The Startling Effects of Going Vegetarian for Just One Day

While I can't dispute that Americans could cut back on meat, the quoted statistics are a little wacked. Here's one:

1.5 billion pounds of crops otherwise fed to livestock, enough to feed the state of New Mexico for more than a year

Oka-a-a-ay. So, what the author expects is that if nobody ate any meat tomorrow, then none of the farmers would feed their livestock that day? Call the ASPCA! That sounds like animal cruelty to me!

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...we're omnivores. Meat is part of our diet. Our bodies have adapted and evolved to digest beef, pork, poultry, and various and sundry other meat items.

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Hi. I am also wondering where these statistics came from? I eat meat, but agree that it is a good idea to not eat heaps of meat. As a culture we eat it wayy too often. However I still can't believe that not eating meat for 1 day would make this much of a difference. Statistics don't account for the complexity of things. EG. Whenever you read about the powersaving light bulbs keep in mind that they save NO POWER over normal bulbs in the winter. This is because normal bulbs don't waste their power, they simply convert it to heat, using a low energy bulb will provide less heat for the room, so in turn the air-conditioning will work a little bit harder to keep the room at your comfortable temperature. ! Anyway, that's my rant. see here for more. Thanks

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As George Bernard Shaw said, "A man of my spiritual intensity does not eat corpses."

"The eating of meat extinguishes the seed of great compassion." --Mahaparinirvana

"Nothing will benefit human health and increase chances for survival of life on Earth as much as the evolution to a vegetarian diet." --Albert Einstein.

And none of this even mentions the bowel cancer and stinky breath.

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Once again totally skewing the facts to fit their beliefs.
These, so called "Facts" are nonsensical on top of being skewed -- as another commenter stated "Are the cows not to be fed for that day?"
When are they going to get it through their heads that human beings are omnivores? That we don't have vegetarian digestive systems? That the cave men were "Hunter"/gatherers and revered the hunt -- have you ever seen cave paintings depicting gathering? No, you see paintings depicting the hunting of meat.

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So we're supposed to give up meat and put all the people in the meat supply business out of jobs? Yeah that's the way to save our economy! Lets make more more people homeless! Besides, why are we arguing about something that is never going to happen? Life really is short and I'm darn well going to enjoy fried chicken and BBQ before I go to the great buffet in the sky (I actually don't believe in an afterlife, but that's a vision I could really get into). Wow all this talk about meat makes me want to go get a sausage biscuit from McDonald's. And yes I know it used to be a pig. And yes that makes me more hungry. hmmmmmmm.

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Excellent stats, the positive impact of eliminating animal parts and fluids from our diet is incredible and vastly far-reaching.
Concerning the comment about humans being omnivores, colon cancer is directly caused by eating meat, as it festers and rots in your colon for long periods of time. Only true carnivorous animals, with the shortest digestive tracts, are naturally meant to eat meat as it passes quickly through their system. Not to mention the massive amounts of heart attacks, disease, stroke, etc, that directly results from human consumption of animal fats. Talk a walk through any of those wards in any hospital and you will see firsthand the results of a meat-centered diet.

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Do a google search on those two and find out which one actually sucks up more water and fossil fuels. It's ok to be vegetarian but this study is missing critical factors and historical changes in the way food manufacturing has changed from over 50 years ago.

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Someone posted that "humans evolved to eat meat", and while that may be true, humans have also evolved to have a larger brain with which to look at the evidence for unsustainable practices and make a choice. Bottom line, just like with fossil fuels, air, and water, are current consumption practices with regard to meat are unsustainable. That's it. End of story. And that means one of two things: either the practice (at its current level) is going to have to go away or we are--unless we continue to evolve. Take that large human brain of ours, look at the situation, and make a choice. For some, apparently, a very hard choice. If we evolved to eat meat, then we can evolve to eat less, or not any at all. Or we can continue along our merry little ways right off a cliff.

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It's amazing how stubborn the "humans are omnivores - so lets go to McDonalds" thinking is. It seems to be a feel good excuse to eat whatever the person wants. I wrote a chapter for a book several years ago that explores our "natural diet" and I invite anyone who is interested to check it out (it's a PDF file).

http://www.allrandall.com/Collura_Chapter.pdf

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..which really seem hell bent on deflecting the fundamental point:

all things being equal, eating meat is an energetically inefficient thing to do.

Look people, energy is lost every time its transferred. Growing corn or whatever to feed to cows for you to eat is less efficient than growing things for you to eat (and uses more water too). Period. End of story! Of course agricultural practices affect this. Pasture raised beef is more energy efficient than grain fed beef, and processed foods of any kind are going to consume more resources. This article really does not dispute that. Obviously, switching from one heavily processed substance (meat) to another (veggie burgers) doesn't help as much as if you cooked your own damn beans from scratch, but it still makes a difference.

Secondly, the arguments demeaning the philosophy behind the calculations are illogical. If we consume XX pounds less meat, then the energy required to produce those XX pounds will be saved somewhere along the line (assuming the meat is not thrown away). Period. End of story.

Finally, arguments about the diet of primates are to be taken cautiously. Yes, our ancestors were omnivorous. They eat bugs, small animals (sometimes their own species) as well as fruit. I don't here much call for including some of those items in our own diet. In fact, most studies of these animals in the wild show they eat a far lower amount of animal protein than in a typical american diet (and the UN has concluded that an american diet is far more protien rich than required (ref available).

Full disclosure. I do eat meat. I enjoy it. I consumer about 1 # of animal protein per week and have done so for many years. That seems enough.

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lot's of people love meat. This article is not about animal rights. The point of this article is to draw comparisons, and correlations. The author doesn't call for a 'no meat' day thinking it will actually have any impact. but if we all learned to eat less meat there would be less cows to feed and less starving humans--more healthy humans, and a cleaner environment. more sustainable. the author is simply saying we should wean ourselves off this outrageous meat-dependency--its like oil. Americans eat more meat, per household, per individual than almost every culture on earth. i don't have statistics for that, but i have travel experience and common sense--or uncommon sense. The American diet is very commercial.

I like meat as much as the next person, but I don't need to eat it in vast quantities. It is not healthy. And as she has clearly demonstrated--really bad for the earth, our home, our air, our water, our land. And fast food meat--is not meat. Its chemicals and shit.

The more auto commercials, ab-training and drug ads i see on alternet the less sophisticated the audience becomes. meat is bad. religion is evil. religion dosn't make people good. it cloaks malcontent. --(as the mainstream ads increase i noticed the religious crowd has also flocked to Alternet--i see a lot more faith-mongerers here. As the money pours in from commercial interests, the alternet content is dumbed-down...a frog in a pot.)

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This article offers thought-provoking statistics on vegan vs. omnivorous diets. But it would be possibly more germane to see how a vegetarian (including cheese and eggs) diet stacks up.

Many vegetarians swear off meat for primarily ethical, but also health, reasons. If Americans are to be convinced to reduce meat intake, this is probably the way it would go. A gradual conversion to sustainable dairy and egg production may still offer a substantial improvement to factory meat production environmental problems.

The assertion, however, that:

if we fed that grain to the 1.4 billion people who are living in abject poverty, each of them would be provided more than half a ton of grain, or about 3 pounds of grain/day -- that's twice the grain they would need to survive.

is problematic to say the least. Such areas are already overcrowded for cultural reasons. Third world societies have failed to adapt, we all know they're failed, and it's counterproductive to pretend solving the problem is simply a matter of sharing the wealth. Show me a destitute society and I'll show you battered, hopeless women who exist to breed, and males who can't cooperate except to increase their chances of copulating or to make war.

Sending them more food (they haven't developed a strategy for producing/keeping enough for thier own, unsustainable populations) will only increase the reproduction factor exponentially.

Unsuccessful cultures have died out since the dawn of time. Please let nature take its course, unless you want all of humanity to be living like the third world, in a very short time.

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3% of men in this country are low in iron. 20% of women. 50% of pregnant women. Low iron in pregnancy is dangerous. It can cause premature birth and low birthweight, which causes many problems for the baby. Some sources claim that humans can absorb none of the iron in plants; others claim we are able to absorb a small amount if we have enough of the right nutrients to enable it.

A mother low in B12 who is nursing will not pass to her infant the small amounts of B12 her liver is attempting to hoard. B12 is found in NO plants whatsoever. If the infant becomes deficient, it will have no symptoms until permanent, irreversible damage happens. This is from Harvard's website.

Anyone blithely stating, with apparently no balanced research whatsoever, that all humans are the same in nutritional needs, male, female, pregnant, nursing, is worse than irresponsible. Anyone considering a meat-free diet should research many sources. You will find vastly different information on different websites, and you won't help but notice that the vegetarian information sounds nothing like anything else. I doubt that anyone who spent a few days googling it and reading a variety of websites would agree that a vegetarian diet in general is safe. In fact, important vegetarians agree.

http://brucefriedrich.org/Top_Five_Nutrients.html

Top Five Nutriets Vegetarians Lack, with warnings about short and long term health consequences.

