I never thought Id see the day when an article mentioned meat and animal slavery - thank you so much for writing this

I have a friend who won't eat meat, saying that she doesn't want a cow to die so that she can eat steak. I replied that vegetarianism is terrible for the environment. When you consider how much land, water and fertilizer was used for that calf just to get it to age three, I shudder to think of the resources it would consume were we to let it live out its full, natural lifespan.

I hope you're joking. If we stop eating meat, we'll stop raising cows.

When we decide to stop raising cows, won't we have to have one last feast? Or will we slowly phase the cow out of existence by having the cows use contraception?

There is a serious issue in the diminishing herds. While cattle or bison raising hardly makes for a pristine environment, enough of it is done in pastures to shape those environments.

If the herds decline, how will their former environments evolve, both ecologically and economically? I don't think the answers are going to be simple ones, and I definitely don't think the local ecology will necesarily improve as a result.

This is completely absurd, and very offensive. Just another racist comparison - talking about slavery and implying that African-Americans of the slavery era were nothing more than "livestock" and not human.

It's also another step in the worldwide, totalitarian "thought Police" movement. Do not let anyone have a choice. FORCE them to do what YOU have decided is "good for them". Outlaw smoking, outlaw red meat, and legalize marijuana.

Anyone who disagrees with your extremist environmental / animal rights viewpoint is immediately threatened, insulted, called every name in the book, and ultimately either silenced or dismissed.

What's next, are you going to FORCE lions, polar bears, wolves, and other meat-eating ANIMALS to become "vegetarian"??

Utter and complete drivel. All of it.

Is meat actually bad for us? I am pretty sure I have traits in my body that are designed for the consumption of meat. My teeth, intestines, and even taste are predisposed to meat; at very least an omnivore lifestyle is realistic and true to our nature. There is no vegetarian revolution, just the herded descent of the masses into something very unnatural. People seem to forget, or are taught not to, think; our very existence is defined predominantly by out ability to use our brains. The simple answers are for the animals, we are suppose to innovate out of our troubles.

comparing livestock to slaves,is rather insensitive,narrow-minded,sad and absurd.While I understand the writer's passion to get his message across,his premise/analogy is incongruous.

The author says:

"Going by the numbers, eating meat is pretty hard to justify for the even moderately health-conscious. A National Cancer Institute report released last March found that people who ate the most red meat were, as the New York Times put it, "most likely to die from cancer, heart disease and other causes." The biggest abstainers "were least likely to die." Those who eat five ounces of meat daily, (the equivalent of one and a half Quarter Pounders or Big Macs) increase their risk from cancer or heart disease by 30 percent compared to those who eat two-thirds of an ounce daily -- a stark difference."

I wish he would differentiate between eating red meat and other kinds of meat. A turkey club is better for ya than a burger any day of the week.

Not herd helpless animals into dark rooms, and allow them to get bigger and nothing else -- and motivated by profit
mass -- rear them and stack the packages in grocery store.

Allow animals to grow naturally and eat as needed.
Stop the meat industry. Gross and violation of all
known standards by any standard. It is a commercial enterprise.

Human beings always have eaten what they could find to eat. This is not a problem. Left to nature, population in any species will be naturally regulated.
Human populations is unregulated as we intervene.
We also forcibly create new herds for the gruesome meat industry machines to chop and pack them.
--
dT

Ahh, cancer. The greatest scare tactic ever invented to change perosnal behavior. Can I have the numbers behind "increase their risk from cancer or heart disease by 30 percent" and not just the percentage? All things in moderation, my friends.

The author of this article isn't the first person to compare meat-eating with slavery. Alice Walker, activist and author of _The Color Purple_ has said, "The animals of the world exist for their own reasons. They were not made for humans any more than black people were made for whites or women for men."

"A diet that can lead to heart attacks, cancer, and numerous other diseases cannot be a natural diet," writes Keith Akers in A Vegetarian Sourcebook. "A diet that pillages our resources of land, water, forests, and energy cannot be a natural diet. A diet that causes the unnecessary suffering and death of billions of animals each year cannot be a natural diet."

I understand there are conservative Christians who fear vegetarianism...which is kind of like being afraid of nonsmoking, nondrinking, or recycling. 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.

A pamphlet put out by Compassion Over Killing says raising animals for food is one of the leading causes of both pollution and resource depletion today. According to a recent United Nations report, "Livestock's Long Shadow," raising chickens, turkeys, pigs, and other animals for food causes more greenhouse gas emissions than all the cars, trucks and other forms of transportation combined. Researchers from the University of Chicago similarly concluded that a vegetarian diet is the most energy efficient, and the average American does more to reduce global warming emissions by not eating animal products than by switching to a hybrid car.

