Today there are more vegetarians and vegans than society has ever seen in the past. This means more people have chosen to eliminate animal products from their diets, but why?
A few of the most popular reasons come from concerns about animal rights, our physical health, and sustainability / environmental health (i.e. climate change).
Animal Rights
A common concern for vegetarians and vegans is animal cruelty. Most people understand that the animal industry does not engage in the kindest of practices. There are many groups on the national scale as well as smaller scale (like campus clubs) that fight for animal rights. These groups include PETA, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, which is the largest animal rights organization in the world. Another is SARO, Syracuse Animal Rights Organization, which is found locally on the Syracuse University and SUNY ESF campuses. Their work focuses on spreading awareness to the public about animal cruelty in places like factory farms, the fashion and cosmetic industry, and biomedical research.
Personal Health
The idea that being vegetarian/vegan is healthier for you has been reason enough for many people to change their diets. To begin, there is a lot of speculation about what happens behind the scenes in our animal agriculture industry. In order to keep up with the nation’s high demand for meat, the animals need to grow as fast and as big as possible. The feed given to the animals is made from genetically modified corn and/or soy along with added growth hormones and antibiotics to avoid the spreading of diseases. According to Kip Anderson from the documentary “Cowspiracy”, a normal chicken takes about 18 months to grow to it’s full size, whereas a chicken grown in an industrial manner reaches maximum growth in just 4 months, and are also twice the size of normal chickens.
The animals can easily get sick from living in cramped places, stepping on each other’s feces and spending the majority of time inside. For these reasons, all livestock are given antibiotics for preventive measures. Studies have shown that eating animal products can lead to certain cancers, heart disease, and more, according to scientist Frank B. Hu, from the American Society for Clinical Nutrition. The fact that unwanted nutrients and chemicals go into the consumer’s body is likely correlated to the high risk of developing these common health problems.
There is a general understanding of the fact that the antibiotics and hormones, and any other unnatural chemical that are used to raise animals today, are not particularly healthy for the people consuming them. Due to the fact that they are unnatural, meaning that these chemicals do not naturally occur in the animals, many people decide to stay away from meat. Some also argue that animal by-products (dairy and eggs, etc.) are just as affected by those unnaturally occurring chemicals as the meat, which why vegans argue to stay away from all animal products. Another immensely important issue to be aware of is the global antibiotic resistance pandemic; it is considered one of the most urgent issues of modern healthcare, and antibiotics for animals contributes to it.
A question that vegetarians/vegans often hear is how they get their protein. It is well known now that humans do not need animal meat to get a healthy and adequate amount of protein. Legumes and tofu are two popular ways vegetarians and vegans get their protein. Just like everyone else, vegetarians eat high protein content foods at two out of three meals a day on average. According to the American Society for Nutrition, 2014 health studies have shown that eating large amounts of animal protein leads to higher chances of cancer (any kind), but people on vegetarian diets have shown otherwise.
Sustainability and Climate Change
Another influential reason affecting people’s decision to become vegetarian/vegan is the fact that animal agriculture has one of the highest environmental footprints on the planet. Sustainability is a growing trend. Recently people are beginning to learn about the detrimental affects of animal agriculture on the environment.
One of the first things people learned about the animal agriculture industry was its contribution to climate change by means of methane emissions from cows. The natural digestive system of cows produces methane, a chemical compound that is much worse than carbon dioxide. Methane is about thirty times more effective at trapping heat in the atmosphere compared to carbon dioxide, according to a Princeton University scientific article. The over-consumption of beef is contributing to climate change simply because of raising cattle.
More resources are needed to support the supply chain of animal products compared to most other foods. Imagine all the water and feed required for cultivating animals, and the transportation of those materials. And then producing and manufacturing the products that go to the grocery stores, along with all the packaging that is involved. So much effort and resources are used for these products. In the United States, the animal agriculture industry emits more greenhouse gases into the atmosphere than the entire transportation sector (24% from agriculture versus 14% from transportation), according to the Environmental Protection Agency.
The documentary “Cowspriracy” (available on Netflix) is an excellent documentary that clearly explains the problems behind animal agriculture in the US, and it’s effects on our environment. In the documentary, Leila Salazar Lopez from Amazon Watch says that more than half of the deforestation of rainforests is cleared for livestock grazing and cultivating grain for feed. Deforestation contributes an enormous amount to climate change in a few ways. First, forests are critical for carbon sequestration, so clearing land for livestock eliminates a source of carbon sequestration. Second, regional weather patterns are effected because the presence of forests generate precipitation; some parts of Brazil and Indonesia are experiencing amazon droughts due to deforestation, and the consequences effect other parts of the world too, according to the World Wildlife Fun (WWF).
