In defense of meat

This is a great article! And I couldn't agree more. I wrote an article a few months ago titled Why I Eat Meat (and Why I Think You Should too). I started writing about food specifically because I was frustrated by the over saturation of vegetarian opinions in San Francisco, where I live. Thanks for writing this!

I find it ironic that Kevin Slaten is a junior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and writes about consuming sentient beings. Raising animals as economic units encourages violence to the treatment of these animals and brings this violence into our societies then into our hearts and minds. In addition, these units that carnists believe they must eat (and are entitled to eat) are necessary for survival. This is not so. And what is worse than taking a life unnecessarily, is that life was physically and mentally abused leading to unimaginable stress. As pigs are forced down a chute to slaughter, they are so stressed they typically go into cardiac arrest and their bodies get “stuck” in the processing. Is this really the type energy you want to take into your body? Finally, the mass production of animals for food polarizes the haves and the have nots. There are people on this planet with very little food and clean water because of the imbalance of resources put to farmed animals. History has taught is that a formula of squandering resources to provide to a few while others go with out does not ever result in peace. Treating animals as economic units for food is not peaceful or healthy for the animals, our selves, or our planet.

Many fish are rich in the fatty acid docosahexaenoic acid, which humans need but bodies can't make themselves. Those omega-3s have become the latest "superfood," and -- sorry, vegetarians -- they cannot be found anywhere else in nature.

This is not entirely true - docosahexaenoic acid or DHA is found in Algae oil, which is developed by Martek. A Google search for vegan DHA brings up several companies that sell these Algae DHA supplements. So while the the author is correct in stating that vegan diets are generally deficient in DHA, a vegan diet such as the one recommended by Michael Greger, fortified with Algae DHA (as well as vitamin D and B12) may be healthier than a diet that includes fish, since seafood is often contaminated with mercury.

I don't know how old Mr. Slaten is, but I've been here for over 50 years and watched the awakening of conscience over cruelty to animals, the spread of factory farm viruses into the human population (the list is getting mighty long), and now, this exponential boom of vegetarian/vegan consciousness because of climate change, soil erosion, deforestation, etc. Who wants to have kids who have only a filthy, barren, windswept plain to live on and where the acdt of breathing is a chore? That's not hysteria, it's science fact and according to every credible expert on climate and epidemiology which does not include Hannity and Limbaugh, raising animals for food, treating them as if they were widgets to be 'produced' in factory-like conditions is the #1 cause of our problem. Subsidizing human demise while violating human values is a political issue that no one can support if they read even a little bit. Try EarthSave.org perhaps? Eating the bean rather than the beef burrito is a start but unless the government stops paying farmers to keep on churning out meat and dairy products out of our tax funds, we are in deep trouble, and boy, are our children's children.

Mr. Slaten,

You're being deeply dishonest when you try to compare greenhouse gas emissions from raising poultry with GHG emissions from rice. You need to compare GHG per calorie, or per gram of protein. Given rice's primacy as food for the world, the volume of rice is so many times higher than the volume of poultry that they're not directly comparable. You're using statistics dishonestly.

While you can certainly claim that some kinds of meat require less GHG emissions than beef or pork, you're being dishonest if you suggest that these varieties of meat cause less GHG emissions than a vegetarian diet.

You also didn't address the environmental devastation connected with the 'greener' and 'healthier' meats. Overfishing is a serious concern, and poultry production produces significant amounts of pathogenic waste. If your only point is that not all meat is equally bad, I'd readily agree. But, if you're trying to say that eating meat is even remotely as good as vegetarianism (or especially veganism) in terms of the environment, you're seriously over-stating the point.

In looking at all the comments, the intensity of the vegans in wanting to push there beliefs down other peoples throats sounds a lot like religious fundamentalists and similar people who would kill you to save you from yourself. Reasoning relating to human nutrition in terms of amnio acid and fatty acid requirements is irrelevant.

