If you're flying in your vegetables from halfway around the world, then you might actually be doing more to raise greenhouse gas levels then if you buy eggs from a local organic farmer.

In addition, if you get your veggies from an industrial farm, it probably took more fossil fuel energy to grow those veggies then you will get by eating them - fertilizers, pesticides, tractor fuel, refrigeration and shipping all add up.

This doesn't mean an end to trade; I still go buy the fair trade coffee, but I turn down the Ecuadorian bananas, and I buy my food from local farmers instead of at the corporate supermarket (as much as possible). If they happen to raise chickens, that's fine with me.

On the other hand, factory farming of animals is a nightmare - polluting, inhumane, and unhealthy - but factory farming land for veggies is only marginally better (all the chemical fertilizers, herbicides and pesticides tend to run right off into local waterways and groundwater, for example).

Sustainable agriculture was the only kind of agriculture prior to WWII - and 60 years of industrial agriculture is enough - we won't be able to survive much more of it.

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Kathy,

I think you’ve made the argument just perfectly, and yet I know that many defensive progressive meat-eaters will come up with the same tired replies, almost as though they’ve ignored your entire article.

Clearly, for anyone who opposes cruelty to animals and opposes waste (funneling crops through animals), a vegetarian diet is the way to go.

At the very least, anyone who is going to continue to eat meat should watch the video link at www.Meat.org. If you don’t want to watch it, you shouldn’t pay people to do it.

Great post. And kudos to the Alternet for giving it top billing! THAT is SO GREAT!

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for a meatless diet -- great health! People who eat no meat are more likely to have stronger bones, lower blood pressure, and are more resilient when it comes to attacks on the immune system. I am in my mid-fifties, and my doctor always comments on the fact that tests on my blood, etc., always come back in the same range as someone in their 20's. Great benefit!

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This article was totally right on- but good luck getting the meat eating public to change their ways. Add to that the howls from the beef lobby and the pork producers who will lament the attack on American farmers and on and on......

In reality, it all depends. As was pointed out in an above comment, eating vegetarian can be very eco-friendly if products are grown locally and organically. If your idea of eating vegetarian consists of raspberries in February in Michigan or something, well that's not too enviro friendly in terms of the CO2 emissions caused by jetting your fruit to you. So, sourcing locally grown fruit, vegies and grains whenever possible, basically eating lower on the food chain is better in terms of numerous environmental factors. Years ago this was pointed out in "Diet for a Small Planet".

However, just as Americans have become addicted to car travel and plane trips, so they also have come to believe that meat, and lots of it, is a necessary component of their diet. Many would feel deprived if they had to do without meat. I would say that a good many people have no clue how to cook meals that don't involve meat. And they will all rally to the defense of their meat-eating with all manner of justification to continue their addiction as they do for their driving and AC use and everything else. Bottom line- nothing will change unless or until it gets so expensive that the masses can't afford it. How about a carbon tax on beef?

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A really well-written, informative and amusing article. But I was taken aback by the emphasis on America as a meat-eating culture. Do Americans really eat that much meat? I'm not totally vegetarian - today we had some chicken in our "nabe" (a kind of hotpot stew) that we had for dinner, along with tofu, carrots, long onions, harusame (a kind of Chinese noodle) and various other assorted leaves. Delicious! When I went out for my afternoon walk, I bought, from our local roadside stall, some broccoli, potatoes, spinach and chingensai (a Japanese vagetable). Vegetables probably make up about 70 percent of our diet, while the rest is a mixture of fish (raw and cooked) and sprinklings of chicken and bacon. We've gradually been drifting into this diet over the past few years, and whether there is a direct causal connectin of not, I don't know, but all the aches and pains I used to have just aren't there now, and I haven't felt better in years. I can thoroughly recommend giving up meat (or cutting down on it very consdierably) to everyone.

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There is a bit of erroneous information here. The article ignores the fact that there are factory farms and there are small family farms that raise animals without cruelty. They are pasture raised, fed no antibiotics, no growth hormones no grain and are often pastured on marginal land that would not be good for food production.

All life is sacred, whether it is a carrot or a steer. The carrot gives its life for us without being able to procreate, as it is a biennial and cannot reproduce unless it is left to flower and go to seed in its second year - at which time it is inedible. We live by eating living things. Unless you are a fruitarian, then it is unreasonable to claim vegetarianism is more ethical. However, there are ethics in HOW the food, whether it be plant or animal, is raised, as was pointed out in an earlier post.

If you are lucky enough to be healthy on a vegetarian diet and want to eat that way, I say go for it. I was a vegetarian for 15 years. After living with increasing health problems, I started doing some research and found that Vegetarian Times was often not scientifically correct. After six years of eating meat again, I am healthy. However, it wasn't enough just to eat meat. I learned to eat unprocessed local food. Unprocessed means no factory farming, no packaged convenience food, no GMO foods. It means raw milk and eggs from pastured animals. Local means no fuel to bring me food from faraway places.

For a good link on some counter arguments that are supported by studies, please follow this link and read it carefully. You have every right to disagree with it, but perhaps you will learn something new.

http://www.westonaprice.org/mythstruths/mtvegetarianism.html

Susan

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This is a well-written article, but I'm surprised most people who have responded seem to think this is new information. In fact, most concerned people have known this for many years, and there are many knowledgeable books and articles on the topic going back to the 1970s.

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After DDT and other toxins were banned from use in the US corporations began producing produce outside of the US and use the same chemicals, pesticides and fertilizers, that are know to cause serious harm to humans. If you can afford to buy lcoally grown produce and meat products, or domestic organic (No WalMart does not sell clean and organic stuff) you will be doing yourslef a great favor and probably cutting your risk of developing cancer.

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Let's assume that what the author wants happens. People become vegetarians and land is taken out of agricultural use and returns to forest or grasslands. What happens next? Animals move to the land, lots of different animals which also poop and fart just like cattle sheep and goats, so net-net how much will methane emissions decline, probably not so much if at all.

Also not discussed is the fact that animal agriculture consumes atmospheric CO2 through growing feed which in turn is released by the animals - so it is a cycle. What's being consumed is being emitted. Contrast this to fossil fuel use - carbon which is locked up in the ground in oil, coal, natural gas or other extracted fuel is burned and emits CO2 into the atmosphere which results in a net increase in the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere.

It's fine that the author is a vegetarian and wants to convert others to vegetarianism, but if she wants to make a scientific/engineering argument for doing this, at least from the global warming perspective, she needs to do a little research and number crunching.

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Great Article. I just rewatched John (Baskin) Robbins 10 year old video Diet for a New America ( I think there was a book too) which covers all the points you brought up--with great visual support for the whole concept. MY 11 YEAR OLD DAUGHTER WAS SPELLBOUND to get such succinct visual and verbal confirmation of what she has come to know, believe and love, although a younger child might be scared by some of the scenes of animal abuse. Thanks

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It is not a closed circuit... first, animals make babies, second, people eat them taking them out of the circle. Third, we have to plant more seed, use more fertilizer, grow more crops, etc. In the natural world, yes, animals are in balance, but factory farming is not sustainable and thus not a closed carbon circuit.

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Rejoice, TrueLeft economic populism has been replaced by the fakeLeft environmentalism!

And the best part of it is that with the new FakeLeftism, the rich and the yuppies hardly have to pay taxes, AND they can keep their illegal aliens nannies and gardeners!

