"At a time like this, scorching iron, not convincing argument, is needed" Frederick Douglass

All the arguments are a waste of time when in the end you all accept the notion of "personal choice". Ask your heart, it never lies. You are either one of us or not.

It is not a "personal choice" when you are eating my friends and you are ruining my world. My tax money subsidizes your "personal choice." When you made your "personal choice," did you ask the animal if you could confine, torture, and murder him or her? When you made your "personal choice," did you ask me if I mind all your pollution and devastation? Just because we personally make selfish choices does not make them "personal choices."

Humane education reinforced with a vegan school lunch will end school shootings and create a generation that cares. When children see that adults care enough to change, they will care in turn. This is too serious of an issue to leave alone just because some wish to eat unimpeded. Every 8 seconds America pumps out another killing machine.

Vegans get outside and tell a child the truth. We don't need to have meetings, sign any petitions, or stand on any street corners with signs. No legislation. Wake up! The future is right here, right now, right in front of us. Children are the transmission of society. All we have to do is tell the children the truth. Afraid? Peer Pressure. That is what they want to achieve in their attempts to maintain the status quo. The animals have their heads on chopping blocks while we all ponder and wait. Get off your asses! No revolution was non-confrontational. You can wait for the meat-eaters to come to you because you are cool; however, they want to eat without you watching. Go find a new reindeer game, the animals need you.

In closing, I'll leave you with the great words of the beloved George Carlin, "Just because you got the monkey off your back, doesn't mean the circus has left town"

Kernel writes: "Admittedly, many people could well reduce their consumption of meat, but to expect them to stop eating it entirely is a fantasy."

I don't think it's a 'fantasy,' but I do concur with TreeFitz, who writes: "I agree, overall, that humans can begin to shift away from eating meat and fish. Such a shift cannot be accomplished overnight."

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(s) or intelligence(s).

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."

TreeFitz___You make good sense with the idea that whatever change people decide they need to make in our system, it will need to be done gradually. The only way to make drastic change in our grain and food production would be for the government to nationalize the land and property, which no sane person would suggest.

We have thousands of people using millions of acres of land to produce grain for livestock feed, export, and ethanol. Our economy would go into the tank with any forced change in the whole inter-related system.

It now costs eight thousand dollars to ship a large container overseas. It is very difficult to see how our products could be gotten to the hungry in any amount as our own treasury is now depleted and our own citizens are in trouble.

Terrific piece, Bruce. Some compelling facts about raising animals for food and the use of water: According to the National Audubon Society, "[n]early half of the water consumed in this country is used for livestock …." Chickens, pigs, cattle, and other animals raised for food are the primary consumers of water in the U.S. It takes 5,000 gallons of water to produce 1 pound of meat, while growing 1 pound of wheat only requires 25 gallons. A totally vegetarian diet requires only 300 gallons of water per day, while a meat-eating diet requires more than 4,000 gallons of water per day. You save more water by not eating a pound of beef than you do by not showering for an entire year!

The best part of all this is how easy and rewarding eating a vegetarian diet is. I found great recipes and ideas on GoVeg.com

I went vegetarian in 1990 when I learned that farmed cattle were a major source of methane gas. Back then, the "greenhouse effect" was not a major concern unless you were a scientist. Since then, the number of reasons to forgo meat has steadily increased, from human rights to animal rights, from environmental to world hunger issues. And of course, heart disease is one of the top killers in America and it could be drastically reduced if people cut meat out of their diets, which would mean saving billions of dollars in health care...

Kernel,

I do note see anything wrong with Bruce Friedrich's thinking ability. The point he makes is that consuming meat has severe environmental, economic, social, and health costs that
are not necessary to pay because we have the option of changing to a largely vegetarian diet.

Our countries can survive even if we do not produce meat as a major part of the economy. True, it would mean that there would be less work in the economy for everyone but that is not a bad thing if we have the will to fairly share the work that needs to be done so that everyone can be involved in the economy (That is something that needs some thinking by progressives imho).