Our oceans are at risk, which potentially contributes to climate change too. Overfishing has caused many marine species to go extinct, which alters the ecosystem of certain areas; scientists can never fully predict what the effects of species extinction will be in any habitat (same applies for species extinction on land). Dead-zones, caused by agricultural run-off, are altering coastal lines. They are called dead-zones because all the nutrients from farmlands eventually end up in the ocean, where the abundance of nutrients causes the microorganisms on the water’s surface to reproduce at extremely high rates; this increases the amount of oxygen in the water, conditions in which marine animals cannot survive.
Understandably, there are also economic and business aspects that feed the problems of unsustainable agricultural practices. Corporate power does not take responsibility for production waste in order to increase profits, and unregulated business in the department of agriculture and agro-businesses are oriented toward business only, ignoring the environment. Corporate power is extremely influential in the U.S.’s political system, and unfortunately, corporate social responsibility is an overlooked topic. “Food Inc” is a documentary (available on Netflix) that explains in detail why the agriculture industry in America has so much political power.
Industrialized animal production has destroyed an enormous amount of natural resources on the planet. Today, about 3.4% of the United States’ population is vegetarian, according to the 2015 report from the Vegetarian Resource Group Blog. Imagine if the number was higher, or consumption decreased by half, how much carbon dioxide would be saved from the atmosphere. The problem with altering ecosystems is that we don’t know what the chain affect of our actions will have on the future. In order to be a good citizen of the world, decreasing consumption of meat sounds like an overall a good idea!
Thanks for reading!
- Camilla
Resources:
http://ajcn.nutrition.org/content/82/1/242S.full
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24898235
http://vitalsigns.worldwatch.org/vs-trend/agriculture-and-livestock-remain-major-sources-greenhouse-gas-emissions
http://www.vrg.org/blog/2015/05/29/how-often-do-americans-eat-vegetarian-meals-and-how-many-adults-in-the-u-s-are-vegetarian-2/
http://www.wwf.org.uk/where_we_work/south_america/amazon/amazon_and_climate_change.cfm
https://www3.epa.gov/climatechange/ghgemissions/global.html
www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/03/140327111724.htm
A few of the most popular reasons come from concerns about animal rights, our physical health, and sustainability / environmental health (i.e. climate change).
Animal Rights
A common concern for vegetarians and vegans is animal cruelty. Most people understand that the animal industry does not engage in the kindest of practices. There are many groups on the national scale as well as smaller scale (like campus clubs) that fight for animal rights. These groups include PETA, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, which is the largest animal rights organization in the world. Another is SARO, Syracuse Animal Rights Organization, which is found locally on the Syracuse University and SUNY ESF campuses. Their work focuses on spreading awareness to the public about animal cruelty in places like factory farms, the fashion and cosmetic industry, and biomedical research.
Personal Health
The idea that being vegetarian/vegan is healthier for you has been reason enough for many people to change their diets. To begin, there is a lot of speculation about what happens behind the scenes in our animal agriculture industry. In order to keep up with the nation’s high demand for meat, the animals need to grow as fast and as big as possible. The feed given to the animals is made from genetically modified corn and/or soy along with added growth hormones and antibiotics to avoid the spreading of diseases. According to Kip Anderson from the documentary “Cowspiracy”, a normal chicken takes about 18 months to grow to it’s full size, whereas a chicken grown in an industrial manner reaches maximum growth in just 4 months, and are also twice the size of normal chickens.
The animals can easily get sick from living in cramped places, stepping on each other’s feces and spending the majority of time inside. For these reasons, all livestock are given antibiotics for preventive measures. Studies have shown that eating animal products can lead to certain cancers, heart disease, and more, according to scientist Frank B. Hu, from the American Society for Clinical Nutrition. The fact that unwanted nutrients and chemicals go into the consumer’s body is likely correlated to the high risk of developing these common health problems.
There is a general understanding of the fact that the antibiotics and hormones, and any other unnatural chemical that are used to raise animals today, are not particularly healthy for the people consuming them. Due to the fact that they are unnatural, meaning that these chemicals do not naturally occur in the animals, many people decide to stay away from meat. Some also argue that animal by-products (dairy and eggs, etc.) are just as affected by those unnaturally occurring chemicals as the meat, which why vegans argue to stay away from all animal products. Another immensely important issue to be aware of is the global antibiotic resistance pandemic; it is considered one of the most urgent issues of modern healthcare, and antibiotics for animals contributes to it.