No wonder Alterent and the rest of the FakeLeft just LOVE THAT NEW-FANGLED FAKELEFTISM!

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The possibilty of a world wide pandemic of the chicken flu
should it materialize will be an awful price to pay for mankinds chicken"culture" dependence for food.

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Ah yes, The Huffington Post - where Hollywood vapidity and toothless commentary intersect. The most revealing thing about the normally voluble "Huff" was her telling silence as Israel slaughtered Lebanese citizens and decimated the hospitals and infrastructure of Lebanon. The (non AIPAC-beholden) world cried condemnation and ceasefire. Huff? Not so much.

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This article threatens to make my head explode. It reads like something written by a 12 year old who just discovered that racism is, like, bad & stuff.

The author almost completely glosses over the complexities of the issues of consumption critical to any discussion of the topic. While briefly mentioning our disproportional resource use, the assumption seems to be that we can continue to live as we are accustomed to (sans icky meat, of course), & everything will be peachy. After all, Leo's got it under control! America's massive consumerism ruining the planet? Don't worry, we'll just buy our way out of this mess. What's next, Alternet, a bubbly article on how to pay off credit card debt by simply putting it on another credit card?

I'm thrilled that the Toyota Prius (tm) is well on the way to a single-handed solving of the fossil fuel pollution problem. It's totally awesome that the author (& her celebrity pals) can actually afford one. As for poorer people like me, I guess we'll just have to continue ruining the environment by walking everywhere, or using our unsexy bicycles.

Any discussion of using purchasing power to effect positive environmental change that doesn't even mention the detriments of mass agriculture or the burgeoning market for local, sustainable food (meat included) is worthless. It's like writing a critique of Wal*Mart, without mentioning "Mom & Pop" grocery stores as an alternative. Of course, the author probably thinks Wal*Mart is okay, now that they've been green-washed...

Idiotic.

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Small farms still mutilate animals without pain relief, ship them through weather extremes, etc. They may be better, but they are still wasteful, polluting, and engage in practices that, if done to a dog or cat, would warrant felony cruelty charges. Check out:
http://goveg.com/organic.asp

you say that a carrot’s life is as valuable as a steer’s life. The logical extension of this is that killing a dog or cat is no different from pulling a carrot from the ground. This is simply not logical or true—the carrot can’t feel pain and doesn’t have a brain. And as pointed out above, it takes exponentially more plant life, funneled through an animal, to get meat—so if you’re concerned about cruelty to plants, it’s still best to eat them directly, rather than to funnel them through animals.

Re: the Weston A. Price link: These people are total cultists. Every medical authority, from the American Dietetic Association to the AMA agrees that vegetarians are healthier than meat-eaters. The WAP folks have no reputable science to back their bizarre claims. The author of the link from them, Stephen Byrnes, suffered a fatal stroke in June 2004. He wasn’t even 40 years old!

Finally, in the U.S. we raise more than 10 billion animals for food every year. As discussed above, that requires massive amounts of CO2 and produces massive amounts of methane. The scientists have spoken on this topic; we ignore them at our peril.

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Hamburger dripping with melted cheese and baaaaacon...

But in all seriousness folks, I eat protein shakes and raisin bran all week (with Campbell's Soup for lunch in the winter) and enjoy a regular Western meat diet on the weekends.

I am a progressive.

Vegetarians are free to whatever they want, but don't offend your natural political allies because they happen to eat meat. It's embarassing, and its why the Republicans still exist. In so many average, middle-class Americans weren't driven from progressive politics because of its umbrella-treatment of hot button issues like this one, then the Republicans would have been out of business long ago. Instead, the religious right run this country, because the left has no sense of unification.

So yeah, I love beef and pork. Can you still stand with me against Bush & Co.?

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The world is over crowded. People are the problem. If the population went down to, say, half of what it is now, then everybody could eat meat and drive a sensible car without destroying the environment.

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Great column. Thank you, Kathy Freston and Alternet, for pointing out what the mainstream media is too spineless to print. Americans need to get over their meat addiction just as much as they need to get over their oil addiction, the two are interconnected.

Besides, one look at the videos on www.GoVeg.com that show how animals are slaughtered by the billions in our country every year will make any person with a backbone swear off meat.

Meat is not only unnecessary, it gives us colon cancer, heart disease, and is linked to many other lethal diseases in our country. A good resource to read about the health problems linked to meat is www.PCRM.org--the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine.

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when "progressives" gloat about how they eat meat--like they are pounding their chests in some lame territorial display. They sound just like the people driving SUVs saying "you can drive whatever you want but don't talk to me about global warming". Give me a break.

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I was a vegetarian back in high school and did a lot of research reports on this subject - the ecological devastation caused by factory farming as well as the negative health aspects of eating meat. However, my vegetarian diet was unhealthy. I don't tolerate soy very well, cutting my options considerably! I still won't eat veal, and I really don't eat a ton of meat. I won't eat fast food. I think really even if you are getting a veggie burger at BK or McDonald's, you are still supporting the corporate culture that is destroying our environment by patronizing those stores. Now I buy a 1/8 cow from a local, organic farmer. It lasts for months. And I feel a lot more connected to my food that way. It travels about 25 miles, it was butchered individually, not in a traumatic lineup, and while it lived, it roamed and ate grass. I am still responsible for ending that life, but with all the other options, I am okay with that. Additionally, when animals are raised in controlled populations, they are beneficial. Chickens run around eating bugs that would otherwise infest plants, and cows can graze hilly areas that are unfarmable. Their manure can be used for compost. There are many studies that show that with organic farming methods, grazing cattle actually improves soil and controls erosion. Of course, I eat meat so you could say I am biased. But I really think the problem is the corporate methods we use to produce ALL food, not just animals. If people were more conscious of where their food came from and demanded organically grown, humane products, meat-eating would not need to be so ecologically devastating.

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Wowsa - it is gonna be darned hard to refuse a fine filet mignon or a big juicy hunk of prime rib; heck, even a good bacon cheeseburger - but my eyes have once again been pried open by something in Alternet. While I see the connection and the benefits of vegetarian chow, I do believe the opposition from the meat and poultry industry is going to be damned tough to overcome. Like so many other issues in our country, it is going to take a generation or two of pounding this information through thick skulls, beating back the onslaught of those who earn their living through "meats" and incorporating the vegetarian lifestyle into mainstream culture. One need only listen to Ron White's gig about his vegetarian friend whose body "rejected" beef broth to understand the kind of scorn and derision vegetarians will receive from the cholesterol-ladened, beer bellied bozos that a goodly portion of our country.....
Thanks for an eye-opening article!

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The current Food/Energy Ratio in the US is 10 calories of energy to produce 1 calorie of food, not including harvesting, processing, transport and packaging. That is simply unsustainable and has implications for the vegans and vegetarians as well.

After a lifetime of enjoying my carnivorous lifestyle, I am seriously considering adopting a vegetarian diet. I do this not because I think eating meat is wrong or bad, but for other reasons. I no longer have any confidence in the safety, regulation or inspection of the meat production system in the US and have increasing doubts about animal food safety.

Our government has decided to allow meat from cloned animals be marketed to you with no special markings, warnings or other labels. This is not designed for your protection- only for the protection of the agri-business and food retailing lobby members. If your USDA & FDA will roll over this easily on cloned meat after the firestorm of opposition to cloned veggies, what else will they turn their head at for profit and political payoff?

