1. RIDICULE
2. VIOLENT OPPOSITION
3. ACCEPTANCE
EARTHLINGS

earth’ling: n. One who inhabits of the earth.

Since we all inhabit the earth, all of us are considered earthlings. There is no sexism, no racism or speciesism in the term earthling. It encompasses each and every one of us: warm or cold blooded, mammal, vertebrate or invertebrate, bird, reptile, amphibian, fish, and human alike.

Humans, therefore, being not the only species on the planet, share this world with millions of other living creatures, as we all evolve here together. However, it is the human earthling who tends to dominate the earth, often times treating other fellow earthlings and living beings as mere objects. This is what is meant by speciesism.

By analogy with racism and sexism, the term “speciesism” is a prejudice or attitude of bias in favor of the interests of members of one’s own species and against those of members of other species.

If a being suffers there can be no moral justification for refusing to take that suffering into consideration. No matter what the nature of the being, the principle of equality requires that one’s suffering can be counted equally with the like suffering of any other being.

Racists violate the principle of equality by giving greater right to the interests of members of their own race when their is a clash between their interests and the interests of those of another race.

Sexists violate the principle of equality by favoring the interests of their own sex.

Similarly, speciesists allow the interests of their own species to override the greater interests of members of other species.

In each case, the pattern is identical. Though among the members of the human family we recognize the moral imperative of respect (every human is a somebody, not a something), morally disrespectful treatment occurs when those who stand at the power end of a power relationship treat the less powerful as if they were mere objects.

The rapist does this to the victim of rape.

The child molester to the child molested.

The master to the slave.

In each and all such cases, humans who have power exploit those who lack it.

Might the same be true of how humans treat other animals, or other earthlings?

Undoubtedly there are differences, since humans and animals are not the same in all respects. But the question of sameness wears another face.

Granted, these animals do not have all the desires we humans have; granted, they do not comprehend everything we humans comprehend; nevertheless, we and they do have some of the same desires and do comprehend some of the same things.

The desires for food and water, shelter and companionship, freedom of movement and avoidance of pain? These desires are shared by nonhuman animals and human beings.

As for comprehension: like humans, many nonhuman animals understand the world in which they live and move. Otherwise, they could not survive.

So beneath the many differences, there is sameness.

Like us, these animals embody the mystery and wonder of consciousness.

Like us, they are not only in the world, they are aware of it.

Like us they are the psychological centers of a life that is uniquely their own.

In these fundamental respects humans stand “on all fours”, so to speak, with hogs and cows, chickens and turkeys.

What these animals are due from us, how we morally ought to treat them, are questions whose answer begins with the recognition of our psychological kinship with them.

Nobel Prize winner Isaac Bashevis Singer wrote in his bestselling novel Enemies, A Love Story’ the following:

“As often has Herman had witnessed the slaughter of animals and fish, he always had the same thought: in their behavior toward creatures, all men were Nazis. The smugness with which man could do with other species as he pleased exemplified the most extreme racist theories, the principle that might is right”.

The comparison here to the holocaust is both intentional and obvious:

one group of living beings anguishes beneath the hands of another.

Though some will argue the suffering of animals cannot possibly compare with that of former Jews or slaves, there is, in fact, a parallel.

And for the prisoners and victims of this mass murder, their holocaust is far from over.

In his book ‘The Outermost House’ author Henry Beston wrote:

“We need another and a wiser and perhaps a more mystical

concept of animals. Remote from universal nature, and living by complicated artifice, man in civilization surveys the creatures through the glass of his knowledge and sees thereby a feather magnified and the whole image in distortion.

We patronize them for their incompleteness, for their tragic fate of having taken form so far below ourselves. And therein we err, and greatly err. For the animal shall not be measured by man.

In a world older and more complete than ours they move finished and complete, gifted with extensions of the senses we have lost or never attained, living by voices we shall never hear.

They are not brethren; they are not underlings; they are other nations, caught with ourselves in the net of life and time, fellow prisoners of the splendor and travail of the earth”.