A 2007 journal published by the American Dietetic Association found "meat protein production required 26 times more water than vegetable protein on rain-fed lands." The journal further states that dieticians "can encourage eating that is both healthful and conserving of soil, water, and energy by emphasizing plant sources of protein and foods that have been produced with fewer agricultural inputs."

"Livestock are one of the most significant contributors to today's most serious environmental problems. Urgent action is required to remedy the situation."

---Union Nations' Food and Agriculture Association

A single dairy cow produces approximately 120 pounds of wet manure per day, which is equivalent to that of 20 to 40 humans.

70% of the grain grown and 50% of the water consumed in the U.S. are used by the meat industry. (Audubon Society)

On average 990 liters of water are required to produce one liter of milk. (United Nations)

Over 260 million acres of U.S. forest have been cleared to grow grain for livestock. (Greenpeace)

It takes nearly one gallon of fossil fuel and 5,200 gallons of water to produce just one pound of conventionally fed beef. (Mother Jones)

Farmed animals produce an estimated 1.4 billion tons of fecal waste each year in the U.S. Much of this untreated waste pollutes the land and water.

The number of animals killed for food in the United States is 70 times larger than the number of animals killed in laboratories, 30 times larger than the number killed by hunters and trappers, and 500 times larger than the number of animals killed in animal pounds.

“If anyone wants to save the planet,” says Paul McCartney in a PETA interview, “all they have to do is stop eating meat. That’s the single most important thing you could do. It’s staggering when you think about it. Vegetarianism takes care of so many things in one shot: ecology, famine, cruelty. Let’s do it! Linda was right. Going veggie is the single best idea for the new century.”

I've seen a few articles and books on this topic but I find it so odd that very few of them point out that dairy is just as much part of the problem. One only has to read The China Study to see the clear health related problems.

It's not that hard to go veg. I never thought I would ever consider it until I saw the movie Earthlings. It didn't take long before I went vegan and it definitely the best decision I've ever made.

Here's a more realistic suggestion. Instead of banning meat and dairy outright, how about strengthening animal welfare laws so that agricultural practices are actually humane and minimize their impact on the environment. This would require more work for people raising animals, and without CAFOs fewer animals would be available. The end result would be an dramatic increase in the price of meat, dairy, and eggs, a price that actually reflects the true cost of humanely raising them. If the price goes up, people will necessarily cut back.

The truth is, no one has ever shown that an exclusively vegetarian diet is superior to an omnivorous one with modest amounts of meat, fish and dairy. And as someone married to vegan, I can personally report that the latter is vastly more pleasant than the former. Meat should be treated like wild fish -- something to be eaten on special occasions, in moderation overall. It is not necessary to be a complete food puritan. Nor is it necessary, as the vegans essentially argue, that domesticated animals should just be phased out of existence. We just need to structure things so that people have a personal motivation to stop being meat gluttons.

lab grown...

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=90235492

If the picture of those corn dogs isnt enough to make you give up 'meat', nothing will!

A vegetarian since 1982, I attended my first anti-vivisection protest in the spring of 1985, as anti-apartheid demonstrations rocked the UC San Diego campus. I first got interested in promoting vegetarianism in mainstream society after reading John Robbins' Diet for a New America (1987). Nominated for a Pulitzer Prize, it makes veganism seem as reasonable and mainstream as recycling.

Half the water consumed in the U.S. goes to irrigate land growing feed and fodder for livestock. Huge amounts of water wash away their excrement. U.S. livestock produce 20 times as much excrement as does the entire human population; creating sewage which is 10 to several hundred times more concentrated than raw domestic sewage. Animal wastes cause 10 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, the number one industrial polluters in our nation, contribute to half the water pollution in the United States.

Joanna Macy, author of Despair and Personal Power in the Nuclear Age, depicts the advantages of America moving towards a vegan diet in her foreword to Diet for a New America:

"The effects on our physical health are immediate. The incidence of cancer and heart attack, the nation's biggest killers, drops precipitously. So do many other diseases now demonstrably and causally linked to consumption of animal proteins and fats, such as osteoporosis...

"The social, ecological, and economic consequences, as we Americans turn away from animal food products, are equally remarkable. We find that the grain we previously fed to fatten livestock can now feed five times the U.S. population; so we have become able to alleviate malnutrition and hunger on a worldwide scale...

"The great forests of the world, that we had been decimating for grazing purposes, begin to grow again. Oxygen-producing trees are no longer sacrificed for cholesterol-producing steaks.

