practice of Permaculture. In Permaculture, animals are valued for the many services they perform, as part of an ecosystem. We have chickens in our orchard. They keep insects out of the fruit, till the ground, provide fertilizer, and yes, eggs. In return, the fruit trees provide cover from predatory raptors, as well as fruit. But what do you do with the 50% of hatched eggs that are cockerels, when one rooster can keep a dozen hens happy? What do you do with hens as they near the natural end of their life?
In short, it's more complicated than the simple picture veganism paints. If we are to survive, we must employ a systems approach, as well as build upon the 10,000 year history humans have with domesticated animals, in as humanely a way as possible.
Those who get their meat from the supermarket probably should be vegans, but although I have not done it yet, I'm open to eating humanely self-butchered meat at the appropriate time. Please don't call me an animal murderer, or claim I'm hurting the planet because of that!
The comments here provide an interesting insight into why the world has degraded and continues to degrade so severely: People always blame others.
There is absolutely no debate that being a vegan is an incredibly powerful thing *we can each do* to help the environment -- quite probably the single best step we can take.
Sadly, though, so many "environmentalists" face this reality by hollaring about other problems. Is overpopulation a serious issue? Certainly. Does the severity of overpopulation justify not being a vegan?
Of course, it is easy to point to big problems that we can't affect ourselves. It is human nature not to want to change, and to blame others. But if we refuse to do the best we can -- go vegan -- then we are just as bad as those who refuse to acknowledge global warming, who oppose contraception, etc.
Take a stand for the Earth! Don't just go with the crowd! Go vegan!
Kem,
Thanks for the humor.
As for me, i get very tired of back-and-forth accusations among presumably serious people who all claim to want to do the right thing, but who invest time and effort to denounce each other for their ideological and tactical errors.
Two things seem obvious to me: yes, there are TOO MANY PEOPLE; and yes, OVERCONSUMPTION MATTERS TOO! While people from different sides assert the "most important" issue, and spend time and effort denouncing others for failing to focus on the "most important issue", we all need to be serious about both of these issues.
Whoever you are, whatever you do, over the course of your life, as best you can, allow the living Earth to stabilize from the human activities that are disrupting the climate, ruining ecosystems, and causing mass extinctions. Try to be holistic, not reductionist. There is not "one" most important issue. Support others when they are working on some aspect of the problem of a human-destabilized Earth. Rather than denounce them for failure to see the "most important" issue, encourage them to grow more holistic in their understanding.
Having been a vegan for 37 years. I have been aware what one eats and where one gets their food matters. This is my spiritual and health commitment to be a vegan.
All of us have to make choices that they assume will continue to have a limited impact on our planet.
This choice of veganism is a challenging choice. Being an RN and teaching people about their diet is always an interesting challenge. Asking people to change their diet is very problematic.
Meeting people where they are is a key to my philophy. My prayer is that all of us choose to make changes to leave the world a little better than we found it. What ever those changes are!! All the best.
PETA is, indeed, a great and needed organization. But let's don't confuse different things. Fighting against cruelty of animals is not the same as promoting veganism or take it into climate change battles. The first one is clear to me, it is always wrong to be cruel in any way to animals. With other issues, it is not so simple.
When it comes to food, know which battles to fight. Fight against industrial global agriculture as this is wrong and bad for everything but those who make money out of it. It doesn't matter if this is livestock or monoculture crops that are eaten and indirectly supported by vegetarians.
Fighting against all meat consumption is where I have and many other progressives should have issues with the activists who fight against it. Eating less meat? Yes. Being choosy about where from and what meat you buy and how animals were raised? Yes. Treating meat as a special food with due respect? Yes. But don't whip all the meat eaters and the very concept with one stroke from assumed high grounds of veganism. That doesn't help the future.
I will not argue that it may be possible to be a healthy vegan but one must be quite knowledgeable and have access to a lot of foods and possibly supplements that are integral part of the very global food system that the progressives fight. Put yourself in the context of a truly local food economy which, most likely, will be the human future. I would like to see how you can fare in such context, conceive and raise healthy children without nutritionaly dense animal foods. So, don't be a hypocrite. That doesn't help.