Pointing out that DHA and EPA can be produced by algae by Martech then complaining about long food chains and energy conversion efficiency in producing meat ignores the fact that the DHA in question is produce in heterotrophic reactors whose conversion efficiency is not even as good as farmed salmon. Again, these technical details are irrelevant.

Remember: Plants can run away from predators so their defenses against being eaten are to poison or provide anti-nutritional factors to those who eat them. You can't survive on raw soy beans, period. Plants also communicate with each other telling others to increase their toxin production when they are being attacked. Without processing, most of our plant based food stuffs are not a suitable diet for humans.

To be truly healthy on a zero meat based diet takes a great effort and a great deal of knowledge. Throw in a little high quality, high digestibility meat and fish and you can get an excellent diet, without worrying about how much lysine is in which vegetable source at which life stage. Note that human health is better in countries with meat and people around the world want more meat when they have more money.

Also note that young humans, like puppies, need a higher protein, higher fat diet for growth than adults. If adults want to be vegan, not much of a problem with low demands for protein or long chain omega-3 fatty acids. Children are a different question.

"chicken production contributes no more than 1 percent to global GHG. Compare that with a vegetarian favorite -- rice -- which emits 1.5 percent of climate-heating gases."

Ok, but how many more people does rice feed? The important factor for deciding which food is more carbon-friendly is GHG produced per person fed, NOT the absolute amount of GHG emissions. I don't know if this error was made in ignorance or by design - you need to either learn some basic math, or stop deliberately misleading your readers.

"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.

If the real costs of meat, in terms of environmental degradation and greenhouse gas emission, are made part of the cost (through carbon taxes and the like) and subsidies are removed then it seems very likely that per capita meat consumption would decline. This seems part of the overarching problem of not properly valuating certain resources.
There is room for skepticism about in-vitro meat as well. Even if/after technical hurdles are overcome, meat production will always be far more resource-intensive than vegetable production, because of the energy loss inherent in the conversion and the additional infrastructure required. It seems unclear how much more efficient this process would be than using actual animals. Does seem worth exploring, however...

Curious choice of image considering this article is supposed to be in defense of eating meat.

Your argument is, for the most part, balanced - and since I happen to be a vegetarian (a bit of a militant one), that's high praise :)

Here's what I might have appreciated though - yes, I do agree that meat eating is not something that will go away...and there is enough moral ambiguity in the issue to make me wonder if it even should. But your article doesn't make any concessions to the way meat is produced and consumed today- which is unhealthy and unsustainable. If the world continues in this manner, then meat should go away. Compare this to oil - we're not moving away from an oil-based lifestyle anytime soon, but any reasonable person can recognize that our dependence on oil is unsustainable and dangerous. Its infuriating that despite being a responsible citizen of the world, I have to deal with sky high commodity prices and the increased risk of global warming because of some jackass who drives a hummer, doesn't care about conservation and is irresponsible in his consumption.

Its the same issue here. You probably know this - but even in a place like California, about 98% of the people I know have no concept of a vegetarian meal. They're addicted to meat in the sense that a meal without meat is inconcievable. How is this a reasonable lifestyle? I dont have to remind you of the ads on TV that try and outdo each other on how much meat a sandwich contains. If India, China and other emerging economies were to adopt this lifestyle, as they surely will in a few years, we can kiss this planet goodbye.

I do believe that the reason we see so many articles defending meat is because meat eaters are begining to feel a little cornered. Earlier, it was easy to dismiss the moral question - but today, eating meat represents more than the lack of respect for life. Today, eating meat, and yes this has to mostly do with red meat, has become a poster child for heart disease, global warming, world hunger and environmental pollution - issues that are harder to ignore. Its difficult to curse the guy next door with the Hummer or the big bad oil company,when you have no intention of moderating your meat consumption.

