What does that have to do with the issue?  How much wild boar have you hunted this year?

Come one -- "What if i hunt a wild boar in Tuscany?" That's one of the most, um, creative loopholes I've seen. The majority of people aren't hunting wild boars--or anyone else--for their food. And the majority of people aren't in a position to do that (nor should they, for environmental reasons if none other, since hunting takes a big toll on wildlife conservation--despite the claims of a few people who like to hunt). But that's a separate issue.

And remember -- energy production is an industry, yes, but its product (energy) goes to feed other industries, like (drum roll, please...) the meat industry. In fact, the meat industry uses about two-thirds of all the fossil fuels consumed by the US.

Lastly, I don't see how choosing vegetarian foods every time we eat is "extreme." They're available at almost every grocery store (tofu, vegetables, veggie burgers and dogs, faux chicken nuggets, even vegan BBQ ribs!) and most restaurants carry them. I've been vegan for nearly 10 years and have never had a problem finding great vegan food--whether I'm in Croatia or Kansas (and everywhere in between).

But then, its easy to cast something off as "extreme" if you've never tried it and just don't want to do it. The same goes for people who think switching to a Prius is extreme, or even more extreme, biking to work (gasp!). "I mean, I'm against global warming, but biking a mile to work? Now that's a bit extreme." Of course we know it's not, but that's because we've taken the step and see how simple it is. The same goes for just not eating meat. Give it a whirl. You might be surprised.

I find it interesting that those of us who resist towing the PETA line are considered shrill and in need of humility. It strikes me that the opposite is more true.

I eat mostly game meat that I kill and butcher myself. Most of the rest of my meat consumption comes from small, local farms and is processed and sold locally. I have a small flock of hens for eggs, and plan to expand the flock next year to include some birds for meat. All of this is done with humility. I don't preach to others, but I gladly share my sustenence and what knowledge I have gained with any and all who express interest. I also grow a great deal of the rest of my food, am working to increase my production, and buy the rest as locally and sustainably as is reasonably possible.

Although I constantly consider how I can live in a more thoughtful, sustainable manner, I am relatively content with my lifestyle. I don't need self-righteous vitriol from PETA and their followers to set me on a "truer" path. Perhaps you would do well to put away your broad brushes and paint a more realistic picture. Can you not see that by separating strictly vegan from everything else, you are simply isolating yourselves? I am finished acknowledging your insults now.

There are two very different reasons for not consuming meat that are being discussed here and vegetarians have a tendency to latch on to which ever is most convenient at the time.

(1) I agree it is morally or ethically questionable practice. This warrants discussion, but not on the Grist website, in my opinion.

(2) There is also a dispute regarding whether it is environmentally acceptable. Industrial farming... bad. Sustainable harvest of wild game or free-range beef... good. Michael Pollan recently pointed out on a WPR program that consuming limited amounts of beef raised on grass can be good for one's health, good for the farmers, and good for the environment.

#1 should be discussed elsewhere,

#2 should be discussed here... can it be done sustainably and to what extent? Whether there is enough for everyone on the planet to consume several pounds per week is another matter.

Another victim of Jean-Paul Marat's ghost and his virtual guillotine?

To argue (as some Christians do) that animal rights and vegetarianism are solely "Jewish" concerns, is kind of like saying, "It's only wrong to own a slave if you're a Quaker."  No.  Suffering and injustice concern us all.  Animal rights and vegetarianism are moral absolutes.  They apply to everyone, including atheists and agnostics.  

One can become a vegetarian or vegan without fear of being "converted" to another religion.  Animal rights is a secular and nonsectarian campaign, comparable to women's rights or civil rights:  it applies to everyone, including atheists and agnostics.

I attended my first anti-vivisection protest in the spring of 1985, when anti-apartheid demonstrations were taking place on 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.  

For example, half the water consumed in the U.S. goes to irrigate land growing feed and fodder for livestock?  Huge amounts of water are also used to wash away their excrement.  U.S. livestock produce twenty times as much excrement as does the entire human population; creating sewage which is ten to several hundred times more concentrated than raw domestic sewage.  

Animal wastes cause ten 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 are the number one industrial polluters in our nation, contributing 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 goes on to admit, "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!"  

Like Bruce Friedrich, Paul McCartney also says, "If anyone wants to save the planet, all they have to do is just 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."

When I first read Diet for a New America, I thought 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.

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 pounds.  

If Americans reduced their meat consumption by just 10 percent, it would release enough grain and soybeans to feed over 60 million people.

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 elaborated further on the economic waste of raising animals for food in May All Be Fed, which my brother gave me for Christmas in 1992.  Oxfam, the international charity, reports 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!  

Meat consumption in Taiwan increased 600 percent between 1950 and 1990.  In 1950, Taiwan was a grain exporter; in 1990 the nation imported, mostly for feed, 74 percent of the grain it used.  Twenty-five years ago, Syria was a barley exporter.  But in the intervening years, livestock have consumed increasing amounts of the country's grain.  Now, despite a phenomenal 1000 percent increase in the land area devoted to producing barley, Syria must import the cereal.

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

The American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (ASPCA) now encourages vegetarianism, the banning of fur, and the eventual end to all animal research, not just "cruel" animal research.  The Humane Society now supports vegetarianism.

With allies in both political parties and across the ideological spectrum, the animal rights movement has been able to score some great successes, regardless of which party controls the White House or Capitol Hill.

In the mid-1990s, Vegetarian Times reported that the animal rights movement is now a permanent part of the American political landscape.  In a 1995 issue of Harmony: Voices for a Just Future, a "consistent ethic" periodical on the religious Left, Catholic civil rights actiivists Bernard and Rose Mae Broussard of Starthrowers wrote that wars in the human kingdom will never cease until we end our war on the animal kingdom.

I had the opportunity to hear John Robbins speak at a Unitarian church here in Oakland several years ago.  The church was PACKED!  John writes in The Food Revolution (2001):

"The revolution sweeping our relationship to our food and our world, I believe, is part of an historical imperative.  This is what happens when the human spirit is activated.  One hundred and fifty years ago, slavery was legal in the United States.  One hundred years ago, women could not vote in most states.  Eighty years ago, there were no laws in the United States against any form of child abuse.  Fifty years ago, we had no Civil Rights Act, no Clean Air or Clean Water legislation, no Endangered Species Act.  

"Today, millions of people are refusing to buy clothes and shoes made in sweatshops and are seeking to live healthier and more Earth-friendly lifestyles.  In the last fifteen years alone, as people in the United States have realized how cruelly veal calves are treated, veal consumption has dropped 62 percent."

PETA represents the future:  the environmental movement should link with the animal rights movement.

The interesting thing about a drive to convince people to eschew meat is that it seeks to change behavior that is literally learned "on the mother's knee."  It's not impossible, but really, really hard.  

I read a book on the history of food (name/author lost to me now) where the author points out that food prejudices are so strong that people often starve when denied what they were brought up to consider "proper" food, even though sufficient edible other food is available.  That's how hard it is to change someone's view of "proper" food.

Save the world: Reduce greenhouse gas emissions 5% annually.

I can see your point here. I agree that an "all or nothing" approach is not the right way to influence most people to go veg. When I talk to people about going veg/vegan, I usually try to meet them at whatever stage they are at. You don't eat most meat but you still eat fish? Well, some people make the switch gradually. You're not vegan? Well, it can be a difficult switch, but have you tried these great vegan options that you probably eat every day anyway?

I know people have a tendency to see PETA as a iron-fisted vegan-Nazi organization, but this just isn't so. If you met a PETA employee on the street can I almost guarantee that they'd have a very similar method of approach to mine. (Note: I said PETA employee-- not member)

I prefer to discuss ethics over anatomy, but...

Linnaeus, who introduced binomial nomenclature (naming plants and animals according to their physical structure) wrote:

"Man's structure, external and internal, compared with that of other animals shows that fruit and succulent vegetables constitute his natural food."

The myth that humans are naturally a predator species remains popular.   "The beast of prey is the highest form of active life," wrote Oswald Spengler in 1931.  

"It represents a mode of living which requires the extreme degree of the necessity of fighting, conquering, annihilating, and self-assertion.  The human race ranks highly because it belongs to the class of beasts of prey. Therefore we find in man the tactics of life proper to a bold, cunning beast of prey.  He lives engaged in aggression, killing, and annihilation.  He wants to be master in as much as he exists."

The fact that predators exist in the wild does not imply man must automatically imitate them. Cannibalism and rape also occur in nature.  Robert Louis Stevenson, in his book In the South Seas, noted that there was virtually no difference between the "civilized" Europeans and the "savages" of the Cannibal Islands:  

"We consume the carcasses of creatures with like appetites, passions, and organs as our own. We feed on babes, though not our own, and fill the slaughterhouses daily with screams of pain and fear."

Although humans are capable of adapting to flesh-eating in order to survive, the optimal diet of man is vegetarian, if not vegan.  Studies indicate flesh-eaters have less endurance than do vegetarians, while vegetarians have two to three times more stamina and recover five times more quickly from exhaustion.  

Most kinds of cancer, as well as heart disease, osteoporosis, kidney disease, diabetes, multiple sclerosis, hemorrhoids, diverticulosis, arthritis, gallstones and gallbladder disease are all preventable and treatable on a vegetarian diet.

The ill effects of alcohol and nicotine are well-documented.  The Federal Bureau of Investigation, for example, reports that some 60 to 75 percent of all violent crime is alcohol-related.  Might there be a similar relationship between diet and aggression?

In a letter to a friend on the subject of vegetarianism, Albert Einstein wrote, "besides agreeing with your aims for aesthetic and moral reasons, it is my view that a vegetarian manner of living by its purely physical effect on the human temperament would most beneficially influence the lot of mankind."

U Nu, the former Prime Minister of Burma, made a similar observation: "World peace, or any other kind of peace, depends greatly on the attitude of the mind.   Vegetarianism can bring about the right mental attitude for peace...it holds forth a better way of life, which, if practiced universally, can lead to a better, more just, and more peaceful community of nations."

According to Count Leo Tolstoy, "A vegetarian diet is the acid test of humanitarianism."

"Who loves this terrible thing called war?" asked Isadora Duncan.   "Probably the meat-eaters, having killed, feel the need to kill...The butcher with his bloody apron incites bloodshed, murder.  Why not? From cutting the throat of a young calf to cutting the throats of our brothers and sisters is but a step.   While we ourselves are living graves of murdered animals, how can we expect any ideal conditions on the earth?"

"I personally believe," wrote Isaac Bashevis Singer, "that as long as human beings will go on shedding the blood of animals, there will never be any peace.   There is only one little step from killing animals to creating gas chambers a' la Hitler and concentration camps a' la Stalin--all such deeds are done in the name of 'social justice.'  There will be no justice as long as man will stand with a knife or with a gun and destroy those who are weaker than he is."