Jan,
Nice to see the plug for Permaculture. For those who are unfamiliar, Permaculture is about a lot more than just holistic agriculture. It is a system of design principles that enable us to design ALL our human systems - not just our agricultural systems - so they work in harmony with natural systems. Exactly the kind of holistic approach we need, without reductionist denunciations. Look it up! Permaculture design courses are available worldwide, Permaculture information is available everywhere.
i have been vegetarian for the past 25 years. it began with the health aspect of it by way of a conversation in the first health food shop to open in my area. there i learned that all the hormones, steroids, antibiotics pumped into the hapless animals whilst they were alive, were in turn going into my system. then add the preservatives that are injected after their slaughter and it's not a very rosy picture. that was enough of a deterrent for me. then i was educated by PETA of the abhorrent treatment of the animals whilst incarcerated in factory farms. so now i had two good reasons for not eating meat. still we have another reason by way of the damage all this factory rearing unleashes on our environment. and let's not forget the mad cow disease that was brought about by greedy farmers feeding the cows with sheep leftovers. how many carniverous cows do you know? and then there is the bird flu. brought about by unsanitary conditions and forcing birds to live in very close proximity to each other. of course we are told milk is very good for us. and yes i agree with that. but not the milk of another species and certainly not after we are weaned. if that were the case, we'd all still be hanging on our mothers' breasts at the age of 40. it's yet another scam perpetrated by greedy individuals and corporations. we are force fed the propaganda that eating meat and drinking milk is good for our health. just like the geese are force fed to enlarge their livers. it is a proven fact that meat is a cause of cancer. i have yet to hear of anyone suffering from cancer brought about by eating broccoli. i support PETA and all they do to put an end to the horrendous abuses suffered by animals for the exclusive use of humans. try watching their videos of animals being skinned alive in china for the fur trade or experiments done in laboratories to determine whether some chemical or other substance is going to harm us. we do not need meat to survive. look at our nearest relatives the apes. and yes the world is overpopulated but this factory farming practice is not helping in any way that i can see.
Fun video from Sierra Club:
http://www.sierraclub.org/factoryfarms/flash/fowlie01.html
The UN report, and what Bruce says, is not what some people want to hear, but it makes sense. From an environmental standpoint, our food choices have either a significant impact on the Earth's air, water, and land (animal-derived food), or are far less destructive effect (plant-based diet). After years of eating meat I found switching to a vegetarian diet was much easier than I'd imagined.
Every time I sit down to eat I make a choice to do the right thing for the environment, for my health, and, of course, for animals.
Check out GoVeg.com and see how easy - and beneficial - going veg is.
"Overpopulation?" Not a problem!
According to author John Robbins, in his Pulitzer Prize nominated Diet for a New America:
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. In fact, 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. The water that goes into a thousand-pound steer could float a destroyer. It takes twenty-five gallons of water to produce a pound of wheat, but twenty-five hundred gallons to produce a pound of meat. If these costs weren't subsidized by the American taxpayers, hamburger meat would be $35 per pound!
The burden of subsidizing the California meat industry costs taxpayers $24 billion annually. 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 eighty-five percent of this loss is directly caused by raising livestock. To replace the soil we've lost, we're destroying our forests. Since 1967, the rate of deforestation 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.
One-third of all raw materials in the U. S. are consumed by the livestock industry and it takes three times as much fossil fuel energy to produce meat than it does to produce plant foods. A report on the energy crisis in Scientific American warned: "The trends in meat consumption and energy consumption are on a collision course."
Nor can fish provide any help here, notes author Keith Akers in A Vegetarian Sourcebook. 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 worlds 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.
The American Dietetic Association reports that throughout history, the human race has lived on "vegetarian or near vegetarian diets," and meat has traditionally been a luxury. Studies show the healthiest human populations on the globe live almost entirely on plant foods--useful data, given our skyrocketing healthcare costs. Dr. Nathan Pritikin, author of The Pritikin Plan, recommended not more than three ounces of animal protein per day; three ounces per week for his patients who had already suffered a heart attack.
Obviously, then, the idea of providing the entire world with a Western-style diet is quite absurd. But what about satisfying today's demand for meat--which provides only a fraction of the population with a Western-style diet? 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 desperately short of forests, water and energy already. 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.
VOTE DENNIS KUCINICH--VEGETARIAN!!! (and humanitarian)
http://www.dennis4president.com/home/
I'm nearly vegan to ease my own mind to the extent that I can. (I became veg in 1980, and have been on and off vegan... I realize now that vegan is much better, and really, with what I know, and know how to do, I have no excuse). I'm a non-child-bearer so that your child will have a place to park and less competition for an apartment when she's grown. Now, if I can get that biodeisel car...