Vegan MyPlate

What would USDA’s MyPlate look like if meat and dairy lobbyists weren’t involved? If the health of the country was actually more important to them than making money and keeping government subsidies as they are?

Nutritionist Dr Bernard says:

The protein portion of the USDA’s MyPlate is unnecessary, because beans, whole grains, and vegetables are loaded with it. And it is a shame that MyPlate reserves a special place for dairy products, which are packed with fat and cholesterol and may increase the risk of health problems ranging from asthma to some types of cancer. There are many more healthful sources of calcium.

But for taxpayers and members of Congress, the new plate has a special significance. There’s a stark contrast between the USDA’s plate and federal food subsidies. While the USDA’s plate encourages fruit and vegetable consumption and advises Americans to limit high-fat products like meat and cheese, federal agriculture subsidies do exactly the opposite: They spend billions of dollars promoting production of high-fat, high-calorie food products.

Despite skyrocketing obesity and diabetes rates, more than 60 percent of agricultural subsidies in recent history have directly and indirectly supported meat and dairy production. In recent history, the federal government has spent about $16 billion a year on agricultural subsidies. Less than 1 percent has gone to fruits and vegetables.

These figures are especially galling when you realize that the taxpayer-funded food system is literally making us sick. More than 60 percent of the deaths in the United States are caused by heart disease, cancer, and other diet-related diseases. Approximately 68 percent of Americans are overweight or obese. In 2008, the direct medical costs associated with obesity added up to $147 billion.

It’s time for Congress to fix this problem and address our country’s epidemics of obesity and other health problems.

(http://pcrm.org/news/blog/index.html)

Ben & Jerry’s ice creams advertise that their milk comes from well treated cows in the Netherlands.

You can see what they say here: http://www.benjerry.co.uk/caringdairy

I was curious to find out some information that they didn’t really talk about on their website, so I sent them some questions.

1- Are the cows free to roam most of the day? how long is she milked for in a 24 hour period?

Outside grazing is an important part of Caring Dairy and all our dairy cows are able to leave the barn in the summer time. In the winter however, most of them stay in the barn, since it is too cold and wet outside for them in the Dutch climate. In the winter time they are housed however in free stalls where they can walk around.

Sadly she didn’t answer the second question.

2- When the cows give birth to the calf, how long does it stay together with her?

To prevent the spread of diseases like para tuberculosis, calves are advised to be separated from their mothers 1 day after birth.
Scientific  research has shown that separation so soon after the birth is less stressful for both the mother and calf than separation after a couple of weeks or months.

Rather than going for “less stress” it would be great if they went for “no stress” and left the mother with her baby until he grew up. Imagine how horrible it must be for a mother to get her newborn baby taken away from her? And how horrible it must be for the newborn to grow up without a mother?

3- Does the calf have full access to drink milk when he/she wants to?

That depends on the farming system. In farming systems with automatic feeding systems for milk the calves have free access to milk 24h. In other farming systems the calves are fed twice a day (after milking in the morning and the evening). Calves have always unlimited access to water and feed.

4- If it’s a male calf, where does it go after it grows up?

Male calves are raised on the farm for two weeks and then go to a bull calf farm for at least another 6 months. This is based on strict regulations in the Netherlands regarding calf housing and animal welfare.

So male calves are taken away from their mother after 1 day, stay in the farm for 2 weeks and then 6 months later is slaughtered for their muscles.

5- How often do the cows give birth to a new calf?

On average once every 13.5 month (starting from the age of 2)

A cow’s gestation period is 9 months. So 4.5 months after she has a calf she is forcefully impregnated again.

6- What happens to the cow when she is old and no longer able to produce milk?

On average dairy cows in the Netherlands live for around 6 years. Part of the Caring Dairy programme is to increase the average age of the cows by preventative health care measures e.g. close observation of cows to promote a healthy well-being as opposed to just treating symptoms when they are already ill. This is good for the cows (longer healthy life), the farmer (longer source of income from one cow) and the environment (less replacement of cows). When cows are no longer able to produce milk they are sent to an abattoir.