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The nation will continue losing jobs until we can become more competitive. But China is years ahead of the U.S. in almost every field. Made in China products are better and cheaper. There is no hope of ever catching up. But the U.S. has the best farm lands in the world. It will eventually become an agricultural nation and become the bread basket of the world. This will make us a nation of farmers and put Americans To work again.

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the thing about meat is that we are indeed omnivores. We eat much too much meat, could probably get by with one or two meat meals a week. Chimpanzees and Bonobos, our closest biological kin hunt on occasion, so a vegan diet isn't really natural thing. I agree that or diet is too meat intense, but a complete vegan diet is a bit too much.

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It always amazes me that the statisticians can skew information in ways boggle the mind. We have been farming a small family farm for many years. My own personal experiences and research lends me some insights here. For one, raising meat animals naturally does not consume support the rediculous statistics. When I lived in the city years ago, I tried a vegan diet. Eventually I found my brain was fogged, I became iron and calcium anemic, which cost a fortune in supplements to reverse, and I might add the consumption of liver and marrow from none other than animals. Once we started the farm, and began eating naturally raised foods, veggies, fruits, oh yes and meats, we became much healthier. In fact, the healthiest I have ever been in my life. I did some research and confirmed what I learned when I was in school, we are omnivores. Meat proteins are not found in the vegetable classes. Meat proteins are what fed and allowed our brains to develop, grow, and evolve into the size we havesustain today. Do we really want to pressure society into de-evolving into a diminished brain capability? A plan to diminish the brain capacity and therby the thinking and analyzing capabilities of mankind would lend them to an easier controlled society. Something smells here, and it isn't the stuff coming out from behind the cows! We work hard here, we are physically fit, and so are our animals. Our muscles are strong, our brains are sharp. Perhaps the real problem is getting these animals off the feed lots, stop building on farm land and provide an environment capable of sustaining naturally raised animals...and veggies. Get rid of the corporate farms which feed you garbage. The cycle of nature is perfect. What comes out of the animals sustains the earth more in natural fertilizer than the area they consume. Do your research. Go live on a farm and learn the cycle of nature. If you live in the city, grow a garden naturally. Do what one of the countries in Europe did. Get chickens and put them in your yard. They will eat all your bugs, discarded food stuffs, and give you nutritious eggs, and meat if you like; and save those food stuffs you send to the landfill. Use the stuff that comes out the back end for your garden. NO WASTE! I challenge you. Before you comment further spend a year doing a bit of farming.

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When you click on a comment, often there is NOTHINGBUT A BLANK PAGE.
This is happening in most of the stories.
It is ONLY happening HERE AT ALTERNET.

We know they don't pay attention and do NOT give a damn when we email them so, if anyone has any contact with them whatsoever, tell them that their site is broken.

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Vegan for a day obviously is a non starter, but, if you made "grass fed" and "grass finished" the only marketable beef allowed, there would be a major improvement in general health as well as a large reduction in the other troubling issues caused by feed lot, grain fed beef.

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Every person I've known personally with a B12 deficiency has been a meat and dairy eater. No, B12 is not in plants, it's in the bacteria on plants, in streams and such. But since we've polluted our environment so badly we now scrub every vegetable and sterilize all the water, so that kills the naturally occurring B12. B12 can be easily obtained from nutritional yeast, most breakfast cereals, most soymilks, ricemilks, hempmilks, etc, now contain it, just to name a few sources. Animals get their B12 from eating plants, just another example of how the extra step of animal production, and the violence and waste of resources involved with it, can and should easily be eliminated, just go straight to the source. Growing as much as possible of your own produce is the way to go, and don't scrub it to death. Any vitamin deficiency mentioned above is easily avoided by a properly varied vegetarian/vegan diet. Those telling you the opposite have much more of an agenda behind their words. Our child has been vegan since conception, and is an extremely strong and vibrant child. All vital nutrients are very, very easily obtained through a properly varied vegetarian/vegan diet and lifestyle.

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This may be one of Freston's more reasonable articles on the subject of switching to an all-vegetable diet. At least she's started citing sources for her baffling, skewed statistics.

"If Kathy Freston just wrote on less vapid argument for Veganism, it would provide all the mute orphans in Bangladesh with enough words to... reach to the moon & back... Or something!" See how easy that is?

If I was a Vegan or Vegetarian, I would still be begging this woman to knock it off. Fact is, she does little service to her cause & absolutely nothing to promote reasoned dialogue. If she was an actual Progressive (something she has infamously claimed that Omnivores cannot, by definition, be), she would realize that these are complex issues. As such, they are rooted in a difficult reality, not one that can be fixed with wishful thinking or fuzzy hypotheticals.

In her writings, Freston further cements the stereotype that Vegan/Vegetarians are blinded by First World, urban myopia & a deep lack of knowledge of world ecosystems, cultures & daily struggles. The argument seems to be that everyone should "go Veg" because we can. If followed to its unpleasantly logical conclusion, the majority of people on this planet can just go die. They serve no purpose, except as theoretical recipients of re-purposed livestock feed, or as is otherwise statistically convenient. Never mind that the human tradition of small-scale animal husbandry developed because it is often the most efficient method of converting plant nutrients to human consumption, especially in harsh climates.

If such people were to follow the typical, cheerfully obtuse "just for one day" advice proffered by folks like Freston, they would have a very hungry day. Unless they eat the 3 pounds of grain Kathy has so graciously bestowed upon them, which in this case would be borderline inedible feed grain, shipped from here to there at a conveniently ignored environmental cost. If Freston & Friends are really serious, maybe they should take one for the team, eat this bounty of cattle feed themselves & send some temperate climate-grown heirloom tomatoes, instead? Oh, wait, maybe it would be less harmful to bring the starving people here so we didn't have to ship the tomatoes... Oh, crap- See how easy this isn't?

There are many ways in which small-scale meat production can be beneficial to the animals in question, healthier to the consumer, & actually better for the environment than vegetable farming (Kathy either doesn't know, or ignores the fact that grass-feeding cattle actually stops erosion & improves soil health, for instance, as well as providing a food source from land otherwise useless to vegetable agriculture). But instead, Freston conflates all meat production with harmful industrial agriculture processes. She misses the forest for the trees, or better, the cure for the cancer.

There are a lot of concerned people who are trying to approach our food crisis from different angles. Some of us take a "do less harm/more good" approach, while others advocate a shrill, top-down, "let them eat cake" moral absolutism. I guess I'm asking that supporters of Kathy Freston take a second look at her underlying assumptions & method of communicating them, & think about whether they really want her representing their concerns.

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I am trying to -- and cannot -- figure out why this article seems to be drawing such vehement commentary.

Defaming the author? Picking a single fact out to discredit the point being made?

Seriously, if you want to eat a 16 ounce hamburger every night, go for it. I eat meat -- just not so very much of it. And I take a multivitamin everyday, so I'm pretty sure my iron and B12 and everything else is covered.

If everyone reduced their meat consumption, those in the "industry" would find other work; think cartwrights, blacksmiths and buggy whip makers, for example.

All I ask is that if you insist on a pound of meat a day, you spot me a "pay for your habits" health care system. And that goes for exercise, smoking, candy and crack use, too.

Fair enough?

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I'm on your side, but I got to say that the figures you're giving are not clearly defined, i.e.: no meat for one day per year? per week in one year? quantity versus time?
I'm totally convinced that we are facing not just a huge problem, but more likely a multi-faceted threat, to the individual, to the nation at large and to future generations:
- industrial farming is fundamentally corrupted,
a few benefit from mass production and sale of cheap poor food.(industry and farm shouldn't even be in the same sentence)
- the total enviromental damage is so blatant and on so many fronts, but it's swept under the carpet by the same "industry" (who are these people?)
- the whole food chain is tainted.
- we give billion$ subsidies to promote this kind of "industry", this is insane!
- meantime EPA and USDA are underfunded (and asleep at the wheel).
- so much meat is not good for you, it turns you into a fat slob for one, it's just good for the meat industry, who is the one who had interest in pushing this flawed notion into the american culture (or the lack thereof).
- people' health is seriously at risk and the scary part is that the "industry" is denying it, because they it's bad for their profits ("it's bad for the economy", yeah, whose?).
- what does it take to establish a culture of healthy reasonable omnivores?

the interesting part is that the "industry" fed us so much bull for the last decades, that we should all be able to go meat-less for at least one whole year.

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Eating Our Future: WSPA report reveals global impacts of factory farming

Did you know if Americans cut meat out of their diet for just a single day, it would save over 200,000 tons of food and nearly 2 million tons of CO2-equivalent emissions? That amount of food could feed all of the estimated 2 million displaced people in need of food in the Democratic Republic of Congo for at least 6 months, and the carbon emissions saved would be more than enough to cancel out the emissions from flying all of that food to the Congo.