Factory Farms are the problem not eating meat. For the meat eaters we need to return to family farms and just eat meat less often in smaller portions as a compromise. I was vegeterian but I was not healthy, got sick and tired often so went back to meat. Some people just can't go veg and getting the whole country to go veg is unrealistic and it won't happen. Getting the country to go back to family farms though might just work.
The basic arguments are centered arount two groups of issues: one is the extreme cruelty to the animals that experience animal factory processes; the other basic arguments center around the inefficiency of factory farming processes and meat eating in general.
It's not about being a 'pure' vegan, it's that, in general, if I understand the author, eating a plant-based diet is both 1) a more efficient use of our precious (and diminishing) resources of land, water, and energy; and 2) a more humane choice.
Win, Win. For those who are already energy-aware and eating *mostly* on the low-end of the food chain--that's great! The goal is to get more people to move toward more efficiency, more awareness, and a more humane lifestyle.
Haha
great article.
Interesting note on Diet for a Small planet was that it said meat eaters shouldnt eat meat if they believe in human rights-because the grain and water could go to humans. Contrast that with Eric Schlosser's dimrod book that says we should avoid factory farms to help exploited slaughterhouse workers. Gail Eisnitz's earlier Slaughterhouse is a much more thorough work--even talks about slaughterhouse workers stealing horses from farms to process torturing animals on the assembly line.
Jason Hribal has a great article on counterpunch.org today as well.
And I love the line Shouldn't we environmentalists challenge ourselves to do the best we can, not just to make choices that are a bit less bad?
And it was great to see that he predicted the responses from the pro meat delusionals. They might as well be members of the US congress.
"Only grass-fed cows eat food from land that could not otherwise be used to grow food for human beings, and even grass-fed cows require much more water and create much more pollution than vegan foods do."
Where do these "facts" come from?
Before writing an article about not eating meat I suggest any author actually go to a farm and see what goes into growing soybeans versus growing grass for cows. The chemicals involved alone in no-till soy production do more damage to the environment than beef cattle grazing on grass. What about organic soy you say? Well, how about all that tillage and cultivation required to get those beans established? Then harvested? Then cleaned? Then processed? Cows do this themselves! They eat weeds, they incorporate organic matter back into the soil, they fertilize, they irrigate and they harvest their feed themselves.
Meat is not harmful to the environment. People who buy conventional food are. Go visit a small, organic, sustainable farm. Come visit mine. You'll see the difference.
The forcast calls for pain.......
dcbeltway states that Factory Farming is wrong; not the eating of meat. However, factory farming is only part of the problem.
Dudley Giehl writes in his 1979 book, Vegetarianism: A Way of Life:
"Significant environmental damage results from livestock agriculture, often driving many other species into extinction. The existence of dodo birds was first recorded in the early 1500s by Portuguese Sailors. The dodo, which weighed about 50 pounds, was incapable of defending itself and could not flee from its enemies, since it lacked the ability to fly. Large numbers of these birds were killed by human beings for food. Additionally, pigs that were brought to the islands destroyed a significant portion of the dodos' eggs, creating a severe decline in the dodo population. The species became extinct by the 18th century.
"The Steller's sea cow once inhabited the coastal waters of the Commander Islands in the Bering Sea. Russian Sealers, who were the first to record the existence of these creatures in 1741, estimated the entire population to be about 5,000. Their meat was considered a delicacy by Russian sealers, who decimated the entire species by 1768 .
"The Labrador duck has been extinct since 1875. This species formerly inhabited the coastal regions of northeastern Canada.
"The extinction of the passenger pigeon was caused by the American westward expansion in the second half of the 19th century. As passenger pigeons became a popular food item, the numbers of this species rapidly diminished. Millions were slaughtered each year and shipped by railway cars to be sold in city markets.
Another bird to become extinct because of its use as food was the heath hen, which became extinct about 1932.
"The pacific sardine lives along the coasts of North America from Alaska to southern California. Sardines, once a major part of the California fishing industry, are now considered to be 'commercially extinct.'
"Another species classified as 'commercially extinct' is the New England haddock. Ecologists have also been concerned about the significant reduction in finfish, the Atlantic bluefin tuna, Lake Erie cisco, and blackfins that inhabit Lakes Huron and Michigan.
"More than 200,000 porpoises are killed every year by fishermen seeking tuna in the Pacific. Sea turtles are similarly killed in Caribbean shrimp operations. Some animals are killed because, as carnivores, they compete with the human predator for the right to kill other animals for food, including wild game and domesticated species raised by livestock ranchers. Alaskan hunters are eager to reduce the wolf population in their state because this animal is a predator of moose.