For us vegetarians, I would urge moderating your stance on meat. Meat eating is like prostitution - it aint goin away - ever. Where we can make a fundamental difference is encouraging people to respect life, even the life that you eat, so you don't treat it like an economic unit. Factory farming is an abomination that should not continue. On the other hand, protesting the President killing a fly annoying him or being radically opposed to any kind of meat, even one that is ethically raised, does more damage to this cause than any meat defender ever could.

The way we currently raise, kill, and prepare the animals whose flesh we consume is unsustainable, wasteful, cruel and inhumane. Fixing those issues does not mean eliminating meat from our diets.

Meat animals can be raised and harvested in ways that are sustainable and humane. This will require laws and consumer awareness to prevent factory farms from continuing to externalize their costs. Of course, meat derived from responsibly managed animals will cost more. As buyers of meat, it pays to know how a particular chicken or pig or cow lived and if that kind of life should be supported with our purchasing dollars.

As someone who is essentially a carnivore for health reasons (google "paleolithic diet"), I feel that eliminating meat from our diet would be a monumental mistake. Even aside from the dangerous loss of HDL promoting saturated fats from our diet and the near guaranteed replacement of healthy lipids with insulin inducing starches, eliminating meat from the human diet is an invitation to the real dangers of modern food industry: processed franken-substances that don't deserve to be called food.

In the meantime, I buy pasture-raised beef and I am a responsible hunter, taking personal responsibility for minimizing the suffering of the animals my family eats. IMHO, both of those options are far more ethical sources of healthy sustenance than the shrink-wrapped slabs of lifelong suffering that can be found in the supermarket. I assert that they are even more ethical than the veggie-burgers made from industrial soy farms that destroy small animal and bird habitats while permanently degrading the agricultural capacity of our planet's soil.

Conflating meat with industrial food practices limits consideration to unhealthy and unacceptable compromises and keeps the discussion far away from the real problems that pervade the modern food creation and distribution system.

a diabetic With proper medication can process between 60 and 180 grams of carbs in a day. This level of carbohydrate intake keeps the blood sugar below 140ml/dl ) Threshold of nerve damage) and reduces damaging spikes.

You can't do that on a vegetarian diet. a cup of rice is 22 carbs and 170cal. Eat that plus some veggies and you will max out your meal carbohydrate limit while taking in less than half your calories. (Assuming 2200 calorie intake needed for tall guy weight loss. ycnwv). Moving to other high carbohydrate protein sources, is a seriously good chance that you will end up protein deficient in addition to calorie deficient.

So this is why I say that vegetarian meal plans are death to diabetics.

The author links to a PDF that he claims shows that :

True, the industry overall may emit 18 percent of all GHG, but the beef sector emits 13 times as much as the poultry sector, meaning that chicken production contributes no more than 1 percent to global GHG. Compare that with a vegetarian favorite -- rice -- which emits 1.5 percent of climate-heating gases.

The chart he refers to, which compares beef and "vegetarian favorite" rice is not calorie-to-calorie, or even acre-to-acre. As the comparison is based on absolute production of GHGs by various agricultural sectors, the author's claim is disingenuous at best. A much more germane question is: How many people can be fed on the rice that allegedly produces 1.5% of the GHGs? How many calories can be derived from the cows that apparently produce so much less? Finally, why is rice singled out as a "vegetarian favorite?" To play the author's game, in absolute terms, the number of meat-eaters who consume rice must be many times the number of vegetarians who do so. Look at China.

Dubious claims like the one in the piece are another reminder that statistics are essential for clear, precise journalism, but that they require logical interpretation. Authors and readers misunderstand statistics at their own peril.

Eating meat is now generally viewed as an ethical issue. Do you want to participate is a system of intensive confinement of animals, where all decent animal husbandry has vanished? We respect our pets, but treat farm animals as if they were not part of the animal kingdom. Well, they are, and the lives they lead before slaughter is unethical. Do you want to be part of this system foisted upon you by corporate meat producers?

