How do you justify vegetarianism? How do you justify eating meat?!
How do you justify vegetarianism? How do you justify eating meat?
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Answers:
Meat is loaded with protein, B vitamins, and iron, which are pretty much lacking in veggies. In fact, the iron in veggies is of poorer quality, and veggies have other substances, such as oxalic acid, which interfere with the absorption of calcium.
Besides, meat tastes good!
To eat meat: Like Ron White, the comedian said something like this; I didn't evolve to the top of the food chain to eat grass and sticks! or something like that..lol
It's not possible to justify vegetarianism...ha ha...
Actually, I think that if someone can eat living things such as plants, they can eat meat. I know that plants are different from animals, but something's being harmed to satisfy hunger in both cases, and it's not fair to discriminate.
I actually avoid eating meat from stores because of all of the possible diseases and what really could be in your meat (read "The Jungle" by Upton Sinclair); I eat things that my family, friends, or I butcher. That's not always possible though since I only see my family about once a year...
They are both personal decisions that do not require justification.
I believe that plants are living things as well like the guy said before me, so vegetarians may not be eating meat but they are still eating living plants.
I see no difference.
I agree with Merlin.......Ron White said, "I didn't fight my way up the food chain to eat grass and sticks". Humans are omnivores, which means we eat both vegetables and meat. Our bodies are in need of both protein and vitamins. People who are just vegetarians are misled, they are eating live creatures that just can't verbalize their pain like animals can. So all in all both are living creatures and if we didn't eat either one, we'd perish.
Ok get your heads out of your asses, plants don't have a central nervous system which makes you feel pain. Obviously plants aren't being tortured like animals.
We are omnivores. Our teeth are an evidence of it. Eatin' just vegetables or eatin' just meat could be the beginning of a anemia because the lack of proteins which are on the meat or vitamins which are on the vegetables. It is true that in some places they kill the animals in a very cruel way, but against that, we can consider how the natural predators kill. See animal planet. We are not guilty about the place we have in nature.
1.Caring for the enviroment-
America's meat eating habits are bad.Half of the water used in the U.S. is used for animal agriculture.Our topsoil is damaged by raising animals for food,we only have about 6 inches of topsoil left,it takes 500 years for 1 inch of topsoil to be created.Every year in the US an area the size of Connecticut is lost to topsoil erosion--85% of this erosion is associated with livestock production.
.Animals create a huge amount of waste,a population of 60,000 pigs creates the same amount of waste as a group of 240,000 people,and our poop is flushed and filtered so the water can be used again,animals' waste is put into a manure lagoon or a small amount can be put back into soil,but most of it builds up.Think about what I said before
60,000 pigs=240,000 people
and now think of the 10 billion animals raised for food each year.Imagine the waste created.The number of farm animals on earth has risen fivefold since 1950: humans are now outnumbered three to one. Livestock already consume half the world's grain, and their numbers are still growing almost exponentially.This is why biotechnology - whose promoters claim that it will feed the world - has been deployed to produce not food but feed: it allows farmers to switch from grains which keep people alive to the production of more lucrative crops for livestock. Within as little as 10 years, the world will be faced with a choice: arable farming either continues to feed the world's animals or it continues to feed the world's people. It cannot do both.