This is the conclusion reached by calculations commissioned by the World Society for the Protection of Animals, or WSPA, in conjunction with their new report Eating Our Future: the Environmental Impact of Industrial Animal Agriculture, released in November 2008. The report and accompanying data show how industrial animal agriculture, or factory farming, not only causes the suffering of billions of animals, but is also a major contributor to climate change, scarcity of resources, and global problems such as poverty and disease.The report concludes by recommending a reduction in meat consumption and moving toward smaller-scale sustainable and humane food production methods.

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I'm almost through the book. One of the most important ecological works of this generation. She is a RECOVERING Vegan who TOTALLY RUINED her health by following that ideology for 20 years. The book gathers together all the latest research that shows the incredible destructiveness of a vegetarian diet-not just on humans but on the environment itself. Grains, soy, the myth of a connection between eating saturated fats and heart disease. It's all there. Plus she also shows the destructiveness of factory farming and the need for a return to pasture feeding of animals.
A post on a site like this simply cannot convey the richness of this book.

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Vegetarian for one day ? HA !

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the entire world not bathing for one day would be phenomenal! And how about the entire world not watching TV for one day? Or the entire world not driving anywhere that's less than a mile away? Or - hey! - how about the entire world closing all the schools for one day? I bet that would save a mint!

There are many, many, many things that would save vast amounts of energy, water, and other resources if people didn't do them for a day. It's so easy to use statistics without reservation to prove anything one wants, and this article is a good example.

I agree with many posters here - this woman's campaign to make everyone do what she does gets old fast. The barrage of "information" she heaps upon her readers is not going to convince anyone who's not already a True Believer, and it annoys many of the rest of us.

Shaming people into changing their behavior is not a very efficient way of approaching problems, and it has an adverse effect much of the time.

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I recommend everyone visit a chicken or beef slaughterhouse for a few hours. You want to eat meat, you should see the "processing".

As for me, I never eat anything with a face. Did you read the recent study confirming that lobsters feel extreme pain when dropped into that pot of water? Mmmmmm good.

I've been vegetarian for a long time. I never have to worry about my weight, I have plenty of energy, and my health is great. Of course, I exercise as well.

Growing up, we only had meat 2-3 times a week. It would help if we at least cut back - a small sacrifice with a big payoff.

Also, read "Diet for a Small Planet" since we're having a "food fight" with books and stats.

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Nice bit of propaganda. What's missing? The heart and soul of his article: attribution, citations, references. In other words, elementary research, not even to mention original fact-finding scientific investigation. Otherwise if we don't eat meat for one day the sky will turn green, and the grass will turn into lambs. Well? Why not?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Nothing will benefit human health and increase chances for survival of life on earth as much as the evolution to a vegetarian diet."

---Albert Einstein

"Each year, the meat industrial complex abuses and butchers nearly 9 billion cows, pigs, sheep, turkeys, chickens, and other innocent, feeling animals just for the enjoyment of consumers. Each year, nearly 1.5 million of these consumers are crippled and killed prematurely by heart failure, cancer, stroke, and other chronic diseases that have been linked conclusively with the consumption of these animals. Each year, millions of other animals are abused and sacrificed in a vain search for a 'magic pill' that would vanquish these largely self-inflicted diseases."

---Alex Hershaft, PhD, president, Farm Animal Reform Movement

When analyzing 8,300 deaths in the United States, United Kingdom, and Germany among 76,000 men and women in five different, large studies, researchers concluded that vegetarians have a 24 percent reduction in death from heart disease.

Similarly, in the famous Oxford Vegetarian Study, where 6,000 vegetarians were compared with 5,000 meat-eaters over nearly two decades, scientists found that the rate of death from heart disease was 28 percent lower in vegetarians than in meat-eaters.

One study analyzed eighty scientific studies in leading medical journals. The analysis found that vegetarians had lower blood pressure, and were less likely to suffer from stroke, heart attack, and kidney failure.

A large German study of nearly 2,000 vegetarians found that deaths from heart disease were reduced by over one-third, and that heart disease itself was far less than that of the general population.

Another large study examined the coronary artery disease risk of young adults ages 18 to 30 and vegetarians were found to have much higher levels of cardiovascular fitness and a greatly reduced risk of heart disease.

"The process of gradual blocking of the coronary arteries begins not in adulthood but in childhood...and the main cause of this arteriosclerosis is the steadily increasing amount of fat in the American diet, particularly saturated animal fats such as those found in meat, chicken, milk and cheeses. If there was another disease that caused half a million deaths a year, you can be sure that the public would be acutely aware of the danger, and that the cure or prevention would be universally practiced."

---Dr. Benjamin Spock, author, child expert

"I don't understand why asking people to eat a well-balanced vegetarian diet is considered drastic, while it is medically conservative to cut people open and put them on powerful cholesterol-lowering drugs for the rest of their lives."

---Dr. Dean Ornish, author, Reversing Heart Disease

Stroke is the third leading cause of death behind heart disease and cancer. Vegetarians have a 20 to 30 percent reduced risk of having a stroke. Stroke, like heart disease, is associated with diets high in saturated fats, and the vegetarian diet is naturally low in these fats.

The Oxford Vegetarian Study found cancer mortality to be 39 percent lower among vegetarians when compared with meat-eaters. The European Prospective Investigation of Cancer found vegetarians suffer 40 percent fewer cancers than the general population.

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

Studies have shown that decreasing a woman's animal fat intake can reduce the chances that she will die from breast cancer. A large-scale, long-term study in the Netherlands found a powerful connection between the amount of animal fat consumed and the rate of prostate cancer. A review of a dozen studies found dietary fat strongly correlated with prostate cancer.

Ovarian, uterine, and endometrial cancers have all been shown to be strongly correlated to the amount of animal fat in one's diet, and vegetarian women have significantly lower rates of these cancers.

"The beef industry has contributed to more American deaths than all the wars of this century, all the natural disasters, and all automobile accidents combined."

---Dr. Neal Barnard, Executive Director, Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine

"Vegetarians have the best diet. They have the lowest rate of coronary disease of any group in the country. They have a fraction of our heart attack rate and they have only 40 percent of our cancer rate."

---William Castelli, MD, Director, Framingham Heart Study

"Human beings are not natural carnivores. When we kill animals to eat them, they end up killing us because their flesh, which contains cholesterol and saturated fat, was never intended for human beings, who are natural herbivores."

---Dr. William Roberts, editor-in-chief, American Journal of Cardiology

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While were at it, why don't we all just stop breathing for a day,
Fact: we would all be dead
Fact: the world would be a better place

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Why are we even arguing about something that is never going to happen? I repeat, it is never going to happen. People are not going to give up meat. Period. That really is the end of the discussion.

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the majority of the world population doesnt eat meat every day.
Thanks to mr McDonald all over the world we can eat hamburgers daily.
Eating meat every isnt healthy see the Pritikin Diet. Eating meat is only possible if you destroy the rainwood, plant soya, have animal konzentration camps.

And then I am Green, I am so good I voted Obama, I buy green chicken shit, oh I am so good.

vegatarians forget Adolf Hitler was a vegetarian.
Eat less meat if;
you want to save the planet
you want to save your life.

but sorry a free american has to shoot buffaloss and indians, that OK on Gods own country.
why the hell to complain about the crisis???

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It's amazing the number of hyper-defensive, factually clueless cretins that come out whenever the "V" word is mentioned.
The author isn't saying that livestock producers shouldn't feed their animals for one day! As if most people would give up their bacon double cheeseburgers for a day in the first place - please.
The author is using these statistics to illustrate the larger truth that animal-based agriculture is environmentally devastating to the planet and ultimately unsustainable. Which is an absolutely accurate fact that has been illustrated many times over.
To those of you who keep erroneously insisting that humans are inherently omnivorous, the evidence doesn't bear that out. Read some Richard Leakey, who has written extensively on the origins of modern homo sapiens, for starters.
Humans have the teeth, saliva, stomach acid, and digestive tract that is most similar to herbivores. Our stomach acids are 20 times weaker than that of carnivores, and we have a long, convoluted intestinal tract typical of herbivores. Carnivores and meat-eaters have short, wide digestive tracts made for passing decaying flesh quickly. You will note that our closet genetic primate relatives in the wild are herbivorous, like Gorillas, or very close to it, like chimpanzees - who have a diet that's typically 97-98% vegetarian. Far cry from our current eating habits.
There's no question that early on, eating meat definitely had survival value. In many areas there was little else. However, that's not the case now. Early humans also didn't live in a world with 8-9 billion people, shortages of drinkable water, massive species loss, and major deforestation/rain forest destruction because of livestock production.
Maybe, instead of attacking the messengers that tell you about the destruction and death you're buying, you might consider trying to actually learn something. Or spending a day a week not stuffing your face with yet another 8-piece box. Try thinking about something other than yourself for a change. I know that's probably a radical concept for some of you, but nonetheless give it a whirl sometime.