"The water crisis eases. As we stop raising and grinding up cattle for hamburgers, we discover that ranching and farm factories had been the major drain on our water resources. The amount now available for irrigation and hydroelectric power doubles. Meanwhile, the change in diet frees over 90% of the fossil fuel previously used to produce food. With this liberation of water energy and fossil fuel energy, our reliance on oil imports declines, as does the rationale for building nuclear power plants..."

Joanna Macy admits, "This scenario is wildly, absurdly utopian. It is also clearly the way we are meant to live, built to live." What could possibly make it a reality? "It is this very book!"

Roberta Kalechofsky of Jews for Animal Rights similarly says:

"Merely by ceasing to eat meat
Merely by practicing restraint
We have the power to end a painful industry

"We do not have to bear arms to end this evil
We do not have to contribute money
We do not have to sit in jail or go to
meetings or demonstrations or
engage in acts of civil disobedience

"Most often, the act of repairing the world,
of healing mortal wounds,
is left to heroes and tzaddikim (holy people)
Saints and people of unusual discipline

"But here is an action every mortal can
perform--surely it is not too difficult!"

When I first read Diet for a New America, I felt it could have the same kind of impact on mainstream American society that Frances Moore Lappe's Diet for a Small Planet had in the '70s.

In writing his expose on the meat industry, John Robbins has been compared to Rachel Carson, Ralph Nader and other whistleblowers. In Diet for a New America, he demonstrates how all the various causes that concern the left: healthcare, a sustainable energy policy, hunger, malnutrition, etc. are all taken care of in one fell swoop by a vegan diet. I had the opportunity to meet John Robbins, in September 1988. It was one of the most inspirational moments of my life!

He was heir to the Baskin-Robbins fortune. He renounced it at a young age. He traveled to India, opened a yoga ashram in Canada, etc. He spoke of Gandhi and nonviolence. His son Ocean Robbins founded Youth for Environmental Sanity (YES!) and is also dedicated to promoting veganism. I asked John if he would try and get the American Left to support animal rights. He told me that he had sent a copy of his book to Mother Jones, a left-liberal periodical published in San Francisco.

Many on the Left are beginning to take a stand in favor of animal rights. Joanna Macy spoke at the San Francisco Green Festival, in November 2005. In his 1990 updated and revised edition of Animal Liberation, Australian philosopher Peter Singer writes that many of the political parties leaning towards the "Green" end of the political spectrum in Europe were beginning to oppose animal experimentation.

John Robbins spoke before the United Nations in 1994, where he received a standing ovation.

A famous slogan of the campaign to abolish slavery was, "Am I not a man and a brother?" People of all races have come to understand that we are all sapient beings, and, in a spiritual as well as biological sense, brothers or sisters. Cows and chickens are neither, nor will anyone ever regard them as such. And frankly, I find assertions to the contrary obscene.

Meat Alternatives: http://www.MeatAlternatives.org

Future Food: http://www.FutureFood.org

Instead, we'll be forced to stop. By 2025, we simply won't have the resources to keep up the habit. According to the FAO report, 33 percent of the world's arable land is devoted to growing crops for animal feed, and grazing is a major factor in deforestation around the world.

You're joking, right? Back in the Middle Ages - when the margin between death by hunger and life was rather thin in many places, and when the "food surplus" was significantly lower - they still cultivated and fed cows for meat. You think they're going to be forced to stop in an environment where there is quite a lot of space for feeding cows, especially if it is profitable (and meat always will be)?

Meanwhile, there will be more than 8 billion people on this earth, and two-thirds of the world's population will live in water-stressed regions.

Then they'll either go thirsty, or de-salinize salt water. Fresh water doesn't transport well except as a luxury good.

Meat will disappear -- except as a luxury available to few -- and the ethical issues will evolve, too.

Not all meats are created equal - or take an equal amount of resources. Cows, for example, eat a lot more than chickens.

I'll make a prediction - assuming the worst happens, and agricultural productivity stagnates while population skyrockets, what we'll actually see is a hierarchy of meat-eating, where the rich eat beef or pork (both resource intensive), while the poor eat fish and chicken, plus game. Why do I think this will be the case in this scenario? Because it has happened already in most other societies where the food surplus was tight.

Thank you very much for this article.

Maybe Jim Motavalli and the readers who have taken a great interest in his article, would be interested in an essay (link below) about the necessity of working torwards the legal banning of meat production and consumption, on behalf of animals.

Meat Abolition

For many years I was a loud and proud and frankly arrogant vegan. But slowly over time, I realized that this way of life is unnatural and frankly, at times, demented. It is decent to have feelings of compassion and ethics towards animals. It is another to disregard one's own health because one cares about an animal. Man is an omnivore. Less meat-consumption may be helpful. No meat consumption is insane and stupid.