Humans are not strictly herbivorous. The human body can't break down cellulose, the principle component of plant foods (though it does serve a purpose as dietary fiber). This is the reason we can't graze or live on grass. Anatomically, we resemble the other primates (frugivores), whose diet is mostly vegetarian. We're meant to live mostly, if not entirely, upon plant foods. Only vitamin B-12 cannot be obtained from plant foods.

Predators are found in nature, but so are cannibalism and rape. Killing other animals for food, in this sense, really is an ethical issue, not a "dietary" issue.

Keith Akers writes in A Vegetarian Sourcebook (1983): "There is no question that lacto-ovo-vegetarians easily obtain enough vitamin B-12; dairy products and eggs are generous suppliers of vitamin B-12. The controversy pertains only to those who live on plant foods and do not eat any animal foods at all--the 'total vegetarians' or 'vegans.'...The evidence shows, however, that there are numerous sources of vitamin B-12 other than animal foods, and that vitamin B-12 is not a particularly difficult vitamin to get. In short, the Great Vitamin B-12 Controversy, like the protein controversy, is largely generated by lack of information concerning already available research data.

"Only incredibly small quantities of vitamin B-12 are thought to be needed in the diet. According to the National Research Council, 3 micrograms daily will meet the body's requirements. but Victor Herbert, a noted authority on the subject, puts the requirement at 0.1 micrograms, making even the National Research Council's microscopic figure 30 times in excess of the actual need."

John Robbins, author of Diet for a New America (1987), says that vitamin B-12 is found naturally around us: on the dirt on a carrot pulled out of the ground, in rainwater, etc., but we live in a sanitized society, removed from nature.

Keith Akers similarly observes:

"Vitamin B-12 has been found in rainwater and in many plant foods. In small quantities, Vitamin B-12 has been found either in or on various foods such as the roots and stems of tomatoes, cabbage, celery, kale, broccoli, leeks, and the leaves of kohlrabi. An ounce of the roots of leeks, beets, and other vegetables will provide 0.1 to 0.3 micrograms of B-12, which is more than a day's requirement.

"There are other plant foods which provide 'massive' quantities of vitamin B-12--'massive,' that is, in relation to human requirements for the vitamin. These include nutritional yeast, tempeh, seaweed, algae, kelp, and fermented soy sauces. The human liver can store vitamin B-12 for years, so once it is ingested from one of these sources, one can go for long periods of time without having to worry about a source of B-12."

In his 1979 book, Vegetarianism: A Way of Life, Dudley Giehl writes that some ancient Egyptian priests were vegetarian to help them with their vows of celibacy and that they avoided eggs and milk, which they called "liquid flesh." Giehl writes that Leonardo da Vinci was a vegan, out of ethical concern for animals.

In his 1923 book, The Natural Diet of Man, Adventist physician Dr. John Harvey Kellogg writes: "The Ladrone Islands were discovered by the Spaniards around 1620. There were no animals on the islands except birds, which the natives did not eat. The natives had never seen fire, and they lived entirely on plant foods--fruits and roots in their natural state. They were found to be vigorous, active, and of good longevity."

The Garden of Eden was vegan, but veganism as an actual historical trend is a fairly recent phenomenon. The Vegan Society was formed in England in 1944.

The ethical, environmental, and nutritional arguments are compelling enough to encourage millions of Americans to reduce, if not eliminate entirely, their consumption of animal products.

According to a national Vegetarian Resource Group Poll conducted by Harris Interactive, nearly 15 percent of Americans say they never eat fish or seafood.

The pacific sardine lives along the coasts of North America from Alaska to southern California. Sardines, once a major part of the California fishing industry, are now considered to be "commercially extinct." Another species classified as "commercially extinct" is the New England haddock. Ecologists have also been concerned about the significant reduction in finfish, the Atlantic bluefin tuna, Lake Erie cisco, and blackfins that inhabit Lakes Huron and Michigan.

Over 200,000 porpoises are killed every year by fishermen seeking tuna in the Pacific. Sea turtles are similarly killed in Caribbean shrimp operations.