A cow’s normal life-span is of 20 to 25 years, yet their cows only live for 6 years. In that time period they’ll have had 4 babies taken away from them. Then they are killed.

Officer, Mike Fowler, said this has been one of the most gruesome acts he has dealt with in his 10 year career as an officer.

The pig, a bright 1 year old had been subjected to a gruesome attack as he grazed in a field with his friends and family.

Mrs Kingsbury, a school teacher, said: “This was an entirely species motivated attack.  That pig was killed and eaten purely because he’s of a different species to us – it’s not fair, he couldn’t change which species he was.”

Superintendent Terry Sherwood, of the National Police Association, told the BBC’s Today programme that the murder was “an unequivocal indication that the cancer of speciesism is still here”.

“Unfortunately, young, innocent animals are subject to it, and I think it is a sad day,” he said. “I have every confidence that the police will catch these people and put them before the courts and demonstrate that we will not tolerate these abhorrent acts of speciesism on young, innocent animals.”

Speaking last night, the chief constable, Larry Sullivan, said: “It is a disgrace that a young pig has been brutally murdered. It is even worse when you think that the only reason for this attack was the victim’s species.”

“Any murder is awful, and this one is particularly abhorrent since the men have allegedly eaten the pig’s body. I can’t emphasise enough the part that the community and members of the public have in helping us to find those responsible for this despicable murder.”

“We are determined to arrest those responsible for committing this murder”"

When witnesses Ginny Messina and Leah Fiennes saw the pig being attacked, they ran off to get help, trying to flag down passing vehicles and banging on doors.

When they returned minutes later, they found him slumped on the ground with his throat slit and his limbs cut out

The local priest, Mrs Sanders, said that these attacks are “entirely untypical of the community in which it happened”, which she described as “settled, peaceful, decent”.

And why is taste, the crudest of our senses, exempted from the ethical rules that govern our other senses? If you stop and think about it, it’s crazy. How would you judge an artist who mutilated animals in a gallery because it was visually interesting? How beautiful would the sound of a tortured animal need to be to make you want to hear it that badly? Try to imagine any end other than taste for which it would be justifiable to do what we do to animals.

It’s easy to make oneself feel better about it by buying “humane” meat. Unfortunately however there’s no legal definition of humane – it’s simply a label that you have no control over. The margins are low, they can’t afford not to mass produce these animals as through they are objects. In the end they are all killed in the same slaughterhouse as all the others. The stun guns only work 80% of the time. Every day animals get skinned alive in the factory process.

These things happen whether in humane farming or factory farming.

And many people seem to be tempted to continue supporting factory farms while also buying meat outside that system when it is available. That’s nice. But if it is as far as our moral imaginations can stretch, then it’s hard to be optimistic about the future. Any plan that involves funneling money to the factory farm won’t end factory farming. How effective would the Montgomery bus boycott have been if protesters had used the bus when it became inconvenient not to? How effective would a strike be if workers announced they would go back to work as soon as it became difficult to strike?

Before child labor laws, there were businesses that treated their ten-year-old employees well. Society didn’t ban child labor because it’s impossible to imagine children working in a good environment, but because when you give that much power to business over powerless individuals, it’s corrupting. When we talk around thinking we have a greater right to eat an animal than the animal has a right to live without suffering, it’s corrupting.

If we are at all serious about ending factory farming, then the absolute least we can do is stop sending checks to the absolute worst abusers. For some, the decision to eschew factory-farmed products is easy. For others the decision is hard. To those for whom it sounds like a hard decision, the ultimate question is whether it is worth the inconvenience. We know, at least, that this decision will prevent deforestation, curb global warming, reduce pollution, save oil reserves, lessen the burden on rural areas, decrease human rights abuses, improve public health, and help eliminate the most systematic animal abuse in world history. What we don’t know, though, may be just as important. How would making such a decision change us?