I find it amusing this facile assumption that eating red meat is unhealthy. A hangover from the puritanical vegetarian diets of the past that were based on the idea that "Being good/nice/kind/vegetarian means one will be rewarded by God with good health"
This of course is a hangover from the reward and punishment system used to condition children, which while effective is artificial.
My health and energy levels have improved dramatically since I introduced small amounts of certain red meats and my body simply thrives on certain cheeses and eggs.

The amount of passion and ill-feeling I come across in Vegetarian/Omnivore debating always strikes me as odd. I suppose being told that doing something as seemingly innocuous and necessary as eating is unethical sparks very strong reactions. A meat-eater myself, I don't find the case that animals possess innate and inalienable rights to life and liberty on account of their limited sapience terribly convincing.

The most convincing argument for vegetarianism - or at least limiting the consumption of animal products - is one of economics. Simply put: you can feed more humans with plants than with animals. Plants retain more of the sun's energy and thus you get more caloric value out of them than you do with animals. As more people are more empowered to get their fair share of the world's available food, that will mean a shift towards more efficient use of arable land.

The fate of so many cattle and sheep are of secondary importance compared with the survival of humans as individuals and as a species. In the future, feeding more and more humans will require a shift towards more vegetable production, but the notion that meat consumption will ever be eliminated is absurd.

While I agree that going veggie is one of the most environmentally-friendly actions people can do. I feel that Mr. Motavalli is missing the point of the FAO's report when he says that it declares all forms of meat production environmentally destructive. The report focuses largely on meat production in South American, where deforestration accounts for a large part of the impact meat production has on the envriornment. The report also speaks well of the US meat industry, calling on other nations' meat industries to follow their lead.

The following quotes, facts, figures, and statistics are excerpted from Please Don't Eat the Animals (2007) by Jennifer Horsman and Jaime Flowers:

"A reduction in beef and other meat consumption is the most potent single act you can take to halt the destruction of our environment and preserve our natural resources. Our choices do matter: What's healthiest for each of us personally is also healthiest for the life support system of our precious, but wounded planet."

---John Robbins, author, Diet for a New America, and President, EarthSave Foundation

One study puts animal waste in the United States to between 2.4 trillion to 3.9 trillion pounds per year. The United states produces 15,000 pounds of manure per person. This is 130 times the amount of waste produced by the entire human population of the United States.

A 1,000-cow dairy can produce approximately 120,000 pounds of waste per day. This is the functional equivalent of the amount of sanitary waste produced by a city of 20,000 people.

A 20,000-chicken factory produces about 2.4 million pounds of manure a year. Poultry factories are one of the fastest growing industries throughout Asia.

One pig excretes nearly three gallons of waste per day, or 2.5 times the average human's daily total. One hog farm with 50,000 pigs in France produces more waste than the entire city of Los Angeles, and some pig farms are much larger.

Factory farm pollution is the primary source of damage to coastal waters in North and South America, Europe, and Asia. Scientists report that over sixty percent of the coastal waters in the United States are moderately to severely degraded from factory farm nutrient pollution. This pollution creates oxygen-depleted dead zones, which are huge areas of ocean devoid of aquatic life.

Meat production causes deforestation, which then contributes to global warming. Trees convert carbon dioxide into oxygen, and the destruction of forests around the globe to make room for grazing cattle furthers the greenhouse effect. The Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations reports that the annual rate of tropical deforestation has increased from 9 million hectares in 1980 to 16.8 million hectares in 1990, and unfortunately, this destruction has accelerated since then. By 1994, a staggering 200 million hectares of rainforest had been destroyed in South America just for cattle.

"The impact of countless hooves and mouths over the years has done more to alter the type of vegetation and land forms of the West than all the water projects, strip mines, power plants, freeways, and sub-division developments combined."

---Philip Fradkin, in Audubon, National Audubon Society, New York

Agricultural meat production generates air pollution. As manure decomposes, it releases over 400 volatile organic compounds, many of which are extremely harmful to human health. Nitrogen, a major by-product of animal wastes, changes to ammonia as it escapes into the air, and this is a major source of acid rain. Worldwide, livestock produce over 30 million tons of ammonia. Hydrogen sulfide, another chemical released from animal waste, can cause irreversible neurological damage, even at low levels.

The World Conservation Union lists over 1,000 different fish species that are threatened or endangered. According to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) estimate, over 60 percent of the world's fish species are either fully exploited or depleted. Commercial fish populations of cod, hake, haddock, and flounder have fallen by as much as 95 percent in the north Atlantic.

