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A coalition of college animal rights groups.

Students for Animal Rights

Why Veg?

People choose to become vegetarians and vegans for reasons as diverse as the people who make up the animal rights movement themselves.  However, the case for a vegan and vegetarian diet can be divided into three parts: ethics, health, and the environment.

 

Ethics

The idea that willful destruction of animal life is unethical is nothing new.  A variety of religions – Hinduism, most notably – limit the number and type of animals that can be eaten and control the manner in which they are slaughtered.  More secular reasons for vegetarianism are abundant, but generally center around a respect for sentient life (the “animal rights” approach) and a concern about animal suffering (the “animal welfare” approach).  Either way, it is clear that a vegetarian diet prevents a huge number of self-aware, sentient animals from suffering and dying at the hands of factory farms.

 

Although we all have been taught to have the image of the idyllic family farm with content cows roaming free on pastures, the reality for most livestock is very different.  Egg-laying hens are stuffed in cages too cramped for them to lift a wing, pigs give birth in filthy gestation crates too small for them to even turn around, and cows are impartially stunned and slaughtered while conscious.  All in all, an individual vegetarian reduces demand for meat to the extent that they prevent the slaughter of approximately ninety-five animals a year, which, over an individual’s lifetime adds up to eleven cows, thirty-two pigs, eighty-five turkeys, and 2570 chickens and ducks - all animals whose entire lives would have been suffering.

 

Health

We were all taught in elementary school that meat belongs within the food pyramid, undeniably part of a healthy diet.  Recent research – and the obvious trends within American society towards increasing obesity and heart disease – challenge this assumption.  Vegetarians are between 25 and 50% less likely to suffer from certain types of cancer over their lifetimes than meat eaters.  Moreover, veganism presents an almost surefire panacea for a growing plague among Americans: vegans are only one tenth as likely as meat eaters to be obese.  As to the concern foremost on many potential vegetarians minds, it is worth noting that a vegan diet can easily provide sufficient protein, as a healthy diet requires that only 10% of its calories come from protein.

 

Environment

That meat eating is in large part responsible for the planet’s environmental problems is a largely unknown and unpublicized fact.  80% of the cropland in the United States goes to feed animals for human consumption.  If only a fraction of that cropland were used to feed humans, the United States could easily meet its food needs and return the rest to its natural state – something that should be the goal of any friend of the earth.  It is clear that meat is a colossally inefficient use to which to put land; in fact, it would take only one-tenth of the grain eaten by U.S. cows yearly to eliminate world hunger.  And land isn’t the only resource wasted by raising livestock for food: it takes six times as much water to produce a pound of beef as it does to produce a pound of wheat.

 

Global warming is an issue at the forefront of public debate and the news, and, unknown to many people, it is an issue best addressed by switching to a vegetarian diet.  Cows produce greenhouse gasses naturally, and when we combine an unnaturally large population of them raised for human consumption, transportation, deforestation, and the extra grain required to feed them, we have a recipe for a steadily warming planet.  According to the United Nations, animal agriculture contributes more to global warming than all the cars and trucks on the planet combined.  Making the transition between a carnivorous and vegetarian diet makes a difference equivalent to going from a gas-guzzling SUV to a hybrid car.

 

Why Vegan?

Many people wonder why – given all the benefits of vegetarianism outlined above – some people choose to go further and become vegan.  Vegans, unlike vegetarians, refuse to consume any animal product, most notably milk and egg products.

 

The logic behind vegetarianism is no less persuasive an argument for a vegan diet.  Milk cows and laying hens suffer just as horribly as animals raised for the meat, and when they cease to meet their unnatural levels of productivity, they wind up in the slaughterhouse as well.  The health benefits of a vegetarian diet are only enhanced by eliminating high-cholesterol, high-fat eggs and milk.  And cows raised for milk emit no fewer greenhouse gases than do cattle raised for food.  While “going vegetarian” is a step in the right direction, the most humane, environmentally friendly, and healthy choice is a vegan diet.

 

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Alex Barnard
Princeton University

 

Questions? Contact Jenny Palmer at staranimals@gmail.com

Sources:

(1) Ena Jones, "Crimes Unseen", Orion Magazine: July/August 2004)

(2) USDA's National Agricultural Statistics Service (NASS, 2006)

(3) J. Chang-Claude et al., “Mortality Pattern of Vegetarians After 11 Years of Follow-Up,” Epidemiology 3 (1992)

(4) Mokdad, A., et al., "the Spread of the Obesity Epidemic in the United States," Journal of the American Medical Association 282 (1999))

(5) Paula Kurtzweil, “Daily Values Encourage Healthy Diet ,” U.S. Food and Drug Administration, 2003.

(6) Marlow Vesterby and Kenneth S. Krupa, “Major Uses of Land in the United States, 1997”

(7) John Robbins, The Food Revolution. 2001

(8) John Vidal, “Meat-Eaters Soak Up the World's Water,” Guardian 23 Aug. 2004.

(9) “Rearing Cattle Produces More Greenhouse Gases Than Driving Cars, UN Report Warns,” UN News Centre, 29 Nov. 2006.)

(10) Gidon Eshel and Pamela Martin “Diet, Energy, and Global Warming” 2006