To your last point about the corn that animals eat being different and more productive per acre than table corn, the meat produced per acre of corn is significantly less than the food value that would be obtained by growing table corn or some other vegetable crop on the same land. I do not see a major problem with some agricultural land being taken out of production once not needed for supporting the meat industry. It would be good to have a buffer of available farm land for when we might need it. Besides, unused land is a place where biodiversity thrives. And with a surplus of agricultural land it is more difficult to argue that the only way the world can be fed is by drenching the plants with chemicals to yield the maximum production per acre. Maximizing the agricultural use of land is imprudent.

Now if you want to argue that learning to cook and eat vegetarian meals involves effort and change, and that the process is not easy, well then you have a point. It is not easy, at least when first learning it. And if you want to argue that some people can survive more easily without meat than others due to the makeup of their bodies you also have a point and we can begin to discuss how much meat these people actualy need to be healthy. Possibly too we might discuss how to improve the quality of life of the animals that we raise for them to eat.

However, capitalism abhours a vaccuum and if land is pulled out of the meat industry it will probably be sucked into the biofuel industry.

"Global hunger could be directly attributed to meat-eating." ---Chrissie Hynde

Half the world's population does not receive an adequate amount of food to eat. Ten to twenty million die annually of hunger and its effects. The Institute for Food and Development Policy reports that, "Forty thousand children starve to death on this planet every day," or one child every two seconds.

The livestock population of the United States today consumes enough grain and soybeans to feed over five times the entire human population of the country. We feed these animals over 80% of the corn we grow, and over 95% of the oats. Less than half the harvested agricultural acreage in the United States is used to grow food for people. Most of it is used to grow livestock feed.

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 livestock) to feed over one billion people in the poorer countries.

The world's cattle alone, not to mention pigs and chickens, consume a quantity of food equal to the caloric needs of 8.7 billion people. It takes 16 pounds of grain to produce one pound of beef. According to Department of Agriculture statistics, one acre of land can grow 20,000 pounds of potatoes. That same acre of land, if used to grow cattlefeed, can produce less than 165 pounds of beef.

In his book, The Hungry Planet, Georg Bergstrom points out that protein-starved underdeveloped nations export more protein to wealthy nations than they receive. He calls this "the protein swindle." Ninety percent of the world's fish meal catch, for example, is exported to rich countries. One-third of Africa's peanut crop winds up in the stomachs of European livestock. Half the world's cereal crop is fed to livestock and the United States annually imports one million tons of vegetable protein from Third World nations--just to feed its farm animals.

Bergstrom writes: "Sometimes one wonders how many Americans and Western Europeans have grasped the fact that quite a few of their beef steaks, quarts of milk, dozens of eggs, and hundreds of broilers are the result, not of their agriculture, but of the approximately two million metric tons of protein, mostly of high quality, which astute Western businessmen channel away from the needy and hungry."

Jeremy Rifkin, author of a dozen influential books and President of the Foundation on Economic Trends, writes in his 1992 bestseller Beyond Beef:

"Cattle and other livestock are devouring much of the grain produced on the planet. It need be emphasized that this is a new phenomenon, unlike anything ever experienced before.

"Contrary to popular belief, the poor are getting poorer each year...Increased poverty has meant increased malnutrition. On the African continent, nearly one in every four human beings is malnourished. In Latin America, nearly one out of every seven people goes to bed hungry each night. In Asia and the Pacific, 28 percent of the people border on starvation, experiencing the gnawing pain of a perpetual hunger."

"In the Near East, one in ten people is underfed. Chronic hunger now affects upwards of 1.3 billion people, according to the world Health Organization--a statistic all the more striking in a world where one third of all the grain produced is being fed to cattle and other livestock. Never before in human history has such a large percentage of our species--nearly 25 percent--been malnourished.

"The transition of world agriculture from food grain to feed grains represents an...evil whose consequences may be far greater and longer lasting than any past examples of violence inflicted by men against their fellow human beings."

In the 1970s, the United Nations Secretary General said that the food consumption of the rich countries is the key cause of hunger around the world. The United Nations has recommended that the wealthy nations cut down on their meat consumption.