The United States and Europe lose several billion tons of topsoil each year from cropland and grazing land, and 84 percent of this erosion is caused by livestock agriculture. While this soil is theoretically a renewable resource, we are losing soil at a much faster rate than we are able to replace it. It takes 100 to 500 years to produce one inch of topsoil, but due to livestock grazing and feeding, farming areas can lose up to six inches of topsoil a year.

Livestock production affects a startling 70 to 85 percent of the land area of the United States, United Kingdom, and the European Union. That includes the public and private rangeland used for grazing, as well as the land used to produce the crops that feed the animals. By comparison, urbanization only affects 3 percent of the United States land area, slightly larger for the European Union and the United Kingdom. Meat production consumes the world's land resources.

Half of all fresh water worldwide is used for thirsty livestock. Producing eight ounces of beef requires an unimaginable 25,000 liters of water, or the water necessary for one pound of steak equals the water consumption of the average household for a year.

The United States government spends $10 million each year to kill an estimated 100,000 wild animals, including coyotes, foxes, bobcats, badgers, bears, and mountain lions just to placate ranchers who don't want these animals killing their livestock. The cost far outweighs the damage to livestock that these predators cause.

The Worldwatch Institute estimates one pound of steak from a steer raised in a feedlot costs: five pounds of grain, a whopping 2,500 gallons of water, the energy equivalent of a gallon of gasoline, and about 34 pounds of topsoil.

33 percent of our nation's raw materials and fossil fuels go into livestock destined for slaughter. In a vegan economy, only 2 percent of our resources will go to the production of food.

"It seems disingenuous for the intellectual elite of the first world to dwell on the subject of too many babies being born in the second- and third-world nations while virtually ignoring the overpopulation of cattle and the realities of a food chain that robs the poor of sustenance to feed the rich a steady diet of grain-fed meat."

---Jeremy Rifkin, author, Beyond Beef: The Rise and Fall of the Cattle Culture, and president of the Greenhouse Crisis Foundation

Lester Brown of the Overseas Development Council calculates that if Americans reduced their meat consumption by only 10 percent per year, it would free at least 12 million tons of grain for human consumption--or enough to feed 60 million people.

@S. H. Walden: "No meat consumption is insane and stupid."

Frankly, you're not any less arrogant now that you're eating meat. You are basically declaring hundreds of millions of Asians "insane and stupid." I call this prejudice.

There are plenty of reasons to refrain from eating meat, ranging from personal morality and ethics, which are none of anyone's business, to economics, to environmental concerns, all of which can be perfectly valid, well-reasoned, and not even approach "insane and stupid."

@XlanoyaX:
Speaking of having no factual basis:

"Your taste is for the seasoning in meat."
How would you know? Are you in that person's brain? I can tell you right now that there is a definite "meat" taste. When I was a strict vegetarian, after about two years, I could instantly taste whether a dish had been made with any dead animal bits, even if it was a small amount of broth.

"Your teeth are hardly designed for tearing flesh [bite your arm as hard as you can, you probably can't even break the skin]."

I assure you that human beings' teeth can, and do, break the skin. If you tried and couldn't, maybe you need some dental work. Only the most gullible who have never been around children would believe this claim.

"Your body can't handle meat in it's uncooked form, like other animals can."

Wrong again. Sushi, carpaccio, steak tartare, all examples of raw meat dishes. We can "handle it" just fine. I've eaten these things safely numerous times, with no digestive problems or illness.

"Besides that, the use of antibiotics in most animals used for consumption has created antibiotic resistant strains of parasites."

Still wrong. Antibiotics kill bacteria, not parasites, and, human beings use antibiotics too. The "use of" antibiotics isn't a problem, it's overuse, and this applies to human beings as well. Further, if a slaughterhouse is medicating meat animals closer than 90 days before slaughter, they are breaking US law.

"And of the meat tested, 73-74% had viruses and other contaminants primarily transmitted through FECAL MATTER. You know? CRAP?"

First, killing possible diseases are why we cook the meat. It's nothing to do with whether our digestive systems can process it.

Last, Do you have a source for this statistic, or are we supposed to just take your word for it? Given that the entire rest of your comment was completely false, your credibility is zero, in my opinion.

The frugivores (gorillas, chimpanzees and other primates) have intestinal tracts twelve times the length of the body, clawless hands and alkaline urine and saliva. Their diet is mostly vegetarian, occasionally supplemented with carrion, insects, etc.

Flesh-eating animals lap water with their tongue, whereas vegetarian animals imbibe liquids by a suction process. Humans are classified as primates and are thus frugivores possessing a set of completely herbivorous teeth. Proponents of the theory that humans should be classified as omnivores note that human beings do, in fact, possess a modified form of canine teeth. However, these so-called "canine teeth" are much more prominent in animals that traditionally never eat flesh, such as apes, camels, and the male musk deer.