Dr. Louis Berman writes:

"Acts of selfishness must be defended, disguised, rationalized and restructured to make them acceptable, even to oneself.  In Passions and Constraints, van der Haag points out that before a people can be made to treat an enemy with cruelty, it is common to deny that the enemy is even human--the enemy must first be redefined as subhuman, bestial, scum."

According to author John Robbins:  "The way we treat animals is indicative of the way we treat our fellow humans.   One Soviet study, published in  Ogonyok, found that over 87% of a group of violent criminals has, as children, burned, hanged, or stabbed domestic animals.  In our own country, a major study by Dr. Stephen Kellert of Yale University found that children who abuse animals have a much higher likelihood of becoming violent criminals."

A 1997 study by the Massachusetts Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (MSPCA) similarly reported that children convicted of animal abuse are five times more likely to commit violence against other humans than are their peers, and four times more likely to be involved in acts against property.

The bottom line:  Is it ethical to do to other animals what we would never do to other human beings?

If I hadn't read them with my own eyes, I would never have been able to imagine the wildly improbable excuses and ratinonalizations that have been trotted out by folks who absolutely refuse to accept the fact that a vegan diet is better for the planet, not to mention the animals and our own health.

Does anyone honestly believe that it's an easier "sell" to convince people to go out and hunt wild boar rather than eat more vegan foods? Is it really easier to "eat local" than to simply choose the bean burrito over the beef? Contrary to what a previous poster said, eating local is NOT more important than eating lower on the food chain. That locally grown pork that you bought had to be fed for several hundred days on food that had to be trucked from somewhere--and it was trucked many, many times, instead of just the one time it would be shipped if fed directly to a person.

Another interesting thing to consider is how much harm to the environment is caused by treatment for heart disease, strokes, diabetes, and the cancers that are conclusively linked to a meat-based diet. Sure, vegans get sick, too, but meat-eaters are more likely to get sick from chronic diseases that require years and years of treatment and all the resources and pollution that entails.

John,

My point is that if this discussion were about the damage coal is doing to our environment, your statement amounts to:
"Coal is not the problem.  There's nothing wrong with barbequeing over hot coals."  

I don't think you'd make that statement about coal.  I'm certainly not against hunting in a sustainable way (or at least not on environmental grounds).  But that's not what PETA's current campaign is about, and it's not what the above article was about.  

Citing hunting as the reason behind your statement "Eating meat is not the problem." serves to distract from the real issue - that eating meat as it is currently practiced is a large part of the problem.

"But don't tell me that in open land, hunting in the wild, with plenty of space, that tracking a beast, and taking it...then roasting...isn't the best bite you'll ever have."

Perhaps for you.  Something I've found is that after being a vegitarian for a few years, meat starts to taste kind of gross.

Given all the facts, it baffles my why some people are reluctant to go vegan. I think it has more to do with their taste buds than anything else. In all the years I've been vegan I have never once felt deprived. Vegan foods are delicious, healthy, humane, and better for the planet. They are inexpensive and easy to find. Make no excuses: just go vegan.

Biodiversist:  "Giving domesticated animals long lives is very low on my list of problems to tackle"

I think the point with all this pro-veggie advocacy is not to give domestic animals long lives, but that we want to prevent so many domestic animal being born, raised and slaughtered in the first place.  If demand for meat goes down, then the breeding of these animals will go down, which will have a positive effect on the environment.  

As to hunting, I don't think it's as benign as some make it out to be. First of all, I hardly think there's enough wild boar out there to meet the current demand for meat.  I'm sure it takes a fair amount of carbon emmissions to produce guns, ammunition and hunting gadgets. And I've noticed that hunters always seem to be driving big trucks and SUVs, so unless a hunter is going into his or her backyard and killing an animal with bare hands, I wouldn't exactly call hunting for your food a "carbon neutral" activity, as some have claimed here.  One more point, it seems to be hunting interests that lobby the most, along with ranchers, for "predator control" here in North America, to protect their elk, deer and moose. So I'd hate to think what would happen to biodiversity if humans turned solely to wild animals for their protein needs.

amc89-

As someone who hunts for most of his meat, and as an environmentalist(?), I'll answer some of your points.

The gist of your arguments amount to putting words in mouths that never uttered them. No one that I have seen on this site has suggested that North America's wild game resources could begin to substitute for domestic livestock, nor is anyone suggesting that humans turn "solely to wild animals for their protein needs". Stop speaking for me, you're getting it wrong. And show me where anyone has claimed that hunting is a "carbon neutral" activity. Tofu farts are not a carbon neutral activity either. What's your point, other than to put words in people's mouths? Please provide accurate citations and cease with the hyperbole.

Now, do hunters require tools to harvest their food resource? Yes. Do vegetarians? Yes. Do many hunters use far more resources than is necessary? Yes. Do I like it? No. Am I personally making more of an effort to reduce the carbon footprint of my hunting activities? Yes. As fuel prices continue to increase, economics will increasingly dictate this.

Hunting wild game is not for everyone. But the resource exists, and in many places hunters help maintain more ecologically viable populations of wild ungulates. And in the process, they provide themselves, their families, and often others with a healthy protein source. I happen to think that providing your own food is a virtue, be it venison or potatoes.

Hey I've seen that diagram before ... is there a reason why the blocks step here and there or is it just to put the puzzle together?  Anyway, seems like meat production seems fairly far down the list.

One thing that bothers me are all these E. Coli scares from ... you guessed it, vegetables.  It used to be famous for meat products to be recalled, but what now, spinach, lettuce, scallions?  I'm getting where I don't trust that leafy stuff unless it is grown in my backyard.  /sam

Onward through the fog

Has it occurred to anyone -- especially vegans -- that not every human being is identical? Perhaps some of us are genetically inclined to consume meat and all the lecturing in the world will not persuade us that it is not okay to consume meat?

I've managed to go weeks without craving  or eating meat, but when I pass by a restaurant and can smell the aroma from the grill I have a strong desire to go in and get a nice juicy grilled piece of animal flesh... it overrides pretty much all concern aboput animal welfare. I think it is genetically programmed instinct and so deeply rooted that it is a challenge to resist. Our culture has found ways to cope with other aggressive behavior -- well, most cultures --  but eating meat is different.

My theory -- perhaps presented before -- is that primitive humans were drawn to charred carcasses following intense grass or forest fires. The animals were essentially surfaced sterilized and a safe source of protein for our ancestors. Thus, there is nothing unnatural about being physiologically adapted to craving and consuming cooked meat.

By the way, Michael Pollan has pointed out that there is at least one enzyme in our gut that is there only to digest meat.

Again... you can argue whether it is appropriate for us to eat meat NOW... and you can argue whether it is environmentally sound. But enough of the "it is not natural" stuff.

I guess you vegans are just genetically superior... for now. We'll see who survives following the collapse of civil society.

Another victim of Jean-Paul Marat's ghost and his virtual guillotine?

Regarding the notion that humans are not equipped to consume meat... has to butchered with knives, we don't have proper teeth, has to be cooked, et cetera...

Has anyone looked at how tofu is made? You can't just grab a handful of soybeans off the plant and pop them in your mouth. They have to be processed in some way... fermented or roasted.

I would say humans are not really "designed" to eat soybeans and we should put a stop to the consumption of such an unnatural product. Energy has to be expended to make soybeans edible.

Another victim of Jean-Paul Marat's ghost and his virtual guillotine?

And canola oil is edible only because radiation and chemical mutagenesis was used to convert a plant used to produce a toxic industrial lubricant into a plant producing a safe edible product.

Another victim of Jean-Paul Marat's ghost and his virtual guillotine?

Livestock agriculture is far less efficient in its use of land resources than plant food agriculture. This is one of the oldest arguments in favor of vegetarianism. It played a role in Plato's Republic. The poet Percy Bysshe Shelley invoked the argument in his discussions of "natural diet."

Mikkel Hindhede used the argument to help persuade Denmark to adopt a lacto-vegetarian diet when Denmark was blockaded by the Allies as a result of World War I. "If Central Europe had adopted a similar diet," he said, alluding to the disastrous German agricultural policies which emphasized meat production, "I doubt that anyone would have starved."

In her 1971 bestseller, Diet for a Small Planet, author Frances Moore Lappe pointed out that it takes 16 pounds of grain to produce one pound of beef. Most of the arable land in this country is used to grow feed for animals, not people. Mathematics professor Dr. Richard Schwartz, author of Judaism and Vegetarianism, writes about the "insanity" of animal agriculture.

Keith Akers discusses the futility of trying to place the rest of the world on a meat-centered diet in A Vegetarian Sourcebook (1983):

"Much of the land considered potentially arable in South America has low-quality soils and is very difficult to get to. Moreover, any expansion would almost certainly be at the expense of the already rapidly depleting forest areas. The same is true of Africa, where nonforested areas are already experiencing severe competition between grazing and cultivation. In Asia, the Far East, the Near East and Northern Africa, most of the potentially arable land is already under cultivation. So bringing additional land under cultivation is terribly difficult.

"The fact is, most of the easily available land has already been cultivated, and much of the uncultivated remainder could only be brought into cultivation by clearing forest areas, which should be protected. The best land is already taken; why would people cultivate the worst land first?

"Moreover, crop yields in the United States and other Western countries are much higher than in the Soviet Union, Asia and Africa. The `Green Revolution,' high-yielding crop varieties, and advanced agricultural techniques require a great deal of supporting technology and natural resources which only an industrialized society can provide, or even afford: tractors, irrigation, fertilizers, etc.

"Suppose even these difficulties were overcome. Suppose all this additional land were brought into production, and the technology and fertilizers were provided to bring crop yields up to western standards. Such an agricultural system would hardly survive more than a few years.

"Energy consumption would skyrocket, more than tripling in the less developed countries. Irrigated land presently comprises only 15% of the world's total cropland; but of the new land at least 50% would have to be irrigated. So the demand for water supplies, already overwhelming in much of the world, would increase dramatically.

"Nor can fish provide any help here. 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 world's 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.

"In the long run, we are all going to be vegetarians. Doubtless through further exploitation of the environment, we can prolong the period in our history in which we think it is necessary to kill animals for food. But the ecological limitations of this procedure will soon make manifest to all that a vegetarian economy is both necessary and desirable.

"Only a small minority of the world's citizens will ever be able to consume meat at current American levels: the resources to support a more intensive livestock agriculture simply don't exist"

In his book Consuming Passions, Australian philosopher Peter Singer similarly writes:

"The case for vegetarianism is at its strongest when we see it as a moral protest against our use of animals as mere things, to be exploited for our convenience in whatever way makes them most cheaply available to us. Only the tiniest fraction of the tens of billions of farm animals slaughtered for food each year-the figure for the United States alone is nine billion-were treated during their lives in ways that respected their interests. Questions about the wrongness of killing in itself are not relevant to the moral issue of eating meat or eggs from factory-farmed animals, as most people in developed countries do.