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

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 20 times as much excrement as does the entire human population; creating sewage which is 10 to several hundred times more concentrated than raw domestic sewage. Animal wastes cause 10 times more water pollution than does the U.S. human population; the meat industry causes 3 times as much harmful organic water pollution than the rest of the nation's industries combined. Meat producers, the number one industrial polluters in our nation, contribute to half the water pollution in the United States.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Roberta Kalechofsky of Jews for Animal Rights says:

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

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

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

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

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"A diet that can lead to heart attacks, cancer, and numerous other diseases cannot be a natural diet," writes Keith Akers in A Vegetarian Sourcebook. (1983) "A diet that pillages our resources of land, water, forests, and energy cannot be a natural diet. A diet that causes the unnecessary suffering and death of billions of animals each year cannot be a natural diet."

I understand there are conservative Christians who fear vegetarianism...which is kind of like being afraid of nonsmoking, nondrinking, or recycling. Ronald J. Sider of Evangelicals for Social Action, in his 1977 book, Rich Christians in an Age of Hunger, pointed out that 220 million Americans were eating enough food (largely because of the high consumption of grain fed to livestock) to feed over one billion people in the poorer countries.

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

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

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

---Union Nations' Food and Agriculture Association

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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I don't think any of those "humans evolved to eat meat" arguements are worth two shits. The fact is lots of people choose not to eat meat, and if you do it right it is widely accepted as a very healthy diet. Eating too much meat on the other hand, gives rise to plenty of medical problems. And were humans really evolved to eat the antibiotic, preservative packed, steroid enhanced meat available? I kinda doubt it.
The real question is, are you willing to give up your beloved meat to help out globally? And yeah, if a ton of people switched to vegetarianism(which is very doubtful any time soon), people in the meat industry would lose their jobs, but food costs would be much cheaper, and you wouldn't be spending as much on health care...and you can rest easy knowing that you're helping to protect our fragile ecosystem instead of killing it softly. I imagine it's easier to create new jobs than it is to create a new planet.
Maybe the world isn't ready for a solid vegetarian population- but just a small increase would help out, there is no denying that. I think flaunting how much you love meat and will continue to eat it indefinitely is selfish and rude. We all do things we don't want, and if this is something you can't give up, bragging about it does not impress me at all. It's about time we all got over ourselves and worked together.

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1. I appreciate this article, and especially vasumurti's comments-- a pity he may not be reaching as wide an audience as he deserves, burying his many useful quotes in a comments column.

2. Some practical ideas-- or if you think they're not practical, they're intended as such. A little humor does not mean they aren't seriously meant:

a. Termites

We have a catastrophic biofuels problem in the US, especially the sourthwest, and Australia, caused in part by the drought caused in part by deforestation caused in part by berserk animal husbandry. We need to bring in a few million guest workers from Mexico, China, India, Darfur, Congo, etc. to work with domestic underemployed persons in a $100 bil. program clipping and gathering all the dead underbrush and delivering it to chippers, shredder and pulverizers to be made into "woodflour" (alias sawdust) which can be loaded into tanks and boxes of various kinds to which termites will be introduced and induced to create nests. (Free seasonal transport south in October and North in April.) Every family could have a few termite tanks instead of a cow or chicken. Then Mom uses some high tech equivalent of the chimpanzee method of pushing a saliva-wetted stick down into the nest, onto which termites crawl, then raising it and licking off the termites. Instead of wincing and howling, think how delicious this will be once made into quiche, guacamole, pesto etc. etc. This should supply most of the meat requirement if any, but I'll mention an experiment I did:

b. Flies

I went to a recycling center where there was a superabundance of flies. I laid out some attractive stinky food material to attract flies, and soon had enough settling in that I could whack seven at one blow using the Two Hands Clapping method (move jhasnds up to within a few inches, and impact them together an inch or so above target so flies will jump up into their path). If you are a zookeeper you might want to try to teach this to the chimps. In a few hours I (counted and) ate 1200 flies but didn't get sick or anything. So much for culturally-induced disgust-fetishism. Human children can be adept at this by age 18 months.

c. Worms

Earthworms are another good food source and there's plenty of expertise about raising them already.

d. Dumpster

The above are not refutations of the ideas of vegetarians, they are just moderate middle-way solutions. I am a dumpster-diver myself and haven't spent a penny on any meat or meat sandwich in 30 years, i.e. economic venegarianism to keep money out of the hands of the meatmongers.

Meat animal slavery will go the way of human slavery after November 19, 1863.

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These are from a great blogspot by a crazy lady who is raising five raw vegan children, www.greenandcrunchy.blogspot.com. She uses raw cacao nibs the way other people use chocolate chips, so I think I can safely assume that she's got plenty of cash.

First version:

1 cup almonds, soaked 30-45 minutes
1 cup walnuts, soaked 30-45 minutes
2 cups pitted medjool dates
2-3 tablespoons raw cocoa powder
2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract
1-2 tablespoons hempseeds, optional
1-2 tablespoons flax seeds or flax meal, optional
1-2 teaspoons spirulina, optional

Drain the soaked nuts, add them to the food processor, and process them in to a fine meal. Slowly add the remaining ingredients (adding the dates a few at a time) until the mixture is well combined and forms a nice ball. Transfer mixture to a pretty plate and shape with your hands. Garnish with fresh fruit, raw cacao nibs, or shredded coconut.

The other version:

2 cups pecans, soaked 45-60 minutes or a combination of soaked pecans and walnuts
2 cups pitted medjool dates
1-2 tablespoons hempseeds, optional
1-2 tablespoons flax seeds or flax meal, optional
3 tablespoons raw cacao nibs (optional, can use 4 T unsweetened cocoa powder instead)
1-1/2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract

Drain the soaked nuts, add them to the food processor, and process them in to a fine meal. Slowly add the remaining ingredients (adding the dates a few at a time) until the mixture is well-combined and forms a nice ball. Transfer mixture to a pretty plate and shape with your hands. Garnish if you like.

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Interesting stuff but unfortunately the author skewed the stats in order to make an illogical argument seem logical.
The true facts are that if we all went vegetarian permanently it would take 20 times the acreage presently being used to grow crops. That would mean 62% of all our wilderness areas including the rainforests would be clearcut and mowed down to feed just us humans. Herbivours are able to maximize the conversion of very low nutrient grasses and such into proteins. A horse, for example can get by on only 22% of the calories that us humans require to do the same work and grow the same amount.
So, if the entire human population vent vegetarian it would only be a matter of decades before we caused a mass extinction event to rival the end of the dinosaur era.
The real solution would be to start eating and composting human biomass.
You see, in reality the air and water and everything else was much cleaner and healthier when tens of millions of buffalo and other huge herds of methane and other greenhouse gas producing creatures roamed the earth in numbers that make our current livestock production seem inconsequential.
I agree that we eat way too much flesh but I won't let my ideologies get in the way of the truth. That's fine for Bush and Cheney and other environment haters but I think it's too bad when people who supposedly care about our planet start pushing dangerous pseudo-science and counterculture folklore as the gospel.
Geo

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Entertaining with Insects or: The Original Guide to Insect Cookery by Taylor, Carter and Tweed, but I gave it to my niece who was fascinated by it.

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

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

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

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

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

Keith Akers similarly observes:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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and that is to fatten them up cheaply. If these same animals were allowed to eat grass, which is their natural food, they wouldn't be nearly so fat.
The same thing with humans, eat corn and grain, and you'll fatten up.

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A common thread running through omnivores' responses is that we evolved to eat meat, therefore we should.

But the history of civilization is a history of moving away from what we naturally do. Unless you are prepared to return to a pre-civilized state of living (which I, and the earth, think might be a good idea. This would mean orders of magnitude less humans, which means eating meat is less of/not a problem), I don't see how you can continue with the idea that we should do what we are naturally inclined to.

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Although it is an agnostic (i.e., no recognition of a personal God) moral philosophy a few centuries older than Christianity, Buddhism teaches a consistent ethic of reverence for all life. No wars have ever been waged in the name of Buddhism. The act of abortion is also explicitly condemned in the Buddhist canonical scriptures. Sir Edwin Arnold’s poetic biography on Siddhartha Gautama, The Light of Asia, caused quite a controversy in Victorian England: centuries before Jesus, an earlier teacher lived “the Christ life.”

The ethical teachings of the Buddha are quite similar to those found in the Gospel of Jesus: One must never be proud nor harbor anger against anyone. He who humbles himself shall be exalted, while the one who exalts himself shall be degraded. Harsh language must never be used against anyone.