"Cougars, coyotes and wolves are considered a menace to the cattle and sheep industries, and livestock ranchers have engaged in a large-scale campaign to exterminate them. Two species of wolves are now endangered, and very few wolves can be found in the United States except in Alaska and northeastern Minnesota.
"The relatively small number of eagles in the U.S. is largely due to the destruction of this species by livestock ranchers, particularly those in the sheep business.
"Herbivorous animals that inhabit rangeland areas are also killed by the livestock industry because they compete with cattle arid sheep for food. Large numbers of kangaroos are being exterminated in Australia, while in the United States livestock ranchers seek to destroy wild horses, wild burros, deer, elk, antelope and prairie dogs."
John Robbins similarly writes in Diet for a New America (1987):
"An ever-increasing amount of beef eaten in the United States is imported from Central and South America. To provide pasture for cattle, these countries have been clearing their priceless tropical rainforests.
"In 1960, when the U. S. first began to import beef, Central America was blessed with 130,000 square miles of rainforest. But now, less than 80,000 square miles remain. At this rate, the entire tropical rainforests of Central America will be gone in another forty years.
"These tropical rainforests are among the world's most precious natural resources. Amounting to only 30 percent of the world's forests, the rainforests contain 80 percent of the earth's land vegetation, and account for a substantial percentage of the earth's oxygen supplies.
"These forests are the oldest ecosystems on earth and have developed extreme ecological richness. Half of all species on earth live in the moist tropical rainforests.
"But these jewels of nature are being rapidly destroyed to provide land on which cattle can be grazed for the American fast-food market.
The current rate of species extinction is 1,000 species a year, and most of that is due to the destruction of rainforests and related habitats in the tropics."
Animal activists consider livestock agriculture itself to be an environmental problem and veganism the solution.
The author mentions John Robbins who has not only written several excellent books on vegetarianism but also is the Founder of an organization called Earth Save. Earth Save embodies many of the qualities that our fellow posters have mentioned are so important, namely bringing people together in a respectful and compassionate way. The goal of Earth Save is to encourage people to transition to a "more plant based diet". As has been pointed out, the vast majority of the population will never become vegan but there is a very good possiblity that they can be convinced to cut back substantionally on their meat and dairy consumption. This could make a huge impact on health, environment and animal deaths.
I agree that encouraging people to buy local and organic in as much of their food choices as possible can have a major impact.
I also encourage everyone to take up gardening and grow some of your own food. Even if you only have a sunny window or fire escape you can grow a few tomtoes or herbs. I believe once people get a taste for growing their own it will encourage the growth of rooftop and community gardens. It is especially great for children to have this experience. This a small but powerful way for the people to fight against the likes of Monsanto, Bechtel and their corporate cohorts.
One other suggestion, if you feel the need to eat meat, I suggest bison meat. The grazing of bison actually encourages the growth of our original prairie grasses. They are always free ranged as they are too wild to be penned up. The meat is very lean and therefore more healthy then the conventional meats and free of homones and antibiotics.
For more information go to www.earthsave.org or www.communitygarden.org or www.bisoncentral.com or www.organicconsumers.org
Great article, Bruce— I'm behind you 100%. We know that raising and killing animals for food is causing global warming, deforestation, water and pollution, and other environmental problems. We also know that meat, eggs, and dairy products are bad for our health and that it is cruel to torture and kill animals. People should stop making excuses (or stop trying to make things more complicated) and just go vegan--it's easy.
Too many people? Is that a vote for canibalism? Personally, I feel better avoiding dead cows entirely and living on salid, beans and corn. Local, not bagged, salid.
This is a compelling, intelligent article that deserves our attention. Why is this extremely significant part of reducing greenhouse gases getting some resistance? Going vegetarian not only makes a huge difference in protecing the environment but it helps improve health and is more humane to animals. Thank you Mr. Friedrich.