"Even when animals are roaming freely over large areas, as sheep and cattle do in Australia, operations like hot-iron branding, castration, and dehorning are carried out without any regard for the animals' capacity to suffer. The same is true of handling and transport prior to slaughter. In the light of these facts, the issue to focus on is not whether there are some circumstances in which it could be right to eat meat, but on what we can do to avoid contributing to this immense amount of animal suffering.

"The answer is to boycott all meat and eggs produced by large-scale commercial methods of animal production, and encourage others to do the same. Consideration for the interests of animals alone is enough justification for this response, but the case is further strengthened by the environmental problems that the meat industry causes...

"Environmentalists are increasingly recognizing that the choice of what we eat is an environmental issue. Animals raised in sheds or on feedlots eat grains or soybeans...To convert eight or nine kilos of grain protein into a single kilo of animal protein wastes land, energy, and water. On a crowded planet with a growing human population, that is a luxury that we are becoming increasingly unable to afford.

"Intensive animal production is a heavy user of fossil fuels and a major source of pollution of both air and water. It releases large quantities of methane and other greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. We are risking unpredictable changes to the climate of our planet...for the sake of more hamburgers. A diet heavy in animal products, catered to by intensive animal production, is a disaster for animals, the environment, and the health of those who eat it."

The nutritional advantages of a vegetarian diet are well-known in the American medical community, but are just beginning to gain acceptance in mainstream society. The ethical, nutritional and environmental arguments in favor of vegetarianism have been well documented by author John Robbins in his 1987 Pulitzer Prize nominated book, Diet for a New America, which makes ethical vegetarianism seem as mainstream as recycling.

It's healthier to be a vegetarian. During the period of October 1917 to October 1918, war rationing forced the Danish government to put its citizens on a vegetarian diet. This was a "mass experiment in vegetarianism," with over three million subjects. The results were astonishing. The mortality rate dropped by 34 percent. The very same phenomenon was observed in occupied Norway during the Second World War. After the war, heavy consumption of meat resumed, and the mortality rate shot back up.

The populations consuming the highest levels of animal products--the Eskimos, Laplanders, Greenlanders and Russian Kurgi tribes--also have the life expectancies, averaging about 30 years. Nor can such a short lifespan be attributed to harsh climate. The Russian Caucasians and Yucatan Indians, for example, live mostly on vegetarian foods and have life expectancies of 90 to 100 years.

The populations with the longest lifespans include the Vilacambans of Ecuador, the Abhikasians of the former USSR, and the Hunzas of Pakistan. The most remarkable feature of all these people is that they live almost entirely on plant foods. The Hunzas, for example, eat a diet that is 98.5 percent plant food.

Studies done at Yale University by Professor Irving Fisher demonstrated that flesh-eaters have less endurance than vegetarians. A similar study done by Dr. J. Ioteyko of the Academie de Medicine in Paris found that vegetarians have two to three times more stamina than flesh-eaters and they take only one-fifth the time to recover from exhaustion.

In recent years, there has been widespread concern about osteoporosis, which is epidemic in America, especially among older women. The popular myth has been to solve the problem by consuming more calcium. Yet this doesn't attack the root of the problem.

Osteoporosis is caused by excess consumption of protein. Americans overdose on protein, getting 1.5 to 2 times more protein than their bodies can handle. The body can't store excess protein, so the kidneys are forced to excrete it. In doing so, they must draw upon calcium from the bloodstream. This negative calcium balance in the blood is compensated for by calcium loss from the bones: osteoporosis. The calcium lost in the bones of flesh-eaters is 5 to 6 times greater than that lost in the bones of vegetarians.

Excessive protein intake also taxes the kidneys; in America, it is not uncommon to find many over 45 with kidney problems. A strong correlation between excessive protein intake and cancer of the breast, prostate, pancreas and colon has even been observed.

It must be pointed out that meat, fish, and eggs are the most acidic forming foods; heavy consumption of these foods will cause the body to draw upon calcium to restore its pH balance. The calcium lost from the bones gets into one's urine and often crystallizes into kidney stones, which are found in far greater frequency among flesh-eaters than among vegetarians. Studies have found that vegetarians in the United States have less than half the kidney stones of the general population.

The high consumption of saturated fats and cholesterol leads to artherosclerosis--more popularly known as "hardening of the arteries." Plant foods contain zero cholesterol and only palm oil, coconuts and chocolate contain saturated fats. Lowering the cholesterol and fat intake in one's diet lowers the risk of heart disease--America's biggest killer.

As far back as 1961, the Journal of the American Medical Association reported that "A vegetarian diet can prevent 97% of our coronary occlusions." Much has been said about the advantage of polyunsaturated fats as a means of lowering cholesterol in the blood. Unfortunately, this also has the adverse side effect of driving the cholesterol out of the blood and into the colon; contributing to colon cancer. The best way to prevent heart disease is to avoid foods high in fat and cholesterol.

Up to 50 percent of all cancers are caused by diet. Meat and fat intake are primarily responsible. The incidence of colon cancer is high in regions where meat consumption is high and low where meat consumption is minimal. A lack of fiber in the diet also contributes significantly to colon cancer.

It's important to remember that unprocessed plant foods are high in fiber and carbohydrates, while animal flesh has none. The highest incidence of breast cancer occurs among flesh-eating populations; meat eating women have a four times greater risk of developing breast cancer than do vegetarian women. There is also a greater risk of cervical, uterine, and ovarian cancer--all linked to diets high in fat. Men who consume large quantities of animal fat also have a 3.6 times greater risk of getting prostate cancer.

Diabetes is known to be treatable on a low fat, high fiber diet. Incidence of diabetes balloons among populations eating a rich, meat-based diet. Hypoglycemia is caused by the excessive consumption of meat, sugar and fat. Multiple Sclerosis is also treatable on a low-fat diet. MS is prevalent among populations where consumption of animal fats is high and is least common where such consumption is low. A brain tissue analysis of people with MS found a high saturated fat content.

Ulcers occur most frequently in diets which are acid forming, low in fiber and high in fats. Meat, fish, and eggs are the most acid forming of all foods, and animal flesh has no fiber and excess fat. Low fiber, high-fat diets are the principle cause of hemorrhoids and also diverticulosis--which affects 75 percent of Americans over the age of 75. Similarly, 35 percent of Americans are afflicted with some form of arthritis by the age of 35. Over 85 percent of all Americans over age 70 have arthritis, yet it is treatable on a fat free diet.

The United States Public Health Service estimates that some 60 million Americans are overweight. Exercise is helpful, but so are proper diet and nutrition. Foods high in fiber, low in fat and moderate in protein are most conducive to maintaining proper body weight.

Excess cholesterol forms gallstones. Gallstones, as well as gallbladder disease and gallbladder cancer are usually found in people with low-fiber, high cholesterol, high fat diets.

Hypertension is virtually unknown in countries where the intake of salts, fat and cholesterol is low. At the University Hospital in Linkoping, Sweden, even severe asthma patients were found to be treatable on a vegetarian diet.

Flesh foods in America are also contaminated with coliform bacteria and salmonella. Much healthier alternatives exist.

"I have no doubt that it is part of the destiny
of the human race in its gradual development
to leave off the eating of animals, as surely as
the savage tribes have left off eating each
other when they came into contact with
the more civilized."

--Henry David Thoreau

Some argue that human intelligence has enabled man to transcend his physical limitations and function as a "natural" flesh-eater. If this is true, then we must also classify napalm, poison gas, and nuclear weapons as "natural," too, because they are also products of (misused!) human intelligence. Agriculture, cookery, refrigeration and transportation aren't found in nature, either. One might therefore argue if human technology is "natural," then the ethical treatment of animals is equally natural.

"I am the very opposite of an anthropomorphizer," said writer Brigid Brophy. "I don't hold animals superior or even equal to humans. The whole case for behaving decently towards animals rests on the fact that we are the superior species. We are the species uniquely capable of rationality, imagination and moral choice, and that is precisely why we are under obligation to respect the rights of other creatures."

The myth that humans are naturally a predator species remains popular:

"The beast of prey is the highest form of active life," wrote Oswald Spengler in 1931. "It represents a mode of living which requires the extreme degree of the necessity of fighting, conquering, annihilating, self-assertion. The human race ranks highly because it belongs to the class of beasts of prey. Therefore we find in man the tactics of life proper to a bold, cunning beast of prey. He lives engaged in aggression, killing, annihilation. He wants to be master in as much as he exists."

The fact that predators exist in the wild does not imply man must automatically imitate them. Cannibalism and rape also occur in nature. Robert Louis Stevenson, in his book, In the South Seas, wrote that there was little difference between the "civilized" Europeans and the "savages" of the Cannibal Islands: "We consume the carcasses of creatures with like appetites, passions, and organs as our own. We feed on babes, though not our own, and fill the slaughterhouses daily with screams of pain and fear."

Moreover, the popular argument that it is `natural" for us to utilize murdered animals as a source of food does not (ecologically) justify factory farming and raising livestock as we know it today. It justifies hunting. The Native Americans, the Eskimo and other hunter-gatherer tribes have traditionally lived more in harmony with their environment than does modern man in urban civilization.

Vegetarianism is relevant to both our modern world and its religious teachings. The livestock population of the United States today consume enough grain and soybeans to feed over five times the entire human population. American cows, pigs, chicken, sheep, etc. eat up 90 percent of our wheat, 80 percent of our corn, and 95 percent of our oats. Less than half of the harvested agricultural acreage in the United States is used to grow food for human consumption. Most of it is used to grow livestock feed.

In The Wealth of Nations, economist Adam Smith noted the advantages of a vegetarian diet: "It may indeed be doubted whether butcher's meat is anywhere a necessary of life. Grain and other vegetables, with the help of milk, cheese, and butter, or oil, where butter is not to be had, afford the most plentiful, the most wholesome, the most nourishing, and the most invigorating diet. Decency nowhere requires that any man should eat butcher's meat."

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.

The realization that meat is an unnecessary luxury, resulting in inequities in the world food supply, has prompted religious leaders in different denominations to call on their members to abstain from meat. Paul Moore, Jr., the Episcopal bishop of the Diocese of New York, made such an appeal in a November 1974 pastoral letter calling for the observance of "meatless Wednesdays."

A similar appeal had previously been issued by Cardinal Cooke, the Roman Catholic archbishop of New York. The Reverend Eugene Carson Blake, former head of the World Council of Churches and founder of Bread for the World, has encouraged everyone in his anti-hunger organization to abstain from eating meat on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays.

"Is this not the fast I have chosen? To loosen
the chains of wickedness, to undo the bonds of
oppression, and to let the oppressed go free?
Is it not to share thy bread with the hungry,
sheltering the oppressed and the homeless?
Clothing the naked when you see them, and
not turning your back on your own?"

