Why become a vegetarian?
NOTE: The following text has been quoted from:
Jones, Haenfler, Johnson, and Klocke (2001), The Better World Handbook, New Society Publishers, pp. 96-100.
the environment | world hunger | health | animals | breaking a pattern | alternatives | factoids
If, like many of us, you grew up in a typical American household, you may believe that a meal just isn't a meal unless it's served up with a fair-sized piece of meat. For many of us a meat dish is the meal; the bread, salads, and vegetables are just side dishes. Our insistence on eating meat every day, often several times a day, creates problems for the environment, workers, our own health, and other people around the world. And due to modern factory farming techniques, it also causes the unnecessary suffering of animals. For one or more of these reasons, millions of people have already reduced the amount of meat they eat! In fact, two out of every three people in the world lead healthy lives eating primarily meatless diets. Once you learn about the environmental, hunger, labor, and health issues surrounding meat, you may want to join them!
By eating less meat you help preserve the environment. Meat production consumes a tremendous amount of natural resources and creates a great deal of waste. In fact, we use about one-fourth of the Earth's land to graze cattle! A reduced demand for meat would mean we could use this land to raise grain, which would feed more people with greater efficiency, and we would help protect the world's grasslands from overgrazing. At the same time, there would be less incentive for the people of Central and South America to create grazing land for cattle by burning down rainforests. Closer to home, cattle grazing has eliminated or severely threatened more plant species in the western U.S. than any other cause and is the number one cause of soil erosion on western public lands. That trend could be slowed or halted if we all lowered our demand for meat.
Though not as destructive as beef production, hog and chicken production cause their own environmental problems. Hog waste has become a major source of water pollution in a number of states. In North Carolina alone, 2.5 tons of hog waste is produced annually for every North Carolinian. Spills have occurred in many states, contaminating our waterways and killing fish. It takes about 660 gallons of water to produce a pound of chicken. Farmers also often apply waste from chicken factories to crop fields as a form of fertilizer, which produces similarly destructive results as the runoff ends up as water pollution.
Commercial fishing presents us with a different kind of environmental challenge: the misuse of our marine resources. The U.N.'s Food and Agriculture Organization estimates that, due to wasteful fishing practices, 57 billion pounds of sea life is caught unintentionally every year and thrown away. The Environmental Defense Fund reports that 13 of the world's 17 major fishing grounds are depleted or in serious decline, due to overfishing.
Nearly 29% of us, or 1.6 billion people, are undernourished. The Food and Agriculture Organization reports that more than 800 million people go hungry each year. Between 40 and 60 million people starve to death each year, many of them children. Despite these startling statistics, we feed 72% of all grain grown in the world to livestock. In fact, due to the high demand for beef in the First World, agribusiness has transformed much of Central and South America's agricultural land into pastures for raising beef that gets exported to the United States, Australia, and Europe. The end result is that the wealthy of the world eat grain fed beef while over a billion people go hungry each day due to a lack of grain.
Many of us have already begun to realize the health benefits of eating less red meat. Diets high in saturated fats and cholesterol have been implicated in numerous medical studies as significantly contributing to a high rate of heart attacks, cancer (such as breast and colon cancer), and strokes. The average U.S. man eating a typical meat-based diet has a 50% chance of dying from heart disease, the number one killer of people living in the U.S. In addition, the vast majority of factory farms use antibiotics, hormones, and other drugs in beef, pork, and chicken production. Each year in the U.S. alone, contaminated chicken kills at least 1,000 people and sickens as many as 80 million others.
Unfortunately, the image of the small, family farm stocked with a fairly content variety of animals no longer corresponds to the reality of modern livestock conditions. Many animals live in less-than-humane factory farms their entire lives. Most breeding sows are kept in crates for almost their entire lives and 71% of pigs suffer from pneumonia. More than 90% of chickens and eggs are raised on crowded factory farms.
Though there are many compelling reasons to reduce our meat consumption, we may find it difficult to break a pattern we've had since early childhood. The first step might be to not eat meat one day each week or to eat it only for dinner. Remember, it is important to make changes that are right for you. Gradual transformations that you feel comfortable with will likely last. Sudden, drastic changes often lead to frustration and giving up entirely. Think of reducing the meat in your diet as an opportunity rather than as a restriction. You have the chance to explore many new recipes you may not have considered before.
If you want to cut back on your meat but think you'll miss the taste, consider meat alternatives. Soy chicken nuggets, burgers, sausage, bacon, hot pockets, lunchmeat, ground beef, hot dogs, and chicken patties are all readily available in your local market. There are also healthy alternatives to dairy products, such as milk, cheese, and ice cream that tend to be easier on the planet and taste good, too! Morningstar Farms, Eden Foods, Rice Dream, Gardenburger, and Fantastic Foods are just a few good brands to look for.
- A common myth is that substantial amounts of meat are essential to provide our protein needs. Actually, the average American gets almost twice the amount of protein necessary each day.
- Animal agriculture causes 80% of the world's annual deforestation.
- Raising livestock for meat is one of the most inefficient uses of land. One acre of land could produce 50,000 pounds of tomatoes, 40,000 pounds of potatoes, 30,000 pounds of carrots or just 250 pounds of beef. To produce a year's supply of beef for a family requires over 260 gallons of fossil fuel, or approximately one gallon of gasoline per pound of grain-fed beef. Finally, it takes 2,500 gallons of water to produce one pound of beef; to produce one pound of wheat requires 25 gallons.
- Americans who work in meat-packing and processing plants face some of the poorest working conditions. Most workers can afford little or no health care, yet their repetitive motion, high speed, physically demanding, assembly line jobs injure one-third of all workers every year—the highest injury rate of any industry. When these workers can no longer function effectively, they are laid off in lieu of new, healthy workers. This has led to one of the highest turnover rates of any job in the U.S. Most packing plants are non-union and pay as little as $5 per hour. Hog farms provide particularly dangerous workplace environments. Seventy percent of swine confinement workers suffer from respiratory ailments, such as chronic bronchitis.
- If you eat seafood, check out Audubon's Seafood Guide to make sure that your seafood choices will help ensure the long-term preservation of sea life. [Excellent choices include mahimahi and Pacific cod while especially poor choices include shrimp and snapper, for example.]