Vegetarianism: Change Your Plate, Change the World!

            Pythagoras, Socrates, Plato, DaVinci, Einstein, Gandhi, and Franklin, some of the most intelligent and intellectual men of history. Ahead of their time, they have given back to the world with genius philosophies and inventions. Though their similarities are not limited to their greatness, they all were a part of a humane revolution. These influential men were all vegetarians. Vegetarianism has been around since ancient Roman times and is gaining popularity among the modern world . There are about fifteen million meatless Americans, and they changed their eating habits to make change . Vegetarianism is the single most effective way for an individual to stop the cruelty of animals, support a sustainable environment, and live a healthy lifestyle.

            Most people associate vegetarians with an animal loving personality. For some, but not all, this is the main reason people go meatless. Vegetarian opposers view animal cruelty in the meat industry as over dramatized by vegetarians or inexistent. The truth is, Americans today are blind to what really goes on behind the meat industry doors. With an increase in population, and a decrease in food price, livestock agriculture has become driven by greed instead of morals and ethics. The disturbing animal cruelty starts off with the ‘meats’ meal. Cows, Poultry, and Hogs are now all fed a single food diet: corn. No more grass, flowers, fruit blooms, or tasty scraps, major meat companies feed their livestock dried genetically manipulated corn kernels because of its cheap price . A constant diet of a single food does not give animals the proper nutrition they need to survive. This causes the cows, chickens, and pigs to have much lower immune systems and can easily contract extremely harmful diseases their body can never fight off . If the animal is still too small to slaughter for food at their time of illness, the meat companies will inject them with extremely powerful overused antibiotics to keep them living long enough to grow more muscle and fat so they can get as much meat as possible from their carcass. These are the lucky ones though. Because for those animals that are able to still gain meat mass even if they are sick with cancer, open wounds, painful illnesses, are never given medical treatment, because by law, an animal is allowed to have their fats and muscles used for meat regardless of medical condition as long as they can stay ‘alive’ until slaughter time. This means Big Macs have a very good possibility of being from the meat of a cow that had a bacterial infection from a cut where the chains hold him down and brain cancer.

            The livestock industry has an everlasting supply of renewable resources. With simple forced reproduction (commonly called rape racks), and constant pregnancies, companies are able to increase their number of resources whenever more are desired. Of course this comes at the animals expense. Once the animals reproduction organs have shut down from the fifty plus litters they were forced to give birth too they are slaughtered for meat. Forced reproduction is a vicious cycle the livestock companies feel genius about. Some calves of cows get to grow up to be diary cows, tugged at for milk by machines and never getting to stretch their legs, others are injected with the bovine growth hormone, but the most unfortunate ones are killed at just sixteen weeks of age. These are the calves raised for veal. The newborns are tied down into cages that prohibit any movement and are deprived of all nutrients all to produce a steak.

            Non-vegetarians that claim they are aware of ‘the animal cruelty’ of cows say they only eat chicken, which they believe are treated more humanely. Actually, it is the chicken and poultry that live the cruelest lives. Their brutal life begins way before they are even conceived. Major chicken producers now have genetically manipulated the chicken into creatures that give them the most money. The most common species of chicken raised today for meat does not look like the conventional chicken. Picture a chicken that is naked without feathers and is three times the size of a normal chicken. It is sitting on the ground because its body weight is too heavy for its twig legs to support, and its beak is cut off  rigidly exposing the mouth. This is the super chicken that proves to make the most money for companies today. Its DNA has been rearranged so that each chicken will make more money by not needing to have its feathers plucked, and producing more meat per animal.  Its beak is also cut off to prevent the chickens from poking each other to death when ten of them are packed into a 1-meter by 1-meter wire cage. This image is terrifying to see knowing that the chicken sandwich is now coming from a poor abused creature whose genetic structure has been mutilated. This is why true vegetarians feel the need to abstain from all meats, especially poultry.

            There are reasons to become a vegetarian even for the proclaimed animal hater or cruelty disbeliever. Taking part in a vegetarian lifestyle directly advocates a sustainable environment. By becoming meatless, a person is able to support farming techniques that will better the environment on a local and global scale. Because livestock are fed solely corn, over farming has become an American issue. Topsoil erosion has greatly increased in the Midwest as crops are no longer being rotated among fields because it is most cost efficient for an American farmer to constantly and exclusively grow corn to sell to the livestock industry. Producing a single hamburger patty causes the loss of five times its weight in topsoil. This amount of topsoil erosion could lead the U.S. into another Dust Bowl. An even bigger problem, the excessive amounts of manure from the overcrowded meat houses are releasing toxins into our atmosphere. Because of corns four-carbon structure, today’s cow manure is more potent than it has ever been. Cows are becoming more environmentally inefficient than cars. The common meat farm is affecting our environment with its water too. The water waste pumped out from factory farms is killing our environment. Everyday animal waste runoff, livestock chemicals, antibiotics, hormones, and fertilizers are pumped into our water systems. In 1995 one very well known ham company caused a large breach in environmental cleanliness. They poured 25 million gallons of animal excrement and urine into water off the shores of North Carolina. This act killed an estimated 14 million fish and closed 346,000 acres of costal beds. The wastes spread the virulent microbe Pfiesteria piscicidia into the ocean.