--Isaiah 58:6-8

Father Thomas Berry, a Catholic priest, author, and founder of the Riverdale Center for Religious Research in New York, wrote in 1987 that "vegetarianism is a way of life that we should all move toward for economic survival, physical well-being, and spiritual integrity."

"Over the past 20 years, the environmental argument against growing crops to be fed to animals . . ."

*Again, conflating all Inclusion of animals in farming systems with a particular modern industrial system.

"Aquaculture is even worse than commercial fishing because, for starters, it takes about four pounds of wild-caught fish to reap just one pound of farmed fish . . ."

*Consider a traditional aquaculture system from SE Asia. The privy and/or chicken pen is elevated over a pond. Guess where the manure goes, where it then nourishes the plant and animal life that the fish feed on. And then humans eat the fish. Again, PETA conflates all systems that produce animal products for human use with the very worst abuses of industrial civilization.

Surely by now the non-religious (e.g. veg*n as a matter of faith)readers of these various threads will have noticed that all of PETA's non-ethical or moral arguments apply equally well to the raising of vegetables. Much vegetative matter for human consumption is raised in socially unjust settings with environmentally horrendus methods and materials. Therefore, these are the only methods and materials that are currently used anywhere. More importantly, for those seeking to change the status quo, these are the only methods and materials that ever have or could be used. If you beleive raising animals to eat them is slavery (a moral position) this makes sense. If instead your concern is the environmental effects of current human use of other animals, this logial position is irredeemably flawed. And if you want to think about future sustainability of human existence, PETA's stance is downright injurious. I'll say it again: without animals, there can't be a sustainable farming system.

I find PETA's arguments dishonest. They're real objection is moral and ethical, not environmental.

Steve E.

Vasu writes with spirit and convection and I respect that.  There are great reasons to become a vegetarian, no doubt.  I suppose the parallel with eating meat and Global Warming is not so convincing, however, at least in a great magnitude.  

There are some market forces that are actually forcing people back to the "soul food" of the old days, accentuated with loads of corn pone, beans, and greens (poke salit as it was called in the South, just a little pork fat used).  Hot sauce and peppers are used a bunch because the stuff because it is essentially tasteless, unless you're into design fruit and frills like arugula (sp).

What are the market forces of today?  Corn and ethanol, along with rising oil prices.  Beef has doubled in prices.  The ethanol brouhaha has caused severe disruptions not only on the feeder cattle market but in Mexico, where tortilla masa has doubled in prices.  Chickens?  They require feed too.  Even the wheat crop has been affected, with the shift to corn production causing a 40% increase in flour prices since January.  The way we're headed, we won't be able to afford to eat honest meat anymore, anyway, since it will be too darned expensive.

The only way we've stayed afloat so far is because buyers (from the corner specialty food store to Wal-Mart) have pressured sellers in Argentina, Mexico, Chile, Australia, and even Italy to keep prices low ... essentially dumping foods on the US market that is below what American farmers can grow it for.  Same can be said for seafood.  

Our rich and diverse food industry is not having an "ag-terrorism" problem, but one of monumental disfunction right now.  I predict that in the future only the very rich will be able to sup on the finest cuts of meats, while us poor slobs will have to save our coin for substandard vegetables and non-animal products. Ah, a victim of our own successes!

You heard it first on Gist.
sammie

Onward through the fog

Don't mean to double-post, but all those lovely, wonderful, and nutritious vegetables you're talking about were picked by what are essentially slaves.  Ever consider hand-picking fiery hot peppers for less than $30 a day?  Your hand's blister with pus.  The crop duster nails you with poisonous overspray.  The only way to pick the peppers is to stoop way over.  There are no Porta-Potties - you just piss or shit right on the crops.  

Oh glorious vegetables, King of the Food Chain!

Onward through the fog

It would be nice if there was a official Grist post and an intelligent, rational, and coherent thread discussing sustainable food production, with a focus on how it might be accomplished in different regions... instead of the blanket condemnation of Western dietary prefrences and general solutions that might not actually work in different cultural settings.

For instance...

There is obviously great concern over the fact that Americans consume meat and it might be harming the environment. Okay... discuss whether there is an environmentally sound way of acquiring a limited amount of meat for those who value it.

At the same time, how about discussing rice?  I've recently learned that rice is a water guzzler compared to other crops. It typically uses up to 3x more water than other food crops such as corn or wheat and consumes around 30 percent of the fresh water used for crops worldwide (terradaily.com) and that rice cultivation has been identified as one of the most important individual sources of atmospheric methane. Perhaps the rest of you already knew this. I think it warrants more discussion.

If Americans are being asked to stop eating meat, should others in the world give up rice? Is there a better -- environmentally AND nutritionally -- crop people can grow? If there is a need to change dietary habit, I believe EVERYONE is obligated to think about the true cost of what they consume.

So, vegetarians and vegans... ready to give up corn, soy, and rice, all very destructive crops? Ready to lecture the Asians about how their addiction to rice is harming the world?

Another victim of Jean-Paul Marat's ghost and his virtual guillotine?

Animal rights is a secular moral philosophy, comparable to women's rights or civil rights, but one that could use the inspiration, blessings and support of organized religion.  The record of organized religion with regards to animals is mixed:  stronger in some religions than in others.

John Stuart Mill wrote:  "The reasons for legal intervention in favor of children apply not less strongly to the case of those unfortunate slaves--the animals."

A rational case exists for the rights of preborn humans.  The case for animal rights is stronger and more readily apparent.  Animals are highly complex creatures, possessing a brain, a central nervous system and a sophisticated mental life.  Animals actually suffer at the hands of their human tormentors and exhibit such "human" behaviors and feelings as fear and physical pain, defense of their children, pair bonding, group/tribal loyalty, grief at the loss of loved ones, joy, jealousy, competition, territoriality, and cooperation.

Dr. Tom Regan, the foremost intellectual leader of the animal rights movement and author of The Case for Animal Rights, notes that animals "have beliefs and desires; perception, memory, and a sense of the future, including their own future; and emotional life together with feelings of pleasure and pain; preference and welfare interests; the ability to initiate action in pursuit of their desires and goals; a psychophysical identity over time; and an individual welfare in the sense that their experiential life fares well or ill for them, logically independent of their utility for others and logically independent of their being the object of anyone else's interests."

Dr. Regan has pointed out that the animal rights movement is a part of (rather than apart from) the human rights movement.  The campaign for animal rights is secular social and moral progress.  The crusade to abolish every kind of animal exploitation and cruelty--including killing animals for food or "sport"--can in no  way be equated with religious "dietary laws," "sacred cows," or various forms of "ritual slaughter."

The animal rights movement is comparable to the abolitionist movement that ended human slavery, the women's rights movement, the labor movement, and the various campaigns against poverty, racism, drunk driving, child abuse, rape and nuclear power.  A number of the early American feminists, including Lucy Stone, Amelia Bloomer, Susan B. Anthony, and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, were connected with the 19th century animal welfare movement.  Together with Horace Greeley, the reforming, anti-slavery editor of The Tribune, they would meet to toast "Women's Rights and Vegetarianism."

With the power of the religious right and a Republican president has come concern in liberal circles for the separation of church and state.  On the abortion issue, Catholics, fundamentalists and "born-again" Christians appear to be imposing their morality upon the rest of our secular society.  The animal rights movement, however, is a secular and nonsectarian campaign, comparable to women's rights or civil rights...but again, one which could use the inspiration, blessings and support of organized religion.

In his 1975 book, Animal Liberation, Australian philosopher Peter Singer writes that the "tyranny of human over nonhuman animals" is "causing an amount of pain and suffering that can only be compared with that which resulted from the centuries of tyranny by white humans over black humans."  

Singer favorably compares animal liberation with women's liberation, black liberation, and movements on behalf of Native Americans and Hispanics.  He optimistically observes:  "...the environmental movement...has led people to think about our relations with other animals in a way that seemed impossible only a decade ago.

"To date, environmentalists have been more concerned with wildlife and endangered species than with animals in general, but it is not too big a jump from the thought that it is wrong to treat whales as giant vessels filled with oil and blubber to the thought that it is wrong to treat (animals) as machines for converting grains to flesh."

Abraham Lincoln said:  "I care not for a man's religion whose dog or cat are not the better for it...I am in favor of animal rights as well as human rights.  That is the way of a whole human being."  

Supporters of civil rights should be supportive of animal rights.  Many of the moral and theological arguments used today to oppress animals were once used to oppress blacks.  Buckner H. Payne, calling himself "Ariel," wrote in 1867, that "the tempter in the Garden of Eden...was a beast, a talking beast...the negro."  Ariel argued that since the negro was not part of Noah's family, he must have been a beast.  Eight souls were saved on the ark, therefore, the negro must be a beast, and "consequently he has no soul to be saved."

In her preface to Marjorie Spiegel's The Dreaded Comparison:  Human and Animal Slavery, Alice Walker, author of The Color Purple, agrees with Ms. Spiegel's conclusion, and writes:  "The animals of this 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..."

At a rally in San Francisco protesting the use of animals in medical research, Ms. Spiegel writes that former Alameda County supervisor John George said, "My people were the first laboratory animals in America."  Black Americans suffered at the hands of research scientists just as animals continue to do today.

In 1968, civil rights leader Dick Gregory compared humanity's treatment of animals to the conditions of America's inner cities:

"Animals and humans suffer and die alike.  If you had to kill your own hog before you ate it, most likely you would not be able to do it.  To hear the hog scream, to see the blood spill, to see the baby being taken away from its momma, and to see the look of death in the animal's eye would turn your stomach.  So you get the man at the packing house to do the killing for you.

"In like manner, if the wealthy aristocrats who are perpetuating conditions in the ghetto actually heard the screams of ghetto suffering, or saw the slow death of hungry little kids, or witnessed the strangulation of manhood and dignity, they could not continue the killing.  But the wealthy are protected from such horror...If you can justify killing to eat meat, you can justify the conditions of the ghetto.  I cannot justify either one."

Gregory credits the Judeo-Christian ethic and the teachings of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. with having caused him to become a vegetarian.  In 1973, he drew a connection between vegetarianism and nonviolent civil disobedience:

"...the philosophy of nonviolence, which I learned from Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. during my involvement in the civil rights movement was first responsible for my change in diet.  I became a vegetarian in 1965.  I had been a participant in all of the `major' and most of the `minor' civil rights demonstrations of the early sixties, including the March on Washington and the Selma to Montgomery March.

"Under the leadership of Dr. King, I became totally committed to nonviolence, and I was convinced that nonviolence meant opposition to killing in any form.  I felt the commandment `Thou shalt not kill' applied to human beings not only in their dealings with each other--war, lynching, assassination, murder and the like--but in their practice of killing animals for food or sport.  Animals and humans suffer and die alike...Violence causes the same pain, the same spilling of blood, the same stench of death, the same arrogant, cruel and brutal taking of life."

