Vegetarianism is the only choice

‘If slaughterhouses had glass walls, everyone would be vegetarian’ —Paul McCartney

Chelse McKee, staff

Each year in Canada, 659 million animals are slaughtered. That’s almost 20 whole animals per person. In the U.S each year, 9.4 billion animals are killed, equating to almost 30 whole animals per person. Thankfully, meat-alternative foods, like veggie burgers, grew to a $1.6-billion industry in 2003, balancing the cruel and pointless slaughter of innocent animals.

According to Goveg.com, calves in the factory farming system of modern agriculture are separated from their mothers shortly (one to two days) after birth. Then, they are castrated, branded, and their horns are either burned or cut off, all without painkillers. Then they are sent to live in tiny crates where they are unable to even turn around, all to head to either the dairy farms or the slaughterhouses. At the slaughterhouses, they are hung upside down, their throats are cut, and they are left to bleed to death before being skinned and sent to your dinner table in the form of steaks or hamburgers.

Meanwhile, when chickens reach the slaughterhouse, they are hung upside down, their feet snapped in shackles, and they are stunned by being placed in an electrified water stun bath to render them unconscious. However, due to the massive amounts of chickens and ineffective stunning, many chickens are conscious when their throats are cut or even when they’re thrown into scalding water in order to remove feathers. That means that some chickens are literally boiled alive.

Animals are capable of feeling pain, as recent studies have confirmed. For example, a recent study by Advocates for Animals showed that lobsters are capable of forming memories and learning, in addition to feeling pain.

Nowadays, there are no more excuses about needing meat as part of a healthy diet. In fact, many studies have shown that eating meat can do more harm than good. For example, a study released by Harvard School of Public Health in 2006 had discovered that people who eat bacon five times a week or more are 52 per cent more likely to develop bladder cancer than those who ate none, while people who ate cooked skinless chicken had a 59 per cent higher chance of developing the cancer.

In addition, vegetarians and vegans, on average, have reduced risks of cancer, coronary artery disease and Type-2 diabetes. In addition, vegetarians have lower blood cholesterol and blood pressure.

According to the American Dietetic Association, a vegetarian or vegan diet can meet current recommendations for all nutrients. The only thing a vegetarian-vegan diet requires is responsibility to manage a balanced diet filled with protein (significant sources are beans, nuts, and dark-green vegetables, like spinach). As well, there are multivitamins to help make up what your diet may have missed in the day. The potential health issues with a vegetarian-vegan diet can all be avoided with simple research online (for example, go to www.peta.org) and a visit to a family physician to discuss options.

Many of my friends who choose to eat meat, and you may be saying this yourself right now, have stated that the main reason they eat meat is because they like the taste. However, the surge of the mock-meat industry shows that people are beginning to recognize that the alternatives are just as delicious and satisfying as the carnivorous options themselves. The stereotype of vegetarians sitting down to a hot meal of white squares of tofu is a thing of the past. Vegetarians now have numerous options of meatless-meatballs, meatless-chicken, meatless-beef, and much more. In fact, I have cooked meals for my friends using the meatless-meat, and they couldn’t tell the difference between meat and what I had cooked.

And, by cutting meat completely out of a grocery bill, your total food cost can be brought down by as much as two-thirds. If you supplement that amount by buying more vegetables and grains, the average vegetarian dish will go further than a meat dish. For beginning vegetarians, PETA offers a free vegetarian starter kit, which can be found at www.goveg.com/order.asp.

There is the argument that there would be vast amounts of animals remaining if the world went vegetarian-vegan, but that simply isn’t possible. If the world began to turn vegetarian-vegan, as it is already beginning to (currently there are 8 million vegetarians in the U.S.), there would be a gradual reduction in the production of livestock. Little-by-little, livestock would reproduce less and less offspring. As the number of vegetarians went up, the number of livestock would go down.

The reduction in livestock would not result in a worldwide famine, but, quite possibly, the contrary. Currently, two-thirds of the grain exports from the United States are sent to feed animals rather than the people who live there. Jeremy Rifkin, the president of the Foundation on Economic Trends, stated in an article for the Guardian of London: “In the U.S., 157 million metric tons of cereal, legumes, and vegetable protein suitable for human use is fed to livestock to produce 28 million metric tons of animal protein for annual human consumption.”

In addition, the reduction of livestock population would also reduce the level of global warming. According to a recent study released through the Lancet, agricultural activity, especially livestock, account for one-fifth of greenhouse gases. This means that cow farts are contributing to global warming! The study states that the “average worldwide consumption level of animal products and the intensity of emissions from livestock production must be reduced.”

If none of this convinces you, for nothing else, take a look at beloved pets and realize that but not for the grace of God, they could be strung upside down with their necks cut in preparation to be eaten.