A Vegetarian Manifesto
It may seem like a rash decision, but the other
day I became a vegetarian. I had never really given much thought to the option
of being a vegetarian at all before in my life. I had previously thought that
it would be fairly easy for me to avoid meat since I have never been a big meat
eater, but I never thought I would feel the need to not eat animals. I have
known that there are ethical issues involved with eating meat, otherwise why
would so many people decide be vegetarians? However, I have also known that
almost every food that we buy from the grocery store has been produced in
ethically questionable ways. In reality, unless I only eat food I grow in a
garden at my house or buy from a local small-scale farmer, my diet will inevitably
consist of foods that are grown or processed in ways that somehow hurt others. Since
I have known this to be true, I have chosen not to think about my food choices
in terms of how they were produced. I have usually chosen instead to ignore the
ethics of my food. It has been quite easy for me to choose to eat in ignorance
for my whole life. This does not mean that I have never eaten anything grown in
my own backyard or bought my food at a farmer’s market, but I have never exclusively
chosen to eat these foods over the foods bought from commercial producers in a
store. I have never really eaten by following any kind of distinct guideline
before.
I believe I have never considered vegetarianism
because while I knew that the animals that are raised for humans to consume live
in inhumane conditions I never really had to see them in these conditions or
actually addressed the problem. The problem was never visible to me so I didn’t
feel the need to fully recognize it. Although this is not the right way to view
any problem, to ignore something just because it isn’t visible, I still did. The
problem became visible to me however after watching the short documentary
called Food Inc in writing class. After seeing real cases of the terrible
production methods I had to acknowledge that animal cruelty in relation to food
production is an issue that is not completely ignorable. The 94-minute long
documentary showed vivid images of still living cows hanging by their feet on a
production line, chickens barely able to move because of malnutrition, and a group
of pigs being crushed by a large piece of metal. While some people may have
been able to push these images aside, after watching the movie I really was not
interested in eating one of those animals forced to live in misery and killed
in very inhumane ways. This is how I became a vegetarian two weeks ago in
writing class.
Although my conversion was based largely on
emotion, there are many rational arguments for vegetarianism. There are arguments
surrounding, not only animals’, but also workers’, rights to humane treatment
and to certain freedoms. There are also scientific health reasons to avoid
eating meat. You only have to look at the food pyramids that have been produced
over the years to see that smaller and smaller portions of meat, especially red
meat, have been recommended for a healthy diet in the more recent years. There
are even arguments proposing that universal vegetarianism would help combat
global warming by reducing the harmful effects that the meat industry has on
the environment.
In Michael Pollan’s article, “An Animal’s Place,” Pollan discusses
his reactions to Peter Singer’s book “Animal Liberation” and his views around
the treatment of animals. Pollan took a slightly different approach than I did
when faced with addressing the issue of animal treatment. While reading
Singer’s book and thinking about animal rights he was sitting down to eat a
steak; he addresses the irony of this, calling it “a good recipe for cognitive
dissonance (if not indigestion).” Pollan
questions some of the fundamental arguments against eating meat. He notes, for
example, that rights for animals and rights for people must be looked at
differently because we are biologically different. He also notes that predation
is a naturally occurring phenomenon so killing other animals is not simply a
cruel human practice. In regards to these differences in rights of humans and
rights of animals I think one of the more important quotes from Pollan’s
article is this one: “The moral idea is that everyone’s interests ought to
receive equal consideration, regardless of what abilities they may possess.’” This
quote suggests that just because a chicken does not have the capabilities that
a human has, it should still be free from pain and suffering and free to
participate in any lifestyle that it wants to rather than be forced to live in
awful conditions.
I agree with Pollan when he later discusses the idea that the
inhumane treatment of animals for consumption purposes is a fairly new
occurrence, and has become a big problem because of the way large production
plants are run. I like Pollan’s idea of being a “humanocarnivore,” or someone
who will eat meat only if they are certain that during the animal’s life they
were treated well, and that they were able to be free of pain and suffering.
Food Inc. played on this idea when they compared the techniques that farmers
raising animals for large companies used and the techniques that a small
independent farmer used. The independent farmer allowed his animals to have a
good amount of living space and to eat and live naturally unlike the other
farmers did. I like this “humanocarnivore” idea because, like Pollan, I do not
think that eating all meat is wrong or unnatural, but I believe the meat and
poultry industries act inhumanely and do not want to support their actions.