I know many long-term raw food vegans who take no supplements and have no B-12 deficiency or other symptoms; I, in fact, am one of them. Veganic agriculture is what I practice, and it provides superior results by relying on the plants own cycles and not wasting space, resources, and human health by courting livestock. We can live in a more clean, happy, and health way by eating only plant foods, but this fact is ignored because people lack conciousness; because, indeed, the same people who say we can't live without war and that we can't have a successful social democracy that has proven to work for decades in other countries say we can't live without the slavery and slaughter of animals. But we can.
http://www.dreamingearth.net
It truly is a costly lifestyle. Most people don't consider where the products they buy come from and simply don't care whether it is food, clothing or whatever. I believe I read somewhere the human body craves fat which is why McDonald's laced their fries with beef fat. Most people can satisfy their bodies needs with a plant based diet but I'm sure there are those who can't. There are lots of choices today for those wanting faux meat.
Why I am a vegan:
Slaughterhouses are perhaps the most violent places on the planet. Animals are routinely sent kicking and screaming through the skinning and dismemberment process, every one bleeding and dying exactly like they would if they were human beings.
Farms today treat animals like so many boxes in a warehouse, chopping off beaks and tails and genitals with no painkillers at all, inflicting third degree burns (branding), ripping out teeth, and hunks of flesh.
Animals transported to slaughter routinely die from the heat or the cold, or freeze to the sides of the transport trucks or to the bottom in their own excrement. Dairy cows and egg laying hens endure the same living nightmare as their brethren who are raised for their flesh, except that their time on the "farm" is longer. They are still shipped to the slaughterhouse and killed, at a fraction of their natural life span.
There is simply no excuse for anyone who considers herself or himself to be an ethical human being, let alone an "animal lover," to be supporting these kinds of practices, all of which are routine and universal throughout the industries which turn animals into eggs and meat and dairy products.
If I can't watch it happening, I want no part of it. I enjoy watching fields tilled and love picking apples and tomatoes and carrots and other vegetarian products. If slaughterhouses had glass walls, as Paul McCartney is so fond of saying, we would all be vegetarians.
Every time I sit down to eat, I make a decision about who I am in the world: Do I want to add to the level of violence, misery, and bloodshed in the world? Or, do I want to make a compassionate and merciful choice?
There is so much violence in the world, from war torn regions of Africa and Europe, to our own inner cities. Most of this violence is difficult to understand, let alone influence.
Veganism is one area where each and every one of us can make a difference, every time we sit down to eat. I find it empowering that I can make an option for peace and compassion every time I eat, simply by not encouraging violence and misery against animals.
Visit www.Meat.org to see how meat is made.
Bruce hit it on the head when he said that people were looking for loopholes. Many are following the advice of authors like Michael Pollan (The Omnivore's Dilemma) who eloquently denounce corporate agriculture and urge people to eat more local food produced on smaller, "sustainable" farms. Locally grown foods are, indeed, a very important issue. But often absent from this conversation is the simple fact that eating locally produced animal products is not a solution for the masses. Small farms use much more land per animal than do factory farms and feedlots. Given current consumption levels, a switch to this type of farming would mean that only a small percentage of Americans could continue to eat meat unless everyone drastically curtailed their intake. We simply don't have the required fertile acreage to accommodate this type of animal agriculture. "Elite meat" will always be for the wealthy. What is everyone else supposed to eat? Must only the poor become vegetarians, or should we as a society recognize the need for a paradigm shift towards efficient plant-based diets?
Bobus said:
"vegan activism put all these people who want to build these food "lifeboats" in a bad light and turns away the urban population from them."
Activism against anything people are accustomed to, have been lead to believe is good ("meat is essential to health), told that there is no harm (animals graze on lands unsuited to tillage), or told is their "right" ("no commie-pinko, bunny-loving, tree-hugger is going to tell ME what to eat"), or simply can't give up anything they reeeeeeeeeeally like ("beef, it's what's for dinner and I ain't eating no damn rabbit food) even food which will make them obese, diabetic, or clog their hearts and kill them, will turn away from anyone who tries to change their minds - will not only turn away, but will turn against any such activists.
Bobus said:
"Articles like this one and people who write them do really harm."
Yeah, sure just like articles about the US invading other countries for profit or ideology do harm, just like articles about the evils of predatory capitalism, or deficit spending, or that many people suffer in systems where medical care is profit-driven, cause harm.
Bobus said:
"The real issue is...." "may divert attention from real issues"
Hello, there are many "real issues": population, city planning, public transportation, fossil fuel use, economic systems, democratic governments immune from being ruled by wealth and class, governments who send their militaries to other lands driven to kill for profit and many, many more "real issues." Bobus you've put down the article in this issue as something less than a real issue without presenting any better solution, or any solution. Bruce Friedrich presented reasons to make change and how to effect change for the better. All you've done is tear someone down, "well intended or not." And that is a real issue, also.