Setting aside the direct material changes initiated by opting out of the factory farm system, the decision to eat with such deliberateness would itself be a force with enormous potential. What kind of world would we create if three times a day we activated our compassion and reason as we saw down to eat, if we had the moral imagination and the pragmatic will to change our most fundamental act of consumption?

Compassion is a muscle that gets stronger with use, and the regular exercise of choosing kindness over cruelty would change us.

It might sound naive to suggest that whether you order a chicken patty or a veggie burger is a profoundly important decision. Then again, it certainly would have sounded fantastic if in the 1950s you were told that where you saw in a restaurant or on a bus could begin to uproot racism. It would have sounded equally fantastic if you were told in the early 1970s, before Cesar Chavez’s workers’ rights campaigns, that refusing to eat grapes could begin to free farmworkers from slave-like conditions. It might sound fantastic, but when we bother to look, it’s hard to deny that our day-to-day choices shape the world.

• Animal testing
• Bullfighting
• Child molestation
• Circuses with animals (including aquatic animals)
• Dairy and eggs (in most cases)
• Eating meat
• Hunting / fishing
• Kidnapping
• Buying leather / fur
• Murder / serial killing (depending on the killer and reason)
• Pesticides / “pest” control
• Racial cleansing
• Rape
• Slavery / low paid workers
• Theft
• Torture
• Zoos (in some cases)

Let me ask you some questions to help us come to a conclusion.

Were the Nazis bad because:

1. They tortured/killed human beings en mass?
2. They tortured/killed beings that were able to suffer?

Meaning, if they had tortured/killed brain dead humans (who were not able to feel pain/fear) would it have been just as bad or would it have been forgotten by today?

And if they had tortured/killed millions of monkeys who were able to feel the same amount of pain as the Jews, would it still be remembered today?

If humans are animals, and if human intelligence is unrelated to the ability to feel pain, which is shared equally amongst most animals, then why is it so shocking to torture a human but not an animal?

How is it that our intelligence grants us the right not to suffer? Isn’t that like saying that our sight grants us the right not to be shouted at? Are these qualities connected in any way? Can a person with high IQ suffer more than one with a low IQ? In fact, can’t children, who are unable to rationalise their pain, seemingly feel more pain than adults?

Why has the holocaust stuck in our minds for so long because of a few million tortured Jews but the hundreds of billions of animals who were since equally tortured for food are not remembered?

And would the holocaust have been any less shocking if the Nazis didn’t kill Jews because of hatred, but simply because they enjoyed the taste of Jewish meat and killed them to feed their families? Equally, would it have been just as shocking to you if the Nazis had tortured and killed millions of cows because they hated cows? If not, why not?

Is it the reason for unneeded torture (hatred, taste, convenience) that makes it horrific or is it simply the torture itself?

So why is it that we grant rights to some but not others?

Was it relevant to the Nazis that Jews were humans? How about the slave masters and the blacks, did they care about their species or was race only deciding factor to them?

You, I assume, care about all humans regardless of anything, so long as they are human. But why do you stop there? Why do you not care about all animals regardless of species?

One is black, the other white, one has fur the other not, one can write poems the other cannot. But are those attributes relevant to the right not to suffer? If so, should a severely retarded human be stripped of their rights?

And under what logic should the right not to suffer be based on color, gender, race, height, religion, sexuality or species? Would it not make more sense if the right not to suffer was based on the mere ability to suffer?

I would appreciate it if you could share your logic on the subject and explain why you believe you are better than the Nazis/slave masters and deserve not to be compared to them.

Animals taste good and since I am more powerful I feel I have the right to eat them. Animals are inferior beings, they don’t have our level of intellect so I don’t see anything wrong with eating them. They were bred for this purpose so their suffering is non-important as long as I get meat on my plate. Our society has eaten animals for hundreds of years, it’s a part of our culture and I’m not the one who’ll change that.