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.

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.

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.

It makes sense to eat lower on the food chain. Some animals are killed because, as carnivores, they compete with the human predator for the right to kill other animals for food, including wild game and domesticated species raised by livestock ranchers. Alaskan hunters are eager to reduce the wolf population in their state because this animal is a predator of moose.

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.

Nor can fish provide any help in alleviating global hunger. There are signs that the fishing industry (which is quite energy-intensive) has already overfished the oceans in several areas. And fish could never play a major role in the worlds diet anyway: the entire global fish catch of the world, if divided among all the world's inhabitants would amount to only a few ounces of fish per person per week.

The American Dietetic Association reports that throughout history, the human race has lived on "vegetarian or near vegetarian diets," and meat has traditionally been a luxury. Studies show the healthiest human populations on the globe live almost entirely on plant foods--useful data, given our skyrocketing healthcare costs. Nathan Pritikin, author of The Pritikin Plan, recommended not more than three ounces of animal protein per day; three ounces per week for his patients who had already suffered a heart attack.

In A Vegetarian Sourcebook (1983), author Keith Akers observes:

"Much has been made over the virtues of chicken and fish in comparison to red meats such as beef and pork. It has been said that eating chicken and fish will aid in the prevention of heart disease, because these meats are relatively lower in fat and contain more unsaturated than saturated fat, thus helping to lower cholesterol levels. Unfortunately, these claims are not supported by the evidence. Studies in which human volunteers switched from diets including beef and eggs, to one including fish and chicken showed that serum cholesterol levels were not appreciably lowered by switching to chicken and fish.

"And an examination of the nutritional data suggests an explanation: while it is true that chicken and fish contain less fat than beef, it is also true that chicken and fish contain about twice as much cholesterol per calorie as does beef. Indeed, some seafoods (such as crab, shrimp, and lobster) are exceptionally high in cholesterol content.

"All of these diverse theories have roughly the same dietary implications. Meat is high in cholesterol, saturated fat, and total fat. Plant foods, by contrast, are usually low in saturated fat and total fat, and contain zero cholesterol. Vegetarians have lower levels of serum cholesterol than do meat-eaters, with total vegetarians (vegans) having the lowest levels of all."

Obviously the idea of providing the entire world with a Western diet is quite absurd. But what about satisfying today's demand for meat--which provides only a fraction of the world's population with a Western-style diet? If the world population triples in the next 100 years, and meat consumption continues, then meat production would have to triple as well. Instead of 3.7 billion acres of cropland and 7.5 billion acres of grazing land, we would require 11.1 billion acres of cropland and 22.5 billion acres of grazing land.

But this is slightly larger than the total land area of the six inhabited continents! We are desperately short of forests, water and energy already. Even if we resort to extreme methods of population control: abortion, infanticide, genocide, etc...modest increases in the world population during the next generation would make it impossible to maintain current levels of meat consumption. On a vegetarian diet, however, the world could easily support a population several times its present size. The world's cattle alone consume enough to feed over 8.7 billion humans.

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.

According to the Bible, God intended the entire human race to follow a vegetarian diet (Genesis 1:29). Paradise is vegetarian. Rashi (Rabbi Solomon von Isaac, 1030-1105), the famous Jewish Bible commentator, taught that "God did not permit Adam and his wife to kill a creature and to eat its flesh. Only every green herb shall they all eat together." Ibn Ezra and other Jewish biblical commentators agree.

According to the Talmud, "Adam and many generations that followed him were strict flesh-abstainers; flesh-foods were rejected as repulsive for human consumption." Although man was made in God's image and given dominion over all creation (Genesis 1:26-28), these verses do not justify humans killing animals and devouring them, because God immediately proclaims He created the plants for human consumption. (Genesis 1:29)

In a letter to Pope John Paul II, challenging him on the issue of animal experimentation, Dr. Michael Fox of the Humane Society argued that the word "dominion" is derived from the original Hebrew word "rahe" which refers to compassionate stewardship, instead of power and control. Parents have dominion over their children; they do not have a license to kill, torment or abuse them. The Talmud (Shabbat 119; Sanhedrin 7) interprets "dominion" to mean animals may be used for labor.