The lifestyle of most Americans has us backed into a corner. When the seas are overfished almost to the extinction of whole geographic areas of the ocean and freshwater fish are unsafe to eat due to mercury contamination, fish/seafood is not a viable option. Commercial meatpacking and industrial poultry now threaten us with resistant viral and bacterial strains that could launch human pandemics and pollute our water to the detriment of whole communities. Presented with these facts, the table becomes much more sparse and localized. Factor in the oil usage of transporting tropical nuts & fruits to the northern climates and your menu gets even more scarce.

If I owned land in the northeast or midwest US, I would be planting fruit orchards with disease resistant hybrid varieties, as they will be in great demand by the time the trees are mature.

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When I read a screed like this, I often am unable to judge the arguments because I don't happen to have access to the data cited or know how reliable it is. So when the author makes a glaring boo-boo, it suggests to me that they are unreliable. Such boo-boos were made on at least two points in this article. One is the statement that meat consumption has risen 5 times in the last 50 years. This is truthiness that George Bush would be proud of. She "forgets" to mention that in the same 50 years, world population has risen from under 2 billion to over 6 billion now.

Furthermore she makes the statement that animals are responsible for producing acid rain by ammonia production. Excuse me! Ammonia is a base, not an acid, and the substance mainly responsible for acid rain is the SO4 that is produced by burning fossil fuels. The acid rain is found where the smoke from electrical generating plants is found, not where factory farms are found.

It has been pointed out that shipping in fruits and veggies from Chile and Mexico is not exactly environmentally friendly. It hasn't yet been pointed out that raising crops is responsible for more desertification than animals ever thought of being. Remember the Dust Bowl. That was from plowing up the prairie, not grazing cattle. The creeping desertification of the Sahara is because people are trying to grow millet in areas that were formerly grazing and when the rains fail, as they usually do, the ground blows away. The migratory pastoralists have been working in harmony with natural cycles for millenia. Now with the agriculturalists moving in, the land won't tolerate plowing.

While the argument can be made that eating at the bottom of the pyramid is more efficient, that only works when you eat grains and similar products. Grass and browse just aren't digestible by anything but a ruminant or a rodent (or lagamorph and equid, too, for you purists), and trying to convert rangeland into cropland is a recipe for ecological disaster.

I am also bothered by the inability of the "magical thinkers" who regard "natural" as good and anything else as bad to make a logical argument. Tell me, how unnatural is PO4 mined from the ground as opposed to compost? The plant cannot tell the difference. Lumping fertilizer in with pesticides is characteristic of someone who really has no clue of what they are talking about and makes anything they say subject to doubt.

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What is with the late comers? Progressives need to be looking towards the next trend, not getting caught up in the current one that is already spreading rapidly. What about the eco-socialist movement? Can we get an article that critiques capitalisms role in the eco-crisis?

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Please remember, this was 15 years ago. It is a lot easier to avoid meat now. My point was that my decision to eat meat was not an easy one. I have issues with the fact that animals die for me to eat them. Vegetarian diets can be very healthy. Mine wasn't. I had great blood pressure and cholesterol, but I had no energy. And no matter how much spinach I ate, or supplements I took, I couldn't get my iron levels up. That's just me. Could I survive on a vegetarian diet? Of course. It is my choice to eat meat, and I feel much better with meat in my diet. If you oppose that, it's your right. I was just making the point that it's not so simple. For me, I feel that only eating locally raised, organic beef lessens my environmental footprint more than getting a veggie burger from a fast food joint would. Grass fed beef is also a lot healthier than corn fed beef. I understand the belief that killing an animal is just wrong. That's why I became a vegetarian. But converting everyone to vegetarianism just isn't going to happen. However, people can be educated about more humane and environmentally friendly methods of meat production.

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1 : a person who puts on a false appearance of virtue or religion
2 : a person who acts in contradiction to his or her stated beliefs or feelings


examples:
Meat eating enviromentalist
Christians who support war and kill abortion doctors

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The dangers of global warming are truly frightening, as is the inaction of waiting for the government to do something. We really need to take it upon ourselves to do the right thing, and cutting out meat seems like a really effective way to do it. I'll certainly be avoiding the bacon when possible. Thanks for this. I hope we hear more about it from enviro groups.

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Human beings evolved by eating meat. Many biological anthropologists believe that it was the addition of meat to the early hominid diet that helped the brain evolve the way it did.

With that being said, it is not meat in and of itself that is the problem it is our current capitalist mode of production. (as with all global warming problems) Large-scale industrial ranching does cause numerous environmental problems, but ranching can be practiced sustainablely. This can be done in small-scale farms and ranches, using an extensive polycultures, crop rotations, and small livestock (hopeful mix herds). Livestock plays a huge role in this type of system. They clear plant waste after a harvest and at the same type provide a 100% organic fertilizer that will regenerate the fields and not lose productivity; as you would with chemical fertilizers.

OK, yes, we in America eat too much meat. Instead of being more of luxury item, it is a everyday (and meal) product. This means we, as consumers, demand it cheap (think McDonalds) and this leads to large-scale industrial ranching and makes them more competitive than small-scale ranching. However, this does not mean that the solution is for everyone to become vegetarians, as this author champions. As someone posted above, fruits and veggies can be just as guilty in contributing to global warming as livestock; its all about where it is coming from.

That peach, apple, blueberries you're eating right now most likely came from South America. Wow, thats a lot of miles for a juicy peach to travel and a lot of oil. As for methane gas, rice paddies can give of plenty of methane to rival large ranches and methane is also produced when fossil fuels are produced. Unfortunately, the production of vegetables/fruits have many of the same problems as meat.

As, for the animal right issue - which seems like a subtly but important part of this article - thats a moral issue and thats a lot harder to argue. If you are a vegetarian because of this issue, more power to you. However, I would remind you that one animal killing another in order to eat is a fact of biology. We've all seen the nature shows with the lions attacking a zebra herd. In my opinion, if an animal is treated humanly and respected in its death that is ok, its a part of nature the same part as we humans are a part of nature. Large-scale industrial slaughterhouses do not fit this criteria.

OK, so I've rambled on, you might be asking (if you read this far) what's your solution? Well, I believe in order to solve the problem of global warming we need to move back to local production through a number of small-scale operations. This means our diets will very depending on where we live and what is able to be produced in the ecosystems we live. In this system meat will still play a role, but it will be produced in sustainable matter, supplementing other foods. Again, it is not meat in and of itself thats the problem, it is how it is produced and the same can be said about veggies. Global warming is the product of industrial capitalism and its fossil fuel infrastructure not the raising and eating of meat. Humans have been raising and eating meat for thousands of years with no problem; its only been in the last 250 years or so that we've been practicing the industrial capitalist mode of production and thats when we've seen the effects of climate change. I would ask this author to take the issue of global warming more seriously and instead of preaching to us on why meat is so bad, stretching to connect her argument to
global warming, a stick to it as a moral issue.

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Eat a steak, starve an African. Eat a chicken, the sea level will rise another inch. Deny your carnivorous yearnings and you're an ecological martyr.

What bullshit.

Yes, yes, industrial meat is polluting, inhumane, etc. but so is industrial agriculture in general. Not saying we should feed grain to ruminants (we shouldn't) but, if we weren't feeding them to cows we would be feeding them to an even more polluting animal. Probably the most polluting animal the Earth has ever seen, the human. If 70% of grain currently fed to livestock and the 15% used for ethanol/biodiesel were available for human food we could feed 700 million more people. Imagine 1 billion Americans.