It must also be noted that the shape, length and hardness of these so-called "canine teeth" can hardly be compared to those of true carnivorous animals. A principle factor in determining the hardness of teeth is the phosphate of magnesia content. Human teeth usually contain 1.5 percent phosphate of magnesia, whereas the teeth of carnivores are composed of nearly 5 percent phosphate of magnesia. It is for this reason they are able to break through the bones of their prey, and reach the nutritious marrow.

Zoologist Desmond Morris makes a case for vegetarianism in his 1967 book, The Naked Ape: "It could be argued that, since our primate ancestors had to make do without a major meat component in their diets we should be able to do the same. We were driven to become flesh eaters only by environmental circumstances, and now that we have the environment under control, with elaborately cultivated crops at our disposal, we might be expected to return to our ancient feeding patterns."

In The Human Story, edited by Marie-Louise Makris (1985), we read: "...recent studies of their teeth reveal that the Australopithecines did not eat meat as a regular part of their diet, and were mainly peaceful vegetarians, rather like chimps or gorillas. The popular image of the murderous ape is now as extinct as the Australopithecines themselves."

Dr. Gordon Latto notes that carnivorous and omnivorous animals can only move their jaws up and down, and that omnivores "have a blunt tooth, a sharp tooth, a blunt tooth, a sharp tooth--showing that they were destined to deal both with flesh foods from the animal kingdom and foods from the vegetable kingdom...

"Carnivorous mammals and omnivorous mammals cannot perspire except at the extremity of the limbs and the tip of the nose; man perspires all over the body. Finally, our instincts; the carnivorous mammal (which first of all has claws and canine teeth) is capable of tearing flesh asunder, whereas man only partakes of flesh foods after they have been camouflaged by cooking and by condiments.

"Man instinctively is not carnivorous," explains Dr. Latto. "...he takes the flesh food after somebody else has killed it, and after it has been cooked and camouflaged with certain condiments. Whereas to pick an apple off a tree or eat some grain or a carrot is a natural thing to do; people enjoy doing it; they don't feel disturbed by it. But to see these animals being slaughtered does affect people; it offends them. Even the toughest of people are affected by the sights in the slaughterhouse.

"I remember taking some medical students into a slaughterhouse. They were about as hardened people as you could meet. After seeing the animals slaughtered that day in the slaughterhouse, not one of them could eat the meat that evening."

Author R.H. Weldon writes in No Animal Food:

"The gorge of a cat, for instance, will rise at the smell of a mouse or a piece of raw flesh, but not at the aroma of fruit. If a man can take delight in pouncing upon a bird, tear its still living body apart with his teeth, sucking the warm blood, one might infer that Nature had provided him with a carnivorous instinct, but the very thought of doing such a thing makes him shudder. On the other hand, a bunch of luscious grapes makes his mouth water, and even in the absence of hunger, he will eat fruit to gratify taste."

As far back as 1961, the Journal of the American Medical Association reported that: "A vegetarian diet can prevent 97% of our coronary occlusions." More recently, William S. Collens and Gerald B. Dobkens concluded: "Examination of the dental structure of modern man reveals that he possesses all the features of a strictly herbivorous animal. While designed to subsist on vegetarian foods, he has perverted his dietary habits to accept food of the carnivore. It is postulated that man cannot handle carnivorous foods like the carnivore. Herein may lie the basis for the high incidence of arteriosclerotic disease."

Keith Akers in A Vegetarian Sourcebook (1983), responds to the argument that killing animals for food is natural:

"This is quite an admirable argument. It explains practically everything; why we do not eat each other, except under conditions of unusual stress; why we may kill certain other animals (they are, in the order of nature, food for us); even why we should be kind to pets and try to help miscellaneous wildlife (they are not naturally our food). There are some problems with the idea that an order of nature determines which species are food for us, but an examination of human history indicates the broad outlines of just such an order, though inhibitions against eating certain species may vary from culture to culture.

"The main problem with this argument is that it does not justify the practice of meat-eating or animal husbandry as we know it today; it justifies hunting. The distinction between hunting and animal husbandry probably seems rather fine to the man in the street, or even to your typical rule-utilitarian moral philosopher. The distinction, however, is obvious to an ecologist. If one defends killing on the grounds that it occurs in nature, then one is defending the practice as it occurs in nature.