Man was made in God's image (Genesis 1:26) and told to be vegetarian (Genesis 1:29). "And God saw all that He had made and saw that it was very good." (Genesis 1:31) Complete and perfect harmony. Everything in the beginning was the way God wanted it. Vegetarianism was part of God's initial plan for the world.

"It appears that the first intention of the Maker was to have men live on a strictly vegetarian diet," writes Rabbi Simon Glazer, in his 1971 Guide to Judaism. "The very earliest periods of Jewish history are marked with humanitarian conduct towards the lower animal kingdom...It is clearly established that the ancient Hebrews knew, and perhaps were the first among men to know, that animals feel and suffer pain."

After the Flood, God revised His commandment against flesh-eating. Human beings, since eating of the forbidden fruit, seemed incapable of obedience on this issue. One Jewish writer comments, "Only after man had proven unfit for the high moral standard given at the beginning, was meat made a part of the humans' diet."

A Jewish legend says Moses was found to be righteous by God through his shepherding. While Moses was tending his sheep of Jethro in the Midian wilderness, a young kid ran away from the flock. Moses ran after it until he found the kid drinking by a pool of water. Moses approached the kid and said, "I did not know that you ran away because you were thirsty; now, you must be tired." So Moses placed the animal on his shoulders and carried him back to the flock. God said, "Because thou has shown mercy in leading the flock, thou will surely tend My flock, Israel."

In his essay, "The Dietary Prohibitions of the Hebrews," Jean Soler finds in the Bible at least two times when an attempt was made to try the Israelites out on a vegetarian diet. During the period of exodus from Egypt, the Hebrews lived entirely on manna. They had large flocks which they brought with them, but never touched.

The Israelites were told that manna "is the bread which the Lord has given you to eat." (Exodus 16:5) For forty years in the desert, the Israelites lived on manna (Nehemiah 9:15,21). The apocryphal Wisdom of Solomon (16:20) calls manna the food of the angels. Manna is described as a vegetable food, like "coriander seed" (Numbers 11:7), tasting like wafers and honey (Exodus 16:31).

On two separate occasions, however, the men rebelled against Moses because they wanted meat. The meat-hungry Hebrews lamented, "Would that we had died by the hand of the Lord in the land of Egypt, when we sat by the flesh pots." God ended this first "experiment in vegetarianism" through the miracle of the quails.

A second "experiment in vegetarianism" is suggested in the Book of Numbers, when the Hebrews lament once again, "O that we had meat to eat." (Numbers 11:4) God repeated the miracle of the quails, but this time with a vengeance: "And while the flesh was between their teeth, before it was even chewed, the wrath of the Lord was kindled against the people, and He struck them down with a great plague." (Numbers 11:33)

The site where the deaths took place was named "The Graves of Lust." (Numbers 11:34; Deuteronomy 12:20) The quail meat was called "basar ta’avah," or "meat of lust." The Talmud (Chulin 84a) comments that: "The Torah teaches a lesson in moral conduct, that man shall not eat meat unless he has a special craving for it, and shall eat it only occasionally and sparingly." Here, according to Soler, as in the story of the Flood, "meat is given a negative connotation. It is a concession God makes to man’s imperfection."

In their book, The Nine Questions People Ask About Judaism, Dennis Prager and Rabbi Telushkin explain: "Keeping kosher is Judaism's compromise with its ideal vegetarianism. Ideally, according to Judaism, man would confine his eating to fruits and vegetables and not kill animals for food."

In his excellent A Guide to the Misled, Rabbi Shmuel Golding explains the orthodox Jewish position concerning animal sacrifices: "When G-d gave our ancestors permission to make sacrifices to Him, it was a concession, just as when He allowed us to have a king (I Samuel 8), but He gave us a whole set of rules and regulations concerning sacrifice that, when followed, would be superior to and distinct from the sacrificial system of the heathens."