Avoid lust, anger and greed. One should not scrutinize the mote in a neighbor’s eye without first noticing the beam in one’s own. One must “turn the other cheek” if attacked or abused. One’s own possessions must be shared with the less fortunate. If a man obtained the whole world and its riches, he still would not be satisfied, nor would this save him.

In 261 B.C., the Indian emperor Ashoka witnessed firsthand the innumerable casualties he caused during one of his many military campaigns. His heart was filled with grief. He converted to Buddhism. 19th century scholar and writer H.G. Wells considered Ashoka’s conversion to Buddhism one of the most significant events in world history.

Ashoka, formerly a bloody and ruthless emperor, became a remarkably kind and gentle leader. Ashoka established some of the first animal rights laws. He stopped the royal hunt, stopped the sacrifice of animals in his capital city, stopped the killing of animals for food in the royal kitchens, and gave up the eating of meat. Ashoka made it illegal to kill many species of animals, such as parrots, ducks, geese, bats, turtles, squirrels, monkeys and rhinos. He forbade the killing of pregnant animals, or animals that were nursing their young. He declared certain days to be “non-killing days,” on which fish could not be caught, nor any other animals killed. He established wells and watering holes, places of rest and hospitals for humans and animals alike.

Ashoka educated his people to have compassion for animals, and to refrain from killing or harming them. He sent missionaries to all the neighboring kingdoms to teach mercy, compassion and nonviolence. Through Ashoka’s patronage, Buddhism was spread all over the Indian subcontinent. Buddhism would eventually reach the rest of Asia; today there are an estimated 300 to 600 million Buddhists worldwide.

The first precept of Buddhism is: “Do not kill, but rather preserve and cherish all life.” There is an ancient poem, reputed to be the only text ever written by the Buddha himself, which states:

“Let creatures all, all things that live, all beings of whatever kind, see nothing that will bode them ill. May naught of evil come to them.”

The Buddhist emperor Ashoka (268-223 BC) declared in one of his famous Pillar Edicts: “I have enforced the law against killing certain animals..The greatest progress of Righteousness among men comes from the exhortation in favor of non-injury to life and abstention from killing living beings.”

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IF YOU DECIDED TO BECOME A VEGETARIAN FOR LIFE, YOU'D PROBLEY CONTRACT THE SAME NEW HUMAN DISEASES AS THE OTHERS HAVE CONTRACTED, DISCOVERED BY RESEARCH, BUT SAVING ON GREENHOUSE GASES AND CO2 WOULD'NT HURT ANYTHING, SINCE MY GLOBAL TEAMS HAVE FOUND THE TRUE CAUSE OF GLOBAL WARMING AND AS THE 31,000 SCIENTISTS HAVE TOLD THE PRESIDENT LAST YEAR THAT MAN WAS'NT RESPONSIBLE FOR THE CAUSE OF GLOBAL WARMING. NOW LETS STATE A FEW FACTS. IF EVERYONE DECIDED TO BE VEGETARIANS, I DONT THINK THE UNITED STATES HAS ENOUGH LAND TO GROW ENOUGH FOOD TO KEEP EVERYONE ALIVE ON VEGETABLES. ONLY GOOD ITEM WOULD BE RAW POTATOES FOR STABILITY, LIKE EATING BREAD. BUT ONE DAY IS'NT BAD, EXCEPT I DONT THINK YOUR SYSTEM WOULD LIKE THE CHANGE. HAVE A NICE DAY. MIKE

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Mahayana Buddhism supports vegetarianism. According to the Mahaparinirvana Sutra: “The eating of meat extinguishes the seed of great compassion.”

The Lankavatara Sutra says:

“For the sake of love of purity, the bodhisattva should refrain from eating flesh, which is born from semen, blood, etc. For fear of causing terror to living beings let the bodhisattva, who is disciplining himself to attain compassion, refrain from eating flesh…It is not true that meat is proper food and permissible when the animal was not killed by himself, when he did not order others to kill it, when it was not specifically meant for him…Again, there may be some people in the future who…being under the influence of the taste for meat will string together in various ways many sophisticated arguments to defend meat-eating…But…meat-eating in any form, in any manner, and in any place is unconditionally and once and for all prohibited…Meat-eating I have not permitted to anyone, I do not permit, I will not permit…”

The Surangama Sutra says:

“The reason for practicing dhyana and seeking to attain samadhi is to escape from the suffering of life. But in seeking to escape from suffering ourselves, why should we inflict it upon others? Unless you can control your minds that even the thought of brutal unkindness and killing is abhorrent, you will never be able to escape from the bondage of the world’s life…After my parinirvana in the final kalpa different kinds of ghosts will be encountered everywhere deceiving people and teaching them that they can eat meat and still attain enlightenment…How can a bhikshu, who hopes to become a deliverer of others, himself be living on the flesh of other sentient beings?”

The Dalai Lama has said, “I do not see any reason why animals should be slaughtered to serve as human diet when there are so many substitutes. After all, man can live without meat.”

Contemporary Hindu spiritual masters teach us that if one wishes to eat cow’s flesh (or the flesh of any other animal for that matter), one should wait until the animal dies of natural causes, rather than take the life of a fellow creature. This indicates that we are vegetarian first and foremost out of nonviolence toward and compassion for animals, rather than because we follow “dietary laws.”

Avoidance of onions and garlic is not limited to orthodox Hindus in India; there is a tradition of avoiding these foods in China, antedating the arrival of Buddhism.

In Theravada Buddhist countries (Burma, Ceylon, Laos, Thailand, Cambodia, Tibet, Malaya), although the monks are forbidden to kill animals, they beg for food and are expected to eat whatever is offered them. Contrasting the Mahayana Buddhist countries (e.g., China) with the Theravada, in A Vegetarian Sourcebook, author Keith Akers writes:

“In the Mahayana countries, the custom regarding monks is completely different, reflecting a different attitude towards meat consumption. The Mahayana Buddhist monks do not beg for food at all; they prepare their own food, which is either bought, grown, or collected as rent. The Mahayana monks in China were strictly vegetarian in ancient times and remain so today.

“Dietary abstinence from meat was an ancient Chinese tradition that antedated the arrival of Buddhism. In China, all animal foods, onions, and alcohol were either forbidden or customarily avoided. Animal products were avoided in dress as they were in diet. There was a prohibition on the use of silk or leather (not observed in Theravada countries).

“Not only are the Mahayana Buddhist monks vegetarian, but so are many Buddhist lay people in China. Lay people usually receive a lay ordination, in which they must take from one to five vows. Almost everyone takes the first vow, which is not to take the life of any sentient creature."

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I'm used to debating these subjects as a vegan, environmentalist, and cancer researcher advocating for animal alternatives.

I know it's threatening and scary to be confronted with this info, but the more you look into the issues of animal agriculture and global warming (methane production, meat refrigeration and transport), egregious human and animal rights abuses (lobbying to deregulate animal farm emissions reporting for local communities), public health (salmonella outbreaks, hormones, GMOs, etc) water pollution (pig farm cess pools), the more shocked and angered you will become. Don't resign yourself to being a defensive, factless naysayer, find some evidence to oppose these claims and we'll start a dialogue.

"the earth can't be round, there's no way!"

People keep claiming the stats are skewed, can any of you prove this? Published, peer-reviewed scientists, not internet surfers or editorial columnists are presenting these analyses. Dr. David Pimentel at Cornell university has validated many of these claims.

Pimentel on unsustainability of US food production, meat vs. vegetarian diets.
http://www.ajcn.org/cgi/content/full/78/3/660S/

Pimentel: 800 million people could be fed (more than 2x US population) on animal food, while reducing stress on natural resources. really old news!!
www.news.cornell.edu/releases/aug97/livestock.hrs.html

The "vegan is better than a hybrid" article:
http://geosci.uchicago.edu/~gidon/papers/nutri/nutri3.pdf
(here's a non-tech summary:
http://www.satyamag.com/feb07/eshel.html)

More cited resources: http://priceofmeat.com/

I challenge you to look at the source documents to verify. Thus this is the only weakness in Freston's article, that you cannot immediately confirm her assertions. Sure the world looks flat, till you see the satellite photo for yourself. Then again, we live in a soundbyte world so how many people would actually bother to dig deeper?

The sign of a futile discussion is when the challenger simply says "that's not true" and does not present a rational counter-argument or reliable opposing facts. I thus interpret them as saying: "I prefer to put faith in my unproven personal ideology regardless of any objective measures of validity, and I choose to believe the exact opposite of your evidence, for my own selfish comfort."

So that takes care of many of the flat-out naysayers, challenge facts with facts, and CITE THEM. Peer-reivewed, data-based scientific articles beat out health blogs and industry-funded "studies."

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Those of you who thought desegregation or women's suffrage would never happen, well they DID because many people chose to speak up and fight rather than resign themselves to the flawed status quo.