The impending crisis will be accelerated by the depletion of both phosphate fertiliser and the water used to grow crops. Every kilogram of beef we consume, according to research by the agronomists David Pimental and Robert Goodland, requires around 100,000 litres of water. Aquifers are beginning the run dry all over the world, largely because of abstraction by farmers.Approximately 1.3 billion cattle populate the earth at any one time. They exist artificially in these vast numbers to satisfy the excessive human demand for the meat and by-products they provide. Their combined weight exceeds that of the entire human population. By sheer numbers, their consequent appetite for the world's resources, have made them a primary cause for the destruction of the environment. In the US, feedlot cattle yield one pound of meat for every 16 pounds of feed. (Within the 12-year period preceding 1992, the number of chickens worldwide increased 132% to 17.2 billion.)It takes an average of 2,500 gallons of water to produce a single pound of meat. According to Newsweek, "The water that goes into a 1,000 pound steer could float a destroyer." In contrast, it takes only 25 gallons of water to produce one pound of wheat.Feeding the average meat-eating American requires 3-1/4 acres of land per year. Feeding a person who eats no food derived from animals requires only 1/6 acre per year. Recent marginal growth in animal protein consumption in increasingly affluent developing countries has led to huge increases in the need for feed grains. In 1995, quite suddenly, China went from being an exporter to an importer of grain. World shortages are predicted as both populations and meat consumption rise together--an unsustainable combination. Early in 1996, the world was down to a 48-day supply of grain. According to Lester Brown of the Worldwatch Institute, the world "may have crossed a threshold where even the best efforts of governments to build stocks may not be enough."The passage of local laws favoring massive corporate pork operations in North Carolina recently propelled the state into the number two spot in national hog production, practically overnight. In terms of manure, the state might as well have grafted the human population of New York City onto its coastal plain, times two! Studies by North Carolina State University estimate that half of the some 2,500 open hog manure cesspools (euphemistically termed "lagoons"), now needed as part of hog productions there, are leaking contaminants such as nitrate--a chemical linked to blue-baby syndrome--into the ground water. In the summer of 1995, at least five lagoons actually broke open, letting loose tens of millions of gallons of hog waste into rivers and on to neighboring farm lands. No mechanical method of retrieval exists that cleans contaminants from groundwater. Only nature is able to purify things again; and that could take several generations.Worldwide demand for fish, along with advances in fishing methods--sonar, driftnets, floating refrigerated fish packing factories--is bringing ocean species, one after another, to the brink of extinction. In the Nov., '95 edition of Scientific American, Carl Safina writes, "For the past two decades, the fishing industry has had increasingly to face the result of extracting [fish] faster than fish populations [can] reproduce." Research reveals that the intended cure--aquaculture (fish farming)--actually hastens the trend toward fish extinction, while disrupting delicate coastal ecosystems at the same time.A scientist, reporting in the industry publication Confinement, calculated in 1976 that the planet's entire petroleum reserves would be exhausted in 13 years if the whole world were to take on the diet and technological methods of farming used in the US. Trees are being cut down at an alarming rate in the US, as well as around the world, for meat production. If tomorrow people in the US made a radical change away from their meat-centered diets, an area of land the size of all of Texas and most of Oklahoma could be returned to forest.It is estimated that livestock production accounts for twice the amount of pollution in the US as that produced by industrial sources. Livestock in the US produce 20 times the excrement of the entire US population. Since farm animals today spend much or all of their lives in factory sheds or feedlots, their waste no longer serves to fertilize pastures a little at a time. One poultry researcher, according to United Poultry Concerns literature, explains: "A one-million-hen complex will produce 125 tons of wet manure a day." To responsibly store, disperse, or degrade this amount of animal waste is simply not possible. Much of the waste inevitably is flushed into rivers and streams. Becoming a vegetarian does more to clean up our nation's water than any other single action.Methane is one of the four greenhouse gasses that contributes to the environmental trend known as global warming. The 1.3 billion cattle in the world produce one fifth of all the methane emitted into the atmosphere.Meat contains no essential nutrients that cannot be obtained directly from plant sources. By cycling grain through livestock, we lose 90% of the protein, 96% of the calories, all of its carbohydrates, and all of its nutritional fiber.Agricultural engineers have compared the energy costs of producing poultry, pork and other meats with the energy costs of producing a number of plant foods. It was found that even the least efficient plant food was nearly 10 times as efficient in returning food energy as the most energy efficient animal food.Since so much fossil fuel is needed to produce it, beef could be considered a petroleum product. With factory housing, irrigation, trucking, and refrigeration, as well as petrochemical fertilizer production requiring vast amounts of energy, approximately one gallon of gasoline goes into every pound of grain-fed beef.The direct and hidden costs of soil erosion and runoff in the US, mostly attributable to cattle and feed crop production, is estimated at $44 billion a year. Each pound of feedlot beef can be equated with 35 pounds of eroded topsoil.A nationwide switch to a pure vegetarian diet would allow us to cut our oil imports by 60%.Compared to a vegan diet, three days of a typical American diet requires as much water as you use for showering all year (assuming you shower every day). acre of land can produce 20,000 pounds of potatoes, but only 165 pounds of beef. In the U.S., 260 million acres of forest have been destroyed for use as agricultural land to support our meat diet (over 1 acre per person). Since 1967, the rate of deforestation has been one acre every five seconds. For every acre cleared for urban development, seven acres are cleared to graze animals or grow feed for them.