In a 1979 interview, Gregory explained:  "Because of the civil rights movement, I decided I couldn't be thoroughly nonviolent and participate in the destruction of animals for my dinner...I didn't become a vegetarian for health reasons; I became a vegetarian strictly for moral reasons...Vegetarianism will definitely become a people's movement."

When asked if humans will ultimately have to answer to a Supreme Being for their exploitation of animals, Gregory replied, "I think we answer for that every time we go to the hospital with cancer and other diseases."

Gregory has also expressed the opinion that the plight of the poor will improve as humans cease to slaughter animals:  "I would say that the treatment of animals has something to do with the treatment of people.  The Europeans have always regarded their slaves and the people they have colonized as animals."

Since the 1980s, Dick Gregory has been involved in the anti-drug campaign.  In his first major civil rights sermon at the Holt Street Baptist Church in Montgomery, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. said:  "If we are wrong, Jesus of Nazareth was merely a utopian dreamer...If we are wrong, justice is a lie!"  Bruce Friedrich of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) reported back in the '90s  that under Gregory's influence, Dexter Scott King--head of the Martin Luther King, Jr. Center for Nonviolence in Atlanta, and son of the slain civil rights leader--and King's widow, Coretta Scott King, had both become committed vegetarians.

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, would eliminate starvation and malnutrition from this planet.  Animal liberation is human liberation, too."  The animal rights movement should be supported by all caring Americans.

The sole purpose of a fruit, vegetable, or other plant is to reproduce.  Technically, tomatoes are a fruit and so it a pepper ... so you're eating something meant to live!  And yes, plants can communicate and have feelings as well.  Eat spinach?  You're stopping them from reproducing.  You're killing stuff that contains DNA, lives, and wants to live and when it dies, the seeds to germinate.  

Vegetable Rights I say!  Don't eat them.  They are your friends.  

Onward through the fog

Are you going to allow this interruption of discussion to continue?

Someone, apparently one of your fellow staff members, tried to initiate a discussion about whether environmentalism necessarily includes vegetarianism and veganism. The threads, all of them, have degenerated into rants about animal rights and the ethics and morality of killing animals for food. This is a very important topic. I myself am trying to move toward a vegetarian diet for most of the reasons mentioned. But it does not belong here.

And the individuals endorsing vegetarianism and veganism are not simply posting helpful links for us evil SOBs to go to for help. They are posting long rants that severely IMPAIR discussion of whether environmentalism must include vegetarianism.

If you found it necessary to delete one of my brief remarks --  which you found inappropriate even though I at least tied it to the topic -- surely it must be time for you to sweep through the recent "vegetarian" threads and eliminate irrelevant remarks and hopefully discourage such behavior in the future.

Am I annoyed when I'm singled out and others are allowed to misbehave? Yes.

Another victim of Jean-Paul Marat's ghost and his virtual guillotine?

Lets all 6 billion of us all go hunting wild boars.

I'm a vegan who acknowledges that humans are omnivores.  Whenever I'm hungry for meat, I chase down a deer.  Or I take down a cow with my bare hands.  I don't mess with grizzlies though.

The fact of the matter is that the human animal is so physically weak compared to a moose and so slow compared to a rabbit that it's obvious that the "meat" we're supposed to be eating are the things that aren't smart or fast enough to get away...shellfish, slugs, insects, and the rotting leftovers from the mountain lion's deer kill.  Technology tips the balance and screws up the earth.  Sure, you can eat cow now because when it's in the grocery store cooler it can't get away.  That doesn't make it natural though.  So let's not pretend.  I challenge all of you who would have "meat in moderation" to chase down your food and kill it with your bare hands.  I'll give you a little tip if you don't want to go hungry though, my omnivore friends, go for the acorns...they don't run as fast as the squirrel.

"I challenge all of you who would have "meat in moderation" to chase down your food and kill it with your bare hands. "

WTF does this have to do with the environmental impacts of eating or raising meat? (Also applies to numerous long tendentious postings by VasuMurti and other fanatic veg*ns).

Sarcastic response a:
Am I allowed to eat road kill? Oh no! That's using technology!

3. Sarcastic response b:
Better give up using that flat rock to sharpen your nails when you go huntng - that's technology!

4. Sarcastic response c:
Better give up clothes, including footwear - that's technology!

5. Sarcastic response d:
Better give up birth control - that's technology! And that'll really help the environment.

Steve E.

In A Vegetarian Sourcebook (1983), Keith Akers responds to the argument:

"If vegetarians object to killing living creatures (it is argued), then logically they should object to killing plants and insects as well as animals.  But this is absurd. Therefore, it can't be wrong to kill animals.

"Fruitarians take the argument concerning plants quite seriously; they do not eat any food which causes injury or death to either animals or plants.  This means, in their view, a diet of those fruits, nuts, and seeds which can be eaten without the destruction of the plant that produces the food.

"Finding an ethically significant line between plants and animals, though, is not particularly difficult.  Plants have no evolutionary need to feel pain, and completely lack a central nervous system.   Nature does not create pain gratuitously, but only when it enables the organism to survive.  Animals, being mobile, would benefit from having a sense of pain; plants would not.

"Even if one does not want to become a fruitarian and believes that plants have feelings (against all evidence to the contrary), it does not follow that vegetarianism is absurd.  We ought to destroy as few plants as possible.  And by raising and eating an animal for food, many more plants are destroyed indirectly by the animal we eat than if we merely ate the plant directly.

"What about insects?" asks Akers.  "While there may be reason to kill insects, there is no reason to kill them for food.  One distinguishes between the way meat animals are killed for food and the way insects are killed. Insects are killed only when they intrude upon human territory, posing a threat to the comfort, health, or well-being of humans.  There is a difference between ridding oneself of intruders and going out of one's way to find and kill something which would otherwise be harmless."

According to Akers:  "These questions may have a certain fascination for philosophers, but most vegetarians are not bothered by them.  For any vegetarian who is not a biological pacifist, there would not seem to be any difficulty in distinguishing ethically between insects and plants on the one hand, and animals and humans on the other."

Animal rights, as a secular, moral philosophy, may appear to be at odds with traditional religious thinking (e.g., human "dominion" over other animals), but this is equally true of democracy and representative government in place of the divine right of kings, the separation of church and state, the abolition of human slavery, the emancipation of women, birth control, the sexual revolution, lesbian and gay rights, and perhaps every kind of social progress since the end of the Dark Ages and the beginning of the Age of Enlightenment.

Some of the greatest figures in human history have been in favor of ethical vegetarianism and animal rights. These include: Albert Einstein, Leonardo da Vinci, Leo Tolstoy, Mohandas Gandhi, Alice Walker, George Bernard Shaw, Robert Browning, Percy Shelley, Voltaire, Thomas Hardy, Rachel Carson, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Victor Hugo, John Stuart Mill, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Pythagoras, Susan B. Anthony, Albert Schweitzer, Isaac Bashevis Singer, Gertrude Stein, Frederick Douglass, Francis Bacon, William Wordsworth, the Buddha, Mark Twain, and Henry David Thoreau.

In his 1975 book Animal Liberation, Peter Singer writes:

"A liberation movement is a demand for an end to prejudice and discrimination based upon an arbitrary characteristic like race or sex. The classic instance is the Black Liberation movement. The immediate appeal of this movement, and its initial, if limited, success, made it a model for other oppressed groups. We soon became familiar with Gay Liberation and movements on behalf of American Indians and Spanish-speaking Americans. When a majority group--women--began their campaign some thought we had come to the end of the road."

Singer notes that "In comparison with other liberation movements, Animal Liberation has a lot of handicaps. First and most obvious is the fact that the exploited group cannot themselves make an organized protest against the treatment they receive (though they can and do protest to the best of their abilities individually).

"We have to speak up for those who cannot speak for themselves. You can appreciate how serious this handicap is by asking yourself how long blacks would have had to wait for equal rights if they had not been able to stand up for themselves and demand it. The less able a group is to stand up and organize against oppression, the more easily it is oppressed."

In Animal Liberation, Singer optimistically observes: "The environmental movement...has led people to think about our relations with other animals that seemed impossible only a decade ago. To date, environmentalists have been more concerned with wildlife and endangered species than with animals in general, but it is not too big a jump from the thought that it is wrong to treat whales as giant vessels filled with oil and blubber to the thought that it is wrong to treat pigs as machines for converting grains to flesh."

Singer admits that "'Animal Liberation' may sound more like a parody of other liberation movements that a serious objective." He notes that when Mary Wollstonecraft, a forerunner of today's feminists, published A Vindication of the Rights of Women in 1792, "her views were widely regarded as absurd."

Thomas Taylor, a distinguished Cambridge philosopher, tried to refute Mary Wollstonecraft by demonstrating that if women could be given liberation, then animals could be given liberation, too. And since this is "absurd" it must be equally "absurd" to give women liberation. Southern slaveholders may have used this line of reasoning in resisting abolition. We find an identical line of thought in contemporary American society when it comes to extending human rights to the unborn:

"Abortion and slavery? Not even close. A fetus isn't human. If you believe it's wrong to eat meat, should your morality be imposed upon everyone else?"

What if both practices (killing animals and killing unborn humans) are equally reprehensible? What if (like the movements in the 18th and 19th centuries to emancipate women and free the slaves) we are really talking about two very similar moral campaigns --animal rights and prenatal rights?

This is the 21st century. People used to mistakenly think humans were omnivores; they know now that, in reality, we resemble the other primates (frugivores), and possess a set of completely herbivorous teeth. People used to worry if one could be healthy on a vegetarian diet; they know now that it's healthier to be a vegetarian and that all kinds of delicious meatless alternatives are readily available. Celebrities like Paul McCartney and musical groups like the B-52s promote vegetarianism at rock concerts. Other celebrities, like Sara Gilbert of "Roseanne" fame, wear "Meat Stinks" T-shirts on television. And science and technology now provide us with alternatives to animal research and testing.

In secular circles, the animal rights movement is taken more seriously than the right-to-life movement. In an article on animal rights entitled "Just Like Us?" appearing in the August 1988 issue of Harper's, bioethicist Art Caplan was willing to seriously discuss the rights of animals, but warned:

"...if you cheapen the currency of rights language, you've got to worry that rights may not be taken seriously. Soon you will have people arguing that trees have rights and that embryos have rights..."

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."

The animal rights movement should be supported by all caring Americans.

"For any vegetarian who is not a biological pacifist, there would not seem to be any difficulty in distinguishing ethically between insects and plants on the one hand, and animals and humans on the other."

Earth to VasuMurti:
Insects are animals.
This is not an animal rights site.

Question:
Are you a sentiient being? Would you like to interact with other sentient beings (assuming you are one)? Prove it by responding to some of the posts.

Steve E.

Dave, I believe in light moderation and the free exchange of ideas, but this discussion has been hijacked by trolls. I'd really like to see a discussion of various conceptions and visions of sustainable agriculture. Can we have such without it being hijacked?

Steve E.