Just because a large majority are entrenched in a certain belief does not make it right or permanent in any way.

I firmly believe that efficiency and sustainability will govern our survival as a species, and we are at a transitional state where agricultural technology can move beyond the current form, ie early 20th century farms amplified on fossil-fuel derived "steroids." we need to rethink fundamentals of food production and distribution, species nutrient content and variety, and new models of land use (see verticalfarm.org, rodaleinstitute.org) rather than just amplifying the same obsolete methodology to grow bigger and cheaper food. All the while mega-pests and mega-weeds are catching up to our bandaid solutions, not to mention the scourge of climate change increasing stresses on our water and food supply.

Many others have addressed the b-12/calcium/vit D myths. B-12 is actually produced in our lower intestine though we can only absorb it in the small intestine, thus the Japanese were creative enough to make human poo snacks that were rather nutritious. Newsflash- humans produce cholesterol from eating veggies also- I would be dead otherwise. I enjoyed also the comment on eating flies and worms, if we truly want a "natural" historical diet then we should put these back on the table.

We are omnivores, yes, but we are also no longer constrained by our immediate environments, thus we can use our brains to eat more nutritiously AND sustainably. Early humans likely didn't even cook their meat, realizing they could ferment it underground, as in certain Ethiopian and Inuit cultures (see wildfermentation.com). They could even eat the bone after it decomposed naturally. Perhaps that is the link to humans gaining the bacteria in their stomachs to break down meat, that we now take for granted when we consume more protein than we actually need. So think about that- if you really want to do things "naturally" then unplug your fridge, stop using your stove, and get out that spear. Why keep defending the sorry excuses for "food" agri-business pushes on the public? True Choice is agricultural reform and responsible technology, not T-bone vs. gardenburger.

IF YOU CAN, grow your own food and avoid eating adulterated meat, eggs and milk.

FYI: cloned meat is already in the food supply, and you all are guinea pigs!!

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"1.5 billion pounds of crops otherwise fed to livestock, enough to feed the state of New Mexico for more than a year."

This grain that is fed to animals is not the same kind of grain that can be fed to humans. Also New Mexico? New Mexico is not exactly high in the population department in comparison to states such as New York, or Florida, and Washington.

Also, who will harvest these crops, and how? They won't do it themselves,and the pollution from the harvesters will be more toxic than the cow farts. Most Americans are too lazy to do manual labor, so that involves immigrants both legal and illegal. Which given the hypocrisy existing in our country on this subject makes the rest of the argument moot, for this specific aspect of the subject. Also back on to the grain thing, and the cow population, how do we dispose of the cows when we get rid of them? Since we won't be eating them? They serve no ecological purpose other than feeding us. They were bred for that purpose.

So logically to ensure the safety of our crops,we need to make them extinct. We can't feed them to sharks, it's not part of their diet, blue-tips, tigers, and great whites are the only three sharks that will eat anything. Also leaving them out to be fed on by wolves, and coyotes, and other apex/keystone predators will only attract them to the area where people will be in the vicinity harvesting the grain. Thus negating human safety, and their function as a predator, since they will then be scavenging not hunting.

Further by crops I mean something other than grain, because man can not live off of bread alone as cliche as it is. Second point on this subject, crop rotation due to nutrients in the soil used by the different plants. Using just grain will kill the soil, thus ruining the area for crops.

Also as it has been pointed out, we have evolved to the point of being omnivores. We eat meat,and plants because we can, and regardless of argument are required to. Before anyone attacks with well you can be just as healthy, then why are supplements required more so for vegetarians,and vegans, than for people who "choose" to follow nature. Because you can only get certain nutrients and vitamins from plants.

One suggestion stop having unsafe sex. And the human population will not be so damn high. Also as cruel as it is abort babies that are progeny of rape. As ludicrous as this sounds, it is no more ludicrous than promoting a meatless diet. The main reason why we have so much livestock is to feed humans. Most humans eat meat. Humans are proven to be over-populating the planet. Also no one becomes vegan or vegetarian for the environment no one. It is always listed as a benefit. Not as a reason, the reason is always because animal cruelty.

Further on this line of thought, in regards to nutrients. Who is more likely to survive in the wilderness from a plane wreck or the like? A vegan or an omnivorous diet inclined human. The latter,there is very little in the way of sustainable nutrition in the way of plants existing in the wilderness to allow a human to survive. Also to counter the the you can eat berries and bark. Really? Do you even know what a birch tree looks like? And do you know how to identify poisonous berries from non poisonous berries. Unless you were in Scouts and remember any of that info. No you can't so don't. You will die. period.

Finally what is with this enlightened attitude towards veganism and vegetarianism as if it's a cultural revolution, it is not. And why is it continually posted on sites that are supposed to be dedicated to the news,and news not sponsored by corporate media? Neither of these are related to the other. It is nothing more than a choice.

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That's why New Mexico was selected, because if everyone chose vegetarian for just one day, never mind the other 364, New Mexico could easily be fed as the massive amounts of feeds and water wasted on animal agriculture are absolutely staggering. Just wait until the fresh-water crisis hits, and the meat & dairy industries have no choice but to cease operation, no matter how politically powerful they are, as they are one of the most unthinkably vast and needless drains on our nation's precious and dwindling water resources.

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From

"The Comparative Anatomy of Eating", by Milton R. Mills, MD

Which category are humans most suited for?

*Facial Muscles*
CARNIVORE: Reduced to allow wide mouth gape
OMNIVORE: Reduced
HERBIVORE: Well-developed

HUMAN: Well-developed

*Jaw Type*
CARNIVORE: Angle not expanded
HERBIVORE: Expanded angle
OMNIVORE: Angle not expanded
HUMAN: Expanded angle

*Jaw Joint Location*
CARNIVORE: On same plane as molar teeth
HERBIVORE: Above the plane of the molars
OMNIVORE: On same plane as molar teeth
HUMAN: Above the plane of the molars

*Jaw Motion*
CARNIVORE: Shearing; minimal side-to-side motion
HERBIVORE: No shear; good side-to-side, front-to-back
OMNIVORE: Shearing; minimal side-to-side
HUMAN: No shear; good side-to-side, front-to-back

*Major Jaw Muscles*
CARNIVORE: Temporalis
HERBIVORE: Masseter and pterygoids
OMNIVORE: Temporalis
HUMAN: Masseter and pterygoids

*Mouth Opening vs. Head Size*
CARNIVORE: Large
HERBIVORE: Small
OMNIVORE: Large
HUMAN: Small

*Teeth: Incisors*
CARNIVORE: Short and pointed
HERBIVORE: Broad, flattened and spade shaped
OMNIVORE: Short and pointed
HUMAN: Broad, flattened and spade shaped

*Teeth: Canines*
CARNIVORE: Long, sharp and curved
HERBIVORE: Dull and short or long (for defense), or none
OMNIVORE: Long, sharp and curved
HUMAN: Short and blunted

*Teeth: Molars*
CARNIVORE: Sharp, jagged and blade shaped
HERBIVORE: Flattened with cusps vs complex surface
OMNIVORE: Sharp blades and/or flattened
HUMAN: Flattened with nodular cusps

*Chewing*
CARNIVORE: None; swallows food whole
HERBIVORE: Extensive chewing necessary
OMNIVORE: Swallows food whole and/or simple crushing
HUMAN: Extensive chewing necessary

*Saliva*
CARNIVORE: No digestive enzymes
HERBIVORE: Carbohydrate digesting enzymes
OMNIVORE: No digestive enzymes
HUMAN: Carbohydrate digesting enzymes

*Stomach Type*
CARNIVORE: Simple
HERBIVORE: Simple or multiple chambers
OMNIVORE: Simple
HUMAN: Simple

*Stomach Acidity*
CARNIVORE: Less than or equal to pH 1 with food in stomach
HERBIVORE: pH 4 to 5 with food in stomach
OMNIVORE: Less than or equal to pH 1 with food in stomach
HUMAN: pH 4 to 5 with food in stomach

*Stomach Capacity*
CARNIVORE: 60% to 70% of total volume of digestive tract
HERBIVORE: Less than 30% of total volume of digestive tract
OMNIVORE: 60% to 70% of total volume of digestive tract
HUMAN: 21% to 27% of total volume of digestive tract

*Length of Small Intestine*
CARNIVORE: 3 to 6 times body length
HERBIVORE: 10 to more than 12 times body length
OMNIVORE: 4 to 6 times body length
HUMAN: 10 to 11 times body length

*Colon*
CARNIVORE: Simple, short and smooth
HERBIVORE: Long, complex; may be sacculated
OMNIVORE: Simple, short and smooth
HUMAN: Long, sacculated

*Liver*
CARNIVORE: Can detoxify vitamin A
HERBIVORE: Cannot detoxify vitamin A
OMNIVORE: Can detoxify vitamin A
HUMAN: Cannot detoxify vitamin A

*Kidney*
CARNIVORE: Extremely concentrated urine
HERBIVORE: Moderately concentrated urine
OMNIVORE: Extremely concentrated urine
HUMAN: Moderately concentrated urine

*Nails*
CARNIVORE: Sharp claws
HERBIVORE: Flattened nails or blunt hooves
OMNIVORE: Sharp claws
HUMAN: Flattened nails

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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.