Bobus said:
"The problem is not with eating or not eating meat."
Bobus, the only reason I can think of that you defending manure-producers is because you are one. Certainly your attack here is a prime example.
4. greenman said:
"I just have to have some meat sometimes or become unhealthy."
Bullfeathers. Allow me to suggest you select a hospital noted for the kind of food "you just have to have" for your future cardiac surgeries. Google vegetarians and you'll find many athletes and bright successful people who are long-time vegetarians and vegans. "Just have to have" is a phrase of addiction, not need.
greenman said:
"There are misleading elements in the article as well, the most glaring is that what we don't eat of animals gets wasted, nothing gets wasted."
Really? That has been said of First Nation peoples prior to being conquered by Euros, but can't be said by any of the meat-eaters I know. Try looking in household and restaurant garbage, or the left-overs at any big picnic, you'll find plenty of waste. Is using animals for glue, dog & cat food not wasting food animals? These true carnivores can get along just fine without the meat, just as we omnivores can.
Another attack on the writer whose article contains factual references from authorities. People who do that are going to bring the level of Common Dreams down to the level of those many political rant sites and bury the few who have something useful to offer.
KEM PATRICK said:
"I do hope this is not a new trend of eating beavers"
Uh, dude, the bumper sticker "Save a Tree - Eat a Beaver" isn't about eating rodents. Get someone a bit more worldly to explain it to you.
Actually, eating beavers is not a new trend but one that goes back more than a couple thousand years, and a recent study has revealed it has become very popular among teenagers.
The permaculturalists are right, world wide people living sustainbaly require the use of animmals and animal products. I grow a significant proportion of my own food on less than a 16th of an acre in a city. If the local council would allow me to keep chickens I could convert a large proportion of my waste to food in the form of eggs and meat, as well as reducing my need to buy fertalisers such as manure and blood and bone.
The problems we face are due to over consumtion and the massive population that refuses to support itself but relies on distant production and transportation to survive. If all these people became vegans we would require an even larger transport fleet to bring the food to maket as much larger volumes of vegtables must be consumed to keep a person alive. Grow your own food, if this means you need to grow some animals to effectively utalise your resources do it. There are many environments that cannot support crop production on a large scale but effectivly support livestock: savanas for a start. People living in these environments have always needed meat to suppliment their diet. A world of vegan consumers is a world without large annimals.
An excellent post VASUMTURI, 6:41pm.
Since 1900, more than 1,000 specie of sea birds have been eradicated by man. In 5,000bc, the Sahara desert was totally forrested. Man burned off the trees to make land for grazing livestock. Presently man is in the process of making alomost all of the planet a Sahara desert and killing the oceans in the process. That is not an exaggeration.
There are no simple solutions to the problem, all of the world's governments MUST stop sensless fighting and work together, if we hope to save our planet. The beef, pork and poultry industries are only a fractional part of the big picture, an imoprtant part, but it is not reasonable to expect all humans are going to stop eating beef, pork or chicken. On the contrary, the vegatarians are in the vast minority.
In addition to education of this important subject to our next generations, all governments must work together to put an end to burning coal to make electricity, oil to run our vehicles and stop spending our wealth for waging wars and purchasing weapons. If we had spent the money we've already wasted on just the current conflict in Iraq to develope clean energy, by the year 2014 we could have shut down every coal fired and nuclear plant in the world. In addition, we wouldn't be hated by over 90% of mankind. Think I'll stop here,___ I could write a book. And for heavens sake, protect the beavers.
obmaj wrote:
"As has been pointed out, the vast majority of the population will never become vegan, but there is a very good possibility that they can be convinced to cut back substantially on their meat and dairy consumption. This could make a huge impact on health, environment and animal deaths."
This is actually the basis of the "Enough" campaign, which aims at getting people to reduce (if not eliminate entirely) their consumption of animal products. This campaign actually has the support of organized religion.
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 Christian denominations to call on their members to abstain from meat on certain days of the week. 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
"Honourable men may disagree honourably about some details of human treatment of the non-human," wrote Stephen Clark in his 1977 book, The Moral Status of Animals, "but vegetarianism is now as necessary a pledge of moral devotion as was the refusal of emperor-worship in the early church."
According to Clark, eating animal flesh is "gluttony," and "Those who still eat flesh when they could do otherwise have no claim to be serious moralists."