Ok...this discussion really has been hijacked and I was drawn into it.  The fact is that the animal industry is the largest contributor to human-induced global warming.  Meat-eaters are so defensive about this fact that they go back to arguing over whether or not meat is necessary for human health, whether or not we're carnivores, omnivores, or frugivores, and so on.  I don't believe in dieties or in reincarnation so no...there is no hellfire waiting for those who eat meat or vegetables or murder other humans, etc.  The consequences are here and for this world only.  Global warming is the consequence.

Yes, Steve E., I am a sentient being, just like you, and am proving it by responding to your post.  I realize this is not an animal rights blog, but many of us in the animal rights movement do see environmentalism and animal rights as related issues.  

In my (2001) critique of Kathleen Marquardt's Animal Scam, I point out that our relationship with other species (wild and domesticated) is partly an environmental ethics issue.

John Robbins, author of Diet for a New America (1987), points out that the Rainforest Action Network didn't begin as an animal rights group, but when they found out the real cause of the destruction of rainforests in Central America, they wound up calling for a boycott of Burger King!

Diet for a New America was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize.  In it, John Robbins writes:  

Half the water consumed in the U. S. goes to irrigate land growing feed and fodder for livestock.  Huge amounts of water are also used to wash away their excrement.  U. S. livestock produce twenty times as much excrement as does the entire human population, creating sewage which is ten to several hundred times more concentrated than raw domestic sewage.  Animal wastes cause ten times as much 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 are the number one industrial polluters in our nation, contributing to half the water pollution in the United States.  The water that goes into a thousand-pound steer could float a destroyer.  It takes twenty-five gallons of water to produce a pound of wheat, but twenty-five hundred gallons to produce a pound of meat.  If these costs weren't subsidized by the American taxpayers, hamburger meat would be $35 per pound!

The burden of subsidizing the California meat industry costs taxpayers $24 billion annually.  Livestock producers are California's biggest consumers of water.   Every tax dollar the state doles out to livestock producers costs taxpayers over seven dollars in lost wages, higher living costs and reduced business income.   Seventeen western states have enough water supplies to support economies and populations twice as large as the present.

Overgrazing of cattle leads to topsoil erosion, turning once-arable land into desert.  We lose four million acres of topsoil each year and eighty-five percent of this loss is directly caused by raising livestock.  To replace the soil we've lost, we're destroying our forests.  Since 1967, the rate of deforestation in the U. S. has been one acre every five seconds.  For each acre cleared in urbanization, seven are cleared for grazing or growing livestock feed.

One-third of all raw materials in the U. S. are consumed by the livestock industry and it takes three times as much fossil fuel energy to produce meat than it does to produce plant foods.  A report on the energy crisis in Scientific American warned: "The trends in meat consumption and energy consumption are on a collision course."

Nor can fish provide any help here, notes Keith Akers in A Vegetarian Sourcebook (1983).  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.

Obviously, then, the idea of providing the entire world with a Western-style diet is absurd.  But what about satisfying today's demand for meat--which provides only a fraction of the 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 greater 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 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.

Again, animal rights and vegetarianism are partly environmental ethics issues.

I'm not sure how to communicate this, but I'll give it a try... please be patient.

To meet our demand for energy, we need a diverse energy portfolio. It is easy to criticize one form or another of alternative energy as unrealistic because it cannot meet 100% of our demands. For example, wind alone wil not save our civilization. We need multiple sources.

Perhaps this is the key to sustainability... multiple sources, multiple cradle-to-grave loops, the option of shifting from one source of energy or protein to another, FLEXIBILITY... I assume this is what provides stability to ecosystems.

So, to meet our demand for animal protein, we need a variety of sources. Yes, factory farms are awful and something should be done about it. So some folks say we must give up all meat because there is no way factory farming can be conducted in an environmentally sound way. Other say, what about hunting? The response... there is no way hunting can feed 6 billion people if they chose to eat meat.

Well, who ever said hunting was THE solution?

First of all, not all 6 billion people chow down on pounds of animal flesh every day. I have not consumed any meat over the past 3-4 days. I'll probably go to a restaurant for a fish fry on Friday. Maybe have a couple bratwurst on Saturday. That is it for the week. Surely I'm not alone in MODERATING my intake of animal protein. Everyone should try it -- MODERATION -- sometime. It will work wonders for saving the biosphere.

Now back to where we should be getting our meat.

So, factory farming is not good for the environment. I think virtually everyone can agree with this. It is a major problem and must be addressed. What are some alternatives?

(1) I'm sure there is an expert out there who can tell us all about sustainable agriculture. I'll leave it to them to tell us about raising animals on a farm and using the waste to nourish other crops.

(2) We could restore portions of the Great Plains -- discussed elsewhere -- to tallgrass or shortgrass prairie and stock it with bison. Folks, including large businesses, could pay for the opportunity to harvest bison in a sustainable manner and process and sell the meat to those who wish to eat it. This would be GOOD FOR THE ENVIRONMENT. It would help pay for restoration of an endangered ecosystem. Other animals would benefit. It would provide people with a means of earning a living off of the land without growing monocultures of crops where it really isn't appropriate -- arid regions with relatively thin soil.

(3) There is grass-fed beef. Mutton as well? It is not the same as the stuff from the feed lots. Some people prefer it and some don't. But a market for it encourages ranchers to leave areas relatively untouched by plows, pesticides, and herbicides. Other animals benefit from the existence of open pastures, especially rather endangered grassland bird. Intact sod reduces runoff and silting of streams and lakes. This would be GOOD FOR THE ENVIRONMENT. There are people who will, if not able to earn a living from their land, sell it to a developer. I would rather see cattle on the land than exurban sprawl.

(4) There is a growing interest in using goats to clear brush from natural areas and along roads. In a nutshell, the goats prefer most of the invasive woody Eurasian plants over the native understory plants. If a herder moves them often enough, it is possible to susbtantially reduce invasives while protectiing desirable flora. This improves habitat for many endangered species, helps native forests regenerate, reduces threat of wildfire, does not rely on herbicides for controlling brush. This would be GOOD FOR THE ENVIRONMENT. It just so happens the the best variety of goat for this purpose is apparently a Spanish-Boer hybrid normally raised for meat. So, another environmentally soud -- even beneficial -- source of meat.

(5) Hunting. Simple. We've eliminated predators. Herbivores are out of control, damaging ecosystems. Others have tried to point this out SEVERAL times. Hunting can serve as an additional source of meat.

I'm sure there are many other ideas out there, if someone would let people discuss this issue. One source of animal protein alone will not replace factory farming. But what about several sources combined? And what if we collectively rreduce our appetite a bit? I'd like to see a serious discussion of sustainable omnivory.

By the way, areas set aside for bison, hunting, et cetera will also be areas for people to gather other wild food. Wisconsin permits limited collection of blackberries, blueberries, and other plant products from some natural areas. Wouldn't it be great if fields of corn were replaced by natural vegetation and one could go there to collect wild plant products... between hunting seasons?

Another victim of Jean-Paul Marat's ghost and his virtual guillotine?

To John former Marine: I entirely agree that discussions of what it is "natural" for human beings to eat, and of what we are "adapted" to eat, and of what it is most healthful for us to eat, are irrelevant, seeing that lots of people do fine eating meat and animal-derived foods, and lots of people also do fine following vegan or vegetarian diets.

A discussion of the religious foundations for our choice of diet, whether we believe in such foundations or not, and if we do, what they might be, is not especially relevant either.  Still, let me just make a note for the record that there are at least some of us who support causes concerning the environment and animal welfare for religious reasons.  And it is not so much that fear of everlasting punishment has anything to do with it.  It has everything to do with discovering our humanity in our eternal approach to the all-wise principle of creativity, beauty, goodness and love which rules the cosmos.  "Hellfire," an image of biblical origin that I myself do not find either literally believable or very interesting, might be acceptable to some, to envision some future state of those who are habitually acting in a destructive way at present.  I prefer to say that such as these have turned away from the cosmic principle, and in their alienation from what is good, already bear the first signs of their radical unhappiness.

This is why WiscIdea's idea about exploiting bison on his restored prairie sounds sinister and vaguely immoral.  To think of the bison, not as sentient beings with interests and rights that we moral agents have a duty to respect, but as investments from which one might capitalize, is not happy.

To Bruce Friedrich: As a fellow-traveler alongside PETA, if not quite a member (later this afternoon, in fact, I hope to join the PETA rally here in NYC, at the SW corner of Central Park, to protest the exploitation of carriage horses), I thank you for your long post.  I am glad you wrote about fish, among many other topics, and included them in your section on cruelty.

Do not worry yourself overly about our beloved Biodiversivist.  He is not usually so touchy.  I think he felt provoked by your colleague Matt Prescott's challenge, to the effect that "If you eat meat, you cannot be an environmentalist"; and, on top of that, by the assertion from some quarters that meat-eating, or rather the industry that supports it, is the largest single source of GHG emissions.  Plus, he has fun with his pie charts and graphs.

True, the "pissing contest" challenge was unfortunate.  And the assertion, which he made elsewhere, that vegetarian food does not taste as good as meat, is simply false.  And another assertion, that it will be impossible to reduce significantly the number of meat-eaters in the world, is unproven; it cannot be proven, in fact, until the future is the past.

Nevertheless, all that aside, the world would be a much happier place with more people in it who live like BioD.

Chickens are our cousins! So are fish! So are other sentient animals! Let us learn to be kind.

...if limitting one's carbon footprint were the basis given--and it was--as a moral imperative to not eat meat, then surely we should have broken off this "conversation" long ago.

Anyone participating in this discussion--ie. airing one's views indulgently and at length with no expectation of a useful result--must surely be guilty of wasting this planet's resources for a selfish end.

If we're to have no moral choice in the matter of eating meat, then wouldn't that apply to futile internet pissing contests?

I probably posted this before. Sorry.

(6) The are a number of people living around my home who are interested in trout fishing. And they are working with the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources, several local non-profits, a national non-profit, and farmers to restore and protect cold-water streams in southwest Wisconsin. They donate hundred of hours of time to clear brush, open channels, install LUNKERSs, sow native seed, et cetera. Businesses also contribute equipment, materials, and time. Were it not for the interest in fishing -- an consuming the fish -- these people would probably not help restore and protect natural areas. Many endangered fish, insects, amphibians, reptile, mammals, and birds benefit indirectly from the interest in harvesting trout from local streams. Also helps environment by encouraging people to stay at home rather than travel to remote areas tro fish and helps local economy.

Another victim of Jean-Paul Marat's ghost and his virtual guillotine?

wiscidea correctly states that we can probably all agree factory farming is not good for the environment.  However, factory farming is only part of the problem.