I'm not sure why America should have the right or responsibility of feeding the worlds poor. Are they signing agreements promising not to overbreed? If there are millions starving now and we continue to feed them, it'll just be more people starving once we stop exporting food. Cut your losses while your ahead. Besides, people starve because of socioeconomic policies, not because of lack of food, at least yet. Currently, the world does produce enough food to feed it's citizens even considering feedig some grain to livestock. Countries like are net food exporters while millions starve. Most starvation due to lack of food is mostly localised and mostly in Africa due to drought but that is about to change. Scared of peak oil? Think Peak Food. We are about to hit that wall, a well.

I raise sheep and poultry, all organic, all pastured. Sure the chickens do get grain but they also get all the grass they can eat. Same with the sheep. In my climate (northern california) most plant based foods, especially annual grains and pulses, would be inappropriate to raise in large enough amounts to sustain people. We do have an abundance of rolling hills, dotted with oaks and carpeted with grass. Unless somehow we evolve quickly to digest grass, the only way to make this type of terrain "productive" is to graze it with animals. As long as care is taken to rotate the animals as not to overgraze, it can help the grasslands sequester more carbon actally helping stop climate change.

This writer, like most espouting the veg gospel, oversimplifies. Sorry but, the world I live in is many shades of grey. It's not meat is bad, veg is good any more then it's you're either with us or against us.

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I grew up on a small family farm, feeding pigs, cows, and chickens before hopping on the bus in the morning. My father taught me that it was natural to feel bad about killing the animals, but made me feel like we had to do it to survive. I dreaded eating dinner, knowing the flesh on my plate was part of one of the animals I took pride in caring for.

To be part of farm life, I became desensitized.

Years later, I learned about modern animal agriculture and I realized that I was paying people to raise animals in filth, pump them full of drugs, and kill them by the billions just for my tastebuds.

I leveled with myself, I knew it wasn't right to support cruelty even if I enjoyed the end result.

Being desensitized to the suffering of any being, human or non-human, is a dangerous way to live. With so much destruction and suffering in our world, why should we knowingly support the misuse of resources and the rape and murder of other sentient beings?

People who truly want peace must examine this for themselves.

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the Prius is the most overrated vehicle. As far as gas consumption goes, they're little better than a regular sedan, and a hell of a lot more complicated.

The compact cars of the 80's got better mileage than a Prius. An early 80's Rabbit or Civic got over 75mpg. But since Americans require 12 ton cars, we can't have that anymore, can we?

U.S. meat consumption is a huge global problem. No one needs to be a vegetarian, but restricting yourself to meat 5 times a week instead of 25 would make a huge difference.

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For more info about food and global warming see The inconvenient truth about what we eat http://www.veg.ca/issues/e-climate-change.html

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I attended a Hare Krishna meeting last night. India practiced a vegetarian "cow culture" for thousands of years. Quite a record of sustainability. Our corporate culture has lasted, what? 50 years? And is now about to self-destruct. I have problems with Krishna fundamentalism but I think we could learn something from how animals, plants and humans can co-exist from the Vedas, before that culture succumbs to the Amerikan dream.

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I've seen from the radical vegan fundamentalists on this board is kind of surprising and disappointing. Trying to have an intelligent discussion with them is like talking to a fundamentalist Christian. Try to bring up an alternative and new viewpoint is followed by an attack and counter arguments that aren't rational and logical, but moral and emotional.

If this is what flies as progressiveness we are in big trouble.

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not the other way around.

I'm sick of all of this "we little people are greedy and killing the planet so stop eating, reproducing, driving, heating our homes and owning land" bull crap.

We are carnivorous warm-blooded creatures of capitalism and we've got to survive. In fact, we should do more than merely survive - we should take pleasure in our lives.
You might call it rationalization, but I am happy to avoid buying Chilean strawberries, use the 'right' lightbulbs, recycle religiously and drive a fuel efficient car and as such I have absolutely ZERO guilt about fried chicken.

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Few realize the impact their choice of foods has on the environment; Or moral/social side effects like war and peace; Or their own health (don't forget that mind and body are one). Most of us are squeamish and intentionally ignore the full spectrum of the process.

Hoodwinked by livestock industry propaganda, driven by what is properly called "bloodlust", when it comes to our dinner plates most of us would "rather fight than switch", which was a tobacco advertising slogan in the 1960's. Blindly engaged in our habits, we enable our own demise.

Painful as it is, a little cognitive dissonance is the first step to the cure. The Earth is wounded and bleeding. Will we continue to fight this war upon our Earth or will we switch and choose peace and sustainability?

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Below is a excerpt from the Slow Food International website.
http://www.slowfood.com/

We believe that everyone has a fundamental right to pleasure and consequently the responsibility to protect the heritage of food, tradition and culture that make this pleasure possible. Our movement is founded upon this concept of eco-gastronomy – a recognition of the strong connections between plate and planet.

Slow Food is good, clean and fair food. We believe that the food we eat should taste good; that it should be produced in a clean way that does not harm the environment, animal welfare or our health; and that food producers should receive fair compensation for their work.

We consider ourselves co-producers, not consumers, because by being informed about how our food is produced and actively supporting those who produce it, we become a part of and a partner in the production process."

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--President Herbert Hoover promised "a chicken in every pot and a car in every garage."

Or a car in every front yard and a chicken in every car?

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I live in San Francisco where I'm fortunate to have access to great farmers' markets and locally grown organic produce. So being vegan is a relatively easy choice for me (as is biking to work and using public transportation when I need to carry heavy things around like my canvas grocery bags).

But for many people in the world, access to such conveniences is just not a reality. They are not surrounded by rich farmland which can produce a diverse variety of produce in large quantities. They don't have access to enough water to farm water-intensive crops. They must rely on grazing animals that eat the grasses and grains on hilly semi-arid lands. So eating meat for them becomes a necessity, not a luxury.

Still, for the vast majority of humans (and especially for Americans with our bountiful farmland), we should be as vegetarian (or vegan) as possible. Many legumes, beans, lentils, and nuts provide enough protein and minerals for our health needs. It's tough weaning yourself off of meat, but if you do it gradually, it is not impossible. I've found I enjoy cooking a lot more now without having to deal with the bloody mess of meat and the stinky fat. True, some people's health suffers without some meat in their diet, but they are a tiny minority. For them, organic free-range meat should be available.

Any yes, the animal cruelty aspect is also important. True, we probably evolved hunting animals for meat, but we humans have free will and can choose how to live our lives. We can choose to reduce and eliminate animal suffering from our hands, even though it will always go on in the Darwinistic natural world. After seeing a cow and a sheep being butchered alive, I just couldn't bring myself to eat meat anymore.

So, in summary:
1) Go veg, esp. if you're American or live in a developed industrialized country with rich bountiful farmlands. Buy locally grown organic produce as much as possible.
2) Allow for the fact that eating meat form grazing animals is a better choice for some people in the world.
3) Use public transportation or walk and bike whenever possible.
4) If you must drive, carpool, do car shares, and buy hybrid/electric/biodiesel cars.
5) Reduce consumption, re-use things, share products with family and friends instead of buying several of the same things, and recycle that which you cannot re-use
6) Choose not to have children, or limit yourself to one.