Use them at work and spread the message!

It is probably one of the best arguments I’ve read for feeding your pets a cruel free diet.

By nature cats and dogs wouldn’t eat anything like what is commonly found in a can of pet food either. Special diets must be provided for cats, as they require an amino acid called taurine — found in the muscles of animals.

Synthetic taurine has been developed, and is used in commercial (non vegetarian) cat foods. Vegetarian cats should be fed it as a supplement. Taurine deficiency can result in blindness and even death. Cats also require pre-formed vitamin A and arachidonic acid.

All known vegan cat foods contain these essential ingredients and the companies listed below provide them in their cat foods. Ask your vet about changing your pet’s diet if concerned.

Not only is it POSSIBLE to feed most cats and dogs a non-meat diet, it is also DESIRABLE. Buying “normal” pet food is supporting the same meat industry with its attendant cruelty, exploitation, waste, and environmental damage that veganism is so opposed to.

Why should ten horses/cows/chickens/ducks or something have to suffer and die every year just to support your pet cat/dog?

This is not a matter of “imposing your beliefs” on your pets (or companion animals, or whatever you call them) since you are not forcing them to eat it and you are not stopping them eating local wildlife on their wanderings round the neighbourhood.

Also animals don’t have morals or beliefs. They do whatever is necessary to survive, with no preference one way or the other about the impact on anything else. We however can make moral/ethical decisions – like the decision to be vegan.

In the wild, surviving may mean “kill something or else starve to death,” but if your animal is being fed anyway, this becomes unnecessary. It is also no more unnatural for a pet cat/dog to be eating vegan food than any other food.

Firstly, the domesticated cat/dog bears little resemblance to its wild cousins so we’re already in an artificial situation.

Secondly, the whole act of feeding it from a tin (as opposed to letting it find food for itself) is unnatural, so you might as well make the best of it. Thirdly, the actual contents of the tins of commercial pet food bear no resemblance to what a cat/dog would eat in the wild anyway… Could you imagine your darling moggy killing horses and cows and going deep sea ocean fishing for tuna?

See also:

• Dogs – a Vegetarian Diet?
• Cats – a Vegetarian Diet?
• www.vegansociety.com/animals/care/cats/
• Veggie Pet Food

If you eat meat you’re a bad person.

And you’re probably deluded too, desperately clinging to quasi-sensical rationalizations that are supposed to justify your cruel and filthy habit.

Yup, you guessed it — I’m through being Mr. Nice Guy when it comes to dealing with meat eaters. I’ve passed a personal tipping point, so to speak, mostly on account of my having to suffer through far too many dinner conservations in which I’m exposed to ridiculous and unfounded arguments intended to support the practice of eating flesh.

Ultimately, when it comes right down to it there is no excuse for eating meat.

Let me repeat that.

There is no excuse for eating meat.

All justifications for doing so – including those rare arguments that actually manage to make sense – are weak to the core. There’s no possible excuse that outweighs the damage and suffering caused by consuming meat.

I would now like to take the time to debunk some of the more common fallacies I’m forced to listen to (and supposedly tolerate) on a regular basis:

Fallacy #1: “Humans evolved the capacity to eat meat, so it’s justified”

When a person tells me this I get the urge to smash tofu in their face.

This is the oft used appeal to nature. Advocates of this view – whether they realize it or not – are essentially suggesting that ‘might makes right’ – that because humans sit atop the food chain they can pretty much kill and eat whatever they want. I’ve even heard guys use this argument to uphold their sense of masculinity – as if eating defenseless animals who were killed by machines that dip them in electrified pools of water somehow affirms their manliness.

Funny, I have a different measure of what makes a man.

Looking at this argument another way, the appeal to nature asserts that evolved traits are inherently good. The line of thinking goes like this: Evolution is natural, and what is natural is good; and because humans evolved the capacity to eat and digest meat, the practice of eating meat must also be natural and subsequently good.