"Clark's conclusion has real force and its power has yet to be sufficiently appreciated by fellow Christians," says the Reverend Andrew Linzey, author of Christianity and the Rights of Animals.
"Far from seeing the possibility of widespread vegetarianism as a threat to Old Testament norms, Christians should rather welcome the fact that the Spirit is enabling us to make decisions so that we may more properly conform to the original Genesis picture of living in peace with creation."
Father Thomas Berry, a Catholic priest, author, and founder of the Riverdale Center of 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."
In a speech before the World Council of Churches in September 1988, Dr. Tom Regan concluded:
"...the whole fabric of Christian agape is woven from the threads of sacrificial acts. To abstain...from eating animals, therefore, although it is not the end-all, can be the begin-all of our conscientious effort to journey back to (or toward) Eden, can be one way (among others) to re-establish or create that relationship to the earth which, if Genesis 1 is to be trusted, was part of God's original hopes for and plans in creation.
It is the integrity of this creation we seek to understand and aspire to honor. In the choice of our food, I believe, we see...a small but not unimportant part of both the challenge and the promise of Christianity and animal rights."
In biology, Hoyle and Wickramasinghe calculated the probability of proteins forming from the random interaction of amino acids--the building blocks of Life. They found the odds were one out of ten to the 40,000th power. Given these extreme odds, it's hard to imagine the self-organization of matter without the deliberate intervention of some kind of higher power or intelligence.
All life is thus precious and sacred. Nobel Prize winner, Dr. Francis Crick has admitted, "the origin of life appears at the moment to be almost a miracle." Organized religion is just beginning to understand that the "sanctity of life" includes other species.
In a 1989 article entitled, "Re-examining the Christian Scriptures," Rick Dunkerly of Christ Lutheran Church concludes, "...the Bible-believing Christian, should, of all people, be on the frontline in the struggle for animal welfare and rights. We who are Christians should be treating the animal creation now as it will be treated then, at Christ's second coming. It will not now be perfect, but it must be substantial, otherwise we have missed our calling, and we grieve the One we call 'Lord', who was born in a stable surrounded by animals simply because He chose it that way." Dunkerly teaches Bible studies at his home Church and is actively involved in animal rescue projects.
In 1992, members of Los Angeles' First Unitarian Church agreed to serve vegetarian meals at the church's weekly Sunday lunch. Their decision was made as a protest against animal cruelty and the environmental damage caused by the livestock industry.
The Reverend Marc Wessels, Executive Director of the International Network for Religion and Animals (INRA) made this observation on Earth Day 1990:
"It is a fact that no significant social reform has yet taken place in this country without the voice of the religious community being heard. The endeavors of the abolition of slavery; the women's suffrage movement; the emergence of the pacifist tradition during World War I; the struggles to support civil rights, labor unions, and migrant farm workers; and the anti-nuclear and peace movements have all succeeded in part because of the power and support of organized religion. Such authority and energy is required by individual Christians and the institutional church today if the liberation of animals is to become a reality."
Those here who defend meat eating are just like the Democratic Party. PATHETIC!
Yes. That is all very good and true: that meat-production for food is "one of the … most significant contributors to the most serious environmental problems, at every scale from local to global.". Plus that "the environmental argument against growing crops to be fed to animals — so that humans can eat the animals — has grown substantially."
But what about humans growing humans "so that humans ... eat the animals" and consume much else?
The ongoing and rising human population-explosion - doubling no. of humans from 3.3 bn to 6.6 bn in the last 40 years only - is also behind the problems with meat-eating.
All environ-mental (hyphen intended) problems are interconnected and must be addressed together.
A main problem with our human reactions to the effects of our selves - be it pollution, climate-crashing, exploitative self-destruction (war & poverty) etc. - is how we concern our selves with only one or the other problem at the time. Rather than striving for sustainable proportions between all conduct and consumption.
Such an approach in a pattern of sustainable proportions quickly reveals that we're simply growing to many of us.
A deliberate downscaling of this production of humans - e.g. one child per couple globally - is the only way to avoid our surrounding Biosphere's natural laws of proportion downscaling us, and a lot more brutally.
We've grown to noticably be interactive co-creators of the Biosphere we grow forth from (and into). We can't get away from the so far cumbersome challenges of including our selves in the equations we see mirrored back at us in the Environment.
