A Vegetarian Environment

According to this article, the two primary ways meat-eating ruins the environment are wasting resources and polluting.

Wasted Resources

Land:
Raising animals for meat involves a great deal of land for grazing and growing crops to feed animals. In the United States, forests are cleared in order to make room for the space needed to grow these crops or allow animals to graze. However, "[v]ast tracts of land are needed to grow crops" for farm animals. Admittedly, I'm no expert, but won't it take just as much (if not more) farmland to feed everyone in the United States? The destruction of forests also endangers many plant and animal species. According to the article, rain forests are often destroyed in other countries to make room for farmland. Obviously this is bad, but there are problems involved with telling other countries what they can and can't do. However, I'm not going to get involved with foreign affairs and international relations at this time.

Food:
Producing food from animals is "grossly inefficient" because animals must eat vast quantities of food to produce enough food to feed humans. This is true, and I won't argue against it. But, don't animals provide nutrients that are difficult to find in fruits and vegetables? I know that cats could only live as vegetarians with many vitamin supplements, would this also be true for humans? Personally, I don't want to be dependent on vitamin supplements for the rest of my life.

Energy:
This is straight-forward enough: raising farm animals wastes energy in the form of fossil fuels used to transport food for the animals, transport animals to be slaughtered, transport the meat to the supermarket, etc.. Of course, won't growing enough crops for the United States waste energy, too? Crops will need to be transported, tractors will need fuel, ... A similar list of wasted fossil fuel energy could probably be developed for a vegetarian society.

Water:
The water required to grow crops, provide drink for animals, clean animals and their living space, are all massive wastes. They anticipated my argument, mostly. The article only takes into account current water demands for crops; much more water would be needed to grow enough food to provide for everyone in the country.

The article also counts rain forests and animal cruelty as wasted resources, but I already discussed those issues.

Pollution

The animals we eat produce feces. Lots and lots of feces. These feces pollute the land, water we drink, the air we breathe, and contribute to global warming. While some of their claims may be a bit exaggerated, there's really not much I can say otherwise...

Works Cited

"Meat and the Environment." GoVeg.com. PETA. 24 Oct. 2008 http://www.goveg.com/environment.asp.

Vegetarians: Healthier?

According to GoVeg.com, a vegetarian diet promotes good health, a longer lifespan, and a stronger immune system. Here's a list of benefits:

Healthy vegetarian diets support a lifetime of good health and provide protection against numerous diseases, including our country’s three biggest killers: heart disease, cancer, and strokes. The American Dietetic Association states that vegetarians have “lower rates of death from ischemic heart disease; … lower blood cholesterol levels, lower blood pressure, and lower rates of hypertension, type 2 diabetes, and prostate and colon cancer” and that vegetarians are less likely than meat-eaters to be obese.

Okay, I guess I can believe most of that. Meats are fatty and all of that. I do have some issues with talking about obesity in meat-eaters, though, what with rampant anorexia and whatnot. To me, it sounds a lot like playing on people's fears of weight gain.

Vegetarian diets can also supposedly increase IQ. I was skeptical of this claim and did some extra research. According to this BBC article, vegetarianism does not promote higher IQs so much as children with higher IQs usually become vegetarians. Additionally, this "higher" IQ is only 5 points above the average IQ: 106 compared to 101 for men and 104 compared to 99 for women. It is also very important to note that there was no difference in IQ for "strict" vegetarians and "vegetarians" who also ate chicken and fish (I have news for those people: those are both meat). So parents, don't think that raising your children as vegetarians will cause them to grow up into the next Einstein.

Works Cited
"Eating for Life." GoVeg.com. PETA. 24 Oct. 2008 http://www.goveg.com/healthconcerns.asp.

"High IQ Link to Being Vegetearian." BBC News. 15 Dec. 2006. 24 Oct. 2008 http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/6180753.stm.