Dudley Giehl writes in his 1979 book, Vegetarianism:  A Way of Life:

"Significant environmental damage results from livestock agriculture, often driving many other species into extinction.  The existence of dodo birds was first recorded in the early 1500s by Portuguese Sailors.  The dodo, which weighed about 50 pounds, was incapable of defending itself and could not flee from its enemies, since it lacked the ability to fly.  Large numbers of these birds were killed by human beings for food.  Additionally, pigs that were brought to the islands destroyed a significant portion of the dodos' eggs, creating a severe decline in the dodo population.  The species became extinct by the 18th century.

"The Steller's sea cow once inhabited the coastal waters of the Commander Islands in the Bering Sea.  Russian Sealers, who were the first to record the existence of these creatures in 1741, estimated the entire population to be about 5,000.  Their meat was considered a delicacy by Russian sealers, who decimated the entire species by 1768 .

"The Labrador duck has been extinct since 1875.  This species formerly inhabited the coastal regions of northeastern Canada.  

"The extinction of the passenger pigeon was caused by the American westward expansion in the second half of the 19th century.  As passenger pigeons became a popular food item, the numbers of this species rapidly diminished.  Millions were slaughtered each year and shipped by railway cars to be sold in city markets.  

Another bird to become extinct because of its use as food was the heath hen, which became extinct about 1932.

"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.  

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

"Cougars, coyotes and wolves are considered a menace to the cattle and sheep industries, and livestock ranchers have engaged in a large-scale campaign to exterminate them.  Two species of wolves are now endangered, and very few wolves can be found in the United States except in Alaska and northeastern Minnesota.  

"The relatively small number of eagles in the U.S. is largely due to the destruction of this species by livestock ranchers, particularly those in the sheep business.

"Herbivorous animals that inhabit rangeland areas are also killed by the livestock industry because they compete with cattle arid sheep for food.  Large numbers of kangaroos are being exterminated in Australia, while in the United States livestock ranchers seek to destroy wild horses, wild burros, deer, elk, antelope and prairie dogs."

John Robbins similarly writes in Diet for a New America (1987):

"An ever-increasing amount of beef eaten in the United States is imported from Central and South America.  To provide pasture for cattle, these countries have been clearing their priceless tropical rainforests.  

"In 1960, when the U. S. first began to import beef, Central America was blessed with 130,000 square miles of rainforest.   But now, less than 80,000 square miles remain.  At this rate, the entire tropical rainforests of Central America will be gone in another forty years.

"These tropical rainforests are among the world's most precious natural resources.   Amounting to only 30 percent of the world's forests, the rainforests contain 80 percent of the earth's land vegetation, and account for a substantial percentage of the earth's oxygen supplies.  

"These forests are the oldest ecosystems on earth and have developed extreme ecological richness.  Half of all species on earth live in the moist tropical rainforests.  

"But these jewels of nature are being rapidly destroyed to provide land on which cattle can be grazed for the American fast-food market.

The current rate of species extinction is 1,000 species a year, and most of that is due to the destruction of rainforests and related habitats in the tropics."

Animal activists consider livestock agriculture itself to be the problem and veganism the appropriate response to environmental devastation.

But Biodiversivist, your first comment was the first negative comment, and it was so mean-spirited and judgemental, from the subject line.

I can see "What about hunting?" as a very legitimate question, etc., and generally, these discussions can be had without attacking one another.

But you opted to attack, which I think set the tone for the rest of the posts.

I do agree with the poster who said that you do great stuff--if you're Blogging here, I'm sure you do, and I guess this issue just set you off...

Add..

<< I entirely agree that discussions of what it is "natural" for human beings to eat, and of what we are "adapted" to eat, and of what it is most healthful for us to eat, are irrelevant, >>

Highly relevant thinking in terms of (our natural) ecological dietary niche, I think you'll agree..

Since Bruce Friedrich first posted his article here, there has been serious discussion as to whether environmentalism necessarily includes vegetarianism and veganism.

I think the facts and figures, which Bruce has presented, speak for themselves.  Given the incredible amount of environmental damage (and waste of energy and resources) caused by raising animals for food, one cannot help but see "meat-eating environmentalists" in the same light as "chain-smoking physicians."

The connection between environmentalism and animal rights has been present for some time.  

In his 1983 book, The Case for Animal Rights (a landmark in moral philosophy, comparable to Rawls' A Theory of Justice), Dr. Tom Regan does not take a utilitarian approach (e.g., Peter Singer), but argues for the rights of animals as individual beings rather than for the rights of an entire species (environmental ethics).  

Genetics is the science often cited by pro-lifers to distinguish humans from other animals.  

In a paper presented before the Conference on Creation Theology and Environmental Ethics at the World Council of Churches in Annecy, France in September, 1988, Dr. Tom Regan opposed discrimination based upon genetic differences:

"...biological differences inside the species Homo sapiens do not justify radically different treatment among those individuals, humans who differ biologically (for example, in terms of sex, or skin color, or chromosome count).  Why, then, should biological differences outside our species count morally?  If having one eye or deformed limbs do not disqualify a human being from moral consideration equal to that given to those humans who are more fortunate, how can it be rational to disqualify a rat or a wolf from equal moral consideration because, unlike us, they have paws and a tail?"

Dr. Regan concluded:

"...the whole fabric of Christian agape is woven from the threads of sacrificial acts.  To abstain...from eating animals, therefore, although it is not the end-all, can be the begin-all of our conscientious effort to journey back to (or toward) Eden, can be one way (among others) to re-establish or create that relationship to the earth which, if Genesis 1 is to be trusted, was part of God's original hopes for and plans in creation.

It is the integrity of this creation we seek to understand and aspire to honor.  In the choice of our food, I believe, we see...a small but not unimportant part of both the challenge and the promise of Christianity and animal rights."

In 1992, members of Los Angeles' First Unitarian Church agreed to serve vegetarian meals at the church's weekly Sunday lunch.  Their decision was made as a protest against animal cruelty and the environmental damage caused by the livestock industry.

Again, the connection between environmentalism and animal rights has been present for some time.

The main difference between the animal rights movement and the environment movement is that the animal rights movement is dominated by extremists while the environmental movement is dominated by moderates. As a result I support Biodiversivist's contention, yes the environmental movement should separate itself from the animal rights movement. Not completely, just keep PETA et al at arms length because a close relationship would be damaging to the environmental movement.

PETA is the flagship animal rights group. It dominates and sets the agenda of the animal rights movement. It has set the animal rights movement on an extremist path. They assert their moral and value judgments as fact. They see no middle ground or room for compromise. They demand that everyone do what they do. They demonize people who disagree. They use arguments that a reasonable person would see as outside the norm. They are clearly hostile and support violence.

The result of this is PETA is a small ideologically pure sect. There is something to be said for people who live up to their own ideals, but a group on the fringes of society is the last thing the environment needs.  

Environmental problems like climate change are bigger and more complex than animal rights issues. Broad public support is essential to solve environmental problems. Extremist demands like mandatory vegan or vegetarian diets to be in favor environmental protection are going to push people away, not bring them in.

Once again, I submit to you that PETA is a violent, extremist organization.  They kill countless people every day by guilting them into starvation.  Everyone knows that cars are the biggest contributor to global warming gases and immoral behavior.  That's why I got a hybrid.  Obviously, PETA, with their extremist agenda, has infiltrated the U.N. and manipulated a 400-page report issued by that organization on the impact of livestock to global warming.

I'm sure all of you will agree with me that people trying to impose their morals on others are freedom-haters.  Facts aside...we need to seek the truthiness of this issue.  As Stephen Colbert says, forget what you read in books...do a gut check.

Al Gore is an extremist too.  He said that global warming was a moral issue.  If the environmental community would just disconnect themselves from these "moral" extremists, they would do better.  If we aligned ourselves with corporations and people that have no claim to moral superiority, like ExxonMobil, Haliburton, or President Bush, we'd get a lot more credibility.

josullivan58 argues that the difference between animal rights and environmental groups is that animal rightists are extreme, whereas environmentalists are moderate.

This is only due to the fact that the environmental movement (which emerged a couple of decades earlier than the animal rights movement) has grown to the point where its ideals have become part of the mainstream...Let's see where animal rights will be in 20 years.  

As Peter Singer points out in Animal Liberation (1975), the environmental movement has changed the way we look at animals in a way that seemed impossible only a decade ago.

PETA, the largest animal rights organization (1.6 million strong), is incredibly mainstream.  Reading PETA literature, like their "Animal Times" magazine, is a lot like reading People magazine!  It's filled with photos of vegetarian celebrities, recipes, etc.  

PETA has gotten flack from feminists for their use of supermodels in campaigns like "We'd Rather Go Naked Than Wear Fur."  But most of what PETA does wouldn't get media attention.  The media thrives on sensationalism, not balanced rational debate.  

Traditional animal welfare groups like the Humane Society and the ASPCA now promote vegetarianism and an end to animal research and testing.  John Robbins' Diet for a New America makes veganism seem as mainstream as recycling.  Meat and dairy alternatives can now be found in most major supermarkets.  Dennis Kucinich (D-OH) was the first vegan presidential candidate!  

The animal rights movement is estimated to be 10 million strong; I think the Moral Majority at the peak of its power was only five million strong.  Try and discuss animal rights and vegetarianism apart from religion (since we're not trying to convert them to another religion, we just want them to stop being cruel to animals) with most Christians, and all they can think of is the MOVE!  

Join PETA.  Join the animal rights movement.  Join history in the making.

Many meat-eating environmentalists here have contended that "sustainable" or "organic" agriculture is not possible at all without the addition of animal manure to the fields.  I'm going to do my best to explain how animals recycle nutrients for us for those radical vegans out there.  I know some of you are lacking enough Omega fatty acids in your diets and so your brains are rapidly shrinking while the meat-eaters brains are expanding rapidly to the outer limits of their skulls right now so I'm going to try and explain this as simply as it can be.

First you start with a confined feedlot.  That's where we environmental meat-eaters get our meat.  In fact, it's the only "sustainable" way to produce enough meat to feed billions of people.  Well, all of those cows, hogs, and fowl poop a lot.  Their poop is rich in nutrients.  Eventually, billions and billions of gallons of this nutrient-rich poop is washed into rivers and eventually finds it's way to the sea.  At first, it has some ill effects but you have to focus on the big picture here to understand the benefits.  Well, to start, the nutrients cause algae blooms in the Chesapeake Bay and Gulf of Mexico.  These algae blooms create huge "dead zones" where there is so little oxygen that all of the fish life dies off.  The pesticides, herbicides, and heavy metals found in the poop is taken into the ocean's ecosystems by the lowest organisms and eventually, through biomagnification and bioacumulation, makes its way to the top game fish.  These fish are eaten by other environmentalists who support "sustainable" fisheries.  The rest of the nutrients, through a process that takes thousands of years, are mineralized, precipitate out of the water, and become part of the sea floor.  This is where the "recycling" of nutrients begins.