            On a global scale, livestock agriculture and the meat packaging industry contribute to four major causes of global warming gasses: carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide, and chloroflucarbons. In a society concerned with ‘going green’ and stoping global warming, becoming a vegetarian is the greatest way to better the environment. Deforestation is destroying forests and much needed oxygen supply. According to the United State General Accounting Office, more plant species in the US have been threatened or eliminated by livestock agriculture than by any other cause. The rainforest is being burned and damaged to set up factory farms. By staying away from meat products, vegetarians help reduce the release of the dangerous gasses that are leading to planet depletion. Each vegetarian saves an acre of trees per year by abstaining from meat. The meat industry accounts for one-fifth of dangerous emissions through manure, transportation, and decomposition of slaughtered animals.  Experts estimate that the production of a single calorie of animal protein productions requires the burning of up to ten times as much fossil fuel energy as the production of one calorie of plant protein.

            Even Earth’s water supply is saved everyday by vegetarians. Abstaining from meat products can reduce water contamination. More than half of all the water used in the United States is dedicated to livestock feed crop. The seafood industry has the worst affect on the planet’s water. Everyday chemicals and steroids are poured into lakes and oceans to increase the size of fish that will be turned into filets. Marine habitats and non-meat species are caught during fish harvesting and left to die on the boats. By- products of the meat and seafood industry stream into water bottles. It is estimated that a person would save more water by not eating a pound of California beef than they would by not showering for ten months because of the excessive amounts of water used in processing from raising the corn to washing off the blood of slaughtered animals. That means vegetarians stop global warming, conserve water, and save the rainforest all by eating a veggie burger, which does taste exactly like an angus beef patty.

            The age-old claim against vegetarianism is that a diet without meat causes protein and iron deficiencies and is unhealthy and unnatural. Critics of vegetarianism point to the dangers caused by reliance on nutritional supplements as opposed to obtaining amino acids from the “natural sources” in meat. The truth is that those “natural sources” are much more unnatural than vegetarian proteins. The “natural sources” in meat are filled with antibiotics and chemical enhancements; whereas, the vegetarian proteins come directly from plant proteins produced by changing energy from the sun (Driscoll). In fact, illness caused by a protein deficiency is practically non-existent in the United States, especially among the meatless. According to the American Dietetic Association Journal, “Whole grains, legumes, and vegetables all contain essential and nonessential amino acids. Conscious combining of these foods within a meal is unnecessary.” Vegetarians better their diet by throwing out meat, especially because meat protein and their high cholesterol content increases the risk of kidney and liver failure, cancer, and osteoporosis.

            The rise of tainted meat has drawn humans away from eating animal products. Vegetarians dodge food contamination and deadly viruses. The Creutzfeldt-Jacob eases, more commonly known as Mad Cow Disease, affects the world,s beef supply. This human form of the bovine spongiform encephalopathy has killed a number of global people after affecting them with a degenerative brain disorder. With few regulations for the livestock industry more food borne illnesses are being created every day. The Bird flu pandemic arose from poultry farms where poultry’s low immune systems were vulnerable to contracting and mutating the disease to human form. Even the common bacterial infection that has hit high schools originated from the livestock industry. Methicillin-resistant staphylococcus aurous MRSA originated from the pig farming industry which heavily dosed its herds with antibiotics. The industries efforts to reproduce larger hogs caused the MRSA strain to become more resistant to antibiotics and a deadly form of a staff infection. The list of illnesses caused by eating meat is a never-ending one that will only increase as companies keep manipulating the genetics of farm animals.

            A meat-based diet is unhealthy compared to a plant based diet. Meat has a high level of cholesterol, saturated fat, and mercury. These three major health factors are non-existent in plant-based products. Plant products provide the necessary fiber to help fend off diseases and cancer. The American Dietetic Associations and the American Heart Association even support a vegetarian diet over a meat filled diet. Eating vegetarian is easy and healthy. There are many meatless products out there today, even in average grocery stores, and they are all around healthier for you. Going meatless is an easy transition in today’s world and the market of vegetarian products is gaining extreme popularity.

            Vegetarianism is not only an important individual choice, but also important for the future of the planet and humanity. Vegetarianism is not just the liberal hippie stereotype most people associate with it. Conservative Republicans are actually more likely to abstain from meat than democrats. Nineteen thousand Americans make the switch to vegetarianism every week in hopes to better the lives of animals, the environment, and their own health. Saying no to meat allows vegetarians to stand up for what they believe in. Skipping over the juicy steak condemns the livestock agriculture industry where everywhere seven billion animals are raised, transported, and slaughtered under grossly inhumane conditions. Picking a slice of pizza instead of chicken fingers stands up for the earth they live one. And eating a salad enriches their bodies with nutrients and vitamins that meat could never provide them with. The easiest way to change to the world is to change what is on your plate.