2.Caring for animals-
To see how meat ends up on your plate go here(http://meat.org/)
Around eight billion animals are killed for food every year in the U.S. alone -- a number greater than the entire human population of the planet. Each meat-eating American eats the equivalent of about 24 animals per year. What's worse, modern agricultural methods mean that animals are raised in cramped confinement operations instead of the pastures from childhood picture books -- a practice known as factory farming. Chickens are crammed into cages with no free space, and are debeaked to keep them from pecking each other to death. Animals are pumped full of various powerful drugs to kill diseases resulting from filthy living conditions, and to make them grow or produce faster than nature intended. When cows and chickens stop producing as much milk and eggs as the younger animals, they're unceremoniously slaughtered and made into low-grade meat (fast food and pet food). For some, vegetarianism and veganism are ways to refuse to participate in the commodification of animals.In the official words of the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA), The Animal Welfare Act, as passed by the US Congress, "specifically excludes animals raised for food or fiber." With virtually no protection of farm animals (at either the federal, or on the state level), institutional cruelty and abuse have become the norm. In legal terms--which is where it counts in a for-profit environment--cruelty and abuse of farm animals is, for the most part, simply not against the law in the United States of America.Pigs in today's factory indoor facilities are likely to be stacked two and three decks high, each solitarily imprisoned in a bin--a cage just a bit larger than a pig's body. Those pigs who live through their stress and fright will adopt coping behaviors--from pacing, to repetitive rocking, to incessant biting of, or banging on, the bars. Industry blames the animals; it calls these behaviors "vices"So-called "redskins" are those chickens which--on the conveyer belts to their deaths--missed not only the brine-filled electrified stunning trough, but the knife that was to cut their throats. Their deaths occurred in the scald tank where feathers are loosened before plucking. Industry throws aside piles of them every day.Farm animals in our factory sheds today are supposed to have their drug intakes stopped at proscribed intervals prior to slaughter to avoid residues ending up in the final consumer product. Withdrawal schedules, however, are not always properly followed. With so many different drugs, the regimens can be complex, with written instructions often not very coherent. Due to the mechanized nature of today's conveyer belt feeding systems, troughs of old, drug-laden feed may not get cleaned away when withdrawal should begin. In addition, since farm animals are often fed animal waste as well as animal flesh, drug and pesticide residues continue to be recycled.About 98% of all milk in the US is produced using factory methods. Part of factory life for a cow includes dangerous levels of drugs administered to boost milk output. Due to selective breeding, cows already produce at least two and a half times the amount of milk of yesterday's pastured counterpart. Then, as of February, 1994, farmers were given the go-ahead to use the genetically engineered hormone Bovine Somatotropin (BST) on their herds. Designed to boost milk output by an additional 15 percent, milk per cow statistics are already showing the effects nationwide. A cow naturally has at least a 20-year lifespan; today's stressed out cows, however, become hamburger in less than 4 years, as a cow's ability to give milk quickly diminishes under modern conditions.In today's factory henhouse, certain lighting schedules will be employed to maintain an illusion of eternal spring--a technique that keeps egg production up to speed. When production drops off, the birds may be put through a brutal forced molt, induced by days of starvation and darkness. Some, and often many, of the birds will inevitably die in the process. Cruelty can be a regular occurrence at stockyards. Sick and crippled farm animals, called "downers," may lie suffering for days until dragged by chain to slaughter. The downer phenomenon would drastically be reduced if all stockyards refused to allow ranchers to make any money on them. (Slaughter of a living creature affords a rancher a better price than "dead-on-arrival" meat.) With every one of their natural instincts restricted and unfulfilled, pigs in today's factories will take to "tail-biting." Insane, bored and frustrated, these naturally intelligent and playful creatures may be driven to gnawing neurotically on one another's pig tails and hind ends. If not prevented, a mauled pig may die from an attack. Mauled pigs cannot be sold, so they become a problem to the producer. The answer? Pig tails are routinely amputated, and pigs are kept in total darkness except for feeding time.In egg factories all over the country, male chicks are weeded out and disposed of by "chick-pullers." Over half a million chicks a day are stuffed en masse into plastic bags where they are crushed and suffocated. Or they may be ground up while still alive to be fed to livestock or used as fertilizer.A male calf born to a cow--what does the farmer do with this useless by-product of the dairy industry? After the calf's birth, if he is not immediately slaughtered, more than likely he'll be taken to a veal factory. There, he will be locked up in a stall and chained by his head to prevent him from turning around for his entire life. He'll be fed a special diet without iron or roughage. He will be injected with antibiotics and hormones to keep him alive and to make him grow. He will be kept in darkness except for feeding time. The result? A nearly full-grown animal with flesh as tender and milky white as a newborn's. The beauty of the system from the standpoint of the veal industry is that meat from today's so called "crate" veal will still fetch the premium price it always did when such flesh came only from a baby calf, just a lot more of it.
