The Ethics Of Vegetarianism
Mar 9, 2009 Author: Crystal | Filed under: VegetarianWritten by guest poster Alberto
Recently as some of you may know, Crystal began a vegetarian diet. You can read about her reasons for trying out the diet in that post so I won’t reiterate them here. Now I’ve always had a hard-line stance on vegetarianism and what I’ll take as an excuse for staying on such a diet.
There are those people who are vegetarians due to their religious beliefs. Since I’m no bigot, I’m not going to tell people that this is a stupid reason to be a vegetarian, so these people get a free pass. Although to be honest, cow is delicious and you’re missing out big time. I’m glad my religion doesn’t stop me from eating foods that taste good.
There are those like Crystal who do it for the potential benefits of being a vegetarian. This includes losing weight, staying healthy, improving skin tone, etc. I see nothing wrong with this either. If not eating fatty meats helps you reach your health goals, why not? It takes quite a bit of discipline to stay vegetarian especially if you’ve just converted. Because let’s face it, bacon is fantastic.
Then there’s the animal rights people. I hate this bogus excuse, a lot. Is it animal cruelty? Not always. A lot of the animals die painlessly, or they are supposed to anyway. In any case the proper way to handle animal cruelty is not to avoid the topic by simply not eating animals, the proper way is to punish those who don’t uphold certain moral guidelines. Man has eaten animals since the beginning of their time. I don’t think its inhumane to eat lesser organisms to survive. But couldn’t we just eat plants you say? What’s the difference between killing one life form versus another if both feel no pain when dying? Besides, I love animals. That’s why I eat them.
If you’re a vegetarian, why do you choose to eat that way? If you’re not, have you ever considered trying?
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3 Responses for "The Ethics Of Vegetarianism"
I’m vegetarian because I believe I have a responsibility to the other people on this planet now and in the future. Meat eating is excessively wasteful and has huge environmental impacts.
Arguments for meat-eating:
1) It’s ‘tasty’ (it is an acquired taste to which we are desensitized — yes, I missed it initially but now I find it rather repulsive)
2) Animals convert waste products that we can’t eat (grasses, waste of grain crops) into high-protein foods that we can. Their manure can then be used as fertilizer.
The reality of the situation:
But as for the second — that’s just not how it works in developed countries. Our corn in the US doesn’t go to Corn Flakes or HFCS — it goes to feeding cows. Our soy doesn’t go to vegetable oil or tofu — it’s for livestock. As our demand for these products in various forms — food, feed, biofuel — increases, where does the increased land come from? The Amazon. What causes climate change? Deforestation.
Ok, I’m not going to address the first point.
Our cattle aren’t feeding themselves from grassland that would never serve another purpose — they’re fed corn in CAFOs. Consider the physics of this all — the conversion efficiencies at every step of the process are necessarily poor. The energy required to make the nitrogen to put on the fields to grow the corn that we’re feeding to another animal instead of eating directly… no thank you. Think your fish are safe from the problems of industrial agriculture? Try looking up the problem of hypoxia due to runoff of N and P. Our fish stocks are doing terrible. Think farmed fish is the solution? Try again. Farmed fish are fed fish that are harvested from the ocean… *and* farmed fish inevitably spread diseases to the wild stocks that are depleting the wild stocks. Could manure technically be used as fertilizer? Yes, but that’s not the way it works in industrial agriculture.
How about the issue of antibiotic resistance? Yes, livestock can be raised without consuming more than half of the antibiotics in the US… but they aren’t. The day will come when routine bacterial infections will be extremely dangerous and it is not that far off. Sure, there are other contributing factors on the end of human prescriptions and human usage — but they really don’t compare to the antibiotics used in livestock feed.
So, the *vast* majority of meat production is inefficient, unnecessary, and responsible for a host of environmental problems.
Although vegetarianism doesn’t need any more justification, I think the animal-rights argument has validity. I freely admit that I am a tree-hugging animal lover, but I do believe there are cultures that need meat for calories/protein and that animals can be killed humanely. I just think those cultures are extremely rare and that very few of our livestock are killed in a humane manner. The regulations are limited and the industry goes for the cheapest method they can get away with. It is absolutely revolting what goes on in slaughterhouses. I with that our livestock were guaranteed a quick death… but that is far from the truth. I wish they weren’t crammed in such close quarters that they go crazy and revert to cannibalism. I wish some sort of painkillers were used for surgeries…. but that is not the case.
Remind me again, how do *you* justify your meat consumption?
I justify my meat consumption via two points:
1. I need to eat to survive
2. Animals are extremely delicious
Thanks for sharing your thoughts!
Becca, I think its really interesting that the main reason for your vegetarianism is environmental. Most of the vegetarians I meet fall into either animal rights or health. I guess I never thought about all those indirect contributions that meat has to the environment. I agree with you though, I don’t really miss meat at all right now, lots of vegetables are very delicious. And now that I dont eat meat, I enjoy vegetables so much more. How long have you been a vegetarian? Does your dining hall have good vegetarian options? Mine doesn’t and it sucks!
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