The Goddess' Rant: National Vegetarian Week/ Happy Birthday Morrissey!

It is National Vegetarian Week! 18 – 24 May, 2009

“National Vegetarian Week (NVW) is the annual awareness-raising campaign promoting inspirational vegetarian food and the benefits of a meat-free lifestyle.” http://www.vegsoc.org/nvw/

Since I am seeing Morrissey next weekend (first-time concert goer, life-long fan!!!) who is one of the most visible advocates for the vegetarian/ vegan lifestyle, I think it’s time for another blog. Lots of vegetarian events this week… it’s National Vegetarian week in the UK and all sorts of stores, cafes and restaurants are offering expanded vegetarian options. Also, Morrissey’s 50th birthday (Friday 22nd May) is today and there are vegetarian-inspired celebrations going on in the UK. Morrissey has also been named the UK’s Favorite Vegetarian in a nationwide poll, beating Sir Paul McCartney for the very first time.

A dear friend of mine recently told me that not only does she read my blog, she is strongly considering going vegetarian, in large part because of my blog. YAY! That is so gratifying and I am really proud of her. There are many reasons to embrace a cruelty-free lifestyle, and you will find of range of these answers if you query individual vegetarians; ethics, environmental concerns, religious dicta, compassion, health and weight loss, a protest of the meat industry and its practices, solidarity with the poor, and just plain “I don’t like meat.”

I have one main reason I do not eat meat, and that is ethics. I personally think it is categorically WRONG, especially in the developed ‘First World’ to raise, pen, torture and slaughter other living, sentient beings just for a tasty morsel. How unbelievably selfish is that, to think an entity exists just for my taco salad? I believe all sentient beings have the same right to life that I have, and that human animals are not better in any way than non-human animals. I deeply consider the horrendous lifestyle which “farm” animals must suffer, before they are brutally killed, as a grave error of the human race – a terrible accretion of ‘bad’ karma. The word compassion comes from the Latin for "to suffer with" and I really put myself in the place of these poor animals. But I do know how hard it is, I myself can be a hypocrite -- I do eat fish sometimes.

I would say environmental concerns are a very close second for why I do not eat animals. You have heard all the statistics, but here they are again: A Smithsonian report says that The United States imports roughly 200 million pounds of beef from Latin America every year. Aside from the fuel used in transport, grazing land is needed for all of these animals. Where does all that land come from in a densely forested region? The answer: from clear-cutting forests and rainforest. The necessity for more grazing land means that every minute of every day, a land area equivalent to seven football fields is destroyed in the Amazon basin. For each hamburger that originated from animals raised on rainforest land, approximately 55 square feet of forest have been destroyed. And its not just the rainforest. In the United States, more than 260 million acres of forest have been clear-cut for animal agriculture. With increased per capita meat consumption, and an ever growing population, we can only expect to see more deforestation in the future.

And the global effects of meat consumption don’t stop on land. Animal production consumes an amount of water roughly equivalent to all other uses of water in the United States combined. Besides grains, animals need water to survive and grow until they are slaughtered. One pound of beef requires an input of approximately 2500 gallons of water, whereas a pound of soy requires 250 gallons of water and a pound of wheat only 25 gallons. And this is to say nothing of the poisonous runoff of agricultural farming into the oceans.

"Nothing will benefit human health and increase the chances of survival of life on earth as much as the evolution to a vegetarian diet." - Albert Einstein

And more than 1/3 of all fossil fuels produced in the United States go towards animal agriculture. Did you know that the production of one calorie of animal protein requires more than ten times the fossil fuel input as a calorie of plant protein?!? This means that ten times the amount of carbon dioxide is emitted as well. Considering how many people are starving on a daily basis in our world – billions – it is unconscionable to eat meat. You cannot justify this massive waste of land, water and resources, and the terrible carbon footprint meat consumption leaves. You just cannot. The only reason I have been proffered as to why someone eats meat is, simply, because “I like it, it tastes good.” That is NOT good enough. So what if you like it?!? What makes you so special? What makes your privilege of eating meat more important than another being’s right to life? Rapists love to rape, but that doesn’t make it acceptable. I love to lay in bed all day and eat cheese curls, but that doesn’t mean I will or can or should.

But there are many other reasons to stop eating meat. My husband, for example, became vegetarian a few years ago, on his own accord, and I could not be prouder of him, even though his reasons are different than mine. In the US, we were watching a documentary on PBS about mammal cognition, intelligence and emotion, and he suddenly realized he could not, in good faith, eat them. His protest, however, is a boycott of the meat industry itself. For example, if he ordered a dish in a restaurant that turned out to have meat in it, he would eat it, because the animal is already dead and he sees no point in wasting it. I, however, would refuse it (and I always ask about ingredients to avoid this, but slips happen) because I will NOT have animals particles in my body. And the sin upon the restaurant’s head for falsely representing their menu items.

It is much easier to be vegetarian in the UK than in many parts of America, in my experience, it should be said – this may very well come from the great numbers of Indians/ Hindus here, not to mention a concern for Halal & Kosher practices. All restaurants have multiple vegetarian offerings, and even the local sandwich shops have more interesting and inventive ideas about meat-free cuisine than one would expect. That being said, it is all but impossible to be vegan here. ALL vegetarian foods here are loaded with cheese, butter and mayonnaise, which is so frustrating for those of us fighting the battle of the bulge, not to mention for our vegan friends. There is a great respect for local, organic, humane farming practices here, which is a small step in the right direction. But don’t be fooled by this, the UK still engages in brutal, inhumane, mass-market meat “production” that puts those diabolical pork farmers in the American South to shame.

Ah, and now pork – SWINE FLU IS A RESULT OF THE MEAT INDUSTRY! If you eat pork and other farmed meat, you are, yourself, contributing to swine flu! Of course you cannot get such influenzas from eating meat, but they come from the meat production industry, via humans (pig farmers) who work with the animals. Are you proud of yourself? I should also point out that pigs are highly intelligent and have evolved great social skills.

“People should not be eating animals… Every so often Mother Nature takes an opportunity to remind us that eating animals and/or factory farming eventually bites us back.” - Bonnie Erbe, Thomas Jefferson Street blog.