A method used to crank up pork production is to take piglets away from their mothers soon after birth. The forced weaning allows the sow to end her lactating period so she can become pregnant again. To prevent piglet death due to the emotional loss, a mechanical teat may serve as a substitute. Tending to the mother's emotional loss has no economic value and so is given no consideration.Chicken feathers, guts, and waste water, which normally need to be discarded during processing, are routinely "recycled" back to the layer and broiler houses as feed. Industry experts believe that along with unclean slaughtering and processing techniques, this forced cannibalism is leading to the rampant salmonella epidemic in poultry plants. To produce foie gras, a duck or goose is force-fed huge quantities of grain three times a day with a feeder tube. This torturous process goes on for 28 days before slaughter, causing stomachs sometimes to burst. Livers, diseased and swollen to several times normal size by this process, are considered a delicacy which sell for about $12 an ounce. About 7,000 tons are produced worldwide per year.
Vegetarian's stay "Regular", and Meat eater's dont!! Atleast not in our family!! We have a tendecy to get backed up, from eating meat, until we're all almost vegetarian's, except for fish, and occasional hamburger......In all honesty, in Deuteronomy it talks about "Clean & UnClean" foods, they used to eat, in the Old testiment...And it really makes perfect sense to me!!! Like, we're only suppose to eat meat, that has the split hoofs, and chews its cud together...If it only does one or has one, and not the other we're not suppose to eat it......Birds that walk on the ground we're not suppose to eat.... Pig, is considered in the bible as a really bad thing to eat, because the bible says it eats, in the same place it goes, to the bathroom... Swine is what the bible calls it "UnClean Food"..... fish is suppose to have scales, and fins, if it doesn't have both, we're not suppose to eat it.....And when you think about all of the tons of Lobster's people Just Love to endulge on!! God put them on the ocean floor to clean the floor, just like he put beatles, and roaches to clean up our earth.... Back to the food..... Look at our Ocean's problem's today....I was just reading this morning on Yahoo's news, that there is an unNatural substance growing on Plankton/Spirulina, which is what some of the largest whales in the ocean live on, their vegetarian whales, and now there food is contaminated!! How sad is that! Okay, cow is considered one of the foods we can eat, and so is goat, because it has the split hoofs, and they chew their cuds......"Biblically Clean Foods" , but we're all under the New covenant, through Jesus.......but, if you ask me, I think we should still follow the Old Testiment's ways, because of our Global problems, with our environment, and if we eat all of our "Crustations" off of the ocean floors, what will our children be able to swim in, when thier grown-up!! Besides a swimming pool, I mean, you know....Something to think about, anyway....Fruits & Vegeez, you never can go wrong with them!! They are sooooo Healthy for our bodies!!! Smile!!! GREAT question, by the way!!!
-yo vegan and pro whatever, she didn't ask for a book to be wrote. Why don't you take your cut & paste philosophies and tell someone that cares
Your question assumes either position has to be justified.
Like many questions, the question isn't the question. It's the underlying premise thats the problem.
If you can hunt it down, kill and butcher it properly, you are worthy of eating meat.
If you have to hunt meat down in the grocery store then you should eat soy.
I love these macho guys saying, Grrr, it's my right to eat meat and I am at the top of the food chain. More than half of them would faint or puke the moment a cow is bled, strung up half alive and gutted.
PS DEAR VEGAN&PROUD, Know your audience. People on Yahoo Answers do not want to scroll shitloads of info. Here, we want to read an opinion summed up into a paragraph or two.
Vegetarians are eating the rainforest!!!!
Ha! Well neither can be "justified". I understand both sides of this controversy.
Animals are living things... they have feelings.
Personally I eat meat. I believe that the animals serve many purposes, including providing us with food. I couldn't stay away from meat. It's just part of life and death in the world.