Through sea floor spreading and the submersion of the sea floor under continental plates (sorry, I'm not great at explaining plate tectonics like other environmentalists), through the course of millions or billions of years, these poop nutrients eventually find themselves again part of the earth's mantle in the form of "red hot magma."  Eventually, this "red hot magma" is pushed up into the cavities of volcanoes and, over millions of more years, is pushed back to the earths surface.  These poop nutrients find themselves again at the top of our mountains in the form of volcanic ash or rock.  Through processes of erosion taking millions or billions of years, these rocks break down and their poop nutrients find their way down the slopes and back to the farm fields.  Once again, the nutrients are taken up by crops of potatoes, corn, quinoa, and whatever else humans can eat that doesn't provide enough protein.  So, as you can see, the nutrients in the soil are actually recycled by the livestock, a process that might take several thousand additional years if not for the cows, hogs, and chickens.  Waiting millions and billions of years for those nutrients to be recycled is long enough in my book.  Would you vegans have us wait thousands of years more?

If there are any vegans out there who aren't suffering from Omega fatty acid, protein, or vitamin B12 deficiencies and you have the brain power and energy to respond, I challenge you to rebut everything I've written here.  Sustainable agriculture is just not possible without animal husbandry.

As a necessary component of the living world, we must extend compassion to one another and to every living thing. Our mission as human beings can truly be to elevate this world from a condition of suffering and cruelty to the planet's creatures, and towards a condition of compassion and inherent respect. Through elevating the cause of every creature, we elevate our own humanity.

We lift up the cause of humanity by reaching out and connecting with all things living. It is our sense of interconnection with all living things that brings us to respect the rights of animals; to understand that animals are not to be "lower than"; that animals should not have less of a claim to existence, less of a claim to the possibility of survival, less of a claim to dignity.

Every one of us knows a story of animal cruelty; every one of us knows how in one way or another official policies have sanctioned cruelty to animals. I am working to put compassion into action in our policies with respect to animals in this country and to have America set a higher standard, not only for this country, but for the world; to make sure that all of God's creatures, that all animals are given a chance to have dignity in our society and are given a chance to experience the appreciation they should have as living beings.

I would include advocacy of animal rights in the Department of Peace, which I have already proposed to Congress. This cabinet-level department would work with, and offer an alternative to, the Defense Department. There have been numerous studies that have suggested a link between animal cruelty and domestic violence. The Department of Peace would not only seek to resolve international conflicts with nonviolent means, but also seek to instill a peaceful paradigm into the hearts of all the people of the world, so that one day war will be an archaic relic of a time that has passed.

My farm policy favors independent and family-owned farms. I support a national ban on packer ownership of livestock, and numerous new incentives for farmers to convert to sustainable and organic farming and ranching techniques. The vision of the meat that we consume coming from happy and healthy free-range animals can become more of a reality, as opposed to the inhumane conditions that the often mutated chickens and cows and pigs are forced to sustain in our current system.

As a member of Congress, I have cosponsored every piece of major animal protection legislation. In addition, I hold the distinction of being the only vegan in Congress. I made this lifestyle change many years ago, because I consider all life on our Earth to be sacred. As a vegan, I choose not to eat any animals or animal products. I strive to live my life in accordance with my convictions, and any other choice of diet would defy my ideals and, in my judgment, be hypocritical.

- Dennis Kucinich 11/16/2006

You can grow crops with green manure just as successfully as using animal manure.  Omega fatty acids are found in nuts and other plant foods, as is B12.  I think the old adage is true here-- where there's a will, there's a way.

I think everyone is missing the real point here.

The problem is human infestation of the planet.
If any other species' population was able to get as out of control as humans, we'd be poisoning it immediately.

Over-population increases violence and pollution and in turn it creates more suffering.

I believe that if we, as a species, were living off the land as the Native Indians did 300yrs ago before they were slaughtered by the caucasians, or like the very few natives that haven't been forced out of the jungles by oil and other corporations, we could eat meat and it wouldn't be wrong.

Fire is good when it's controlled and in a fireplace or such.

So let's all get along and try not to feel threatened by facts.  Facts, good. Pollution & cruelty, bad!!

If we all accept that it's impossible to have good nutrition without eating factory-farmed meat, we might as well accept that it's also a necessity to live in huge homes and drive big cars.  It's a lifestyle choice.  It has to do with a standard of living.  We have the ability to make tools and use fire, which enables us to eat meat - which we otherwise are too weak and slow to chase down.  Well...can't our technology also help us to achieve proper nutrition without factory farms?  

If I correctly understand the PETA philosophy, "exploitation" of animals is immoral. This would seem to include:

*Using animals for draft power in farming (those immoral Amish and numerous 3rd world peoples!)
*Keeping bees for honey or raising bees for the explicit purpose of pollinating crops
*In any way consciously manipulating vegetation or land use so as to create conditions favorable for animals that provide beneficial services to humans. This includes consciously growing or creating the conditions to grow plants that harbor (e.g.) wild pollinating insects orinsects that predate other insects that attack crop plants.

This is an interesting philosphical position to some, but seems to me to be so divorced from the real word that I've come to the conclusion that the people holding this position are also divorced from the real world. By this I mean that they have no conception about how farming systems of any sort actually function. Use of manure is only the tiniest tip of the iceberg of the way in which animals participate and are used in farming systems. An example: in central Washington a non-native leaf roller is a major pest in apple orchids, for which farmers use gobs of expensive pesticides. A native leaf roller occurs on the native wild rose. There is a native parasite that preys on these insects. When these wild roses are near and around the orchards, the parasite of the native leaf rollers suppress the non-native pestiferous leaf rollers. A farmer that plants the wild rose will likely reduce or eliminate major pesticide use as well as provide habitat for numerous other organisms. But under PETA's philosphical stance, the farmer would be committing a sin. She is "exploiting" the native leaf rollers and their parasites, as well as killing the non-native leaf roller. I find this world view bizarre. Putting it bluntly, just wearing polyester or pesticide soaked cotton is not sustainable, and as an environmentalist concerned about the future (including humans), my goal is sustainability.

Steve E.

If I correctly understand the PETA philosophy, "exploitation" of animals is immoral. This would seem to include:

*Using animals for draft power in farming (those immoral Amish and numerous 3rd world peoples!)
*Keeping bees for honey or raising bees for the explicit purpose of pollinating crops
*In any way consciously manipulating vegetation or land use so as to create conditions favorable for animals that provide beneficial services to humans. This includes consciously growing or creating the conditions to grow plants that harbor (e.g.) wild pollinating insects orinsects that predate other insects that attack crop plants.

This is an interesting philosphical position to some, but seems to me to be so divorced from the real word that I've come to the conclusion that the people holding this position are also divorced from the real world. By this I mean that they have no conception about how farming systems of any sort actually function. Use of manure is only the tiniest tip of the iceberg of the way in which animals participate and are used in farming systems. An example: in central Washington a non-native leaf roller is a major pest in apple orchids, for which farmers use gobs of expensive pesticides. A native leaf roller occurs on the native wild rose. There is a native parasite that preys on these insects. When these wild roses are near and around the orchards, the parasite of the native leaf rollers suppress the non-native pestiferous leaf rollers. A farmer that plants the wild rose will likely reduce or eliminate major pesticide use as well as provide habitat for numerous other organisms. But under PETA's philosphical stance, the farmer would be committing a sin. She is "exploiting" the native leaf rollers and their parasites, as well as killing the non-native leaf roller. I find this world view bizarre. Putting it bluntly, just wearing polyester or pesticide soaked cotton is not sustainable, and as an environmentalist concerned about the future (including humans), my goal is sustainability.

Steve E.

a lot of people in the sustainable farming movement. I run an organic berry and veggie farm and sell at a large metro farmers markets.

i hate to say it but you can spot most vegetarians and especially vegans coming down the aisle.

many of them are thin with pale complections and sick looking skin sometimes, very few of them look healthy.  I don't have the link handy but there is growing research that vegetarians and vegans suffer from depression and other mental health problems at a significantly higher rate then the general public. if I recall the theory is that a lack of a well balanced diet is the possible reason for higher mental healthy problems.

a real concern is that many people do not have a good grasp of nutrition and how to get a well balanced diet with no meat or dairy. from what I have read its dangerous for children to be eating vegetarian and vegan as their bodies and minds are developing.

if God wanted us to only eat green stuff and fruits we would have different teeth structure.

lots of sickening people who should keep their pushy opinions about what we eat to themselves.

Chickens deserve our true friendship! So do fish! So do other sentient beings! Let us learn to be kind.

you do more harm with your endless prolixity to you movement then you will ever realize.

i will give you a free lesson in internet discourse.  read carefully.

 short and to the point.
short and to the point.
use links to support your points, if you are making sweeping statements in particular.
a comments section is a forum to engage the writer of the post first, and other commenters second.  it is not a place to go off on your own endless tangents.  you have a link at your name that leads to your website.

i would suggest, in future, that you merely say "please check my website for more info" after following rules 1 and 2.

and to dave roberts et al:  to let someone turn this into a peta recruitment site is shameful and embarrassing.  you really need to do better than this.  in general there are too many posts on gristmill, but this is really pushing it.

I recently read this on a discussion board (paraphrasing):

"Methane is a stronger greenhouse gas. It traps 23 times as much heat as CO2. But it has a shorter atmospheric residence time relative to CO2. Methane stays in the atmosphere for about 10 years, CO2 for about 100 years. However, methane breaks down into CO2 (and water). So, added up, you get 10 years of methane residency plus 100 years of CO2, give or take."

So, taking these assumptions as true:

CO2 = ~100
Methane = 23*10+1*100 = ~330

So although methane only makes up 8% of emissions, it makes up about 3.3 times as much of a greenhouse effect as reflected in the chart. Doing the math to figure out the resulting percentage, it comes out as less than 25%, but not a whole lot less. But there's even more unaccounted for...

What's not reflected also is the destruction of forests for agriculture. If forests are being destroyed to grow soy, tobacco, and corn, that significantly reduces the total amount of CO2 being removed from the atmosphere. Every acre of conventional farming increases the level of nitrates, now at about 4% on the chart. Every acre increases use of fossil fuels by farm equipment.

All of these effects can be curtailed at once by reducing or eliminating unnecessary foods - like red meat - from the personal diet, and encouraging others to do the same. (I recommend by cooking good food and sharing it!)

Regardless of the realities of the world, the difficulty of giving up meat, and the cultural sanction we have to indulge ourselves, there's simply no ethical reason to discourage people from going vegetarian or vegan, and every reason to encourage compassion by all means.

People who choose to go vegan or vegetarian are more likely to be conscientious in other ways. For example, in addition to being vegan, I prefer to bicycle everywhere I go. When people begin acting conscientiously, rather than purely out of personal desire - all slices of the pie-chart are affected... As compassion is engaged more deeply, there should be an exponential increase in social health and well-being, and a decrease in fear and its social remedies.

Oh, and let's reduce population growth around the world by increasing the level of education and offering a better overall standard of living through development. Slowing population growth is more important than anything, so get busy not having babies!