The Worldwatch Institute has released a remarkable report entitled Taking Stock: Animal Farming and the Environment, which lists nation after nation where food deprivation has followed the switch from a grain-based diet to a meat-based one.

Most of the nations that now import grain from the United States were once self-sufficient in grain. The main reason they aren't is the rise in meat production and consumption.

In Taiwan, for example, per capita consumption of meat and eggs increased 600 percent from 1950 to 1990. With this change, vastly increased amounts of grain have gone to livestock, raising the annual per capita grain use in the country from 375 pounds to 858 pounds. In 1950, Taiwan was a grain exporter; in 1990 the nation imported, mostly for feed, 74 percent of the grain it used.

In mainland China, the situation is similar. Increased meat consumption has meant less grain available to feed people. Since 1978, meat consumption has more than doubled, to twenty-four kilograms. The share of Chinese grain fed to livestock rose from 7 percent in 1960 to 20 percent in 1990.

Over half Of Latin America's beef production is exported, and the rest is too expensive for any but the wealthy to purchase. From 1960 to 1980 beef exports from El Salvador increases over sixfold. Meanwhile, increasing numbers of small farmers lost their livelihood and were pushed off their land. Today, 72 percent of all Salvadoran infants are underfed.

In Brazil, major portions of the Amazon tropical rain forests have been destroyed so that wealthy multinational corporations can produce beef for the wealthy. Corporations such as Volkswagen, Nestle, Mitsubishi, Liquigas, King Ranch, and Swift-Eckrich have bulldozed and burned literally hundreds of millions of acres, replacing the world's oldest and richest ecosystems, home to two million or more species of plant and animal life with a single crop--pasture grass for cattle. And here, the beef produced has not gone to feed hungry Brazilians; it has been primarily exported to Western Europe, the Middle East, and North America. In 1987, the United States imported three hundred million pounds of meat from countries in Central and South America.

With the help of international lending institutions, Brazil has mounted an enormous effort to increase agricultural production, but this has been primarily meat-oriented production and for export. In the late '60s, soybeans were almost nonexistent or Brazil. Today, this crop is the nation's number one export--but almost all of it goes to feed Japanese and European livestock. Twenty five years ago, one third of the Brazilian population suffered from malnutrition. Today, the figure has risen to two thirds.

Oxfam, the international charity, reports that in Brazil huge cattle ranches take up some of the most fertile soil in the whole country, yet 60 percent of Brazilians are malnourished. Oxfam estimates 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! The livestock are exported of course, to satisfy the developed nations' craving for cheap hamburgers.

In the early '60s, sorghum was almost unknown in Mexico. But by 1980, it covered literally twice the acreage of wheat. Sorghum isn't grown for humans. It is fed to livestock. In the late '60s, livestock consumed only 6 percent of Mexico's grain. Today, the figure is over 50 percent. This is a trend throughout the Third World. Copying the United States' meat-oriented diet, these poor countries devote increasing percentages of their resources to meat production.

In Guatemala, 75 percent of the children under five years of age are undernourished. Yet, every year Guatemala exports 40 million pounds of meat to the United States. It borders on the criminal!

In Costa Rica, beef production quadrupled between 1960 and 1980, but almost all this beef is exported to the United States, and what does stay in the country is eaten by a tiny minority. Though more and more Costa Rican land is being turned over to meat production, the population is not eating more meat for the change. The average family in Costa Rica eats less meat than the average American housecat.

Throughout Latin America, land availability is a prominent social issue. Revolutionaries as well as reform-minded moderates have made land reform a major issue. Yet in many Latin American countries, forests are being leveled in order to create pastures for cattle grazing land.

In a region where land availability is a central social issue, existing land is being gobbled up by livestock agriculture. The resulting social tensions have resulted in civil wars, repression and violence.

Hunger is really a social disease caused by the unjust, inefficient and wasteful control of food. Our food security is not being threatened by the prolific, hungry masses, but by elites that profit by the concentration and internationalization of control of food resources.