I also do not want to support the
meat and poultry industries because they not only remove animals’ freedoms to a
happy and healthy life, but these industries can be extremely unhealthy for the
workers as well. The article “Foul Trouble” by Christopher D. Cook discusses
the dangers found in poultry production plants for the workers. The workers are
at risk of disease through exposure to salmonella, bacteria, and blood. Exposure
to these substances is made even more dangerous because workers often have cuts
from the birds or from the tools they use. I found it to be very disturbing
that in some plants the workers have to kill the birds themselves by hand. Another
disturbing fact Cook brought up was that “OSHA also found that most employees
in the plants it surveyed were required to buy their own protective boots,
gloves, and aprons, necessities that many poultry workers- who typically earn
only $6.50 an hour- simply did without.” Not only are these workers underpaid,
they are not even given protective gear to attempt to avoid the many diseases
and injuries that their jobs put them at risk for.
Aside from the health and happiness of the
people and animals involved in the production and the eating of meat, the
industry’s effect on the environment, and on the world food supply, are
extremely significant. The amounts of carbon dioxide and methane that raising
and processing animals for consumption requires are excessive. The article,
“Fight Global Warming by Going Vegetarian,” gives a statistic that in itself
proves the inefficiency of the industry: “Producing one calorie from animal
protein requires 11 times as much fossil fuel input- releasing 11 times as much
carbon dioxide- as does producing a calorie from plant protein.” In the article
“Holy Cow: What’s Good for You Is Good for Our Environment,” Pan et al also
discuss the environmental impacts of the industry, stating that: “the animal
agribusiness generates more greenhouse gases than all forms of transportation
alone.” As we have been attempting
to solve global warming by using public transportation, switching to more
energy efficient light bulbs, or driving hybrid cars, the meat industry has
been largely contributing to the issue and many people have not had any idea to
what extent. The inefficiency of the industry is hurting the environment by
taking up huge amounts of land, causing deforestation, and emitting large
amounts of greenhouse gasses. This is undoubtedly another very good reason to
avoid eating meat.
After researching the meat and poultry
industries further, I know there are many more reasons to be vegetarian besides
the emotional reasons for which I decided to try vegetarianism. I do not
believe that people should never eat meat, or even that I should never eat meat
if the animal was humanely raised and killed. I do however, believe that the
meat and poultry industries as they exist today partake in many wrongdoings.
They are contributing to too many moral and global injustices for me to
support. I also know that these industries are not the only food industries
doing harmful things; the seed industry, and specifically the Monsanto seed
monopoly, for example hurts many farmers. Choosing to acknowledge this one
issue by avoiding meat is at least a start. I think the industry could be
reformed drastically to continue to cater to people’s eating needs but in a
much more humane way. In the article, “Is Universal Vegetarianism Feasible,”
Professor A. E. Taylor argues that it would be impossible for the whole world
to become vegetarian simply because we do not have the technology to produce
enough plant calories agriculturally to feed the entire world. While this may
be true, I think that we could at least decrease the amount of animals consumed,
since we have learned that meat consumption should not be a huge part of our diets,
as we once believed. With a decreased need for meat these huge plants that are
inhumanely raising and killing animals could be replaced with smaller farms
which treat their animals as living beings and not as items on a production
line as the small farmer in Food Inc. did. This might not happen anytime soon
however, so being vegetarian, or at least being what Pollan would call a
“humanocarnivore” seems like the best way to avoid to the meat industry for now.
Works Cited:
Cook, Christopher
D. "Fowl Trouble." Harper's Magazine Aug. 1999: 78-79.
"Fight
Global Warming by Going Vegetarian." PETA People for the Ethical
Treatment of Animals. Web.
<http://www.peta.org/issues/animals-used-for-food/global-warming.aspx>.
Food Inc.
Dir. Robert Kenner. Perf. Michael Pollan, Eric Schlosser, Richard Lobb. 2008.
"Is
Universal Vegetarianism Feasible?" JAMA The Journal of the American
Medical Association. American Medical Association, 18 Jan. 2012.
<http://jama.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?doi=10.1001/jama.2011.1912>.
Pan Et. Al.
"Holy Cow! What's Good for You Is Good for Our Planet." Www.archinternmed.com.
American Medical Association, 29 Apr. 2012.
<http://blackboard.du.edu/bbcswebdav/courses/2017.201230/Holy%20Cow%20-%20Ornish.pdf>.
Pollan,
Michael. "An Animal's Place." New York Times Magazine 10 Nov.
2002.
