Thanks for this info! It's really good, and useful.

Good article Stephanie. A 'delicate' subject that didn't even need a study to acknowledge.And Cecilia is so right. We need to learn to cook/eat good vegetarian food. Being in an Indian restaurant is amazing, you want flavors and aromas, and tastes. Amazing.  There is a great one in Berkeley. But they have to import all their ingredients. I recommend starting vegetarina cooking classes at say community colleges.

Also, sorry, but the picture got me. My uncle raised Jersey dairy cows, on grass. They were beautiful, gentle lovely creatures.  I got to feed calves with my cousin as our chore.None of their cows went to waste. They went on the table. But I guess they did produce a lot of methane. I wonder if anyone has done milk/methane study.

I rarely eat "red meat" because of all of the genetic altering and experimentation that has been on these animals.  My Spanish speaking friends REFUSE to eat "cows meat" raised in the USA because they say "it will KILL you".  I am beginning to believe they maybe on to something.

NOTE:  Vegetarian cooking can be quite simple to achieve, just substitute the meat with beans, Tofu, cheeses, veggies, rice or pastas.  The American Heart Association has great Cook Book with lots of tasty vegetarian receipes.  Check it out or Google: Vegetarian Reciepes.

Thanks for your notes, friends. Lee, the article indicates that this study was focused not just on cattle being raised for meat but on dairy cows as well. Cows are cows, of course, regardless what we're taking from them, and a dairy cow produces the same methane as a cow or bull being raised for flesh.

Looks like we were posting simultaneously, Leatrice. Something that I meant to add at the end of this post is that this isn't a reason to just start eating more pigs, chickens, and fish instead. Pig farming, chicken farming, and fishing & fish farming come with their own myriad environmental problems, not to mention cruelties. We don't need to eat them any more than we need to eat cows.

Also, you mentioned substituting cheese for meat. You may have noticed that the article refers to dairy cows and cheese as well--dairy farming is a significant part of the greenhouse-gas problem too (as I mentioned in the comment I was submitting at the same time as you, dairy cows produce methane just like beef cattle do), and it involves its own set of cruelties as well, which I've written about periodically on this blog.

Thanks for the link up there, Stephanie!
Still, I am wary of these efforts to mash virtuous issues together like Play Doh (tm).  

The primary cause of human-propelled global warming is burning fossil fuels for energy.  Agriculture's climate impact (whether it's organic or conventional ag) comes primarily in how much energy it uses, and how that energy is generated. 
So going vegan is a very indirect approach to curbing global warming.  If not for coal-fired power plants and diesel tractors, I suspect the atmosphere would be handling cow farts just fine!

I honestly don't consider this a "mashing together" of issues. Is it nice for the animal rights movement that scientific global warming studies suggest humans shouldn't be eating nearly so many animals? Yes. But that doesn't make the studies invalid. Perhaps if studies and reports such as this one and the one from the United Nations' FAO were coming from vegan or animal rights organizations, I could see that perspective. But when scientific organizations and studies that have no other "agenda" are putting out this information, I consider the information reliable.

You're assigning meanings to my post that are clearly not there.  I didn't argue against the reliability of the data or the findings.  But saying that going vegan will help solve global warming is a weak argument for supporting your animal rights goals.  

What if all this animal husbandry were supported with clean energy?  The climate change justification for going vegan would vanish.  What if people give up animal foods because they want to stave off climate change?  Then in 40 or 50 years, if we've managed to cut carbon emissions as much as we need to, then there's no reason for people NOT to go back to an omnivorous diet.

Emily, I'm sorry--I was reacting to the comment about "mashing" isues together, and I likely overreacted. But if these studies are reliable, why is saying that cutting out animals and animal products from the diet could help the global warming problem a "weak argument"? Don't these studies support the position that laying off animal ag would help significantly? Or are you saying that you have mixed feelings about my writing this on an animal rights blog? Sorry. I'm honestly not sure where you're coming from.

And I also don't believe that veganism would solve global warming all on its own--I think people need to make changes in all areas of their lives. But because people are so attached to their dietary choices, real diet change is a big difference people can make that doesn't get enough attention, even when someone such as Dr. Pauchari is recommending significant cutbacks in how much meat & dairy people consume or even when studies such as this one come out.

Even if all animal agriculture were supported with clean energy, that wouldn't wipe out all the many environmental problems with animal ag, and of course, that's one giant "if" too--supporting animal ag with clean energy is utterly impossible right now, and if it were to become possible, that's way off. On the other hand, widespread diet change and a reduction in animal ag is something that could happen now if people would talk about it more and get on board.

And naturally, I completely disagree that there would be "no reason for people NOT to go back to an omnivorous diet" if it did someday, in the future, become possible to support large-scale animal ag with clean energy. Environmental destruction and global warming are excellent reasons not to eat animals, but they're not the only ones of course.

Obviously this blog focuses more on animal rights and veganism than things like climate change, since it's not, after all, about climate change. I went vegan purely because I decided that consuming animals is morally insupportable for me. For a good while, I didn't really care about the environmental issues associated with veganism because they are not the essence of veganism and never will be. It is a good point that by emphasizing environmental issues in a frenzied attempt to save animals, we are very likely to get mass media proposing veganism as an environmental solution before an animal rights one. However, the environmental issues create an additional incentive go vegan and stay vegan. I think that once many people actually give up animal consumption, they will be more open to the related animal rights issues if they weren't to vegin with, just as I am more interested in the environmental issues now. The biggest hurdle for getting the world to go vegan is the fact that animal consumption is deeply rooted in not only industry, but custom. And when it comes to lifestyle changes, people are resistant on little moral basis.

Go vegan, ride a bike (or at least public transit), buy local and organic, buy bulk rather than packaged, use less energy, use less everything, buy used products, recycle, reuse, etc etc etc etc. No veganism is not the ONLY thing people need to do to help stop global warming. But it is one of the MAIN things.

I hear what Emily is saying.  It's similar to former veg'ns who have gone back to eating animal products because they buy into the "humane" food labels.  But in the case of Global Warming (for those who take it seriously), I think that problem isn't going to go away as easily as as the food industry hiding cruelty underneath "humane" labels.

But people who care about the environment or about Global Warming aren't likely to care about the treatment of animals.  So they need to know the other implications of animal agriculture on issues that matter to them.  

It takes all facets of an issue to reach all fronts.

As far as the "mashing together" goes, the only people I hear talking about the environmental implications of animal agriculture are the animal rights people.  I don't think I've ever heard it from the non-veg environmentalists.   And I consider the silence to be the elephant in their living room.

I'm still waiting for Al Gore to weigh in -- and to go veg. 

I would also like to hear more environmentalists speak uploudly about the collapse of the world's fisheries.  That may seem unrelated to cows, but it really isn't for two reasons:  First, when people decide to give up "red meat", they eat some other type of flesh.  And second, I heard in a keynote address by Paul Watson last summer, that about half of fish (or by-catch?) caught in the world goes to feed livestock.  It's mentioned in the last minute of this video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OZaFJWIUXSE&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j41pLFhS9OY&feature=related   

If I didn't think wasting 70% of the world's grain to feed livestock was bad enough, wasting fish on them is even worse -- considering scientists expect the oceans to be stripped by 2048, if the fishing industry doesn't change radically.


There are humanitarian consequences, too, but I won't "mash" in another topic.


It's all interrelated.  I do wish the various interest groups could coalition, and work for a comprehensive common cause in a way that wouldn't step on each others' toes.  

Obviously meat-eaters aren't going to talk about how their lifestyle is the source of environmental destruction. No one talks about that. The question is... what would they say if you brought it up? I mean, what's really troubling is change.org's Sustainable Food blog where I posted about meat not being sustainable and was basically told by the blogger to go where I was welcome.

The 2006 UN livestock report that says livestock produces 18 percent of the world’s greenhouse gasses is an excellent example of how easy it is to lie with statistics. For the full story of why those statistics are wrong, read

http://www.consumerfreedom.com/news_detail.cfm/headline/3742 The brief explanation is that they counted greenhouse gas emissions from all types of farm activities, whether related to livestock or not. The statistics are further skewed by the fact that the vast majority of the greenhouse gases being averaged into the total are from Amazonian jungle deforestation, not all of which is for farming purposes. No deforestation is taking place in the US – in fact, quite the opposite (for more than a century there has been an continual increase in overall US forest cover). This reduces the UN figure from 18 percent of greenhouse gases to 12 percent. But the EPA contradicts even this with its own figure of 6 percent as agriculture’s contribution to the US total, with the livestock-related portion being only 2.6 percent. Thus the amount any American farmer’s cow puts into the air is a tiny fraction of the publicly hyped figure. And consider this: if livestock farming disappeared overnight, vegetable and grain farming would have to increase to take its place. Since humans digest vegetables and grain less efficiently than meat, the replacement volume would be several times as much, and growing and transporting it would create at least as much greenhouse gas as the activity it replaced.

Government laws and policies must be based on facts -- coldly, logically, and evenhandedly researched. To merely accept the word of wildly emotional political factions with political axes to grind or to react in a knee-jerk manner to popular enthusiasms driven to a frenzy by propagandized "statistics," without checking facts and doing your own research, is simply unacceptable. The duty of government is to look to the long-term benefit of our country, a process which involves holding firm against politics and emotionalism and remaining calm and sensible. As should the citizens also. 

"Or just stop eating animals altogether. If you're going to cut down to once a week, why not go all the way?"
Sorry to all vegetarians and other anti-meat groups, but I have to quote the most over-quoted quote in the history of mother-quotes: "You are what you eat" - I'd rather base a diet around the meat of a strong animal than that of plants. (No offence intended there, just letting people know my position).
Now to my main point - to help reduce the effect cattle and some other livestock have on the environment, wouldn't it be wise to set up some sort of system to trap all these gasses? I know it's done already, but surely a change in routine or something could allow farmers to better catch the burps and farts of cows?

OK, I've read the article, I've read the links, and I'm trying to understand, so please please please, no flames. :-)

I confess to being a dedicated omnivore, although we do tend to go lighter on the meat and heavier on the veggies than most people we know. We raise a lot of the veggies we eat ourselves when we can - can't get much more local than that - and we've found that dairy generally disagrees with us unless it's been cultured. We've also discovered that our bodies cannot seem to tolerate soy well; tamari as a condiment is OK, but tofu, soy cheese, tempeh - BIG digestive problems.  Soy as a protein source doesn't work for us if we can't digest it. :-( Beans? Want to talk methane production? Enough said. (That was an attempt at humor. :-)) It's also easy enough to find negative information on soy: see here for one example: http://www.soyonlineservices.co.nz . (I know this link isn't the be-all and end-all - just posting it as an example of what else is out there.)