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Have you taken your green placebo pills? This vegan dribble would never have happened some time ago. Devout vegans, without New Zealand leafy stuff and Amazon soy beans for seven winter months would have frozen to death. Turn omnivore or die!
You must have heard about Mary, not the virgin, the survivor. At night, closing the vurtains, she had a little lamb.
Let's compare notes. Me, an omnivore (carni stile) in supreme heath at 82. I have saved at least $50,000 bypassing 'heath' stores and pharmacies.

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I will try to restrain my baser urges here (such as suggesting that the author of this article be cooked and eaten). I find this kind of smug, simpering, holier-than-thou vegan-fundy crap (which seems to appear on Alternet with tiresome regularity) an unfortunate distraction from those issues on which we progressives can (and should) make common ground and genuine progress.

(1) Animal waste in agriculture has been used for millenia to fertilize the soil and grow more crops. Yet, here in the US we humans seem content to foul our water with our own waste in astronomical proportions. Where is the initiative to stop wasting water in this way, quite literally get our shite together and use it as an alternative energy source (this has been shown to work on a small scale)??? Additionally, what are the possibilities for adopting "animal-based" greenhouse gasses to produce small-scale alternative energy systems?

(2) Why do we insist on gobbling up precious agricultural land with useless, redudant and highly wasteful suburban and exurban developments? That seems far more wasteful and foolish than anything else and surely poses more of a threat to the food system than the so-called "evil" agricultural system itself. The vegetarians want everyone to stuff themselves with plants but don't seem to understand much about scale of production issues or what it would really take to sustain large populations on grain-based diets (not to mention the variables of weather and other causes of crop failure). Where are all those crops going to be grown? . . .And where do you stand on the issue of unchecked development????

(3). Who is allowed to define "surplus population?" Who choses those who shall live and those who shall die? Do you honestly believe that subsistance farming, feudalism or agrarian slavery are preferable to modern agriculture, which successfully feeds billions of human beings? If you so blithely overthrow the agricultural infrastructure, are you prepared to decide who gets to eat and who gets to starve?

(4) Living as we do in an obscenely wealthy society, it seems we rather easily forget the struggle many less-fortunate peoples have in endeavoring to live and grow. It is the height of arrogance for us to assume that everybody has the same incredible range of choices that we enjoy; for billions of people such choices do not exist, and for us to foist our supposed "enlightened" values on those who must struggle is patronizing at best, paternalist, imperialist and colonialist at worst! Even among the poor in this country the range of dietary choices can be limited. I would suggest that, instead of this constant patronizing insistance on vegetarianism as "the only truly moral choice," we consider the basic truth that underlies the greater part of human existence; "I will do what I have to in order to survive; I will eat what I can get when I can get it if it means the differene between life and death."

Just some food for thought.

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like others on this comment thread, i gotta call bullshit on the premise that eating veg is somehow not harmfull to the environment. if that's what you're worried about, eat local. large-scale agribusiness eliminates entire ecosystems, displaces indigenous peoples, ect. roads fracture habitats. trucks are made from products mined all over the world, and they run on fuel that was also acquired at the expense of the environment. going veg is great but pointless as far as environmental impact goes, UNLESS you go local. try the 100 mile diet, where you only eat food that comes from within 100 miles of where you live.

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I have a few chickens, a goat and a garden. Americans need to change the way they live. My chickens do give me eggs, but just as important..even more important..is the rich manure and the bug eating they do for my organic garden.

A goat for milk and cheese..and a Country Living Grain hand grinder to grind wheat from bread. I don't eat my old animals. Goats can give milk for years and happy chickens lay eggs for years as well...so they can retire when old.

You don't need much else. But this is hard to do when also working a 40 hour a week job..to pay for all the toys and cars and fancy job clothes and taxes to make the rich richer. And there is the real problem.
Capitalism leads to environmental destruction. It exploits the animals and people. And I am getting tired of all the 'population' people saying the problem is too many kids.

Don't you realize that our government is importing Mexicans because this generation of Americans are not having enough kids?
Capitalism needs lots of kids...to feed the system...to grow up and be garbage men and truck drivers and pick veggies at the huge mega-farms and work at slaughterhouses...who do you think works at slaughterhouses?

A veggie burger..grown where? On what kind of soil? By who? Made with what? Sprayed with what? Processed how? By who? Marked up how much? Packaged how? Shipped how far? Kept fresh by what? Sold by who?

Trying to change the system..without changing the way we live...is too little too late.

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This article paints a pretty picture for vegetarianism but misses alot of other points that have already been made in preceding posts. I will just add a few of my own here:

1. The species of early man that was vegetarian (Austrolopithicus I believe) died out because they couldn't sustain their body mass nutritionally.

2. If you eat vegetarian you have to know exactly what you are doing or you will not get the right combination of nutrients. This is especially dangerous for teenagers. Being a "Vegan" is very fashionable among teenagers in my town, especially the girls. Unfortunately their idea of being Vegan is eating french fries and drinking Cokes, with the occasional tofu whatever. When my son wanted to become vegetarian when he was 16 I forbade him until he was old enough to know what he was doing.

4. Sometimes there is really no substitute for animal protein. I underwent a 6 month regimen of Interferon therapy for Hepatitis C. If I didn't eat meat, and alot of it, I was completely wiped out.

5. Anything in excess is unsustainable whether it is meat, factory farming, the building of McMansions, and mass consumerism in general. Eating animal proteins as part of a healthy diet does not mean devouring an 18 oz T-bone. Just a few ounces does the trick.

Don't browbeat those of us who choose to eat animal protien. And so what if Leonardo DiCaprio drives a Prius? Good for him. How many square feet is his house(s)?

In order to really tackle this problem we must all start living smaller in all aspects of our lives.

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Vegitarian is nice, difficult for many carnivores, b ut the right idea. One thing though;soy, it is a good source of protein, but it is often souced from places that are experiencing environmental catastrophies, such as the amazon. Supporting Blairo Maggi by eating soy is not good, true most of the soy goes to feed cattle, which is bad, but some must be used directly by consumers(human), and that has to be policed,or at least the sources of soy must be truth searched.

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I am a farmer in Northeastern Nebraska. I raise corn and soybeans on 160 acres. Until 2 years ago I was also a dairy farmer. In my 30 years of farming I also raised meat cattle and hogs. And I have to say my experience with animals up-close and personal, and the horrors I have witnessed in the meat animal to-food production process; have caused me to minimize meat in my diet. I am seriously trying to eliminate it completely.

Added to the above, both my dad and my mom died prematurely from heart disease, and heart attacks are the leading cause of death around here. Heart disease is approaching epidemic proportions among farmers where I live, from a lifetime of eating red meat.

Grain should not go to feed animals for meat. I produced 10000 bushels of soybeans last year, and the only market around here for it is to be processed into animal feed. While harvesting it, I kept thinking to myself how many people this could have fed instead if it had gone directly into food.

I also think people should be made aware of how much impact the current government farm programs have on this issue. My dad used to grow lots of alfalfa, and it was a major crop in our area. Alfalfa has terrific advantages over corn--it doesn't require any fertilizer, it does wonders for the soil, once it is established you seldom need to apply herbicides. It also produces lots of protien that could be used for human food. But it is hardly planted anymore around here, even by myself. Reason: it isn't subsidized by the federal farm program.

I do think that dairy products can do alot to replace critical protien requirements that some people truly need i.e. teenagers, pregnant mothers, etc. As a dairy farmer, I can say that dairy animals (at least on small farms) have a much more humane life.

Sorry for my wordy post. But as someone who has been intimately involved with livestock, I just wanted to give my perspective. I also want to mention that I am not particularly a "green" type of person, but a farmer-businessman with a farm mortgage to pay.