I simply don't like the taste or smell of meat any more, which is why I chose to become vegetarian. But if I needed a reason to justify my choice, it would be that vegetarianism is a more effective use of land and water.
A huge amount of water and grain go into producing a single pound of beef -- the same grain that could be used to feed several people for more than one meal. (See the article below.) I don't have time to go into all the details, but problems associated with producing animals for slaughter include methane pollution from animal waste, overgrazing, water pollution, etc.
From what I've read, the vegetarian diet is a much better use of our limited natural resources.
I became vegetarian because it is healthier, and meat was getting boring to me.
I ate meat before, as a younger child, because I had to. My mom made my food choices. I liked it, and was unaware of the fat and other bad things. I was unaware of where the meat I was eating was comming from. So, basic ignorance.
I agree with the posters who say that vegetarianism does make better use of our limited resources. I became a vegetarian about two years ago when I found out how abused animals are when killed for food. And I justify my vegetarianism based on the fact I'm not contributing to this abuse. But that's not the only reason. I think it's healthier. Most meat these days has hormones and antibiotics I'd prefer staying away from. And for those who say you can't get enough protein from veggies, you're wrong. Today's meat and chicken substitutes for vegetarians are protein equivalent to the real thing........and without the harmful additives!
If you have a MySpace account, check out McDonalds' profile. It's very interesting...
I don't think it's a matter of needing to justify I think it's what works best for you. I just became a vegetarian a few months ago and I love it. I have more energy my skin looks great , I just feel better all around. My reason for giving up meat was what I read in " Fast Food Nation" , I will never look at meat products the same.
To justify eating meat, say that the animals eat meat, and humans are animals, so...there you go. To justify not eating meat, simply state that it is cruel and inhuman. There you go. Again.
@ Wolfeblayde
- It takes more water to get a pound of rice that a pound of beef. Therefore, should we stop eating rice?
- Overgrazing is a very big problem in the desserts of Africa, etc, where meat is an esential source of food. In more temperate climates overgrazing isn't really a problem.
- Pesticides on plants cause more water polution than animals, and kill animals, which cow **** doesn't.
The thing about arguments about meat being more wasteful, pound for pound, that grain, etc, is that meat is so immenselly more nutritious, with all the essential amino acids, and most of the vitamins and minerals the human body needs. When you compare it to nutrition rather than weight, meat is considerably less wasteful than it first appears, considering some essential nutrients usually got from meat can only be got in seasonal, tropical plants.
I'm not even going to bother replying to Vegan and Prouds answer properly. I have better things to do than spend an hour analysing and rebuking pages of copy pasted material from the web, although given a quick glance I see many things (read prety much everything) that are wrong or I disagree with, and no doubt the rest of the answer follows suit.
But, as I doubt many people can be bothered to read it either, do I really need to rebuke it?
Simply - Meat isn't bad for health or the environment, see links.
- Meat isn't bad for human rights. People in third world countries need money, and their food industries tend to be their biggest employers and money makers and, whilst I cannot claim they aren't taking advantage of the people, they'd be worse off without that money.
Also, I think you'll find that you don't tend to get meat over here from African countries, it tends to be grown in more developed countries. They generally export crops.
- Vegetarian doesn't save ANY animals lives. If there was no demand for meat they'd die anyway as no one would want to kill them.
There are laws against animal cruelty and the instances he gives are exceptions, rather than the rule.
hot damn, do i love this debate! either choice is simply that. personal choice. both diets provide the necessary nutrition humans need to survive. there is no need to justify either choice. you eat what you like. true, diets containing excess amount of meat add to high cholesterol, fatty liver, and other such conditions, but normal sensible folks who happen to be meat eaters dont exclusive eat meat and nothing else. that would be suicide. and stupid. and boring. imagine that, chicken tonite beef tomorrow, pork the next over and over and over and over....see what i mean? nay, i say. keep a variety in your diet. if you chose not to eat meat, then hooray for you. if you chose meat in your diet, hooray for you too. but for one group to constantly spout off non-interesting and possibly even untrue fact about why NOT to eat meat to the other .........or on the reverse.....for the meat eaters to constantly ridicule vegetarians for their choice is simply not acceptable behavior. like i expected this forum to be any different than chat rooms, in the way people treat each other. shame on all of you for behaving like bickering little children. need i say more? gimme some time and another debatable question and i prob will... ;)