The article from Consumer Freedom doesn't seem to be making up statistics, at least at the beginning; its source is the EPA. And while Berman may be in the pockets of a number of groups skewing statistics, such skewing can happen in any direction; sensationalism and exaggeration aren't strictly the purvey of one side or another, of one cause or political position or another. He does bring
 up a number of points worth thinking about, whether or not you like his overall approach or agree with his ethics.

After some quick Googling on methane as a fuel, it seems that there has been and still is work on using it as a fuel, but some of its properties make it less than practical in many ways. The best source of lots of info on this seems to be wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Methane .

Thank you for the "food for thought" on how raising animals plays a part in the larger picture of our world and the issues we face. I may not agree with the premise, but I certainly cannot argue that we should all be taking a good hard look at what we eat, how much we eat, how it's grown and produced, and where it comes from - along with many many other things we can do to reduce our personal and collective carbon footprints.

The really significant issue on climate change and environmental degradation is not eating meat vs not. The problem is overpopulation. William Catton wrote a book called "Overshoot" about 30 years ago which make Stephanie's plea seem rather quaint and naive. There is no more morality in not eating meat than there is in not eating vegatables. The anthropomorphism in the Vegan philosphy is specifically that animals are more like humans than plants, therefore animals suffer more with their growing and slaughter than plants suffer with their growing and slaughter. Vegans apparently are willing to make a moral distinctions between killing and devouring different forms of life believing they have a better (morally superior?) idea of what should have to die that humans might live. Perhaps it would be appropriate for humans to become more like Buddhists and pray to every plant that must die so we might live to please forgive us. Or at least like the Zuni Indian in Frank Waters' "The Man Who Killed the Deer" to pray to the spirit of the animal that he has just killed to forgive  him, and for its spirit to bless him and his family who will eat him. My Tibetan Master taught me that we live on a warring planet. Not easy to escape as Vegan - or anything else.

If we eat a vegan diet,   the same as a cow,  Won't we produce additional methane??  I would bet some creative person can come up with a way to harvest the methane from our farm animals and reduce our need for imported oil. 

Sorry, all you vegans out there, but you really need to get a life.  First of all, the article is not factual and there is a difference in the benefits of grass fed cattle and those that are confined to a feedlot eating who knows what.  The confined cattle produce more methane gas than grass fed cattle, the same gas production as in humans when you eat certain types of food that causes the human body to produce more gas..same is true in animals.  Also, the article makes no mention to the benefits that the green pasture has on the climate especially if chemical fertilizers are not used. Also, if everyone was a vegan, that means that more vegetables would have to be produced, more tractors, more chemical fertilizers, less green pastures to benefit the climate, but more pollution.  So what effect would that have on the climate?  And, what happens to all the cattle?  Do they just roam around the country, still emitting methane gas?  Or do the animal right activists just kill them all off?  Get real, please.

I fail to see what's so bad about "going back to the days of the sunday roast." That's pretty much what I do already.

Eating grass-fed beef is a good source of protein, vitamins and minerals.

Most Americans eat a disgusting 1 lb of meat a day. I eat that much in a week or so. Eating moderate amounts of (more expensive) meat is perfectly logical. Moreover, even if we all switched to being vegan, that wouldn't necessarily be good for the environment either, since in some areas food would have to be shipped ridiculously far, itself a carbon toll on the environment. Studies have also indicated that farming without animal compost (e.g., using only plant compost to restore soils) is not sustainable, certainly at least in certain areas.

Absolutely outstanding article (again!). Non-Vegans love to use all sorts of excuses for abstaining from killing.  Such as not referring to animal slaughter as murder, killing etc. But we know denial is not a river in Egypt.  I'm going to send this article to a local author who writes in our small town newspaper occasionally.  She waxes on being the best of environmentalists but doesn't agree with Vegetarianism.  Obviously being ignorant of the connections between climate change and enslavery of billions of suffering animals, this article may help. Unfortunately, the river denial is crammed with people rowing to nowhere, content to live in their ignorant cocoons.  Peace begins nowhere else but at the dinner plate!

"I'm still waiting for Al Gore to weigh in -- and to go veg."

It's going to take a lot more than this article to push people over the edge; people love "their" meat and are militant defenders of their right to eat dairy. For most people there is no substitute for a slab of meat as it comes off the barbecue, and it's far more "natural" than a tofu dog. Besides, acres of rainforest are being razed to plant soybeans and vegetables, and people are coming out against planting the vegetables, too. Clearly there are no easy answers.

I tend to think that reducing human population is just as important as reducing cattle population, but with 6.7 billion people now on the face of the earth--up from 3 billion in 1968) that's clearly an unpopular viewpoint.

A farmer/omnivore's perspective:

As a farmer and former vegetarian who now eats meat, I have a different take on this article.

First, the study above discussed conventional vs.
organic farming. Animals raised to meet  organic
standards are not necessarily  "grass-fed".
Sustainable farmers now understand that a grain based diet for  ruminants was a mistake, and  we are working to correct that.

On that note, I'd like to share this link to a recent
Cornell study:
"Diet for small planet may be most efficient if it includes dairy and a little meat, Cornell researchers report"

http://www.news.cornell.edu/stories/Oct07/diets.ag.footprint.sl.html

For folks who dislike following links, the bottom line of the study found that  fruits, vegetables and grains must be grown on high-quality cropland.

Meat and dairy products  can be produced on lower quality, marginal lands that are not suitable for growing crops.  

So while vegetarian diets in New York state may require less land per person, the type of land they require is high value and limited.

From the standpoint of global  footprints,  allo acres are not created equal.

"The key to conserving land and other resources with our diets is to limit the amount of meat we eat and for farmers to rely more on grazing and forages to feed their livestock."  says the coauthor of the study.

That Cornell study mainly focuses on the footprint required by our dietary choices. The following study is more directly related to greenhouse gases:

"Can Cattle Save Us From Global Warming?

A small band of activists and scientists believe that farming done the right way can remove carbon from the atmosphere."

http://www.worldchanging.com/archives/008338.html

This article says, "The central idea in carbon farming is moving the animals frequently—as once happened with wild herds chased by predators—so grasses are not gnawed beyond the point of natural recovery and plant cover remains to fertilize the land and sequester carbon."

In this scenario, farts and burps are not only canceled out, but additional carbon from other sources is sequestered, as well.

Of course, both studies agree that current rates of  meat and dairy consumption should be curtailed  -
and that the agricultural model should shift animals off of grain and on to grass.

This is ridiculous! Eating animals is no more un-natural than eating plants.  Whether it is a animal or a plant it is still a life form.  The real proplem in the world is over population, if all you vegans really want to make a difference then quit having babies.  The less people in the world the less rescourses you will use to support those people, which in turn will mean less polution.  I like that part in the movie "The Matrix" where the computer classifies the human species as a virus.  I am not going to stop eating meat that will not save this planet. 

Grass fed cattle do not have such a large carbon footprint as grain fed.  The pasture and grasslands they need actually are a carbon sink, trapping carbon dioxide.  They lead happier live and are more healthy for humans to eat.  As others have noted above, it takes more cropland to feed a vegan than it does to feed an omnivore. It is true that CAFOs are inhumane, unhealthy and unsustainable, but eating a moderate amount of properly raised meat is sustainable and healthy.  
On the topic of overpopulation--Unfortunately, the responsible people who see that there is a problem and choose to not have children are often the people who *should* be parents, because they *are* responsible people and would raise their children well.  I have no answers for that dilemma.
Slightly off topic:http://www.businessandmedia.org/arti...225213407.aspx

Read also: The Cheeseburger Footprint
http://openthefuture.com/cheeseburger_CF.html

Too bad your numerous pets are not vegetarians. How much of the meat industry exists to feed pets?
Although eating too much of the wrong meats can be dangerous to your long term health, for example clogging of arteries from fat/cholesterol that will eventually cause strokes and heart attacks, the belief that the 'average person' eats too much meat is IMHO wrong. Only the well off can afford meat to excess.  In fact the average person (who is also overweight) consumes too many carbs that come from the likes of wheat products that are in virtually everything.  
The real cause of global warming is unknown, but we contribute to it in other ways. A more reasonable way to reduce it would be to limit the amount of fuel and warming we permit to heat and light millions of unoccupied buildings nights, weekends and on holidays, and allow for large illuminated signs.  (Transmission lines and transformers also create heat.)
Another meaningful and manageable way to reduce global warming would be to not allow trees to be cut down to create toilet paper.

There's been some talk about soy as a substitute for meat, and Deb mentioned the fact that soy can be difficult to digest. I personally avoid soy products as much as I can (though once in a while eat them). Not only can soy be difficult to digest, soy products have been found to alter the body's hormonal balance (though fermented soy products such as tempeh or miso are an exception/generally recognized as beneficial to the body.)  

I find soaked nuts to be an amazingly delicious ingredient in vegan recipes. If you're looking for a whole lot of amazing vegan recipes that utilize nuts as a base, raw food is the way to go. I highly recommend Alissa Cohen's cookbook for starters- http://www.alissacohen.com/ And another amazing one is Juliano's The Uncook Book (the most beautiful Vegan recipes this lifetime vegetarian has *ever* seen/tasted).
http://shire.symonds.net/~planetraw/ecart/product_info.php/cPath/63/products_id/31?osCsid=423670b9341baf6985e77f9d181aa06c 

As a child, and even an adult I was often asked (much to my annoyance): Well where do you get your protein if you don't eat meat? Protein needs are actually met far easier than one might think (just about every food contains it). My understanding is that the western diet (vegetarian or not) contains too much protein.

Everyone needs to make their own decision about what they eat (obviously) but I highly suggest that you consider alternatives if you're eating a lot of cooked food. It's been shown that vegetarians generally don't live much longer than meat eaters. I believe this is because of all the cooked, denatured food we eat.

I ate all raw for 6 months and never felt better in my life. I've decided not to limit myself to raw, but am still very intrigued by the lifestyle.

Here are some more links to get you started, if you too would like to explore what others are doing around raw food:
http://www.rawveganradio.com
http://www.rawfamily.com (amazing family who emigrated from Russia and cured themselves of debilitating and life threatening diseases with raw food, after being on the SAD diet.
http://www.shazzie.com (another amazingly inspiring raw fooder)

I am glad someone else brought up grass feeding cattle. Doing so can actually SEQUESTER CARBON.

See:http://www.indyweek.com/gyrobase/Content?oid=oid%3A194735

And: http://carbonfarmersofamerica.com/

I just want to add that the Juliano book I linked to is pricey because it's an autographed version. I'm sure you can get it cheaper without his autograph.

It is not "necessary" to eat meat, I've been a vegetarian since 1967.  Why should we slaughter and eat other animals?

Further, a plant-based diet can be a lot less expensive.

I respect your request, Stephanie, because I know you have personal connections to that person and she shares a job on the same website as you do, but I honestly think that's the only reason because you seem to have no qualms going after the one person that is Temple Grandin and her job. Some George Bush supporters get offended when I start criticizing Bush... in fact, they seem to take criticism as disrespect. I really don't like this line of thinking. Asking for respect is one thing, but asking not to criticize is another. Not that I have anything else to say about that blogger right now anyway.