Over 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 and 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.

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.

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At one time, there were massive herds of buffalo all across the north american plains. They were wiped out in a very short time. In the intervening time what happened before those herds were replaced with herds of domestic cattle? Did the land rejoice and rebound after man freed it from the herds of buffalo and then once more become crushed under domesticated hooves?

Is it that cows are so bad in the eyes of vegetarians now? Or the fact that we eat the cows? If the cows ran free and became herds of millions roaming across the land again, maybe with buffalo as well. Would all be fine? Or would we then have to just shoot them and bury them to make room for vegetarian farmland?

Cows and buffalo as food? Or cows and buffalo as pests that the vegetarians would need to kill to keep out of the garden?

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This author has failed to consider all the facts as has the creator of the stats.

A quick review of the other comments shows the readers of this article are thankfully not as gullible as mainstream media seems to believe we are. Realization of this fact (surly they must read there comments)does not seem to detour there efforts to change our thinking with junk science.

It has been said in many comments before my own, but is important enough to warrant repeating, we are omnivores. All purely vegetarian animals have developed a digestive system that can break down vegetable matter in a highly efficient manner. humans do not have this system.

A cow with its four stomachs can break down the entire grain plant stock and all, a human can only digest the seed. Furthermore when a grain is converted to bread supplements must be added to prevent malnourishment to people that consume more grains and less protein.

I know no rational person would take pleasure from knowing another living breathing thing must die for them to eat meat but, we have not evolved with the necessary digestive system to live as purely vegetarians.

The author states that 100 billion gallons of water can be saved, i wonder if that stat takes into consideration our inefficient digestive systems, much more vegetable matter must be grown to feed a human then cattle or chickens. More crops would require more water. Also more fertilizer which is made from oil which also requires large quantities of water to process.

By the way meat is digested in the human digestive system fiber is not, fiber rots in the human digestive system, this is why fiber causes gas. my point is if food rotting in the colon causes cancer than it would have to be fiber from vegetables that is causing this, not meat.

I do believe that trying to solve the over population problem by making the whole world vegetarians is not in the least bit productive. the only way to deal with overpopulation is to contract the population. Feeding everyone will not prevent our depletion of other limited resources. Has anyone but me considered that it requires two oxygen molecules to produce one CO2 atom, if the green house gas CO2 is on the rise worldwide do to humans burning fossil fuel then the O2 (oxygen) levels must be decreasing.

What ever your choice, vegetarian or not, please be sure to get all the facts before making it. and if you chose vegetarian please inform yourself on how to avoid malnutrition before starting this way of life.

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Hypocrisy.

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I would like to see organized religion take up the struggle for animal rights. Religion has been wrong before. It has often been said that on issues such as women's rights and human slavery, religion has impeded social and moral progress. It was a Spanish Catholic priest, Bartolome de las Casas, who first proposed enslaving black Africans in place of the Native Americans who were dying off in great numbers.

The church of the past never considered human slavery to be a moral evil. The Protestant churches of Virginia, South Carolina, and other southern states here in the U.S. actually passed resolutions in favor of the human slave traffic.

Human slavery was called "by Divine Appointment," "a Divine institution," "a moral relation," "God's institution," "not immoral," but "founded in right." The slave trade was called "legal," "licit," "in accordance with humane principles" and "the laws of revealed religion."

New Testament verses calling for obedience and subservience on the part of slaves (Titus 2:9-10; Ephesians 6:5-9; Colossians 3:22-25; I Peter 2:18-25) and respect for the master (I Timothy 6:1-2; Ephesians 6:5-9) were often cited in order to justify human slavery. Some of Jesus' parables refer to human slaves. Paul's epistle to Philemon concerns a runaway slave returned to his master.

The Quakers were one of the earliest religious denominations to condemn human slavery. "Paul's outright endorsement of slavery should be an undying embarrassment to Christianity as long as they hold the entire New Testament to be the word of God," says contemporary Quaker physician Dr. Charles P. Vaclavik. "Without a doubt, the American slaveholders quoted Paul again and again to substantiate their right to hold slaves.

"The moralist movement to abolish slavery had to go to non-Biblical sources to demonstrate the immoral nature of slavery. The abolitionists could not turn to Christian sources to condemn slavery, for Christianity had become the bastion of the evil practice through its endorsement by the Apostle Paul. Only the Old Testament gave the abolitionist any Biblical support in his efforts to free the slaves. 'You shall not surrender to his master a slave who has taken refuge with you.' (Deuteronomy 23:15) What a pittance of material opposing slavery from a book supposedly representing the word of God."

In 1852, Josiah Priest wrote Bible Defense of Slavery. Others claimed blacks were subhuman. Buckner H. Payne, calling himself "Ariel," wrote in 1867: "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."

The status of animals in contemporary human society is not unlike that of human slaves in centuries past. Quoting Luke 4:18, Colossians 3:11, Galatians 3:28 or any other biblical passages in favor of liberty, equality and an end to human slavery in the 18th or 19th century would have been met with the same kind of response animal rights activists receive today if they quote Bible verses in favor of ethical vegetarianism and compassion towards animals.

Someone once pointed out that while Hitler may have claimed to be a Christian, he imprisoned Christian clergy who opposed the Nazi regime, and even Christian churches were subject to the terror of the Nazis. Thinking along these lines, I realize that while I would like to see organized religion support animal liberation (e.g., as was the case with Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and the American civil rights movement) rather than simply remain an obstacle to social and moral progress (e.g., 19th century southern churches in the U.S. upheld human slavery on biblical grounds), this support must come freely and voluntarily.

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A 1980 United Nations report states that women constitute half the world’s population, perform nearly two-thirds of its work hours, yet receive one-tenth of the world’s income and own less than one-hundredth of the world’s property. The impact of the women’s movement upon the church is being heralded as a Second Reformation. Women are now being ordained as priests, pastors and ministers, while patriarchal references to the Almighty as "Father" are replaced with the gender-neutral "Parent." Jesus Christ is designated the "Child of God." The words of Scripture—perhaps, more accurately, the words of the apostle Paul—on this subject are seen today not as a divine revelation, but rather as an embarrassment from centuries past:

"Let the women keep silent in the churches, for they are not allowed to speak. Instead, they must, as the Law says, be in subordination. If they wish to learn something, let them inquire of their own husbands at home; for it is improper for a woman to speak in church...let a woman learn quietly with complete submission. I do not allow a woman to teach, neither to domineer over a man; instead she is to keep still. For Adam was first formed, then Eve. And Adam was not deceived, but the woman, since she was deceived, experienced the transgression. She will, however, be kept safe through the child-bearing, if with self-control she continues in faith and love and consecration." (I Corinthians 14:34-35; I Timothy 2:11-15)

Many churches now claim these instructions were merely temporary frameworks used to build churches in the first century pagan world—they are not to be taken as universal absolutes for all eternity. If churches, Scripture and Christianity can adapt and be redefined or reinterpreted in a changing world to end injustices towards women, they can certainly do the same towards animals.

The International Network for Religion and Animals (INRA) was founded in 1985 by Virginia Bouraquardez. Its educational and religious programs are meant to "bring religious principles to bear upon humanity’s attitude towards the treatment of our animal kin...and, through leadership, materials, and programs, to successfully interact with clergy and laity from many religious traditions."

According to the INRA:

"Religion counsels the powerful to be merciful and kind to those weaker than themselves, and most of humankind is at least nominally religious. But there is a ghastly paradox. Far from showing mercy, humanity uses its dominion over other animal species to pen them in cruel close confinement; to trap, club, and harpoon them; to poison, mutilate, and shock them in the name of science; to kill them by the billions; and even to blind them in excruciating pain to test cosmetics.

"Some of these abuses are due to mistaken understandings of religious principles; others, to a failure to apply those principles. Scriptures need to be fully researched concerning the relationship of humans to nonhuman animals, and to the entire ecological structure of Nature. Misinterpretations of scripture taken out of context, or based upon questionable theological assumptions need to be re-examined."

A growing number of Christian theologians, clergy and activists are beginning to take a stand in favor of animal rights. In a pamphlet entitled "Christian Considerations on Laboratory Animals," Reverend Marc Wessels notes that in laboratories animals cease to be persons and become "tools of research." He cites William French of Loyala University as having made the same observation at a gathering of Christian ethicists at Duke University—a conference entitled "Good News for Animals?"