A question that vegetarians/vegans often hear is how they get their protein. It is well known now that humans do not need animal meat to get a healthy and adequate amount of protein. Legumes and tofu are two popular ways vegetarians and vegans get their protein. Just like everyone else, vegetarians eat high protein content foods at two out of three meals a day on average. According to the American Society for Nutrition, 2014 health studies have shown that eating large amounts of animal protein leads to higher chances of cancer (any kind), but people on vegetarian diets have shown otherwise.
Sustainability and Climate Change
Another influential reason affecting people’s decision to become vegetarian/vegan is the fact that animal agriculture has one of the highest environmental footprints on the planet. Sustainability is a growing trend. Recently people are beginning to learn about the detrimental affects of animal agriculture on the environment.
One of the first things people learned about the animal agriculture industry was its contribution to climate change by means of methane emissions from cows. The natural digestive system of cows produces methane, a chemical compound that is much worse than carbon dioxide. Methane is about thirty times more effective at trapping heat in the atmosphere compared to carbon dioxide, according to a Princeton University scientific article. The over-consumption of beef is contributing to climate change simply because of raising cattle.
More resources are needed to support the supply chain of animal products compared to most other foods. Imagine all the water and feed required for cultivating animals, and the transportation of those materials. And then producing and manufacturing the products that go to the grocery stores, along with all the packaging that is involved. So much effort and resources are used for these products. In the United States, the animal agriculture industry emits more greenhouse gases into the atmosphere than the entire transportation sector (24% from agriculture versus 14% from transportation), according to the Environmental Protection Agency.
The documentary “Cowspriracy” (available on Netflix) is an excellent documentary that clearly explains the problems behind animal agriculture in the US, and it’s effects on our environment. In the documentary, Leila Salazar Lopez from Amazon Watch says that more than half of the deforestation of rainforests is cleared for livestock grazing and cultivating grain for feed. Deforestation contributes an enormous amount to climate change in a few ways. First, forests are critical for carbon sequestration, so clearing land for livestock eliminates a source of carbon sequestration. Second, regional weather patterns are effected because the presence of forests generate precipitation; some parts of Brazil and Indonesia are experiencing amazon droughts due to deforestation, and the consequences effect other parts of the world too, according to the World Wildlife Fun (WWF).
Our oceans are at risk, which potentially contributes to climate change too. Overfishing has caused many marine species to go extinct, which alters the ecosystem of certain areas; scientists can never fully predict what the effects of species extinction will be in any habitat (same applies for species extinction on land). Dead-zones, caused by agricultural run-off, are altering coastal lines. They are called dead-zones because all the nutrients from farmlands eventually end up in the ocean, where the abundance of nutrients causes the microorganisms on the water’s surface to reproduce at extremely high rates; this increases the amount of oxygen in the water, conditions in which marine animals cannot survive.
Understandably, there are also economic and business aspects that feed the problems of unsustainable agricultural practices. Corporate power does not take responsibility for production waste in order to increase profits, and unregulated business in the department of agriculture and agro-businesses are oriented toward business only, ignoring the environment. Corporate power is extremely influential in the U.S.’s political system, and unfortunately, corporate social responsibility is an overlooked topic. “Food Inc” is a documentary (available on Netflix) that explains in detail why the agriculture industry in America has so much political power.
Industrialized animal production has destroyed an enormous amount of natural resources on the planet. Today, about 3.4% of the United States’ population is vegetarian, according to the 2015 report from the Vegetarian Resource Group Blog. Imagine if the number was higher, or consumption decreased by half, how much carbon dioxide would be saved from the atmosphere. The problem with altering ecosystems is that we don’t know what the chain affect of our actions will have on the future. In order to be a good citizen of the world, decreasing consumption of meat sounds like an overall a good idea!
Thanks for reading!
- Camilla
Resources:
http://ajcn.nutrition.org/content/82/1/242S.full
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24898235
http://vitalsigns.worldwatch.org/vs-trend/agriculture-and-livestock-remain-major-sources-greenhouse-gas-emissions
http://www.vrg.org/blog/2015/05/29/how-often-do-americans-eat-vegetarian-meals-and-how-many-adults-in-the-u-s-are-vegetarian-2/
http://www.wwf.org.uk/where_we_work/south_america/amazon/amazon_and_climate_change.cfm
https://www3.epa.gov/climatechange/ghgemissions/global.html
www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/03/140327111724.htm