With all due respect, M Scho, it sounds like being a farmer is far more important to you than treating animals well. I am sure you sound not entirely unlike plantation owners of the 1800s who obviously could claim to produce more than farms where workers were treated relativiely well.

I don't really like how this post seems to elicit from meat-eaters descriptions of animals as mere objects of consumption to save or not to save the environment. If we are going to have a discussion about animal rights with environmentalism, then it has to be both at the same time.

Hasn't anyone noticed that plants breathe CO2 and produce O2? It is apparent to me that the problem is that we have denuded so much of the Earth that the CO2 is not consumed by plants and escapes to the upper atmosphere. The solution is to grow morw plants. How about atarting your own produce gardens. Eat organically grown plants, save the cost of energy to deliver your food to you and your plants will consume CO2 and relaese O2 for you to breathe.

Luella said, "With all due respect, M Scho, it sounds like being a farmer is far more important to you than treating animals well."

I have a hard time figuring out how you came to that conclusion.
I said nothing about my farm and merely cited a few contradictory studies.
 
As I said, I am a former vegetarian. I fancied myself on some ethical and moral high ground.

Then I bought a farm in moved into the nature. I saw first
hand how crops are grown. I saw how many baby bunnies are starved when momma is decapitated by crop planting and harvesting machinery. I saw fawns and nesting birds mutilated and die and slow agonizing death in the field.

I realized what an ignorant "citiot" I had been to have the illusion that my eating vegetables meant no other life form would suffer or die for my expense.

If you are above ground on this planet, you are displacing wildlife, the food you eat, whatever it is, is taken at the expense of someone else. 

BTW, I don't raise animals for meat, so perhaps if the vegans want a meaningful discussion with "the other side" you should attempt to rein in your assumptions.

If you really want to be green, start eating humans.  There's plenty of bottom feeders on this planet.  That would reduce the number of cows needed to feed the world as well as human feces and effluviation gas.  Soylent green is people !

No, it doesn't matter if you raise Organiclly or conventionally.  What matters if is you give them GRAIN!!!  Grian is not a natural food of rumenants... orgaic or conventionally raised grain, it doesn't matter.  The stuff that grows in the pasture, grasses, forbs, weeds, clovers.... THAT is the natural diet of a a pasture animal. If you feed them grains, the pH in the digestive tract drops. 

What happens to you if YOU get an acid stomach?  You get gas, just like a cow!  THAT is the problem!  MY cattle do NOT have a significant amount of gas.  They have no more than you or I.  It is not normal or natural for cattle to have gas.  It is unnatural & cruel to put the cattle thru that!  It is the cause of many cattle not being able to walk when they get to the slaughter house.  The acid GI tract that they've had their entire lives fianlly eats thru their intestine wall.  That's when they rush the animal to slaughter, before it dies.  The intestinal content is spilling out into the abdomen.  If you had your intesional content flooding your abdomen, could YOU walk?
Pasture animals, who life on pasture, don't have this problem.  They are happy & healthy.  MY animals NEVER see a peice of grain that isn't attached to a plant.  They might eat the plant, but they leave the seed head for the chickens. 

Would you have me kill my 18 cattle and 92 sheep & goats?  They are happy & healthy living out on my pasture, with never a bite of grain & never a gas problem.

I wouldnever become a vegan, these animals were bread to become food and it's been that way for hundreds of thousands of years. If all animeals have rights, what's next? plant rights? then we'd have anything to eat

I agree with John Weibel's 3/1/09 comment. Carbon sequestration makes all the difference. All of the other comments that I read here did not take this into accout.

I certainly understand the ethical reasons for vegetarianism.  I was vegetarian for over a decade, until my health required a return to eating meat.  Now, when I go too long without red meat, my body craves it.

When cattle are grazed using proper field rotation, the grass becomes a highly effective method for removing carbon from the air and putting it back into the earth.  Root formation of the grass is optimized, so atmospheric carbon basically gets stored in the ground as plant material, which then decays and enriches the soil.

Several May 2008 postings to the following blog discuss this issue.  The URL for one of these postings is below.  For anyone who is interested in truly understanding this issue, it is worthwhile putting the effort in to really understand this material.  Following farming methods like these could actually make a substantial improvement in the global warming problem.  Using COWS.

http://whataretheissues2008.blogspot.com/2008/05/putting-carbon-back-where-it-belongs-in.html

An example of a working farm successfully and profitably following these principles is Polyface Farm.  They sustainably produce enormous quantities of high quality food, primarily a variety of animal products.  http://www.polyfacefarms.com/

I do agree with some of the comments that a return to livestock farming based on pasture grazing animals would require more land, and would essentially require that overall less meat be consumed.  But that would not be a catastrophic requirement.

If you actually read the blog postings mentioned above, desertified land can actually be RECLAIMED, including a return of ecologically natural plants and water features.  The Soil Carbon posting with the URL given above shows examples of this.

Cows are neither the enemy, nor the source of the problem here.  The unsustainable farming methods of the people have caused the problem.

Sandra

The idea of organically grown meat effects on climate is negligible and was never a big selling point to meat eaters. The idea that it is healthier to eat than hormone fed meat was the selling point. The way organically raised cows live is more humane.  So don't throw the baby out with the bath water.  Organic is much better.  Big corporate farms are bad for far too many reasons to mention here.  Meat eaters aren't going anywhere any time soon so stop dreaming about that.

A very useful info!

I hope there will be more and more useful and enlightening information like this available for the public in the future.

Thank you very much for providing this!

Right on, Stephanie, but you overlooked one thing.
The population is increasing dramatically. Even if
the meat consumption per person goes down, the
cow problem is sure to go up (less meat per person, but many more people ....).
Of course, if we do nothing about population, the problem will take care of itself (think WWIII).

   Thank you John Weibel, you have a fantastic point! There is far too much attention to conventional factory farmed V.S. conventional organic factory farmed. Virtually NO information is given on organic Grass-Fed livestock, raised according to their natural diet and life. No cow I have seen would just naturally eat grains, bypassing all grass or greens.

   My dad, my husbad and I cannot sustain good health with a vegan or vegetarian diet. We purchase naturally-raised, grass-fed organic meat as much as possible. Unfortunately, we have to purchase conventional organic meat once in a while. We vote with our dollars and support small local farms as much as possible.

   Our biggest problem with the climate issues related to food is that food has become an industry for profit rather than healthy sustenance for people. Take back the small farms, support organic, sustainable farming and we will have better carbon sequestering and healthier foods for everyone.

I'm sorry, but this "article" is rather ridiculous.

First, it doesn't appear that a definition of "organically" is included.  Many suspect that it is not the cows that are the problem, but whether they are fed grain or grass, the latter being their natural diet.  Only a fool would expect to see a difference in the cows' emissions when the only difference is corn laden with pesticides or corn without; why didn't they test grass-fed cows with corn-fed cows?  Not to mention that the grass that such cows would eat might well negate the emissions (if any) that the cows produce. 

And if you refuse to accept this point, then you are essentially saying that the buffalo which roamed the American plains unimpeded for thousands of years were major polluters.  I think I need not point out how silly that sounds. 

Second, I couldn't help but react to the suggestion that eating meat is selfish.  For those who are unaware, life is a cycle in which life begets more life.  Almost every other organism on the planet consumes some other life form to perpetuate its own existence until the time that it, too, perishes and thereby becomes part of other organisms.  This is the cycle of life. 

This is why in many cultures and religions killing animals was considered a "sacrifice" whereby the people recognized and paid homage to the fact that the animal sacrificed itself so that we might live.  The deceased animals were respected and revered.  Kosher laws, for example, forbid harming animals or raising them in inhumane conditions and require that the animal be killed with the least amount of pain possible.  Native Americans employed similar rituals with respect to the animals they killed for food. 

Third, what is the alternative to cow products in particular or animal products in general?  Many if not most vegans and vegetarians rely on soy as their source of protein.  A little known fact, however, is that Brazil, the world's second largest producer of soy products, is clearing rainforest by the acre everyday to do what?  Plant soybeans for your tofu and Foturky.  I first became aware of this fact years ago while reading "National Geographic."  So anyone eating tofu and other soy products may well be contributing to the destruction of the rainforest (and I need not tell you what kind of impact THAT has and will continued to have on our planet as a whole). 

In short, this sort of article is essentially worthless.  If merely provides more fodder for the dogma of avoiding all animal products.  Instead of relying on this without hesitation, we ought to question whether natural means of raising cattle--which are far more humane anyway--would avoid this problem.  That way we could have pastures of grass to clean the air, acres of rainforest in South America, and still derive the benefit of the beef. 

Billions of animals are slaughtered every year, but not all the meat or animal products are not consumed.  Is there any statistics of how much goes to waste and the impact on the environment it has also?

I guess the first premise I'd challenge here is the notion is that people judge themselves as more virtuous or ethical, solely based upon what they put into their mouths. Jesus said it's what comes out of your mouth that condemns you, not what goes in. People in the Bible ate meat, going so far to say that "a weak man eats vegetables while a strong man can eat anything." There are amino acids in meat generally not found in sufficient concentration in vegetable products-- carnosine for the heart, taurine for the eyes, etc., and minerals (zinc.) Also the ability to adjust to a vegan or even vegetarian diet depends upon beiochemical individuality (genes, DNA.) There are northern tribes who have lived on whale blubber and seals (including organ meats, for their vitamin C) for generations.
Not too much foliage near the poles. These people probably couldn't make a comfortable transition to veganism in their lifetime, and their climatary circumstances wouldn't make it very convenient either. Do not presume that everyone can be happy and healthy as a vegan just because you can, also don't presume that just because you're a vegan at a young age, that you won't incur deficiencies later (B-12, etc.)

OK the next premise is that factory animals (or organic, free range) are contributing to methane on this planet. Sure they are, as did US herds of buffalo in past generations, and wildabeast in Africa, to this day. When man doesn't regulate wildlife, they reproduce anyway, to the limits the land and food supply will allow. And carnivores generally choose meat
over veganism, when left to their own devices (for all you  owners trying to make your carnivorous pets more "ethical.")
I would suggest that it's the number of people rather than the number of animals (oops, I guess we're animals too!)  that are contributing to the methane "problem." (Which presumes that the Creator simply cannot manage the planet without our fretting and laws.)

Perfectly possible to be a vegan or vegetarian with arthritis if you eat cooked foods. And yet chinese Medicine says that "too much raw food ruins the stomach."

I should paint a blue dot on my nose and work hard to convince the world that the blue dot makes me more virtuous and ethical than you all. You MUST paint a blue dot on YOUR nose to be as ethical as me. If you want to eat less meat, or none at all, have at it, but please, please stop telling me what a holy, virtuous & ethical person you are, because apart from the single-minded importance you place upon what you put in your mouth, I don't believe you. Really, get a life, and get over yourselves.

