10 Reasons to be a Vegetarian

 

Here are 10 reasons I have come up with to be a vegetarian. For each reason I have provided a link to a source that talks about each issue in detail.

 

While people will undoubtedly disagree with some of these reasons, but I think most can agree on at least two or three of them. The only reasonable counter-argument seems to be that people enjoy eating meat, which is very true, but hardly a good defense.

 

Getting people to do something they would rather not do, especially when it comes to something they enjoy, is very difficult. This is especially true given that most people don’t understand the real impact of their choices, and the large political and marketing power of meat producers. Of course, this also used to be true of slave owners and cigarette manufacturers years ago, but we are no longer fooled.

 

Moral

  1. Killing of any kind is wrong. This includes animals as well as humans. 
  2. While we are told that animals are killed humanely, many are not. Mistakes are often made in the killing process, making death very painful for many animals. (PETA video)
  3. The way animals are raised in the west is extremely cruel. In an effort to increase efficiency, we make life very painful for them. (Caged chickens)

 

Health

  1. The USDA, the governmental organization designed to oversee meat producers, can only set guidelines for the handling of meat, but cannot put guidelines on the quality. Meat producers argued for this system so only large-scale companies can produce meat, and to ensure the government cannot force a recall of products on the shelf. This means no one can force a company to issue a recall of bad meat, or check to make sure the meat is ok to eat. This is more evidence that meat producers don’t have the interest of the consumer in mind, only the bottom line. (GoVeg.com)
  2. Animals are raised in confined spaces and often in very large numbers. Diseases are then able to spread very quickly among the animals and often end up in humans. Humans then are directly responsible for the spread of diseases like bird flu and mad cow disease, as well as many others. (Envir Health Perspecitves and PEW)
  3. Producers give animals a large number of hormones to increase their growth rate, thus making production more efficient. These hormones eventually make it to the consumer. (A Scientific Literature Review)
  4. There is no question within medical science that the eating of meat, even small amounts, is detrimental to a person’s health, causing obesity, heart disease and other serious medical problems. It has been estimated that America spends between $20-60 billion a year on health care costs associated with meat consumption, comparable to the health costs of smoking. (Barnard, Nicholson and Howard 1995)

 

Environmental

  1. Meat production creates more greenhouse gases than our cars. (FAO 2006 and Fiala 2008)
  2. Meat production uses a lot of land, approximately 6-17 times as much as soy. Animals also contribute to an unusually high topsoil-loss, making the land we have less efficient every day. (Reijnders and Soret 2003)

 

Economic

  1. Countries are becoming increasingly dependent on the international marketplace for cheap food, decreasing self-sufficiency and increasing the chances of famine or shortages. (Import Dependency)