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Getting factoried animals off the land would be such a boon to everyone, not to mention the wild animals that could return. In Yellowstone National Park, the only remaining wild bison are shot when they step out of the park's boundaries. The reason is cattle ranchers do not want them on their land. Last year over 1000 wild buffalo were killed because they were following their traditional migratory winter habits.

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A number of the postings have alluded to the fact that it is the current practice of animal agriculture, not the animals themselves, that makes our system unsustainable.

Prior to the European take-over of the North American continent, the Great Plains supported millions of herd animals. The grasslands of the world were in balance with the herds that lived on them. Here is an exerpt from a piece by David Schafer, who has practiced pasture-based animal agriculture for over 20 years:

"If we see the Earth as a giant solar collector whose task has been to capture and accumulate as much solar energy as possible, the herbivores have been and remain essential. They prune the solar collectors [plants] and keep them in peak receptivity for photosynthesis. They assimilate and expel nutrients and hoof them into the soil They are the gardeners, the caretakers.

Predators serve as wardens of the caretakers, keeping their senses tuned, culling the weak and sick and preventing the caretaker's numbers from escalating to the point where they overrun their feed supply.

Here is how it used to work: the sun shone, the plants grew and fed bison who fertilized the prairie and fed the wolf. Stored energy accumulated through photosynthesis and the cycle of life and death and decay. Deep, rich, organic soils formed. Deposits of plants became energy-dence petroleum stores. Those calories deposited in the system far exceeded the calories out (burned).

But look what we've done in the last one hundred twenty-five years. The soil is stripped and left bare for seven months of the year, burned with toxic chemicals to produce a nutrient deficient crop which is mechanically raised and harvested and laboriously fed to the now confined animals. In the ultimate irony which illustrates our distance from the natural system, the feed moves around and the animals are kept confined!...

Farm animals have inherited an enormous responsibility from their ancestors. They are all the Earth has at present to mend its ravaged croplands and abused pastures; they are the primary "solar tools" to regain a positive energy flow. For their role we should revere them, as the native cultures revered their wild ancestors.

Those of us 'managing' their movements must try to carefully duplicate the energy-assimilating model...."
Thus endeth the reading.

Mono-cropping the plains with soy, corn, milo and wheat has been a disaster. Much of the crop is fed to animals - and sickens them. Instead of returning their manure to the soil, it is kept on the feedlots or in pools that are too concentrated to break down efficiently into the soil, while the land is drenched with chemical fertilizers and pesticides that wash down the streams into the rivers into the oceans and sicken them. Animals are integral to organic farming, farming that mimics the natural relationship of animals and plants.

Those soybeans ya'll are recommending are part of the problem, not the solution. And BTW, the early studies that showed vegetarians are healthier than omnivores failed to correct for the fact that the vegetarians studied were largely 7th Day Adventists, who neither smoke nor drink alcohol. The apparent advantages disappear when that is accounted for.

As Michael Pollan noted recently in the NY Times magazine, those who eat meat as a condiment, rather than the main meal component, are as healthy as vegetarians anyway.

Religion is part of how the world got to be such a mess. Let's not turn vegetarianism into another such destructive faith.

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My wife read the article and now wants that damnable Yaris smushmobile thingy instead of the Prius! And, she's gonna make me eat tofu! Thanks a lot, lady! I thought all I had to do was drive the right car.... a chance to drive a shuttle pod with a nav system and a stealth mode to run down the kids with... Thankfully we can't afford the Yaris either, bwahahahaha, low-income makes life much simpler.

Just thinkin' 'bout all that ruffage, makes me thinkin' I need an enema.

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Our preference for meat may be genetic but we didn't simply demand more meat. Producers chose to supply more meat, and this was reflected in its declining price. This declining price spurred higher demand, and the price was kept low by further production to increase the supply.

The problem is meat requires ten times the inputs as vegetables. The producers chose to ramp up production in the mode that is least efficient by a factor of ten. This figure does not even account for the impact on the environment and on people's health.

If Adam Smith were alive today, he might notice that this extremely inefficient resource allocation fails to serve society's best interests, an assumption that he apparently relied on to help sell his market theory so often cited today by laissez-faire capitalists.

T. Roosevelt's trust busters may have framed it in terms of collusion between the meat producers and their raw material suppliers, though the collusion goes unspoken.

But members of the US Congress in any era might label the industrial pork as what their constituents demand, and the bankers, treasurers, and empire caretakers might applaud the meat chain's impressive contribution to the GDP. They need to grow the GDP, and have more slaves build their pyramids.

People know the highest efficiencies are in the best interest of the society. People expect to benefit when the inefficiencies are eliminated, but these producers have clung to the most inefficient food production, by a factor of ten, that is meat production over vegetables.

It seems that the errant food industry and many other industries may be brought back into line by closing down the K Street lobbies, and putting the people back in charge of markets with US government oversight. Markets are not truly free until informed consumers can demand and get what is in society's best interest. Of course, a grass roots revolution may occur, in the back yard, where you grow your own food.

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I originally posted this in reaction to being categorized as a hypocrite for being a "meat eating environmentalist", but thought it may be interesting to others:

Listen, most soy (like corn) is farmed on an industrial scale, i.e., 'factory farmed', in an unsustainable fashion. Furthermore BT technology is commonplace in both of these crops. It obviously does not have to be this way; traditionally scaled farming (e.g., family farms, neighborhood gardens, CSA) would not be prone to this critique. The factory label is what seems to bother you, that as a vegetarian, you are participating in something on an industrialized scale. Perhaps you are conscious of this and demand your soy be produced with more sustainable farming practices. However, like meat, the majority of it is produced in an unsustainable fashion that is detrimental to the environment (and particularly the soil it depletes). I try to limit my dependence on all industrial agriculture. I know that the more directly linked I am to the foods I eat the more ethical responsibililty I am aware of. This, I believe, helps generate an empathic stance not just toward animals, but systemically for ecosystems and other such gestalts I participate in.
I hunt my meat. This is a possibility where I live for me, and this is a sustainable way of life for many people who live away from population centers. I am vehemently opposed to sport/trophy hunting-- much moreso, I would guess, than the non-hunter. I am further aware that hunting is not sustainable for all peoples everywhere, however, it fits the environment I have situated myself within. This concern for living with a consciousness of one's own environment, for being aware of the relationships with the natural world we participate in, is what is lacking in the reductive generalization that vegetarianism is most sustainable and stands on a higher intellectual ground than any type of diet that would involve meat. Should we condemn the Masai diet reliant on staples of goat products, namely blood and milk, but also meat occasionally? The land that has supported this culture has been grazed for generations in a sustainable fashion. It was only after the land was switched over to agricultural crops that it failed, creating an environment inhospitable the relationships that had previously been formed by the participants.
Furthermore, and here I will get a bit nasty, the argument that a vegetarian diet is exemplary of an evolved consciousness is a bunch of new age b.s. Evolution is not a metaphor but a physical process determined by selective pressures (hint: I don't buy that memes are selected for in the same way as genes). We evolved biologically as hunter-gatherers--this is unquestionable! Much of this may have been scavenging, but this diet is at least partially responsible for the animal we are (and have been for the past 100,000 odd years). This doesn't mean we cannot tolerate other diets, but we have certainly not 'evolved' into vegetarians, nor are there the requisite selective pressures to adjust our bodies to that of an herbivore.