This is the naturalistic fallacy and it leads to all sorts of problems. Given this line of thinking we should also condone other human traits that came about through evolution, namely rape, murder, pedophilia and cannibalism. Obviously we’re not about to do this any time soon. We know very well that many people cannot be left to their own hard-wired devices; this is why we have self-corrective memes (i.e. ethics, laws, etc.) and why we need to have police and penal systems.

More to the point, however, is the acknowledgment that overriding our evolutionary baggage is part of the human mission. Having Darwinian processes guide our moral compass is sheer lunacy. Where is the morality in ‘survival of the fittest?’ Evolution may have helped us describe how we got here, but it most certainly won’t help us move forward as a compassionate species.

Fallacy #2: “Humans evolved the capacity to eat meat, so it’s a necessary part of a healthy diet”

Yeah, right.

That’s why heart disease is the leading cause of death; hundreds of thousands of people die prematurely each year because of too much saturated fat from meat and dairy products. It’s no secret that meat consumption promotes heart disease, cancer, diabetes, osteoporosis, and every other major degenerative disease. The Western meat-obsessed diet is a major contributor to the host of health problems currently endemic in our society.

Meanwhile back at the tempeh ranch, not only do humans fare very well without meat, they actually thrive without it.

A number of dietitians are now claiming that human physical performance peaks when people go off meat and other animal bi-products. Carl Lewis said his best years as a sprinter came after he transitioned to a vegan diet. Word of this is slowly getting out and an entire sub-culture has emerged around this revelation.

Philosopher Peter Singer hit the nail on the head when he said that if alternative means of survival exist, one ought to choose the option that does not cause unnecessary harm to animals. And as Charles Eisenstein has said, “It is just plain wrong to take another animal’s life unnecessarily; it is bloody, brutal, and barbaric.”

Makes sense to me. We don’t need meat to survive or to remain healthy. Consequently, we have no business raising and killing animals for food. The ongoing practice of doing so is pure extravagance.

Fallacy #3: “Being a vegetarian is too difficult and I’d never find anything to eat”

In other words, you’re lazy, unimaginative and you have the taste buds of a 5-year old.

Get over it. A chunk of meat does not reside at the center of the Universe. There are plenty of other options.

Which brings to mind another infuriating but common misconception – the twisted notion that vegetarians only eat vegetables. What nonsense. How about a good old fashioned plate of pasta and thick tomato sauce? Or a pizza covered in mushrooms and hot peppers? A plate of nachos and refried beans, anyone? How about meatless lasagne, stir-fries, curries, chillies and casseroles? Pancakes covered in syrup, sweet potato soup, and a fresh blueberry pie…

In fact, I’ve never eaten better since becoming a vegetarian five years ago. I now eat a diverse array of foods and I’m much more competent and knowledgeable in the kitchen.

Moreover, even the most meat-centric of us (my old self included) can find worthy substitutes. I often enjoy fake ham sandwich for lunch. For dinner I like to throw a veggie patty on the barbecue and slather it with HP and Tabasco sauce. I also enjoy burritos stuffed with simulated ground meat. Add the right spicing, condiments and marinade to this stuff and you’re practically there.

Fallacy #4: “Taking the life of an animal isn’t cruel because they’re worthless, stupid and probably not even self-aware”

Again, patent nonsense. These are the lies that people tell themselves as they bite into a sirloin steak – the kind of re-assurance they need to convince themselves that what they’re doing is not evil.

It’s also a sign of our speciest tendencies. As humans, we don’t kill each other because we know that other humans do not want to die. The same should hold true for our relationship with non-human animals. They don’t want to die either, but they’re given no choice and no protection.

Indeed, the de-valuing of animals is a lie. Farm animals are remarkably intelligent and emotional. As professor of animal husbandry John Webster has said,

“People have assumed that intelligence is linked to the ability to suffer and that because animals have smaller brains they suffer less than humans. That is a pathetic piece of logic, sentient animals have the capacity to experience pleasure and are motivated to seek it, you only have to watch how cows and lambs both seek and enjoy pleasure when they lie with their heads raised to the sun on a perfect English summer’s day. Just like humans.”