Also I concur with a previous poster: if you really favor the animals, then stop replicating, because every human being's material needs displaces huge habitat for Bambis and bunny rabbits.

Free energy (over-unity) is real and could be used to fix a lot of the problem over which so much hand-wringing has occurred, on the part of UN/World-bank/IMF who have very different agendas than they let on. Some of us were working in this area (and doing the vegan experiment too) before it became chic or obtained public attention. There's nothing new under the sun, not even your vegan arguements.

Nobody really knows the reason for global warming, but with that said, I agree with the importance of living in such a way as to have as little negative impact on this world as possible.  I doubt that ending cattle farming would have any significant effect on the climate, but it would allow us to feed more people less expensively, because those fields now used for production of animal feed could be used to raise plants for people to eat. 

On the subject of greenhouse gases, in particular carbon dioxide, I would like to make a point that always seems to be overlooked in these discussions.  From our grammar school science books we learned that carbon dioxide is a byproduct of breathing and is needed by plants to grow.  Unless we all want to hold our breaths for a very long time, it would make sense to increase the number of plants in relation to number of animals and people, if we want to reduce the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.  Methane is another issue. 

Now I have a question for all of the vegans out there.  How do you get vitamin B12 into your diets?  I know a couple of people who went vegan and after a few years ended up severely deficient in B12 to the point of needing injections of the vitamin.  I would like to know what plant products (if any) contain this vitamin in a sufficient quantity to ward off deficiency.

After we deal with automotive and industrial pollution, and realize that beef production is environmentally unsound, as well as ethically and morally wrong, then we can begin to understand and appreciate the real beauty of the milk cow, and of the ox who plows and provides labor.

One more time, with feeling, for the people who keep making this argument: deforestation of the Amazon is not happening for the sake of vegans' tofu--most of this deforestation happens for cattle ranching, and most soy grown goes to feeding livestock, not humans.

Perhaps we ought to try to harness the power of these methane gases that are being emitted instead of trying to reduce them. Methane could be used as a fuel perhaps? =)

As far as I am concerned, organic and sustainable refer to "life."  When some living being is killed, how that is sustainable?  Hunting is for the warriors amongst us.  How we can have a milk-toast cop?  When you need help, you need help, and hunting is how warriors become strong and courageous and unafraid of the sight of blood. Wholesale slaughterhouses are so sissy.  There is no sport, no challenge, nothing.

The lesson to be learned is:  "All things in moderation" and that goes for human reproduction, too!  I'm pleased that overpopulation (the elephant in the room that rarely gets enough attention) has been discussed a couple times on this thread.  But really, it's all about excesses. 

My father used to argue, "It's the ability to consume that has made this country great".  I think our current little economic collapse has shown that consumption does have its dark side, as well.  For decades, we've all been indoctrinated by the motto:  "Have it your way".  Not only can we have it our way, but we have as much as we want, 24 hours a day - and if we're still not satisfied, all we have to say is, "Supersize it"!

The earth is approaching critical mass and it's showing in every conceivable way.  There are just too damn many of us, and unfortunately, there is a very small minority of humanoids that is consuming a disproportionate amount of resources.

Let's all try to encourage our fellow human being whenever we can.  Positive feedback works wonders - much more effective then chastisement or badgering.  We all have our dirty little consumption secrets.  The vegan who drives to market in the SUV, the non-car owner who simply has to have the latest titanium bike, (the mining of titanium being one of the most environmentally destructive processes of all).  And, what if we measured the carbon footprint effect with each flower bouquet given this past valentine's day?

Let's face it, we need to pressure this planet with less people and with less disposable/flushable/etc consumption.  Maybe here in Maine, we simply can't buy strawberries in January (flown up from Chile) and maybe in Texas, the dude ranch can't have lobster flown in from Maine.  But that'll never happen, because there's a little of the Roman Emperor in all of us.  Peel me a grape, hon, and make sure that grape is the organic variety from Australia.

I'm a 95% vegan by choice - not political or environmental, but as a healthy choice.  Besides, many years ago, I ran an intensive swine confinement operation in Pike County, Missouri and I could tell enough horror stories about what's injected, and what's not disclosed, that you would swear off meat entirely.  But, that would be using fear tactics.  I prefer to applaud good choices.  Let's all try to be "forces for good", and let's all applaud and encourage moderation - especially human breeding!

You know what I hate most about veganism? The fact that so often it requires you to miss the forest for the trees.  A vegan reads the above study and thinks, "See, I'm right!" and doesn't consider that a grass-fed cow does NOT produce excessive methane.  They say we should all be vegan and don't stop to consider that it is IMPOSSIBLE to run a sustainable farm without animals. On a proper farm, the grass feeds the animals and the animals feed the crops and the grass.  It's a sustainable cycle, and without animals the cycle is broken.

I guess my point is that we could be lobbying for REAL solutions, such as denouncing industrial farming practices as a whole and supporting farmers who do it right, instead of thinking that vegetarianism or veganism is the only answer, or even a real answer at all. I would wager that supporting grass-based farmers does a whole lot more to help global warming than eating processed meat-substitutes does (how many fossile fuels to you think went into extracting, distilling and texturing that Textured Vegetable Protein?).  And industrially farming vegetables kills MORE animals than sustainable meat farming does, whether it's the machinery hacking apart songbirds or pesticides poisoning the wildlife in the area, including the bugs, or the chemical fertilizers washing away and causing algae blooms, suffocating fish hundreds of miles away.

Very few of us have ever worked on a farm anymore.  It is our distance from animals in day-to-day life, our utter unfamiliarity with anything but a cat or dog, that allows both the extreme cruelty that exists in our factory farms (and that everyone who eats conventional meat implicitly condones) and the ridiculous anthropomorphisation that occurs on the vegan side of things. Sure, I am all for eliminating the cruel conditions of factory farming, passionately so, but that doesn't mean I think a cow has some deep need to be free rather than munch happily on grass all day and have a farmer milk her in the morning and evening, or that a chicken feels exploited by having her infertile eggs taken while she's out pecking at bugs and grass in the meadow.  Or even that a cow has some sort of right to not be eaten after a life of health and happiness and being properly cared for on a sustainable grass farm. That cow would not exist at all were it not going to be eaten, it would be much less healthy and happy if we weren't looking after it, and if we didn't eat it something else would (in a far more cruel fashion), or else it would starve from overpopulation.  It's the ciiiircle of liiiiife! And it moves us all!

I will grant that an animal has the right not to suffer, and I can even understand the vegetarian viewpoint that it's wrong to kill them, even if I don't agree with them, but that is where common sense stops. Veganism is part of the problem, not the solution.

Eating meat is termed selfish because it takes tons of grain to produce a few pounds of meat, when that same grain can feed many more people than can the meat it produces.  Also, raising beef degrades the environment.  I've heard that the west used to be beautifully green and lush.  Then came the beef industry and now we have deserts.  Amazing but true.
If you want meat, why not go hunting.  Then when the enemy comes, we can put you on the front line and you can protect us, with your courage and strength and lust for blood.  In addition, it is also said that animal slaughter is the cause of war.  Just where do you think you can hide the reactions for all that death?  Under the rug?  Think again.  In order for the whole planet not to split apart, that pressure has to be released.  That release is called war.

Thank you Kristen. Very well said. To add to it the fact that most people would be very ill and die without meat, is just another perspective no one is talking about.
As for you, Richard Michael Boyden, this old argument has been shot down many times and I don't care to repeat the proofs. Do your homework. One ounce of meat gives your the nutrition of so many pounds of grains, and grains will kill most of us long term. If you can't eat it raw is ain't food.Grains are responsible for most of our degenerative diseasesand eating them instead of meat won't solve the environmental problems for this and the reasons mentioned by Richard and by myself in an earlier post.

To the person who stated "you are what you eat" and feels that meat makes one a stronger person because animals are strong- What do cows eat? What do horses  eat? Why grasses of course. Aren't they both among the strongest mammals in the world? 
Dead food takes away from the body's enzyme reserves. Live food contains the enzymes necessary for digestion. This is why the carnivorous animals eat live animals (except for the scavengers such as vultures who don't appear to be as strong). 
And to the person who says cows who eat grasses don't have problems with gas, interesting point. 

From my perspective all players in the web of life, plants, microorganisms, animals (including humans) are ultimately on the menu of other players in the web.  All living bodies gather and redistribute nutrients and impact the web of life with their activities.  I too have children who will, I hope, be able to spend their lives sharing a peaceful, healthy, biodiverse planet with the children of all other humans. 
I would like to bring to your attention that large numbers, (very, very, very many of them) of large grazing herbivores with their mouths, rumens, hooves and social behaviors are an essential ingredient of healthy lands in seasonal rainfall environments. Because of imbalances caused by human decisions and behavior and the continued presence of humans as a factor in the Ecosystem, if we wish for human life to continue to survive, it is critical that we effectively manage these animals to restore biodiversity that can sustain larger life on earth. In this light, manageable grazing herbivores, like cows, are not just meat and all the other products we derive from them as they cycle through the web of life, but can be powerful agents for the restoration and maintenance of biodiversity. 
Proper management of land (remember grazing herbivores are an essential ingredient) can build healthy soils which slow, absorb, clean and cycle water back into life. Healthy soils, which are complex living communities, also gather, process, store and cycle minerals making them available for the growth of future generations of living entities. Plants covering healthy, life covered lands, through the pulsing of their life cycles, remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and store it safely underground as carbon for long periods of time by the gigatons when nature's processes are flourishing.  Plants and animals also gather, repackage and store solar energy in service to the web of life 
Yes, our agricultural practices both conventional and organic must be revisited.  A new agriculture is required.  The good news is that there are proven approaches that offer real hope in sustaining life and helping deal with global warming.  Drastic reduction in the numbers of cattle is not one of them.  A change in how we humans make decisions and orient in relation to the whole of life may well be.
I recommend taking a calm and open mind on a visit to: www.holisticmanagement.org.  On the home page left side menu click on "Chat with Allan" and there read the article: A Global Strategy for Addressing Global Climate Change.  Some time invested in visiting on the site and reading "Holistic Management, A New Framework for Decision Making" (Island Press 1999) might greatly enhance your effectiveness as an agent in behalf of a life sustaining planet.

VEGANISM is the answer for world health, environment and peace!! Not only does the extra extra population of cows and people produce a lot more methane than all cars in the world combined, but also the worst polution, waste of resources and main cause of forest devastation. You know what, I would love to see a psychology study on why dairy/meat-eaters are SO defensive when it comes to this subject... Who cares if we need meat or not of if our ancestors mstreated animals? What does that matter now? It's been proven we don't need to rely on anything from animals. People gotta stop looking at the past and look to the future!
In our modern society there's just NO EXCUSE to mistreat animals. It's your choice: peace or war?