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I believe and always will believe that some animals were meant to be eaten. If you don't want to eat them, don't eat them. But shut the hell up.

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LOL!!!!!!!!!
Cannibalism is definitely the next stop. Soylant green?
RFLMFVAO
(rollingonthefloorlaughingmyfatveganassoff)

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Debunk this or deal with it!

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I think the only way to let the neo-con's and others be swept away in a tide of raging vegetarianism is to just tell them the truth. I have only been a vegetarian for a year and also have much better BP and cholesteral levels than ever before (I'm 4th generation ranching).

But what makes my anam cara so very happy she helped convert me is the fact that sex has gone off the charts. Morning and evening and more explosions than Baghdad on a bad day. It is absolutely incredible! Just make sure that you don't tell anyone...

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After living many years with my family vegetarian we eat moderate meat.
Here it is normal once a week meat and on Friday (in honor of the godess Freya) fish.

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FACT: 500,000 people will die of Heart Disease in the US this year

FACT: 1 out of 2 men, 1 out of 3 women will have Heart Disease problems

FACT: The higher the meat and dairy consumption of a country, the higher the incidence of heart disease-related health problems.

FACT: a no-fat vegan diet can REVERSE and PREVENT Heart Disease

What's more radical? Eating vegan or cutting open a person's chest and attaching a piece of leg vein to that person's heart (a bypass)?

http://www.heartattackproof.com
... explains Dr. Esselstyn's peer-reviewed, 20 year study.

It's not just the environment. It's your life.

FYI, Mark
my blogsite

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Just because a food is veggie or organic veggie doesn't mean that it is environmentally the right thing to do. As veggie and organic become more and more commercialized, the packaging becomes more and more like that of commercial agri-business. Your organic stuff may not have been grown with petro fertilizer, but it was doubtlessly handled by petro driven tractors & trucks, cooked or cooled by fossil-fuel electricity, wrapped in packaging made of/lined with/coated with plastic of some kind, etc. The current average is 10 calories of fuel energy per calorie of food energy for non-organic. I'm betting that most organic marketed today is probably not much better (no petro fertilizer/pesicide, pretty much the same in other ways).

Beyond all of that, a good deal of it is not locally sourced. What kind of insanity justifies shipping short shelf life produce halfway around the world by air when so many go to bed hungry every night. How much increasingly scarce petroleum is used shipping bottled water (in petro-based plastic) to the US for people too good to drink locally bottled water? How many hundreds of millions ➞billions of people lack safe and drinkable water seasonally or daily.

It used to be said live simply so that others may simply live. That's not just a slogan or a nice sentiment--it's a life change commitment.

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...then you can't eat them in good conscience, period. There is no way I'm eating meat and that is the main reason. I buy produce from local farmer's markets and truck stands to support my local farming community and the money I save from not buying meat allows me to buy organic.

I'm very comfortable with my choice and don't miss meat at all. There are some excellent vegetarian cook books with enough recipes to keep you happily meat free forever. Try it, you can always go back to clogging your arteries and letting meat decompose in your intestines whenever you wish.

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Ruminants produce methane because they digest mostly by fermentation. Chickens, pigs, reptiles, fish and other commonly eaten animals in the world's diet produce little methane. They all presumably produce some methane. Some humans are more flatulent than others. Should that most famous of vegetarians, Adolph Hitler's, solutions be instituted for the good of the environmental order? We should euthanize flatulent old men along with the cattle and sheep? Well, that is absurd, no? All good vegetarians shall ensure the status for cattle that is reserved for them in India. They are formerly wild animals, why not allow cattle to go feral like so many cats and dogs. Man/woman should remove themselves from the plains a' la Ted Turner and reintroduce bison as the dominant species. Do we have more ruminants now than before the wild ruminants were hunted out? Alas, all evil originates with carnivals.

Allan Lazrus, the little atmospheric scientist (NCAR) who took the lead out of gasoline and stopped the SST program, found that nitrites are the real culprit in auto emissions, not CO2. Cattle don't produce nitrites; Prius do. In a steady state system, like North America enjoyed but 150 years ago, what was the major difference? There were fewer people. Perhaps vegetarians, omnivores and carnivores, alike, should look first to root problems rather than pursuing justification for something as personal as dietary causes.

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Philosophically, there is a problem with rampant anthropomorphism in many of the comments above. We put animal life above plants, human life above animal and plants because we are predators, unable to photosynthesize, not adapted to scavenging dead food. It is for the human condition and however much we feel guilty, that we offer apology. There are three reasons for contemplating elimination of certain species from diet:
1) Spiritual -guilt feelings that are beyond argument
2) Health- a good case can be made
3) Environmental- no case at all, grazing animal production requires no petroleum

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After the vegetarians succeed in exterminating all livestock, will they then pursue extermination of the environmentally destructive wild animals? Does a bear fart in the woods?

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Vegetarianism is not analogous to buying Prius.

Prius = keep driving car (or keep eating meat), but do it cleaner.

Vegetarianism = stop eating meat completely (or stop driving completely), suffer the deprivation.

Now I both own a Prius and eat meat. Human beings are evolved to eat meat. Telling humans that they shouldn't eat meat is like telling me to deny my human instinct. Denying the human instinct often leads to mental defects over time. This has been shown in a number of vegetarians and vegans that suffer from higher levels of depression and other mental disorders.

However, I do agree that the livestock industry is acting irresponsibly and many folks eat more meat than they need. We need to address this problem as a society and many people, such as myself, make informed decisions when buying meat (organic, free range, from local growers, etc) although I don't drink milk. (Humans are typically lactose-intolerant after weening, but for some reason we just love drinking that milk.)

The answer is not to force people to deprive themselves or align themselves with a philosophy that doesn't fit them, but to find a better way.

I think with a little education and legislation, we can manage the environmental impact of agriculture while still allowing humans to live and control what happens to their own bodies.

....I could be completely wrong though :)

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Thank you for finally letting people know who the real polluters are. Just fly over South Carolina or Kentucky to see the hundreds of "lagoons" polluting waterways - taking up valuable vegetable farming land and generally causing excessive gasses to be released into the atmosphere. "Lagoons" is the word used for pig waste which is so toxic that workers have to wear hazmat gear to work there. Beef farmers use more grain to feed their stock than we could use in a lifetime to feed all the entire third world countries. The factory farm owners pay millions of dollars a year to keep this information from the public. Glad someone is finally getting the news out. Great article.

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I think that focusing on the environmental benefits of vegetarianism has the same problems as focusing on the health benefits of vegetarianism.

Can you imagine someone criticizing Jeffery Dalmher on the grounds that cannibalism increases the chance of heart disease?

Similarly, can you imagine anyone condemning Nazi death camps on the grounds that they are an inefficient use of petroleum?

When vegetarian advocates focus on arguments such as these, it just reinforces the attitude that animal suffering is unimportant.

And this is occurring at a time when the conditions in which farm animals are raised and slaughtered are so atrocious, and so abysmal, that when people learn about it, even religious and cultural conservatives end up concluding that we are morally required to go vegetarian.


By the way, for more of my thoughts on this stuff, please check out my web site at

http://ar.vegnews.org


Thanks.

-Eugene

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Seriously, you will be doing them a favor and maybe adding on several years to their lives if they take it to heart and stop putting animal products--the only source of cholesterol--down their gullets.