Some biblical passages denounce animal sacrifice (Isaiah 1:11,15; Amos 5:21-25). Other passages state that animal sacrifices, not necessarily incurring God's wrath, are unnecessary (I Kings 15:22; Jeremiah 7:21-22; Hosea 6:6; Hosea 8:13; Micah 6:6-8; Psalm 50:1-14; Psalm 40:6; Proverbs 21:3; Ecclesiastes 5:1).

Sometimes Christians cite Isaiah 1:11, where God says, "I am full of the burnt offerings..." They say the word "full" implies God accepted the sacrifices. However, in Isaiah 43:23-24, God says: "You have not honored Me with your sacrifices...rather you have burdened Me with your sins, you have wearied Me with your iniquities." This suggests, as Moses Maimonides taught and Rabbi Shmuel Golding confirms above, that "the sacrifices were a concession to barbarism."

Jesus taught his disciples to pray for the coming of God's kingdom (Matthew 6:9-10), the kingdom of peace, in which the entire world is restored to a vegetarian paradise (Genesis 1:29; Isaiah 11:6-9). Recalling Psalm 37:11, he blessed the meek, saying they would inherit the earth. (Matthew 5:5) The kingdom of God belongs to the gentle and kind (Matthew 5:7-9) Christians are to "Be merciful, just as your Father is also merciful." (Luke 6:36) Those who take up the sword must perish by the sword. (Matthew 26:52)

Jesus repeatedly spoke of God's tender care for the nonhuman creation (Matthew 6:26-30, 10:29-31; Luke 12:6-7, 24-28). Jesus taught that God desires "mercy and not sacrifice." (Matthew 9:10-13, 12:6-7; Mark 2:15-17; Luke 5:29-32) The epistle to the Hebrews 10:5-10 suggests that Jesus did not come to abolish the Law and the prophets (which Paul, and not Jesus, regarded as "so much garbage"), but only the institution of animal sacrifice, as does Jesus' cleansing the Temple of those who were buying and selling animals for sacrifice and his overturning the tables of the moneychangers in the Temple. (Matthew 21:12-14; Mark 11:15-17; Luke 19:45-46; John 2:14-17)

Jesus not only repeatedly upheld Mosaic Law (Matthew 5:17-19; Mark 10:17-22; Luke 16:17), he justified his healing on the Sabbath by referring to commandments calling for the humane treatment of animals.

When teaching in one of the synagogues on the Sabbath, Jesus healed a woman who had been ill for eighteen years. He justified his healing work on the Sabbath by referring to biblical passages calling for the humane treatment of animals as well as their rest on the Sabbath. "So ought not this woman, being a daughter of Abraham...be loosed from this bond on the Sabbath?" Jesus asked. (Luke 13:10-16)

On another occasion, Jesus again referred to Torah teaching on "tsa'ar ba'alei chayim" or compassion for animals to justify healing on the Sabbath. "Which of you, having a donkey or an ox that has fallen into a pit, will not immediately pull him out on the Sabbath day?" (Luke 14:1-5)

Jesus compared saving sinners who had gone astray from God's kingdom to rescuing lost sheep. He recalled a Jewish legend about Moses' compassion as a shepherd for his flock.

"For the Son of Man has come to save that which was lost. What do you think? Who among you, having a hundred sheep, if he loses one of them, does not leave the ninety-nine in the wilderness, and go after the one which is lost until he finds it?

"And when he has found it," Jesus continued, "he lays it on his shoulders, rejoicing. And when he comes home, he calls together his friends and neighbors saying to them, 'Rejoice with me, for I have found my sheep which was lost!'

