Why I'm Vegetarian

As a student at a fairly conservative university, I never know how people are going to react when I tell them I'm vegetarian. New acquaintances sometimes make automatic assumptions about my character and my political leanings. There's a certain facial expression that I've come to interpret as an unspoken, "Oh, so you're one of those crazy PETA animal rights extremists, eh?" (I'm actually not.) Some people get defensive, as if just by making a personal choice on how to eat I am condemning them and their choices. (Wrong again.) I usually try to give a succinct, inoffensive answer somewhere along the lines of, "I'm vegetarian because of the impact of the meat industry on our world - on human health, on the environment, and especially on global poverty and inequality." More often than not, that explanation piques people's curiosity and they ask, "What impacts?" This post is just a peek into the answer I wish I could give every time.

First, human health. Numerous studies have linked over-consumption of animal products with the main causes of death in America - heart disease, cancer, and other diet-related diseases. (I won't go into the details, but I especially recommend the book The China Study on this subject.)  The effects of hormones, antibiotics, and other chemicals used in meat production are also well-documented. In fact, 80% of all antibiotics used in the United States are used for non-therapeutic livestock treatment. That means meat producers regularly feed their animals low levels of antibiotics when they're not sick to combat the effects of the unsanitary conditions in which they are raised. You better believe that residues from those antibiotics remain in the animals' bodies... and show up in your steak. Exposure to antibiotics through the meat we eat reduces the effectiveness of medicines that could otherwise improve our health.

But eating meat affects more than just the eater. I assume that most people reading this blog are well aware of the dangers of environmental degradation and climate change. Any elementary school child can tell you that cars are polluting our air and causing global warming. But did you know that livestock production is responsible for more greenhouse gas emissions than all of transportation - cars, trucks, trains, boats, airplanes, etc - combined? And it's not just about emissions. The large-scale livestock production demanded by Western meat-based diets requires massive amounts of land. Pasture-land creation is a major cause of deforestation. For example, 70% of former rainforest land in the Amazon region is now used for grazing. Not to mention the amount of farmland it takes to produce the grain required to feed all of these factory-farmed animals. A full third of the earth's arable land is used to produce feed, not to feed humans, but to feed animals destined for slaughter. The erosion and soil degradation on pastureland and monoculture feed crop lands (usually corn or soybeans) is immense. All that eroded soil (not to mention pesticides, fertilizers, animal excrement, and antibiotics) ends up blocking our rivers, causing floods, and contaminating our water supply while leaving once fertile farmland barren. With every bite of hamburger, we're eating away future generations' ability to feed themselves.

But we need not wait for future generations to see the meat industry's impact on world food security. (This is really what I care most about.) The high demand for meat in developed nations aggravates extreme poverty and world hunger by reallocating the world's food resources from subsistence and survival for the poorest to luxury and waste for the richest. The meat industry manufactures scarcity by using massive amounts of land to produce feed for animals instead of humans. Depending on the estimate, it takes between 14 and 17 pounds of grain to produce 1 pound of beef. If we stopped dumping more than 836 million tons of grain down the drain of livestock production each year, that alone would be more than adequate to feed the 1.4 billion humans living in extreme poverty. And that's just the grain, not including the 240 million tons of soy produced every year, most of which is also fed to livestock. Demand for meat in rich countries drives consolidation of land both in those countries and in the developing world, depriving small farmers of their only means of subsistence, forcing them into urban slums, and aggravating income inequality, extreme poverty, and hunger. In this world of abundance, there is no reason humans should still be plagued by starvation. When you choose what's for dinner, you have more than just an animal's life in your hands.

Now, I have to add a caveat. I'm not a total vegetarian. There are certain kinds of meat that I have no qualms about eating. This summer while I was in Tennessee my family had some venison in the freezer. Our neighbor hunted the deer locally and prepared it himself. The whole process involved none of the global impact issues of agribusiness livestock production. So, after mulling it over for a little while, I ate it. And it was delicious. But as a general rule I don't go out of my way to find meat I feel ok eating. To be honest, I don't even miss it that much.

So, to my meat-eating friends - do I condemn you? No. Meat is not in itself evil, and I understand its appeal. I don't think it's a sin to eat meat, and if eaten sparingly it shouldn't cause any harm. But as a culture we've taken it way too far. I just want people to educate themselves about the impacts of their choice to eat meat (as well as other consumption choices) and then act in accordance with what they think is important. As for myself, that means being vegetarian.

Note: the majority of the info in this post comes from the UN Food and Agriculture Organization's 2006 Report, "Livestock's Long Shadow." Numbers may be slightly old, but telling nevertheless. Other info comes from the following sources, which I highly recommend:

http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?newsID=20772&CR1=warning#.UGD7Tq6enec

http://www.alternet.org/story/137737/13_breathtaking_effects_of_cutting_back_on_meat

http://www.vegetariantimes.com/article/why-go-veg-learn-about-becoming-a-vegetarian/

http://www.psr.org/chapters/oregon/safe-food/industrial-meat-system.html

Diet for a Small Planet, Francis Lappe