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I lost about 10 lbs when I went vegan, but compared to the other women in my gym, I've got better tone and rebound from being inactive faster. I've been vegan for about 11 years now. It was seriously the best thing I've done for my health.

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Another Inconvenient Truth
www.anotherinconvenienttruth.org

Eco-Eating: Eating as if the Earth Matters
www.brook.com/veg

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"Non-violence leads to the highest ethics, which is the goal of all evolution. Until we stop harming all other living beings, we are still savages."
        Thomas Edison, inventor


The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way its animals are treated.
  -Mohandas Gandhi

Animals are my friends-and I don't eat my friends.
  -George Bernard Shaw

"For as long as men massacre animals, they will kill each other. Indeed, he who sows the seed of murder and pain cannot reap joy and love."
         Pythagoras, mathematician

"As long as there are slaughterhouses, there will be battlefields."
   "What I think about vivisection is that if people admit that they have the right to take or endanger the life of living beings for the benefit of many, there will be no limit to their cruelty."
          Leo Tolstoy author

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Thanks so much for the article! As a recent environmental studies graduate from Western Michigan University, I agree that our diets have a major impact on our footprint on the planet. Meat production takes a lot of our earth's resources. Much grain has to be produced to feed the animals. Much more water and energy is used for meat production over plant-based food production. Methane and CO2 pollution from the modern factory farms causes health problems such as more severe cases of asthma. Of course, the pollution also greatly contributes to global warming (global climate change). The mass amount of animals "raised" for meat make a lot of feces which pollute our water causing eutrophication. Eutrphication is where a lot of nutrients (feces) gets into bodies of water and causes more plant growth until the body of water is turned to land.

Go to www.earthsave.org or http://www.goveg.com/environment.asp for more information.

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I've been vegan for twenty years of my life and I have never regretted it. I find that it reflects my values of wanting peace and freedom for all beings.

Many of us liberals are willing to rant against CEOs that make billions off of slave and sweatshop labor. We feel they are abusing their power while callously harming others. We feel so sure that if we were in their position, we would never be like them. But in many ways our relationship with animals is just that way. We have total power over them, so what do you do with that power? Do you extend the concepts of fairness, peace, and justice to that relationship? Do you recognize the value of the animals' lives to themselves?

As a gay person who has felt the stinging barbs of discrimination, when I see the discrimination that animals endure, it breaks my heart. I can't help but see our treatment of animals as fundamental to our improved treatment of each other. The animals are me. I am them. I refuse to see it any differently.

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This article is about greenhouse gases and animal farming. If you want to anthropomophize animals do it somewhere else, it's off topic. And to those who liken meat eating or slaughter houses to murder or genocide as if your soul was clean because you are a veggie I would like to remind all that Adolf Hitler was a vegetarian, hence no moral high ground.

Besides that, the article was a good reminder that farming must change. The problem of animal farming creating greenhouse gas is the manure lagoons used to store waste. I have worked on pilot programs using worms to digest this waste and turn it into useful worm castings. This has the potential to be a large part of the solution. With federal regulations soon going into effect regarding these lagoons large farmers will have to find alternatives and they will.

Hope is not lost.

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I stopped eating meat about 15 years ago. At the time I loved meat but I just couldn't stomach it once I learned how animals were treated and how it effected the environment. People who eat meat find vegetarians threatening that someone is going t take away their hot dogs and tuna sandwiches etc..., that is the only reason I can think of that would explain why anyone would argue so vigerously against something that is so obviously beneficial to health, environment, and reducing the amount of suffering in the world.

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WAKE UP AMERICA and start BELIEVING that the Agribusiness is destroying our planet!!! It is SO SIMPLE to become a vegetarian, even better, a vegan.

Not only does it save the planet, but it saves billions of animals from suffering.

If you REALLY CARE about saving the earth, go veg! The time is now!

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What a great article. I went vegan to stop animal suffering, save the environment, and improve my health. It was the smartest move I ever made! I always encourage others to go vegan, and I'm glad to see this important article on Alternet. Thanks!

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Rudoph Steiner and Michio Kusho had some interesting things to say about the essential and integral role of animals in any vegetable production system (farms). Humans are predators, as I wrote above. Certainly moderation is a key element in the understanding of man's future diet. In a post oil technology, nitrogen production of our barn yard animals and night soil may be essential for our food production system. The Hindu ideal of doing no harm to any living thing is impossible. Putting plant life below that of animals is anthropocentric. "If we are not taking care of life at a protozoan level, we are not ensuring the survival of higher life on this planet." Chris Maser, Corvallis, OR
Lon

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Yes, plants are alive, and so are protozoa.

But, with regards to ethics, the question is not, "Are they alive", but, "Can they suffer".

Protozoa and plants lack a nervous system, and hence lack consciousness.

Animals, on the other hand, feel pain and suffering just as we do, and they value their lives just as much as we value ours.

-Eugene
__________________
http://ar.vegnews.org
(My animal rights FAQ)

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My wife belongs to the LISUtribe (northern birma/thailand)
During the year many tribal members no drink alcohol or eat meat.
On chinese new year the family pig is slaughtered and a kind of ricewhiskey is drunken.Vitamin B12 is consumed this way.

The dutch socialists called moderate vegetarism if you not prepare meat but only eat if offered to you

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Plants & pain

"For plants to feel physical pain, they must have some sort of organized tissue which, upon stimulation, would activate a structure in the plant that is conscious and could perceive the stimulation as painful. There are no structures within plants that are analogs to the pain receptors, neurons, and pain-perceiving portions of the brains of vertebrate animals. Animals, being mobile, benefit from their ability to sense pain; but plants simply have no biological or evolutionary need for the experience of pain. Even if, contrary to all evidence, plants did feel pain, it would still be preferable to be vegan. More plants are killed in non-vegan diets, as more plants must be harvested to feed animals."



Doesn't the bible say we should eat meat:
"Nowhere in the Bible does it say that we are required to eat animals. Just because the Bible doesn't explicitly forbid something doesn't make it right. For example:

When your brother is reduced to poverty and sells himself to you, you shall not use him to work for you as a slave.... Such slaves as you have, male or female, shall come from the nations round about you; from them you may buy slaves. You may also buy the children of those who have settled and lodge with you and such of their family as are born in the land. These may become your property, and you may leave them to your sons after you; you may use them as slaves permanently.

Leviticus 25: 39-46

There are many different interpretations of the Bible. Among them is the view that Eden was the state-of-being that God desired for humanity, and in this state, Adam and Eve ate no animal products.

There are plenty of devout Christians and Jews who are vegetarian and vegan, and most theologians would agree that a benevolent God is not going to condemn someone for being compassionate to animals."

vegan outreach

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Much more then a diat, a holistic way of life. Before you respond go study the principals.

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I published a report in a public presentation in March 2006 that described that CO2 from herd animals and other terrestrial animals represented another 40% CO2 above the documented releases by industry. The report is available at robill.com

Unfortunately, some people miss the significance of it. It does NOT mean that more CO2 is adding to the atmosphere. The total in the atmosphere has been independently established, and represents only a fraction of the total produced by industry (~50%). What the new information means is that total increases are only about 35% of that produced by the major sources.

One way to account for the uptake of such significant amounts of CO2 is to realize that all the terrestrial animals produce CO2 highly diluted, and diffused through movement, and that such sources are rapidly captured by plant growth. The other sources that are also dilute and diffuse are those of ground vehicles. Discussion of SUV's is a waste of time, insofar as the issue is atmospheric CO2.

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