"I say to you, likewise there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine just persons who need no repentance...there is joy in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner who repents." (Matthew 18:11-13; Luke 15:3-7,10)

Jesus insisted upon the moral standards given by God in the beginning (Matthew 5:31-32, 19:3-9; Mark 10:2-12; Luke 16:18), and this did not go unnoticed by early church fathers such as St. Jerome.

From history, too, we learn that the earliest Christians were vegetarians as well as pacifists. For example, Clemens Prudentius, the first Christian hymn writer, in one of his hymns exhorts his fellow Christians not to pollute their hands and hearts by the slaughter of innocent cows and sheep, and points to the variety of nourishing and pleasant foods obtainable without blood-shedding.

Some of the most distinguished figures in the history of Christianity have been vegetarian. A partial list includes: St. James, St. Matthew, Clemens Prudentius, Origen, Tertullian, Clement of Alexandria, St. Basil, St. Jerome, St. John Chrysostom, St. Benedict, Aegidius, Boniface, St. Richard of Wyche, St. Columba, St. Filipo Neri, John Wray, Thomas Tryon, John Wesley, Joshua Evans, William Metcalfe, General William Booth, Ellen White, Dr. John Harvey Kellogg, and Reverend V.A. Holmes-Gore.

Reverend Marc Wessels of the International Network for Religion and Animals (INRA) writes:

"The most important teaching which Jesus shared was the need for people to love God with their whole self and to love their neighbor as they loved themselves. Jesus expanded the concept of neighbor to include those who were normally excluded, and it is therefore not too farfetched for us to consider the animals as our neighbors.

"To think about animals as our brothers and sisters is not a new or radical idea. By extending the idea of neighbor, the love of neighbor includes love of, compassion for, and advocacy of animals. There are many historical examples of Christians who thought along those lines, besides the familiar illustration of St. Francis. An abbreviated listing of some of those individuals worthy of study and emulation includes Saint Blaise, Saint Comgall, Saint Cuthbert, Saint Gerasimus, Saint Giles, and Saint Jerome, to name but a few."

According to contemporary Benedictine monk, Brother David Steindl-Rast:

"...the survival of our planet depends on our sense of belonging---to all other humans, to dolphins caught in dragnets, to pigs and chickens and calves raised in animal concentration camps, to redwoods and rainforests, to kelp beds in our oceans, and to the ozone layer."

In a sermon preached in York Minster, September 28, 1986, John Austin Baker, the Bishop of Salisbury, England, attacked the overcrowded confinement methods of raising and killing animals for food ("factory farming"), choosing as his example, the treatment of chickens:

"Is there any credit balance for the battery hen, denied almost all natural functioning, all normal environment, lapsing steadily into deformity and disease, for the whole of her existence?" he asked. "It is in the battery shed and the broiler house, not in the wild, that we find the true parallel to Auschwitz. Auschwitz is a purely human invention."

Rick Dunkerly of Christ Lutheran Church says:

"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."

Rose Evans, editor and publisher of Harmony: Voices for a Just Future, a "consistent-ethic" periodical on the religious Left, says there are more Christian vegetarians than Jewish vegetarians. Yet some people still react to the idea of Christian vegetarianism as though it were an oxymoron.

"Every year," says Reverend Andrew Linzey, author of Christianity and the Rights of Animals, "I receive hundreds of anguished letters from Christians who are so distressed by the insensitivity to animals shown by mainstream churches that they have left them or are on the verge of doing so...The time is long overdue to take the issue of animal rights to the churches...

"I derive hope from the Gospel preaching that the same God who draws us to such affinity and intimacy with suffering creatures declared that reality on a Cross in Calvary. Unless all Christian preaching has been utterly mistaken, the God who becomes incarnate and crucified is the one who has taken the side of the oppressed and the suffering of the world--however the churches may actually behave."

The amount of acreage it takes to feed livestock is unstainable. As the human population continues to grow, cows, pigs and other heavy livestock will be taking up too much of the burden.

The world is going to go veggie because our fields aren't getting any bigger.
- Eric C www.onviolence.com