In country after country the pattern is repeated. Livestock industries are consuming feed to such an extent that now almost all Third World nations must import grain. Seventy-five percent of Third World imports of corn, barley, sorghum, and oats are fed to animals, not to people. In country after country, the demand for meat among the rich is squeezing out staple production for the poor.

The same trend can be found in the Middle East and North Africa--increases in grain-fed livestock require more imported feed. In the early '70s, Egypt was self-sufficient in grain. Then, livestock ate only 10 percent of the nation's grain. Today, livestock consume 36 percent of Egypt's grain. As a result, Egypt must now import eight million tons of grain every year.

In the late '60s , Syria was a barley exporter. But in the intervening years, livestock has consumed increasing amounts of the country's grain. Now, despite a phenomenal 1,000 percent increase in the land area devoted to producing barley, Syria must import the cereal.

According to Buckminster Fuller, there are enough resources at present to feed, clothe, house and educate every human being on the planet at American middle class standards. The Institute for Food and Development Policy has shown that there is no country in the world in which the people cannot feed themselves from their own resources.

Moreover, there is no correlation between land density and hunger. China has twice as many people per cultivated acre as India, yet less of a hunger problem. Bangladesh has just one-half the people per cultivated acre that Taiwan has, yet Taiwan has no starvation, while Bangladesh has one of the highest rates in the world. The most densely populated countries in the world today are not India and Bangladesh, but Holland and Japan.

Many of us believe that hunger exists because there's not enough food to go around. But as Frances Moore Lappe' and her anti-hunger organization Food First! have shown, the real cause of hunger is a scarcity of justice, not a scarcity of food.

This is a very good and up to date overview of what has become, in its own way, as compelling a case as the argument for the global warming crisis itself. We have a catastrophic climate crisis on our hands and a global shift to eating low on the food chain (much more plant protein, much less animal protein) is as necessary a part of the solution as slashing our carbon footprints in the other, obvious ways. The very same inefficiencies of production that make animal protein a climate threat, make it a threat to global food security too. Making meat amplifies, by a factor of about 5 to 15, both the resource cost and the pollution penalties of food production compared to growing the same amount of protein from grains and beans.

Even putting the issue of animal rights and welfare aside (the prime motivator for going all the way to strict vegetarianism, or veganism), a diet rich in animal products (with rare exceptions that don't apply in developed countries) is a socially irresponsible diet – a gas-guzzling, pollution spewing and child-starving, selfish SUV diet.

I agree, overall, that humans can begin to shift away from eating meat and fish. Such a shift cannot be accomplished overnight. It is not simply a matter of choosing what we will have for dinner tonight. Large swaths of our economy have to shift. We can't wipe out all cattle-feeders overnight, and, in the process, wipe out the network that feeds the beef economy and all the livelihoods that rely upon growing beef. It is very complex.

I wish that progressives might become better at advocating for incremental change instead of staking out radical change and demanding it overnight.

I call for all humans to have more vegetarian meals. If you are someone who always has meat at all meals, then maybe you could have one meal this week without meat. If you are someone who only eats meat/fish a few times a week, then you might eliminate a little more.

We're all in everything together. Every change I make, however microscopic, affects others.

As others have pointed out, people starving in other parts of the world cannot instantly have access to the corn that is being used for ethanol.

Baby steps.

Bruce Friedrich____ Maybe 20 years on a vegetarian diet has affected your thinking ability. Admittedly, many people could well reduce their consumption of meat, but to expect them to stop eating it entirely is a fantasy. Also, how do you expect the poor starving people in the world to come up with the means to buy all of that corn that is now going into livestock for food in this country?

Many people pay a high price for some meat in their diet, which ends up keeping farmers and livestock producers in business. Our country could not survive without the production of farmers, ranchers, and feeders contributing to the nations business.

Another small point on eating all of that grain is that the corn people eat is not the same corn that livestock use. The sweet corn for our table does not yield much in comparison to field corn, so there is another problem with this grand scheme of vegetarianism for all.