Yes, animals deserve an experiential life free from suffering and torment. We, as the dominant species on the planet, have to pay particular attention to their needs.

Biologist Marc Bekoff has noted, “When animals are seen as automatons with no emotions, it is easy to treat them as mere property with which humans can do as they please.” Exactly — and we need to move away from this sort of parochial thinking as quickly as possible.

Along these lines I highly recommend the book, The Pig Who Sang to the Moon: The Emotional World of Farm Animals by Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson.

Fallacy #5: “Livestock aren’t treated poorly”

People who make this claim are either terribly misinformed or just plain ignorant. The reality is that modern farming practices are an absolute travesty.

Pigs are typically kept in stalls so small and narrow that they can never turn around or rest properly. Many develop respiratory problems and neurotic coping behaviors such as repetitive bar biting and sham chewing (chewing nothing). Chickens and turkeys are often packed twenty to a cage and pumped with antibiotics. Their beaks have to be clipped to prevent them from pecking at one another. And as for cows, well, read this excerpt from an April 2001 Washington Post article which describes typical slaughterplant conditions:

The cattle were supposed to be dead before they got to Moreno. But too often they weren’t.

They blink. They make noises, he said softly. The head moves, the eyes are wide and looking around. Still Moreno would cut. On bad days, he says, dozens of animals reached his station clearly alive and conscious. Some would survive as far as the tail cutter, the belly ripper, the hide puller. They die, said Moreno, piece by piece…

“In plants all over the United States, this happens on a daily basis,” said Lester Friedlander, a veterinarian and formerly chief government inspector at a Pennsylvania hamburger plant. “I’ve seen it happen. And I’ve talked to other veterinarians. They feel it’s out of control.”

I could go on and on, but I’m sure you’re getting the point and you’d probably get more by reading other accounts of how pigs, cows, chickens and other farm animals are mistreated. I also recommend the book, Slaughterhouse: The Shocking Story of Greed, Neglect, And Inhumane Treatment Inside the U.S. Meat Industry by Gail A. Eisnitz.

Fallacy #6: “Eating meat isn’t that bad for the environment”

Guess again. Raising meat is environmentally nasty and an inconvenient truth.

Given the climate change hysteria currently gripping the planet, one would think that maintaining hordes of livestock would be a hot-button social and political issue. But it’s not. That would be too inconvenient. The ongoing practice of raising animals for food is being ignored as a subset to the larger environmental catastrophe currently in effect.

Animal protein, for example, requires tremendous expenditures of fossil-fuel energy—eight times as much as for the same amount of plant protein. The average meat consuming diet burns the equivalent of a gallon of gas per day. All the livestock in the U.S. consumes five times as much grain as its human population. Americans are outnumbered by their farm animals by a ratio of 25 to 1.

In terms of land use, one-sixth an acre of land can feed a vegetarian for a year, while three acres are required to provide the grain needed to raise a year’s worth of meat for the average meat-eater.

The toll on water resources is just as bad. Grain-fed livestock consume 100,000 liters of water for every kilogram of food they produce; this compares to 2,000 liters required for soybeans. The meat industry accounts for nearly half of the water consumption in the U.S. – 2,500 gallons per pound of beef compared to 25 gallons per pound of wheat.

And what goes in must come out; 1.6 million tons of manure gets sent back into the environment every year in the U.S. In addition to this, residues of antibiotics and synthetic hormones are increasingly showing up in municipal water supplies.

And I have only scratched the surface.

So, as you’re heading off in your hybrid car to get solar panels for your home, just remember that as a meat eater you’re only being partly environmentally conscious.

Fallacy #7: “Eating meat is my personal choice, and since I respect your desire not to eat animals, I would appreciate your respecting my preference”

Sorry, I will do no such thing.