Very timely - Vitamin B-12 deficiency tied to neural tube birth defects : http://www.usatoday.com/news/health/2009-03-01-vitamin-defects_N.htm
"Women at higher risk include vegans — who eat no animal products — and women with..."

Many of the above comments seem predicated on the idea that meat-producing animals (primarily beef cattle) are high methane producers, and therefore add to the global warming problem. So far, so good.

There's a bunch of new research in Australia focusing on reducing the greenhouse impact of agriculture, particularly by changing the diet of cattle and sheep, and by introducing new gut microorganisms (presumably to alter digestive chemistry - I'm not a scientist, I just watch the news sometimes.)

To add another idea to the cookpot - what about meat from animals other than cattle and sheep? I've been urged to support a movement to goat meat and kangaroo meat because they provide much more meat for much less methane.

"most people would be very ill and die without meat"
Please do some research and don't make unsubstantiated claims. Thirty percent of Indians live without meat, and I am pretty sure they aren't dying just because the other 70% eat meat.

"Very timely - Vitamin B-12 deficiency tied to neural tube birth defects"
The vegans who don't learn about B12 aren't vegans any more. The rest of us know this.

Is it just me, or do all these long discussions on this section of the site devolve into nothing but a discussion between completely ignorant meat-eaters? If anything, it just shows that people who couldn't care less about animals far outnumber us.

I enjoyed reading the many differing perspectives in this thread and appreciated the respectful tone that most poster used.  I am a long time environmentalist and animal rights activist but only recently became a vegetarian.  For me, it was an ethical choice.  I have always loved beef, chicken and pork but also veggies and fruits. A week or so ago, a friend shared the book "Skinny Bitch" and the proverbial penny dropped.  One concept was that as a vegetarian, I would spare the life of approx 90 animals annually.  For me to enjoy a filet mignon or chicken breast or bacon, I am literally responsible for the death of an animal every 4 days.  With the baseless cruelty in the slaughter houses that has been exposed, there is no way I can justify it any longer!  While I'm not promising that I will never have a bite of meat again, I'll willing to make a major change in my life.  So far, it has been relatively easy!

Kathryn, good for you!  Welcome!  There are enough vegans & vegetarians on this blog to answer any questions and support you through your changes! 

And I'm with Luella:  learning about B12 is simple - considering our bodies store many years' worth of B12 at a time.  There are no other nutrients in meat, besides B12, that you can't find in a plant based diet.  Eating a balanced vegan diet is so simple it's laughable.

Lisa: You're right. I also wanted to say that plenty of meat-eaters also have B12 deficiency or anemia because they aren't aware of what they're eating - or not eating.

Kathryn, it takes time to adopt a new diet. You'll find the way. Namaste.

Were the carbon sink effects from grasslands (that depend on large ruminants) factored into this study?
http://www.loe.org/shows/segments.htm?programID=07-P13-00049&segmentID=2
Thomas Walther, I enjoyed your calm response.

sigh ... it's a lot bigger than Stephanie leads you to believe.   About 10,000 years ago, early human land use practices began to warm the climate, and it has been warming ever since at an accelerating rate.

During  the industrial revolution, human population started expanding more and more rapidly, as did our agriculture.  Climate changing gases increases like our population did and is doing. Cattle are just one piece of the puzzle.  Rice, for example, causes more methane to be released than cattle.

Global climate change is serious and will require a multi-pronged approach to deal with it.  For me, the first thing is to look at population reductions --- preferably some way other than war.

My problem with vegan and animal rights is that they are as scientific as christianity and other religions.  Science tests by proving a null hypothesis. 

vegans and animal rightists  and religious folks comb the literature for examples that will prove their point.  It ain't science, but it is passionate and gets its jollies by wrong making of others. As a result, i tend to mistrust information that these groups put out.

So sorry, Stephanie ... its not that you're wrong (you are not), it is that you are so limited in what's possible, and people who aren't willing to compromise in the present are generally politically incompetent.  That's why vegans and animal rightsters  are so marginalized.

Right, Luella, thinking that just by eating a piece of meat every need of their body is being met.  So many people are shocked when they ask "so how do you get any protein?" as if there are no other sources of protein besides meat! 

And the average person needs less protein per day than we think - depends on your gender & your particular health situation obviously.  You can calculate your protein requirement here: http://www.indoorclimbing.com/Protein_Requirement.html

In yoga, we are reminded that protein settles in your joints, clogging them, therefore for joint health we are encouraged not to eat meat or animal products.  It's easy to see the benefits of a vegan diet when you're pushing your joints to their limits - so I can understand how the average person might not notice their joints until they get arthritis or other degenerative disease.

"My problem with vegan and animal rights is that they are as scientific as christianity and other religions.  Science tests by proving a null hypothesis. "

Doesn't matter how "scientific" my diet is, I don't eat animals.  Some people don't eat broccoli. 

The following quotes, facts, figures, and statistics are excerpted from Please Don't Eat the Animals (2007) by Jennifer Horsman and Jaime Flowers:

"A reduction in beef and other meat consumption is the most potent single act you can take to halt the destruction of our environment and preserve our natural resources.  Our choices do matter:  What's healthiest for each of us personally is also healthiest for the life support system of our precious, but wounded planet."

---John Robbins, author, Diet for a New America, and President, EarthSave Foundation

One study puts animal waste in the United States to between 2.4 trillion to 3.9 trillion pounds per year.  The United states produces 15,000 pounds of manure per person.  This is 130 times the amount of waste produced by the entire human population of the United States. 

A 1,000-cow dairy can produce approximately 120,000 pounds of waste per day.  This is the functional equivalent of the amount of sanitary waste produced by a city of 20,000 people.

A 20,000-chicken factory produces about 2.4 million pounds of manure a year.  Poultry factories are one of the fastest growing industries throughout Asia.

One pig excretes nearly three gallons of waste per day, or 2.5 times the average human's daily total.  One hog farm with 50,000 pigs in France produces more waste than the entire city of Los Angeles, and some pig farms are much larger.

Factory farm pollution is the primary source of damage to coastal waters in North and South America, Europe, and Asia.  Scientists report that over sixty percent of the coastal waters in the United States are moderately to severely degraded from factory farm nutrient pollution.  This pollution creates oxygen-depleted dead zones, which are huge areas of ocean devoid of aquatic life.

Meat production causes deforestation, which then contributes to global warming.  Trees convert carbon dioxide into oxygen, and the destruction of forests around the globe to make room for grazing cattle furthers the greenhouse effect.  The Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations reports that the annual rate of tropical deforestation has increased from 9 million hectares in 1980 to 16.8 million hectares in 1990, and unfortunately, this destruction has accelerated since then.  By 1994, a staggering 200 million hectares of rainforest had been destroyed in South America just for cattle.

"The impact of countless hooves and mouths over the years has done more to alter the type of vegetation and land forms of the West than all the water projects, strip mines, power plants, freeways, and sub-division developments combined."

---Philip Fradkin, in Audubon, National Audubon Society, New York

Agricultural meat production generates air pollution.  As manure decomposes, it releases over 400 volatile organic compounds, many of which are extremely harmful to human health.  Nitrogen, a major by-product of animal wastes, changes to ammonia as it escapes into the air, and this is a major source of acid rain.  Worldwide, livestock produce over 30 million tons of ammonia.  Hydrogen sulfide, another chemical released from animal waste, can cause irreversible neurological damage, even at low levels.

The world Conservation Union lists over 1,000 different fish species that are threatened or endangered. According to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) estimate, over 60 percent of the world's fish species are either fully exploited or depleted.  Commercial fish populations of cod, hake, haddock, and flounder have fallen by as much as 95 percent in the north Atlantic. 

The United States and Europe lose several billion tons of topsoil each year from cropland and grazing land, and 84 percent of this erosion is caused by livestock agriculture.  While this soil is theoretically a renewable resource, we are losing soil at a much faster rate than we are able to replace it.  It takes 100 to 500 years to produce one inch of topsoil, but due to livestock grazing and feeding, farming areas can lose up to six inches of topsoil a year.

Livestock production affects a startling 70 to 85 percent of the land area of the United States, United Kingdom, and the European Union.  That includes the public and private rangeland used for grazing, as well as the land used to produce the crops that feed the animals.  By comparison, urbanization only affects 3 percent of the United States land area, slightly larger for the European Union and the United Kingdom.  Meat production consumes the world's land resources.

Half of all fresh water worldwide is used for thirsty livestock.  Producing eight ounces of beef requires an unimaginable 25,000 liters of water, or the water necessary for one pound of steak equals the water consumption of the average household for a year.

The United States government spends $10 million each year to kill an estimated 100,000 wild animals, including coyotes, foxes, bobcats, badgers, bears, and mountain lions just to placate ranchers who don't want these animals killing their livestock.  The cost far outweighs the damage to livestock that these predators cause.

The Worldwatch Institute estimates one pound of steak from a steer raised in a feedlot costs:  five pounds of grain, a whopping 2,500 gallons of water, the energy equivalent of a gallon of gasoline, and about 34 pounds of topsoil.

33 percent of our nation's raw materials and fossil fuels go into livestock destined for slaughter.  In a vegan economy, only 2 percent of our resources will go to the production of food.

"It seems disingenuous for the intellectual elite of the first world to dwell on the subject of too many babies being born in the second- and third-world nations while virtually ignoring the overpopulation of cattle and the realities of a food chain that robs the poor of sustenance to feed the rich a steady diet of grain-fed meat."

---Jeremy Rifkin, author, Beyond Beef:  The Rise and Fall of the Cattle Culture, and president of the Greenhouse Crisis Foundation

Lester Brown of the Overseas Development Council calculates that if Americans reduced their meat consumption by only 10 percent per year, it would free at least 12 million tons of grain for human consumption--or enough to feed 60 million people.

The following additional quotes, facts, figures, and statistics are also excerpted from Please Don't Eat the Animals (2007) by Jennifer Horsman and Jaime Flowers:

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

---Albert Einstein

"Each year, the meat industrial complex abuses and butchers nearly 9 billion cows, pigs, sheep, turkeys, chickens, and other innocent, feeling animals just for the enjoyment of consumers.  Each year, nearly 1.5 million of these consumers are crippled and killed prematurely by heart failure, cancer, stroke, and other chronic diseases that have been linked conclusively with the consumption of these animals.  Each year, millions of other animals are abused and sacrificed in a vain search for a 'magic pill' that would vanquish these largely self-inflicted diseases."

---Alex Hershaft, PhD, president, Farm Animal Reform Movement

When analyzing 8,300 deaths in the United States, United Kingdom, and Germany among 76,000 men and women in five different, large studies, researchers concluded that vegetarians have a 24 percent reduction in death from heart disease.