Animal "Intelligence"

Let's take a look at the next item on the list. Supposedly, the animals we eat are intelligent creatures who deserve the same rights and protections as dogs and cats. GoVeg.com provides quite a bit of information on chickens, pigs, fish, turkeys, cows, ducks, and geese. Apparently, all of these animals have secretly had an amazing level of intelligence that nobody noticed for years. Cows can solve problems and get excited by solving them. Chickens understand that eating painkillers makes them feel better. Fish can learn to escape a net. Pigs are apparently smarter than the average human baby (but then agan, what isn't?). That's nice and all, but we don't keep dogs and cats as pets because they're good problem-solvers; we keep them because they're good company. Granted, should these animals be mistreated because they aren't "pet-worthy?" Of course not. But the idea that we should compare these animals to pets (and even people) is absurd.

In short, I was not impressed by this nonsense argument. I'm not going to replace my dog with a pet cow anytime soon. Maybe the animal cruelty argument just set the bar too high... We'll see when I check out the next item on the list.

Works Cited
"Amazing Animals." GoVeg.com. PETA. 23 Oct. 2008 http://www.goveg.com/amazinganimals.asp.

The Animal Issue: Cruelty and Factory Farms

Turns out PETA has a lot of reasons why you should stop eating meat. I'll discuss them all individually eventually, but I'll start by briefly listing them.
According to this article at GoVeg.com, a PETA affiliate, you should adopt a vegetarian diet for the following eight reasons:

1. Stop animal cruelty/abuse
2. Animals deserve rights and protection
3. Vegetarian/vegan diets are healthier than regular diets
4. Growing fruits and vegetables are better for the environment than raising livestock is
5. Eating and growing more vegetables and less meat could help solve world hunger
6. Slaughterhouses are unsafe for workers
7. Factory farms are dangerous, unhealthy, and unclean
8. The meat industry doesn't care about consumer health

I could probably argue against most of these points, but that isn't my purpose here. Instead I will begin a (long overdue) analysis of the first point: stopping animal cruelty.


I would imagine that most vegetarians, when asked, would cite concern for animal welfare as the primary reason they adopted a vegetarian diet. GoVeg.com provides several (graphic) descriptions of the cruelty animals face at factory farms, where they are bred and raised to provide meat for human consumption. According to this article, factory farm animals suffer unimaginable horrors, being confined by the thousands to dirty sheds and cages. The article goes on to discuss other horrors of factory farm life:

Animals on today's factory farms have no legal protection from cruelty that would be illegal if it were inflicted on dogs or cats: neglect, mutilation, genetic manipulation, and drug regimens that cause chronic pain and crippling, transport through all weather extremes, and gruesome and violent slaughter. Yet farmed animals are no less intelligent or capable of feeling pain than are the dogs and cats we cherish as companions.

But that’s not all. Animals are fed massive amounts of drugs to fatten them quickly while keeping them alive in an otherwise fatal environment. Many animals will die before they can be brutally slaughtered while they are still alive.

Okay, so, a lot of this sounds like exaggerated propaganda. At least I thought so. Surely things can’t really be this bad? For us non-believers, a video is provided which, I must admit, I didn’t have the stomach to watch completely. It shows animals in factory farms living in their own excrement, packed into side-by-side cages like products on shelves at the supermarket. Some animals have died from the inhumane conditions. A worker is shown beating several animals.

Clearly, the welfare of these animals is important to many people who ultimately adopt a vegetarian diet. But what about animals living on a conventional farm, the storybook variety we think of when we hear the word “farm?” Surely animals there get to live happy, healthy, and natural lives? What’s wrong with eating those kinds of animals?


I’ll find out.

Works Cited
"Why You Should Consider Adopting a Vegetarian Diet." GoVeg.com. PETA. 21 Oct. 2008 http://www.goveg.com/.

"Cruelty to Animals: Mechanized Madness." GoVeg.com. PETA. 21 Oct. 2008 http://www.goveg.com/factoryfarming.asp.