This is a pretty good link that makes a lot of the same human rights points, but looking at the people who raise and slaughter, especially pigs and chickens. I guess the people who raise cattle and work on dairy farms aren't treated as badly as the ones who raise chickens and pigs, which have been totally vertically integrated. The people who slaughter them all are treated like dirt though.

http://www.goveg.com/workerrights.asp

Killing animals is inherently dangerous work, but the fast line speeds, dirty killing floors, and lack of training make animal-processing plants some of the most dangerous places to work in America today. According to statistics from the U.S. Department of Labor's Bureau of Labor Statistics, nearly one in three slaughterhouse workers suffers from illness or injury every year, compared to one in 10 workers in other manufacturing jobs.1 The rate of repetitive stress injury for slaughterhouse employees is 35 times higher than it is for those with other manufacturing jobs.2

The industry has refused to do what would be necessary to create safe working conditions for its employees, such as slowing down the lines or buying appropriate safety gear, because these changes could cut into companies' bottom lines. In its 175-page exposé on worker exploitation by the farmed-animal industry titled "Blood, Sweat, and Fear: Workers' Rights in U.S. Meat and Poultry Plants," Human Rights Watch explains, "These are not occasional lapses by employers paying insufficient attention to modern human resources management policies. These are systematic human rights violations embedded in meat and poultry industry employment."3

Employees who are injured at work—and most will be—are often fired if they take time off or try to file a health insurance or workers' compensation claim. Human Rights Watch cites one slaughterhouse worker who reports: "They love you if you're healthy and you work like a dog, but if you get hurt, you are trash. If you get hurt, watch out. They will look for a way to get rid of you before they report it. They will find a reason to fire you or put you on a worse job like the cold room, or change your shift so you quit. So a lot of people don't report their injuries. They just work with the pain."4 Another worker in a factory farm agrees, confessing: "I worry every day that I will break my hand or get hurt, but I never say anything for fear I'll lose my job. No American would do this job. This is a shit job, for shit money."5

It goes on and on. Click on the link to read all about how poultry and pig "farmers" are treated, etc. Bad stuff.

Well put, Bruce. The Center for Science in the Public Interest also advocates a meat-free diet in their book about the topic, Six Arguments for a Greener Diet (http://cspinet.org/new/200608011.html).

Fortunately, awareness about the link between meat consumption and environmental destruction is increasing at a time when vegetarian food is better and more avaliable than ever. Where I live, just about every restaurant has vegetarian options, and there are three totally vegetarian restaurants. In fact, two of my friends went vegetarian just in the past month.

I agree that its wrong to focus only on human rights as a reason for going vegan, but its good to use against those that claim to be against animal rights but for human rights(often their interest in human rights only materializes in response to vegan arguments).

Sorry, that video is available at www.Meat.org.

I agree with the points in this piece, though I don't know if we really need to focus on human rights to promote veganism, and I don't know if it's going to work, necessarily... I think the health and animal protection arguments are stronger and more immediate--that is, if you go vegetarian, you know you're doing your health a favor and you know you're not eating animals. Saving food for the starving... the relationship is a bit less distinct, it seems to me.

The American Dietetic Association says about vegetarian diets--after reviewing all the best science on the issue: "[V]egetarian diets are healthful, nutritionally adequate and provide health benefits in the prevention and treatment of certain diseases. Well-planned vegan and other types of vegetarian diets are appropriate for all stages of the life cycle, including during pregnancy, lactation, infancy, childhood and adolescence. Vegetarian diets offer a number of nutritional benefits, including lower levels of saturated fat, cholesterol, and animal protein as well as higher levels of carbohydrates, fiber, magnesium, potassium, folate, and antioxidants such as vitamins C and E and phytochemicals. Vegetarians have been reported to have lower body mass indices than nonvegetarians, as well as lower rates of death from ischemic heart disease; vegetarians also show lower blood cholesterol levels; lower blood pressure; and lower rates of hypertension, type 2 diabetes, and prostate and colon cancer."

And anyone who watches the PETA video, "Meet Your Meat"... well it should turn anyone off meat!