Similarly, in the famous Oxford Vegetarian Study, where 6,000 vegetarians were compared with 5,000 meat-eaters over nearly two decades, scientists found that the rate of death from heart disease was 28 percent lower in vegetarians than in meat-eaters.

One study analyzed eighty scientific studies in leading medical journals.  The analysis found that vegetarians had lower blood pressure, and were less likely to suffer from stroke, heart attack, and kidney failure.

A large German study of nearly 2,000 vegetarians found that deaths from heart disease were reduced by over one-third, and that heart disease itself was far less than that of the general population.

Another large study examined the coronary artery disease risk of young adults ages 18 to 30 and vegetarians were found to have much higher levels of cardiovascular fitness and a greatly reduced risk of heart disease. 

"The process of gradual blocking of the coronary arteries begins not in adulthood but in childhood...and the main cause of this arteriosclerosis is the steadily increasing amount of fat in the American diet, particularly saturated animal fats such as those found in meat, chicken, milk and cheeses.  If there was another disease that caused half a million deaths a year, you can be sure that the public would be acutely aware of the danger, and that the cure or prevention would be universally practiced."

---Dr. Benjamin Spock, author, child expert

"I don't understand why asking people to eat a well-balanced vegetarian diet is considered drastic, while it is medically conservative to cut people open and put them on powerful cholesterol-lowering drugs for the rest of their lives."

---Dr. Dean Ornish, author, Reversing Heart Disease

Stroke is the third leading cause of death behind heart disease and cancer.  Vegetarians have a 20 to 30 percent reduced risk of having a stroke.  Stroke, like heart disease, is associated with diets high in saturated fats, and the vegetarian diet is naturally low in these fats.

The Oxford Vegetarian Study found cancer mortality to be 39 percent lower among vegetarians when compared with meat-eaters.  The European Prospective Investigation of Cancer found vegetarians suffer 40 percent fewer cancers than the general population. 

Studies have shown that decreasing a woman's animal fat intake can reduce the chances that she will die from breast cancer.  A large-scale, long-term study in the Netherlands found a powerful connection between  the amount of animal fat consumed and the rate of prostate cancer.  A review of a dozen studies found dietary fat strongly correlated with prostate cancer.

Ovarian, uterine, and endometrial cancers have all been shown to be strongly correlated to the amount of animal fat in one's diet, and vegetarian women have significantly lower rates of these cancers.

"The beef industry has contributed to more American deaths than all the wars of this century, all the natural disasters, and all automobile accidents combined."

---Dr. Neal Barnard, Executive Director, Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine

"Vegetarians have the best diet.  They have the lowest rate of coronary disease of any group in the country.  They have a fraction of our heart attack rate and they have only 40 percent of our cancer rate."

---William Castelli, MD, Director, Framingham Heart Study

"Human beings are not natural carnivores.  When we kill animals to eat them, they end up killing us because their flesh, which contains cholesterol and saturated fat, was never intended for human beings, who are natural herbivores."

---Dr. William Roberts, editor-in-chief, American Journal of Cardiology

What is the point of going for the impossible? Most people would die without meat. Vegans don't want to know about it. Most people's digestion track cannot utilize B12 or protein from even the most educated vegan diet. I was vegan and I almost died. We must start with tolerance to differences. We are not cows or sheep. Or digestion is different and each person is also different. MOST CANNOT SURVIVE WITHOUT MEAT. This is fact. The enzymes of vegetables are the wrong ones for most of us. 


Like Luella said: "Thirty percent of Indians live without meat,"  I think it is even less than that if any (they eat fish). The others would die if they didn't eat meat.

And the production of vegan foods pollute and warms as much or more than cows. But regardless of this clear fact:The only change that can help is eating local and unprocessed. It is not possible to control what other people eat and be responsible to everyone's health. You vegan people, I appreciate you, but whether you like it or not, most humans cannot survive without meat. What is good for you isn't good for another. And, many of you won't last as vegans. It took me many years to realize that it was destroying my health and my child's health.

So, tolerance, diversity, facts (not religious attitude and righteousness), and local local local. 

Also, dear vegan people and all: instead of talking, start now without changing your diet. Don't buy packaged foods. Eat local. Don't cook. Avoid unnecessary products like deodorant, shampoo, and other stuff packed in plastic. Lemon is a great deodorant. Eggs are a great shampoo, lemons clean everything, coconut oil lubricates the skin and cleans... etc. And, go out in the sun at sunrise and sunset to do some sungazing, or bask and you won't need to eat as much because you will get it directly from the sun.


So instead of suggested something that would never pass, start with you and start now with what is possible right away for everyone.

I've been vegetarian since 1982.  I attended my first anti-vivisection protest in the spring of 1985, as anti-apartheid demonstrations rocked the UC San Diego campus. I first got interested in promoting vegetarianism in mainstream society after reading John Robbins' Diet for a New America (1987).  Nominated for a Pulitzer Prize, it makes veganism seem as reasonable and mainstream as recycling. 

For example, half the water consumed in the U.S. goes to irrigate land growing feed and fodder for livestock.  Huge amounts of water are also used to wash away their excrement.  U.S. livestock produce twenty times as much excrement as does the entire human population; creating sewage which is ten to several hundred times more concentrated than raw domestic sewage.  Animal wastes cause ten times more water pollution than does the U.S. human population; the meat industry causes three times as much harmful organic water pollution than the rest of the nation's industries combined.  Meat producers are the number one industrial polluters in our nation, contributing to half the water pollution in the United States. 
 
Joanna Macy, author of Despair and Personal Power in the Nuclear Age, depicts the advantages of America moving towards a vegan diet in her foreword to Diet for a New America: 
 
"The effects on our physical health are immediate.  The incidence of cancer and heart attack, the nation's biggest killers, drops precipitously.  So do many other diseases now demonstrably and causally linked to consumption of animal proteins and fats, such as osteoporosis... 
 
"The social, ecological, and economic consequences, as we Americans turn away from animal food products, are equally remarkable.  We find that the grain we previously fed to fatten livestock can now feed five times the U.S. population; so we have become able to alleviate malnutrition and hunger on a worldwide scale... 
 
"The great forests of the world, that we had been decimating for grazing purposes, begin to grow again.  Oxygen-producing trees are no longer sacrificed for cholesterol-producing steaks. 
 
"The water crisis eases.  As we stop raising and grinding up cattle for hamburgers, we discover that ranching and farm factories had been the major drain on our water resources.  The amount now available for irrigation and hydroelectric power doubles.  Meanwhile, the change in diet frees over 90% of the fossil fuel previously used to produce food.  With this liberation of water energy and fossil fuel energy, our reliance on oil imports declines, as does the rationale for building nuclear power plants..." 
 
Joanna Macy admits, "This scenario is wildly, absurdly utopian.  It is also clearly the way we are meant to live, built to live."  What could possibly make it a reality?  "It is this very book!"  

Paul McCartney also says, "If anyone wants to save the planet, all they have to do is stop eating meat.  That's the single most important thing you could do.  It's staggering when you think about it.  Vegetarianism takes care of so many things in one shot:  ecology, famine, cruelty.  Let's do it!  Linda was right.  Going veggie is the single best idea for the new century."

Roberta Kalechofsky of Jews for Animal Rights similarly says:

"Merely by ceasing to eat meat
 Merely by practicing restraint
 We have the power to end a painful industry

"We do not have to bear arms to end this evil
 We do not have to contribute money
 We do not have to sit in jail or go to
 meetings or demonstrations or
 engage in acts of civil disobedience

"Most often, the act of repairing the world,
 of healing mortal wounds,
 is left to heroes and tzaddikim (holy people)
 Saints and people of unusual discipline

"But here is an action every mortal can
 perform--surely it is not too difficult!"

When I first read Diet for a New America, I thought it could have the same kind of impact on mainstream American society that Frances Moore Lappe's Diet for a Small Planet had in the '70s. 
 
The number of animals killed for food in the United States is 70 times larger than the number of animals killed in laboratories, 30 times larger than the number killed by hunters and trappers, and 500 times larger than the number of animals killed in pounds.  A fellow animal activist in San Diego, Tricia Fernatt, felt as I did:  since the vast majority of animals are being killed for food, why are we wasting our time on peripheral issues?  Shouldn't veganism be the main focus of our movement?  And Diet for a New America tied it all together.  If Americans reduced their meat consumption by just 10 percent, it would release enough grain and soybeans to feed over 60 million people. 
 
In writing his expose on the meat industry, John Robbins has been compared to Rachel Carson, Ralph Nader and other whistleblowers.  In Diet for a New America, he demonstrates how all the various causes that concern the left: healthcare, a sustainable energy policy, hunger, malnutrition, etc. are all taken care of in one fell swoop by a vegan diet.  I had the opportunity to meet John Robbins, in September 1988.  It was one of the most inspirational moments of my life!
 
He was heir to the Baskin-Robbins fortune.  He renounced it at a young age.  He traveled to India, opened a yoga ashram in Canada, etc.  He spoke of Gandhi and nonviolence.  His son Ocean Robbins founded Youth for Environmental Sanity (YES!) and is also dedicated to promoting veganism.  I asked John if he would try and get the American Left to support animal rights.  He told me that he had sent a copy of his book to Mother Jones, a left-liberal periodical published in San Francisco. 
 
Many on the Left are beginning to take a stand in favor of animal rights.  Joanna Macy spoke at the San Francisco Green Festival, in November 2005.  In his 1990 updated and revised edition of Animal Liberation, Australian philosopher Peter Singer writes that many of the political parties leaning towards the "Green" end of the political spectrum in Europe were beginning to oppose animal experimentation. 
 
John Robbins elaborated further on the economic waste of raising animals for food in May All Be Fed, which my brother gave me for Christmas in 1992.  Oxfam, the international charity, reports that in Mexico, 80 percent of the children in rural areas are undernourished, yet the livestock are fed more grain than the human population eats!  Meat consumption in Taiwan increased 600 percent between 1950 and 1990.  In 1950, Taiwan was a grain exporter; in 1990 the nation imported, mostly for feed, 74 percent of the grain it used.  Twenty-five years ago, Syria was a barley exporter.  But in the intervening years, livestock have consumed increasing amounts of the country's grain.  Now, despite a phenomenal 1000 percent increase in the land area devoted to producing barley, Syria must import the cereal. 
 
John Robbins spoke before the United Nations in 1994, where he received a standing ovation. 
 
I had the opportunity to hear John Robbins speak at a Unitarian church here in Oakland, CA several years ago.  The church was PACKED!  John writes in The Food Revolution (2001): 

"The revolution sweeping our relationship to our food and our world, I believe, is part of an historical imperative.  This is what happens when the human spirit is activated.  One hundred and fifty years ago, slavery was legal in the United States.  One hundred years ago, women could not vote in most states.  Eighty years ago, there were no laws in the United States against any form of child abuse.  Fifty years ago, we had no Civil Rights Act, no Clean Air or Clean Water legislation, no Endangered Species Act.  Today, millions of people are refusing to buy clothes and shoes made in sweatshops and are seeking to live healthier and more Earth-friendly lifestyles.  In the last fifteen years alone, as people in the United States have realized how cruelly veal calves are treated, veal consumption has dropped 62 percent."