What we can do, is to live with that awareness of our interactivities with the Biospere and feel into the immense joy that awareness provides. That is to know and feel the joy of being alive directly, with every breath we take. Rather than that we fall victim to the outdated belief that pleasure comes from the outside. That is what so easily happens when our own production of meaning and pleasure is reflected on to our outsides, our surroundings, and we then can see and sense pleasure there.
Believing meat-eating provides more pleasure, efficient energy or whatever, is only one of those pleasures reflected back at us from our outside.
Pleasure is a skill that is learned. Experience of pleasure can be adjusted to any sustainably available conditions – and that is what we humans now most need to learn. After all, the greatest pleasure we humans can have – orgasm – takes nothing more than our selves to produce.
All other pleasures - of food, clothes & shelter etc. – follow (in strength) from that "peak experience", and are surprisingly adjustable.
The changes we need to make to sustainable forms of pleasure are easy to take, once we realize how needless our dependence on conventional forms of living and pleasure really are.
Enjoy.
Ole Ullern
Wow, I'm a vegan and have been for a long time. I think Friedrich's essay is fantastic--the best thing I've ever seen on the environmental argument for veganism, in fact.
And I really don't like the strange attacks from the meat-eaters on this list (though I love that Friedrich predicted them in his piece--that's cute).
But I really wish the vegans and vegetarians would not respond in kind. Eating meat is a sort of addiction; it's something people have done for their entire lives. It doesn't help to belittle meat-eaters and/or call them pathetic.
It does help to reply to the arguments, as gently as possible, and to answer questions honestly. I really like the person who said that if you MUST eat meat, eat Bison. She doesn't want them to eat meat, but if someone is absolutely going to eat meat, bison is the one to consume.
That makes sense to me, too--bison, and grass-fed beef are probably the two meats that are least bad for animals and the environment.
Fossil fuels are the culprit, not eating meat.
Advocate:
KEM knows you don't have to kill a beaver to eat one.
Good arguments for vegetarianism. But the state of the world doesn't have a one shot cure. There is also organic meat for those of us who won't give it up, dire overpopulation-related resource depletion and pollution problems that must be addressed by humane methods instead of by violent ones, economic, sexual and racial inequalities, species extinctions from habitat loss by human encroachment, energy problems to resolve, global warming and more if we are to escape our present psychotic state of affairs. The Greens are the only ones concentrating on these issues.
I agree that meat-eating is an addiction. That's why so many otherwise intelligent people continue to passionately defend their right to kill living, breathing, feeling creatures (or have someone else do it for them) simply for pleasure, since it's certainly not necessary for survival anymore. Like any other addiction, you can kick it!
P.S. Maybe eating bison is better for the environment, but not for the bison.
It is interesting to see how many of the fierce promoters of veganism as one of the remedies for ills of globalization buy, without even blinking the story promoted by the big food business and big pharma how animal fats are bad for us and all that cholesterol BS. Did you ever ask where did this wisdom come from? How did it start? Who has benefited from it? Did you ever have any questions about possible links between our health problems and lack of proper fats and fat soluble vitamins in our diets?
I bet you now think that I really went crazy but just check it out. How this revelation that animal fats and cholesterol are killing us started? Why this idea has been so strongly promoted and by whom? It is convenient for vegans to believe in it as it fits their position but what if that is not true?
Please, notice that I am not attacking vegans or vegeterians as I understand your intentions. I didn't eat meat either for many years. But in what we want to believe is one thing and what may be facts is another story.
For those who have any doubts whether animal fats and meat are or are not healthy, check out the Weston Price Foundation. http://www.westonaprice.org/index.html
At the bottom of ideas presented there are studies of a number of indingenous cultures conducted by Dr. Price. These studies are precious since they were done at the beginning of this century when such cultures were still present. Now, there is practically no chance to do such studies. You may be surprised but this may be one of the most important books of your life.
http://www.radiantlifecatalog.com/prod.cfm/ct/9/pid/1002
Another great recent book that covers most of the health aspects of eating foods from other than official orthodoxy is Real Food by Nina Planck. Check it out at Amazon. Or, the book The Heart Revolution by Kilmer McCully about the cholesterol story. Again, if you don't trust the rulers of this world on some aspects of our lives, doesn't it make sense to distrust them on others?
I must repeat that pointing that meats can be healthy to us doesn't mean advocating sensless overconsumption of industrial meats. This comment is not about repeating previous arguments but just addressing the issue of connection between consumption of animal foods and our health.
It should not be a surprise to any opponnents of globalization and corporatism that truth may be opposite to anything presented by them as facts. Give it a chance, keep the minds open.