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"One man's meat is another man/woman/child's hunger." This slogan is part of the "Enough" campaign, with its aim of reducing meat consumption.

The campaign highlights the waste of resources involved in feeding grain to animals. "Every minute 18 children die from starvation, yet 40% of the world's grain is fed to animals for meat."

Vegetarianism for a trial period is advocated to "help the hungry, improve the environment" and "stop untold animal suffering." Vegetarianism is also recommended on health grounds. This campaign actually has the support of organized religion.

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 Christian denominations to call on their members to abstain from meat on certain days of the week. 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

“Honourable men may disagree honourably about some details of human treatment of the non-human,” wrote Stephen Clark in his 1977 book, The Moral Status of Animals, “but vegetarianism is now as necessary a pledge of moral devotion as was the refusal of emperor-worship in the early church.”

According to Clark, eating animal flesh is “gluttony,” and “Those who still eat flesh when they could do otherwise have no claim to be serious moralists.”

“Clark’s conclusion has real force and its power has yet to be sufficiently appreciated by fellow Christians,” says the Reverend Andrew Linzey, author of Christianity and the Rights of Animals. “Far from seeing the possibility of widespread vegetarianism as a threat to Old Testament norms, Christians should rather welcome the fact that the Spirit is enabling us to make decisions so that we may more properly conform to the original Genesis picture of living in peace with creation.”

Father Thomas Berry, a Catholic priest, author, and founder of the Riverdale Center of 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.”

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.

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people can say what they want about VEGGI diet but realistically people need MEAT the protein is important.

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"Global hunger could be directly attributed to meat-eating." ---Chrissie Hynde

Half the world's population does not receive an adequate amount of food to eat. Ten to twenty million die annually of hunger and its effects. The Institute for Food and Development Policy reports that, "Forty thousand children starve to death on this planet every day," or one child every two seconds.

The livestock population of the United States today consumes enough grain and soybeans to feed over five times the entire human population of the country. We feed these animals over 80% of the corn we grow, and over 95% of the oats. Less than half the harvested agricultural acreage in the United States is used to grow food for people. Most of it is used to grow livestock feed.

Ronald J. Sider of Evangelicals for Social Action, in his 1977 book, Rich Christians in an Age of Hunger, pointed out that 220 million Americans were eating enough food (largely because of the high consumption of grain-fed livestock) to feed over one billion people in the poorer countries.

The world's cattle alone, not to mention pigs and chickens, consume a quantity of food equal to the caloric needs of 8.7 billion people. It takes 16 pounds of grain to produce one pound of beef. According to Department of Agriculture statistics, one acre of land can grow 20,000 pounds of potatoes. That same acre of land, if used to grow cattlefeed, can produce less than 165 pounds of beef.

In his book, The Hungry Planet, Georg Bergstrom points out that protein-starved underdeveloped nations export more protein to wealthy nations than they receive. He calls this "the protein swindle." Ninety percent of the world's fish meal catch, for example, is exported to rich countries. One-third of Africa's peanut crop winds up in the stomachs of European livestock. Half the world's cereal crop is fed to livestock and the United States annually imports one million tons of vegetable protein from Third World nations--just to feed its farm animals.

Bergstrom writes: "Sometimes one wonders how many Americans and Western Europeans have grasped the fact that quite a few of their beef steaks, quarts of milk, dozens of eggs, and hundreds of broilers are the result, not of their agriculture, but of the approximately two million metric tons of protein, mostly of high quality, which astute Western businessmen channel away from the needy and hungry."

Jeremy Rifkin, author of a dozen influential books and President of the Foundation on Economic Trends, writes in his 1992 bestseller Beyond Beef:

"Cattle and other livestock are devouring much of the grain produced on the planet. It need be emphasized that this is a new phenomenon, unlike anything ever experienced before.

"Contrary to popular belief, the poor are getting poorer each year...Increased poverty has meant increased malnutrition. On the African continent, nearly one in every four human beings is malnourished. In Latin America, nearly one out of every seven people goes to bed hungry each night. In Asia and the Pacific, 28 percent of the people border on starvation, experiencing the gnawing pain of a perpetual hunger."

"In the Near East, one in ten people is underfed. Chronic hunger now affects upwards of 1.3 billion people, according to the world Health Organization--a statistic all the more striking in a world where one third of all the grain produced is being fed to cattle and other livestock. Never before in human history has such a large percentage of our species--nearly 25 percent--been malnourished.

"The transition of world agriculture from food grain to feed grains represents an...evil whose consequences may be far greater and longer lasting than any past examples of violence inflicted by men against their fellow human beings."

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Or we could eat pasture-raised organic meat and avoid most of those consequences.

The calculation is far off however. For one thing there is a great deal of carnage involved in planting, tilling and harvesting vegetables as any farmer who has driven a combine can attest. You lose habitat diversity, and lots of direct animal life. And we would need to convert more land to monocrop fields, we would have more grain ingested, hence more insulin resistance, more diabetics, more obesity and more diabetic drugs in the water supply.

If you don't eat meat for one day, the farm animals will not cease to exist or offgass. They will eat, either pasture or grain, drink, eliminate and breathe. Alternatively you are talking about wholesale destruction of entire species that cannot live on their own.

We have a realtionship with our meat animals, and although it may entail killing for food, it also entails giving life. Better to focus on the appropriate nature of that relationship, and ensure that the animals are not fed grains, which make up little of their natural diet, are not concentrated artificially in feedlots, are not stressed so that they need antibiotics and are rotated in pastures so they can fertilize fields for future planting. And their elimination rather than being seen as poison, will add moisture and nutrients and will build the soil which years of industrial farming has left so seriously depleted that the mineral content of vegetable food went down on an average of 30% between the 1970s and 1990s according to the USDA's own figures.

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Watch this video with an open mind and use a little common sence. Our government is controlled by Corporations that are making laws that benefit them at our expense and contribute to the destruction of our health. GMO foods not good for us but good for chemical co's.
All the chemicals they put in our animals that we consume for food is not good for us but good for the corporations. Even packing of some meats use RADIATION, not good for humans but .... Then there is my favorite: fertilizer factories that produce toxic waste have controlled our government by letting the dispose of this stuff by putting it in our drinking water and even selling it to us... Most foods grown in the US today have no nutritional value to speak of because their is no incentive for farmers to make food healthy just profitable. Who suffers
We do. Who Profits corporations. Who elects politicians ??CORPORATIONS. It's just common sense. You can see the film at Youtube called "Meet Your Meat" or click here>http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VIjanhKqVC4

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I guess this is what happens when a grad student gets a hold of stats and wants to be professorial.
I'm a vegetarian, but more than that, I use logic and reason when thinking about the interpretation of stats.
If people didn't eat meat, then corn, soy, and wheat prices would skyrocket due to increased demand. This in turn would lead to increased use of pesticides and fertilizers in order to meet the new demand and market for grasses and leafy veggies. I'm sure some say, buy organic, which is cute, but I'm sure not everyone can afford a 3 dollar head of lettuce no matter what the bumper stickers on the backs of Subaru Outbacks say. Of course, these new tons of products would need to be transported, but not by bio-diesel vehicles because that takes a huge up front investment and we all know that using food sources for fuel is about as smart as using bath water to boil taters. It's even more nefarious though as poor families begin to starve due to the conscientious consumption habits of the trust-fund elites. Etc Etc. Wow, I've totally skewed facts and stats to make a political point. I should be a journalist.
Why isn't this article called: "Fantasy World at the Huffington Post"

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Being a vegetarian for 9 years and now a vegan I can only recommend and support this way of living. I have never felt healthier especially since going vegan, my skin glows, my eyes are bright and I am constantly told I look much younger than my age, I have loads of energy for exercise and a busy life and I feel fit and strong. The food that I eat everyday is so much more enjoyable with more variety, flavors and creativity and there is an alternative to every single animal product with none of the saturated fat, cholesterol or poisons that come with flesh, eggs and dairy. The big buisness of animal production tortures and denies billions of creatures everything which is natural to them and causes them immense suffering that if saw by the human eye would be enough for everyone to go vegetarian, the more we learn and open our minds and hearts to the many serious issues and injustices the more people are switching to a humane way of eating and living, the animals, the enviroment and your body will thank you so very much!

Clare Knight

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Third world societies are the ones that feed America for shit wages, America is all over third world nations just like they were all over Vietnam and Iraq.

Go home America and take your weapons of mass economic destruction with you. Oh and dont forget all the other nasty stuff that one spreads over the exploited of the world.

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Third world societies have failed to adapt, we all know they're failed, and it's counterproductive to pretend solving the problem is simply a matter of sharing the wealth. Show me a destitute society and I'll show you battered, hopeless women who exist to breed, and males who can't cooperate except to increase their chances of copulating or to make war.
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That comment of yours shows the paucity of your education. Go home yank and leave the rest of the world in peace.

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