"When one species of animal preys on another in nature, it only preys on a very small proportion of the total species population. Obviously, the predator species relies on its prey for its continued survival. Therefore, to wipe the prey species out through overhunting would be fatal. In practice, members of such predator species rely on such strategies as territoriality to restrict overhunting and to insure the continued existence of its food supply.

"Moreover, only the weakest members of the prey species are the predator's victims: the feeble, the sick, the lame, or the young accidentally separated from the fold. The life of the typical zebra is usually placid, even in lion country; this kind of violence is the exception in nature, not the rule.

"As it exists in the wild, hunting is the preying upon isolated members of an animal herd. Animal husbandry is the nearly complete annihilation of an animal herd. In nature, this kind of slaughter does not exist. The philosopher is free to argue that there is no moral difference between hunting and slaughter, but he cannot invoke nature as a defense of this idea.

"Why are hunters, not butchers, most frequently taken to task by the larger community for their killing of animals? Hunters usually react to such criticism by replying that if hunting is wrong, then meat-hunting must be wrong as well. The hunter is certainly right on one point--the larger community is hypocritical to object to hunting when it consumes the flesh of domesticated animals. If any form of meat-eating is justified, it would be meat from a hunted animal."

In his 1975 book, Animal Liberation, Australian philosopher Peter Singer writes:

"Killing an animal is in itself a troubling act. It has been said that if we had to kill our own meat we would all be vegetarians. There may be exceptions to that general rule, but it is true that most people prefer not to inquire into the killing of the animals they eat.

"Very few people ever visit a slaughterhouse; and films of slaughterhouse operations are rarely shown on television...Yet those who, by their purchases, require animals to be killed have no right to be shielded from this or any other aspect of the production of the meat they buy.

"If it is distasteful for humans to think about, what can it be like for the animals to experience it?"

Peter Singer concludes in Animal Liberation that "by ceasing to rear and kill animals for food, we can make extra food available for humans that, properly distributed, it would eliminate starvation and malnutrition from this planet. Animal Liberation is Human Liberation, too."

Dr. Milton Mills' "The Comparative Anatomy of Eating,"

www.vegsource.com/veg_faq/comparative.htm

and the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine,

www.pcrm.org ,

argue persuasively that the optimal diet for humanity is a vegan diet. However, even if humans really are omnivores and not frugivores, the diet of natural omnivores is mostly (80 percent) plant food.

Well said thank you. We will evolve and our level of awareness will expand....

What I think we should really be discussing here is the issue of overpopulation. Resources in general, whether they be food (meat, grain, or veg), energy, or space, are going to become scarce very quickly if we continue to populate the earth at the current rate. As soon as resources do become scarce, supply vs. demand will dictate that the weak, unresourceful, and poor will suffer. They will die, they will not have children, and the balance will eventually be reset. However, if each and every one of us does something about overpopulation now, we could potentially avoid that inevitable suffering. Unfortunately, as with the meat vs. veg debate, humans are selfish and will only think of themselves. It is hard to imagine that the inevitable won't occur, unless there is heavy governmental regulation (which is another thing that many of us, including me, fears). Nobody wants to be told they can only have one child or that they can't eat meat. IF we educate the masses, maybe then we can have hope that they will make their own, intelligent decisions that benefit themselves, their children, and the future of this planet.

Thanks for writing this. Oh, and pay no attention to the crazy comments left by so many. They are misinformed. The idea that eating meat is what has saved the cow from extinction is silly. And of course, it takes 10 pounds of grain to create 1 pound of meat. Versus 1 pound of grain to create 1 pound of say, bread. In a world where people are starving it makes no sense to funnel the grain through animals, mucking up the enviornment on the way, only to end up with less food than we started with.

As a holistic health practitioner, I routinely treat vegans and vegetarians and those that follow the Standard American Diet (SAD), all of whom have a host of health problems. Years of research have shown me that neither a vegetarian diet nor one that incorporates grain-fed feedlot and caged animal products, is healthy, sustainable, or natural. What should one eat to help themselves and the planet? That’s easy - just follow what Nature intended, which is a diet of free-range grass and grub-fed animal products and ripe sweet fruit. The largest "clinical trial" in the history of our species (conducted by Nature over 100,000 generations) has proven that this diet is the healthiest and most ecologically sustainable. Of course, there are no recent studies based on this diet because virtually nobody eats this way as a result of having been brainwashed by the AgriGiants and feedlot meat production industries. For those interested in the unsustainability of planting annual monocrops such as wheat, corn and soy (all require huge amounts of fossil fuels and manmade chemical processing to produce), and the benefits of raising animals on perennial grass (no planting, no fertilizing, no pesticides), read:
"The Vegetarian Myth" by Lierre Keith and "Against the Grain" by Richard Manning (researches the ethical, political, ecological, and nutritional deficits of a vegetarian diet).
"The Original Diet" by me (researches what Nature intended humans to eat to provide a healthy life in harmony with our environment).