As Colleen Patrick-Goudreau has retorted, “The problem with this justification is that it assumes there is no victim, no other. It implies that the meat-eater’s desires, traditions, culture, or taste buds are superior to anything — or anyone — else and that because of this, he or she is absolved from the harm eating meat causes.”

Remember, this is not about you.

The truth hurts

As for me personally, I do not profess to have achieved any semblance of moral perfection. You don’t need to remind me of my hypocrisies and inconsistencies; I am very much aware of them and I am my own worst critic. I am not vegan, for example, but I hope to transition to that diet eventually.

But at least I’m trying; I’m making an effort to live a life in which I mete out as little suffering as possible to other living creatures. I’m also trying to reduce my global footprint. And if that means giving up meat, which I used to eat with great delight, then so be it.

And yes, I’m on my high-horse now — but I’m sincerely trying to make a difference. If my tone pissed you off then I succeeded in my goal. I’m deliberately trying to cajole you so you’ll reconsider your eating habits.

And in my own naive way I’m hoping that some of you will now actually consider a vegetarian diet.

Read more by George on his follow up post: http://www.sentientdevelopments.com/2007/08/struggle-to-make-vegetarianism-new.html

Now, since we do not need meat to survive, and in fact are healthier without it, then shouldn’t treating animals with such disregard and killing them so callously be considered a doubly barbaric act?

Until we are collectively able to use our intelligence to care about the well-being of all others and stop thinking solely about ourselves and our superiority,  it doesn’t matter whether we’ve been to the moon, built pyramids or iPhones –  we’re still no better than beasts.

Ideal Diet.pdf

We don’t usually think of what we eat as a matter of ethics. Stealing, lying, hurting people – these acts are obviously relevant to our moral character. So too, most people would say, is our involvement in community activities, our generosity to others in need, and especially our sex life. But eating – an activity that is even more essential than sex, and in which everyone participates – is generally seen quite differently.

The way food is sold an advertised today doesn’t help. Despite the recent upsurge of farmers’ markets, in the developed world almost all food is purchased from supermarkets. Shoppers are not presented with relevant information about the ethical choices that surround food. Instead, the world food industry spends more than $40 billion annually trying to make us eat their products – a figure greater than the domestic product of 70% of the world’s nations. That buys an avalanche of advertising that sweeps down on us from all sides but tells us only what the advertisers want us to know.

If slaughterhouses had glass walls, it’s often said,  we’d all be vegetarian. That’s probably not quite true – some people can get used to almost anything. But transparency is increasingly recognised as an important ethical principle and a safeguard against bad practice. Consumers should be able to get accurate and unbiased information about what they are buying and how it was produced.

There is a broad consensus within both religious and secular ethics that an ethical life respects virtues like fairness, justice, and benevolence. At the heart of these virtues lies a more basic principle: I cannot reasonably claim that my interests matter more than yours simply because my interests are mine. My interests may matter more to me, but I cannot claim they matter more in any objective sense. From the ethical point of view, everyone’s interests deserve equal consideration.

Obviously, animals can’t have equal rights to humans. Animals can’t have equal rights to an education, to vote, or to exercise free speech. The kind of parity that most animal advocates want to extend to animals is not equal rights, but equal consideration of comparable interests. If an animal feels pain, the pain matters as much as it does when a human feels pain. Granted, the mental capacities of different beings will affect how they experience pain, how they remember it, and whether they anticipate further pain – and these differences can be important. But the pain felt by a baby is a bad thing, even if the baby is no more self-aware than, say, a pig, and has no greater capacities for memory of anticipation. Pain can be a useful warning of danger, so it is sometimes valuable, all things considered. But taken in themselves, unless there is some compensating benefit, we should consider similar experiences of pain to be equally undesirable, whatever the species of the being who feels the pain.

We don’t need to eat meat to live. We only continue doing so because we are accustomed to eating these animals products and can’t imagine a meal without them, or because we like the way they taste. And these are not ethical justifications, given the harm these practices cause.