The absolutely baseless remark "most people would die without meat" needs to stop being posted, and I wouldn't mind if people laid off other silly generalizations about "vegan food" either, as if their definition of "vegan food'" as being only heavily processed meat substitutes is anywhere near accurate. People have been thriving on plant-based diets for centuries. And I'll take that and the word of such organizations as the American Dietetic Association that balanced vegan and vegetarian diets are perfectly healthy, for all ages, long before I'll take the word of someone commenting without reliable evidence.

I'd also like to remind the many people who seem to have not bothered reading the actual post and the article to which it links (and who instead seemed to go straight to the comments to submit their tired arguments) that I didn't pull this stuff out of thin air. This article reports on a study--a scientific study--not an opinion piece by vegans.

I wish everyone would quit on this global warming nonsense. It is not brought on by people or cows farting. It is a cycle of the sun and also now there is a big shift or actually loss of the Earth's magntic field and also changes in the Sun's magnetosphere that is not quite understood. There is nothing that can be done about it. This global warming scare is just another way for the rich scam artists to make money and instill fear to the people. Give it up already.

I am concerned about climate change. However as a pre-diabetic who is so insulin-resistant, I can only eat fat and a bit of protein (no grains, sugar, fruit, legumes, starchy vegetables), I am not sure what I would eat if I didn't eat meat. Please don't judge everyone who is not a vegetarian - it is simply not a healthy choice for the 30% or so of us who are insulin-resistant.

When will you all stop trying to force your eating habits upon the rest of us? Iwouldn't force you to begin eating meat and I would apprecaite if you all and the government quit trying to tell me what is best for myself and my family. Our ancestors lived off the land and the animals that lived upon her. We used every part for one thing or another. There was no waste. Frankly I love my steak and potato dinners and no I don't give a darn that a cow may fart and emit carbon dioxide which our trees and plants NEED to live. I don't buy into the global warming hoas or as you all now want to call it Climate change. Sorry but I have been out of shcool long enough that the indocrinating they are doing hasn't been done to me. Learn to respect what others do and then maybe you might get some respect back as it is. I find nothing but contempt as it is not your concern what I eat, drink or how I live my life. This is suppose to be a free country. You are trampling on my rights by wanting to force your ways up on me and my family.

(( As manure decomposes))  --  It should not decompose on the surface.  In a properly functioning ecosystem, dung beetles or other insects should take this underground feeding the soil. 

It is unfortunate that the debate centers around the ethics of eating meat.  When the article is about the negative impacts of cattle.

Most points in support of cows being bad are simply ignorant.  Like, cow manure is such a bad thing.  Cow manure feeds the soil which then nourishes the plants.  Without the restorative effects of livestock then our not be healthy.  That is why in India they view the cow as sacred as it is a good thing.

another -Oxygen-producing trees are no longer sacrificed for cholesterol-producing steaks. -  If one looks at forests and the pictures of older forests the tress were spaced much further apart.  Why, the predators chased the ruminants who knocked down small trees making a mulch, or when not being chased they would eat smaller trees.  Grasslands can sequester as much carbon as a forest, its sequestration takes place under ground.  In addition the plains evolved to be grazed not plowed.

For those who can eat/grow a locally diverse vegan diet great.  That does not work in the rockies as the climate has a 50 day growing season where I am and we can not produce locally a whole diet.  So we either ship in a whole lot of food from costal areas probably screwing up that environment and use a lot or energy to ship it or we can work to grow a locally produced diet that is viable for us (animal protein being a part wether meat or dairy)
another -  half the water consumed in the U.S. goes to irrigate land growing feed and fodder for livestock.  If lands were managed wholisticly they would retain the moisture that fell on it and not need the vast quantities of irrigation water.  In tanzania a river there had water flows increase 35% with no additional rainfall, this was attributable to row crops not allowing proper infiltration of water into the subsoils and aquifers.
Quit using reductionist arguments for a very dynamic topic that does not apply to all regions.  The west that was quoted as having been green in the past and now is a near desert is not just simply an overgrazing phenomenon, it is more a phenomenon of grazing without proper amounts of rest as described in holistic management discussions.

"It is not the type of food we are eating that is the problem it is the mind set that the public has."

Robert, this statement has quite a bit of insight that I think many people are forgetting!  If the general public were as educated as you (and I know because my husband is a chef) people would be demanding better.  MORE people would be demanding better.

The problem, even in my vegan perspective, isn't that people have the choice to eat what they want, but that they don't realize that big ag is the problem here.  Small farmers (like some who have posted here) actually care about their land, their business and the health of their animals.  They feed them an appropriate diet based on physiology rather than profit margin.  Think those big feed lots care about methane emissions or about profits? 

Though I don't tell people they have to be vegan, I do hope they respect my choice not to eat meat.  I don't eat the flesh of other living beings, a belief that isn't going to be negated because there is a "humane-local" option.  BUT, my family doesn't appear to be interested in veg*nism in any form, so I do encourage them to find out where their food comes from and to support businesses that more closely align with their own beliefs. 

Even vegans try to eat local, organic, etc. etc..  The less impact on the environment the better - that includes transport, pesticides and good business practices.  If you're lucky enough to live near a farm that sells produce, great.  If not, then you have to find something that satisfies your ethical needs.  Like... um... not shopping at Walmart Supercenters!

And you know what?  People respond to THAT.

You know.. when I hear ideas like this, I can't help but recall that at one time North America had herds of Buffalo that were 5 miles wide and 12 miles long. Millions and millions and millions of buffalo, eating, burping and farting methane. And what about the elk, caribou, deer, and the hosts of other ruminants like wild mountain goats? The planet was healthy, back then.

While I agree that present day modern farming methods MUST change, and that we MUST stop using so much water and fertilizers to make feed for cattle, etc., I think that prices will be the only thing that will make a significant change in peoples' eating habits. Call me cynical.... Same thing goes for fish, whose numbers in the wild are dwindling rapidly.

Methane emissions from cows is not, in my opinion, where we should be looking to solve the climate crisis. One day in the life of a traditional coal-fired electricity plants undoes thousands of people's efforts to stop eating meat. I have also heard that soybean production for Tofu, soymilk and other "healthy" foods is a major contributor to deforestation, esp. in the rainforest. How ironic.

The Environmental Movement needs to be intelligent, not hysterical, or we risk being viewed as fools. Converting everyone to veganism is a silly, impractical idea, which will never gain traction.

Hah!  You clowns crack me up.  There's a hell of a lot more people in the world than cows, spewing out way more methane.  Get real!

The frugivores (gorillas, chimpanzees and other primates) have intestinal tracts twelve times the length of the body, clawless hands and alkaline urine and saliva. Their diet is mostly vegetarian, occasionally supplemented with carrion, insects, etc. 
 
Flesh-eating animals lap water with their tongue, whereas vegetarian animals imbibe liquids by a suction process. Humans are classified as primates and are thus frugivores possessing a set of completely herbivorous teeth. Proponents of the theory that humans should be classified as omnivores note that human beings do, in fact, possess a modified form of canine teeth. However, these so-called "canine teeth" are much more prominent in animals that traditionally never eat flesh, such as apes, camels, and the male musk deer. 
 
It must also be noted that the shape, length and hardness of these so-called "canine teeth" can hardly be compared to those of true carnivorous animals. A principle factor in determining the hardness of teeth is the phosphate of magnesia content. Human teeth usually contain 1.5 percent phosphate of magnesia, whereas the teeth of carnivores are composed of nearly 5 percent phosphate of magnesia. It is for this reason they are able to break through the bones of their prey, and reach the nutritious marrow. 

Zoologist Desmond Morris makes a case for vegetarianism in his 1967 book, The Naked Ape: "It could be argued that, since our primate ancestors had to make do without a major meat component in their diets we should be able to do the same. We were driven to become flesh eaters only by environmental circumstances, and now that we have the environment under control, with elaborately cultivated crops at our disposal, we might be expected to return to our ancient feeding patterns." 
 
In The Human Story, edited by Marie-Louise Makris (1985), we read: "...recent studies of their teeth reveal that the Australopithecines did not eat meat as a regular part of their diet, and were mainly peaceful vegetarians, rather like chimps or gorillas. The popular image of the murderous ape is now as extinct as the Australopithecines themselves." 
 
Dr. Gordon Latto notes that carnivorous and omnivorous animals can only move their jaws up and down, and that omnivores "have a blunt tooth, a sharp tooth, a blunt tooth, a sharp tooth--showing that they were destined to deal both with flesh foods from the animal kingdom and foods from the vegetable kingdom... 
 
"Carnivorous mammals and omnivorous mammals cannot perspire except at the extremity of the limbs and the tip of the nose; man perspires all over the body. Finally, our instincts; the carnivorous mammal (which first of all has claws and canine teeth) is capable of tearing flesh asunder, whereas man only partakes of flesh foods after they have been camouflaged by cooking and by condiments. 
 
"Man instinctively is not carnivorous," explains Dr. Latto. "...he takes the flesh food after somebody else has killed it, and after it has been cooked and camouflaged with certain condiments. Whereas to pick an apple off a tree or eat some grain or a carrot is a natural thing to do; people enjoy doing it; they don't feel disturbed by it. But to see these animals being slaughtered does affect people; it offends them. Even the toughest of people are affected by the sights in the slaughterhouse. 
 
"I remember taking some medical students into a slaughterhouse. They were about as hardened people as you could meet. After seeing the animals slaughtered that day in the slaughterhouse, not one of them could eat the meat that evening." 
 
Author R.H. Weldon writes in No Animal Food: 
 
"The gorge of a cat, for instance, will rise at the smell of a mouse or a piece of raw flesh, but not at the aroma of fruit. If a man can take delight in pouncing upon a bird, tear its still living body apart with his teeth, sucking the warm blood, one might infer that Nature had provided him with a carnivorous instinct, but the very thought of doing such a thing makes him shudder. On the other hand, a bunch of luscious grapes makes his mouth water, and even in the absence of hunger, he will eat fruit to gratify taste." 
 
As far back as 1961, the Journal of the American Medical Association reported that: "A vegetarian diet can prevent 97% of our coronary occlusions." More recently, William S. Collens and Gerald B. Dobkens concluded: "Examination of the dental structure of modern man reveals that he possesses all the features of a strictly herbivorous animal. While designed to subsist on vegetarian foods, he has perverted his dietary habits to accept food of the carnivore. It is postulated that man cannot handle carnivorous foods like the carnivore. Herein may lie the basis for the high incidence of arteriosclerotic disease." 
 