Roy Mankovitz, Director
www.MontecitoWellness.com

Great article!

Yes, as the horrid tentacles of hunger spread and fresh water becomes a scarce commodity, humans will be forced to eat vegetarian.

This is good for us, good for the animals, and good for the entire planet. Humans will be so much healthier, the animals will not have to suffer so horribly, and the planet will begin healing.

And being veggie is NOT a tough way to go in the least -- I made that decision 25 years ago, & it's the one decision I've never regretted!

Thank you for writing this! Bringing reality to this topic. It is so easy for people to ignore the ethical implications by simply blinding themselves to it. Quite like historical mass misery of slavery. I have been a vegetarian for a few years now and I love it, I'll never go back to being a carnivore. Other people around me that were open to the information have tried vegetarianism, and some even stuck with it, as for the others they eat much less meat on a regular basis. I encourage everyone to just be open to looking at the information and the ethical implications. I challenge carnivores to give up meat for even a day, a week, or a month just to understand how much it really permeates our lives. http://www.goveg.com/

All the argument is CORRECT and well understood, regarding HEALTH, MORALITY, SCIENCE, ENVIRONMENT. One day, eventually, human will realize themselves that eating the flesh of others is not only harmful but also barbarous!

Factory farms cause the worst impact on global warming, because of their green house gases. So if humans continue to raise animals for meat like they're doing now around the world, green house gases from these factory farm animals will kill our world!! Every year, about 10 billion (billion) cows are bred and killed for meat in U.S.A alone! Can you imagine the impact?

So as soon as possible, MEAT SHOULD BE BANNED before our world is destroyed by green house gases through climate change.

Thank you Jim Motavalli for writing an excellent article. And I share with you the Golden Age as many past spiritual masters and prophets predicted it will come. Just a matter of time, and also, the world has to go through a "cleansing" process, to move other humans (souls) who are "carnivore" (as you said) to another planet, which still in the progressing stage, like our Earth before, and we have to move on, to the next stage, the level of Sainthood, where love rules, not power, not war, not weapon, not violence, not force, i.e. any negative thing can not exist in the high level planet, or namely the Golden Age. It is not an imaginary thing, but even the Bible said that the Big Flood did come, and Noah was saved, and even his son would not believe his father to get on the ship with him. So I think individual human soul has to evolve, and wake-up his or her inborn goodness, in order to be worthy to live in the Golden Age. In life, no one forces anyone to go to college to study medicine, but if one want to be a doctor, he or she has to study hard and sacrifice a lot (time, effort, money, personal pleasures, etc...) in order to graduate. Similarly, no one forces anyone to be a Saint, but if one wants to be, he or she has to work hard and sacrifice, the first and foremost sacrifice is the taste of other being dead-or-alive flesh, in order to truly know how to love.
By the way, I am not a preacher or anything, but I have learned that we don't progress, unless we improve our soul, which is the real self.
Now, forget the spiritual aspect, if no one cares, then we talk about the scientific aspect. We don't have much time to save the Earth, if we don't reduce the greenhouse gases in the next couple of years. Meat (or animal raising for meat) causes so much methane, which is 72 times stronger than CO2, in terms of retaining the heat from the sun light, hence more global warming. In IPCC report in 2006, as you reported in your article, the scientists used the factor of 23 for the methane, as more potent greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide (CO2), but now those same scientists figure that they used to low a factor, because methane is 72 or higher in trapping the heat than CO2. Therefore, the livestock is no longer responsible for 18% of the global warming, but rather more than 50% of the global warming. Therefore eliminating methane from the air, we can reduce at least 50% of global warming. Luckily for humans, methane only last about 8-10 years in the air, once we don't put in anymore, but CO2 last more than 1000 years before it dissipates from the atmosphere. You would see the movie ("HOME" as in YouTube) to find out how long it took to absorb CO2 in the air, in order for life to form.

Therefore, to eliminate methane from the air, we have to stop raising animals for meat. We also have to stop fishing to save the oceans from being out of balance, and cause many dead zones. So, practically, we have to be true vegan, no meat, no diary, no fish, and grow grains, vegetables, fruits, potato, etc. with organic method, with no chemicals which damage our waterways. It is our individual choice to save this planet. Probably, this is the only and last choice!
Duc Vu

This is just simply a WONDERFUL article....it has all the important facts...I hope everyone everywhere will read this...I posted it to my FB page and passed it around to others by e-mail...faboulous. :))))