Keith Akers in A Vegetarian Sourcebook (1983), responds to the argument that killing animals for food is natural: 

"This is quite an admirable argument.  It explains practically everything; why we do not eat each other, except under conditions of unusual stress; why we may kill certain other animals (they are, in the order of nature, food for us); even why we should be kind to pets and try to help miscellaneous wildlife (they are not naturally our food).  There are some problems with the idea that an order of nature determines which species are food for us, but an examination of human history indicates the broad outlines of just such an order, though inhibitions against eating certain species may vary from culture to culture.
 
"The main problem with this argument is that it does not justify the practice of meat-eating or animal husbandry as we know it today; it justifies hunting. The distinction between hunting and animal husbandry probably seems rather fine to the man in the street, or even to your typical rule-utilitarian moral philosopher. The distinction, however, is obvious to an ecologist. If one defends killing on the grounds that it occurs in nature, then one is defending the practice as it occurs in nature. 
 
"When one species of animal preys on another in nature, it only preys on a very small proportion of the total species population. Obviously, the predator species relies on its prey for its continued survival. Therefore, to wipe the prey species out through overhunting would be fatal. In practice, members of such predator species rely on such strategies as territoriality to restrict overhunting and to insure the continued existence of its food supply. 
 
"Moreover, only the weakest members of the prey species are the predator's victims: the feeble, the sick, the lame, or the young accidentally separated from the fold. The life of the typical zebra is usually placid, even in lion country; this kind of violence is the exception in nature, not the rule. 
 
"As it exists in the wild, hunting is the preying upon isolated members of an animal herd. Animal husbandry is the nearly complete annihilation of an animal herd. In nature, this kind of slaughter does not exist. The philosopher is free to argue that there is no moral difference between hunting and slaughter, but he cannot invoke nature as a defense of this idea. 
 
"Why are hunters, not butchers, most frequently taken to task by the larger community for their killing of animals? Hunters usually react to such criticism by replying that if hunting is wrong, then meat-hunting must be wrong as well. The hunter is certainly right on one point--the larger community is hypocritical to object to hunting when it consumes the flesh of domesticated animals. If any form of meat-eating is justified, it would be meat from a hunted animal." 

In his 1975 book, Animal Liberation, Australian philosopher Peter Singer writes:

"Killing an animal is in itself a troubling act. It has been said that if we had to kill our own meat we would all be vegetarians. There may be exceptions to that general rule, but it is true that most people prefer not to inquire into the killing of the animals they eat.

"Very few people ever visit a slaughterhouse; and films of slaughterhouse operations are rarely shown on television...Yet those who, by their purchases, require animals to be killed have no right to be shielded from this or any other aspect of the production of the meat they buy.

"If it is distasteful for humans to think about, what can it be like for the animals to experience it?"

Peter Singer concludes in Animal Liberation that "by ceasing to rear and kill animals for food, we can make extra food available for humans that, properly distributed, it would eliminate starvation and malnutrition from this planet. Animal Liberation is Human Liberation, too."
 
Dr. Milton Mills' "The Comparative Anatomy of Eating,"

www.vegsource.com/veg_faq/comparative.htm

and the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine,

www.pcrm.org ,

argue persuasively that the optimal diet for humanity is a vegan diet.  However, even if humans really are omnivores and not frugivores, my friend Mareechi Duvvuuri (another Hindu-American!) who once studied sports medicine, pointed out that the diet of natural omnivores is mostly (80 percent) plant food.

Humans are not strictly herbivorous. The human body can't break down cellulose, the principle component of plant foods (though it does serve a purpose as dietary fiber). This is the reason we can't graze or live on grass. Anatomically, we resemble the other primates (frugivores), whose diet is mostly vegetarian. We're meant to live mostly, if not entirely, upon plant foods. Only vitamin B-12 cannot be obtained from plant foods.

Predators are found in nature, but so are cannibalism and rape. Killing other animals for food, in this sense, really is an ethical issue, not a "dietary" issue.

Keith Akers writes in A Vegetarian Sourcebook (1983): "There is no question that lacto-ovo-vegetarians easily obtain enough vitamin B-12; dairy products and eggs are generous suppliers of vitamin B-12. The controversy pertains only to those who live on plant foods and do not eat any animal foods at all--the 'total vegetarians' or 'vegans.'...The evidence shows, however, that there are numerous sources of vitamin B-12 other than animal foods, and that vitamin B-12 is not a particularly difficult vitamin to get. In short, the Great Vitamin B-12 Controversy, like the protein controversy, is largely generated by lack of information concerning already available research data.

"Only incredibly small quantities of vitamin B-12 are thought to be needed in the diet. According to the National Research Council, 3 micrograms daily will meet the body's requirements. but Victor Herbert, a noted authority on the subject, puts the requirement at 0.1 micrograms, making even the National Research Council's microscopic figure 30 times in excess of the actual need."

John Robbins, author of Diet for a New America (1987), says that vitamin B-12 is found naturally around us: on the dirt on a carrot pulled out of the ground, in rainwater, etc., but we live in a sanitized society, removed from nature.

Keith Akers similarly observes:

"Vitamin B-12 has been found in rainwater and in many plant foods. In small quantities, Vitamin B-12 has been found either in or on various foods such as the roots and stems of tomatoes, cabbage, celery, kale, broccoli, leeks, and the leaves of kohlrabi. An ounce of the roots of leeks, beets, and other vegetables will provide 0.1 to 0.3 micrograms of B-12, which is more than a day's requirement.

"There are other plant foods which provide 'massive' quantities of vitamin B-12--'massive,' that is, in relation to human requirements for the vitamin. These include nutritional yeast, tempeh, seaweed, algae, kelp, and fermented soy sauces. The human liver can store vitamin B-12 for years, so once it is ingested from one of these sources, one can go for long periods of time without having to worry about a source of B-12."

In his 1979 book, Vegetarianism: A Way of Life, Dudley Giehl writes that some ancient Egyptian priests were vegetarian to help them with their vows of celibacy and that they avoided eggs and milk, which they called "liquid flesh." Giehl writes that Leonardo da Vinci was a vegan, out of ethical concern for animals.

In his 1923 book, The Natural Diet of Man, Adventist physician Dr. John Harvey Kellogg writes: "The Ladrone Islands were discovered by the Spaniards around 1620. There were no animals on the islands except birds, which the natives did not eat. The natives had never seen fire, and they lived entirely on plant foods--fruits and roots in their natural state. They were found to be vigorous, active, and of good longevity."

The Garden of Eden was vegan, but veganism as an historical trend is a fairly recent phenomenon. The Vegan Society was formed in England in 1944.

The ethical, environmental, and nutritional arguments are compelling enough to encourage millions of Americans to reduce, if not eliminate entirely, their consumption of animal products.

According to the Bible, God intended the entire human race to follow a vegetarian diet (Genesis 1:29). Paradise is vegetarian. Rashi (Rabbi Solomon von Isaac, 1030-1105), the famous Jewish Bible commentator, taught that "God did not permit Adam and his wife to kill a creature and to eat its flesh. Only every green herb shall they all eat together." Ibn Ezra and other Jewish biblical commentators agree.

According to the Talmud, "Adam and many generations that followed him were strict flesh-abstainers; flesh-foods were rejected as repulsive for human consumption." Although man was made in God's image and given dominion over all creation (Genesis 1:26-28), these verses do not justify humans killing animals and devouring them, because God immediately proclaims He created the plants for human consumption. (Genesis 1:29)

In a letter to Pope John Paul II, challenging him on the issue of animal experimentation, Dr. Michael Fox of the Humane Society argued that the word "dominion" is derived from the original Hebrew word "rahe" which refers to compassionate stewardship, instead of power and control. Parents have dominion over their children; they do not have a license to kill, torment or abuse them. The Talmud (Shabbat 119; Sanhedrin 7) interprets "dominion" to mean animals may be used for labor.

Man was made in God's image (Genesis 1:26) and told to be vegetarian (Genesis 1:29). "And God saw all that He had made and saw that it was very good." (Genesis 1:31) Complete and perfect harmony. Everything in the beginning was the way God wanted it. Vegetarianism was part of God's initial plan for the world.

"It appears that the first intention of the Maker was to have men live on a strictly vegetarian diet," writes Rabbi Simon Glazer, in his 1971 Guide to Judaism. "The very earliest periods of Jewish history are marked with humanitarian conduct towards the lower animal kingdom...It is clearly established that the ancient Hebrews knew, and perhaps were the first among men to know, that animals feel and suffer pain."

After the Flood, God revised His commandment against flesh-eating. Human beings, since eating of the forbidden fruit, seemed incapable of obedience on this issue. One Jewish writer comments, "Only after man had proven unfit for the high moral standard given at the beginning, was meat made a part of the humans' diet."

A Jewish legend says Moses was found to be righteous by God through his shepherding. While Moses was tending his sheep of Jethro in the Midian wilderness, a young kid ran away from the flock. Moses ran after it until he found the kid drinking by a pool of water. Moses approached the kid and said, "I did not know that you ran away because you were thirsty; now, you must be tired." So Moses placed the animal on his shoulders and carried him back to the flock. God said, "Because thou has shown mercy in leading the flock, thou will surely tend My flock, Israel."

In their book, The Nine Questions People Ask About Judaism, Dennis Prager and Rabbi Telushkin explain:  "Keeping kosher is Judaism's compromise with its ideal vegetarianism.  Ideally, according to Judaism, man would confine his eating to fruits and vegetables and not kill animals for food."

In his excellent A Guide to the Misled, Rabbi Shmuel Golding explains the orthodox Jewish position concerning animal sacrifices:  "When G-d gave our ancestors permission to make sacrifices to Him, it was a concession, just as when He allowed us to have a king (I Samuel 8), but He gave us a whole set of rules and regulations concerning sacrifice that, when followed, would be superior to and distinct from the sacrificial system of the heathens."

Some biblical passages denounce animal sacrifice (Isaiah 1:11,15; Amos 5:21-25).  Other passages state that animal sacrifices, not necessarily incurring God's wrath, are unnecessary (I Kings 15:22; Jeremiah 7:21-22; Hosea 6:6; Hosea 8:13; Micah 6:6-8; Psalm 50:1-14; Psalm 40:6; Proverbs 21:3; Ecclesiastes 5:1).

Sometimes Christians cite Isaiah 1:11, where God says, "I am full of the burnt offerings..."  They say the word "full" implies God accepted the sacrifices.  However, in Isaiah 43:23-24, God says:  "You have not honored Me with your sacrifices...rather you have burdened Me with your sins, you have wearied Me with your iniquities."  This suggests, as Moses Maimonides taught and Rabbi Shmuel Golding confirms above, that "the sacrifices were a concession to barbarism."

Jesus taught his disciples to pray for the coming of God's kingdom (Matthew 6:9-10), the kingdom of peace, in which the entire world is restored to a vegetarian paradise (Genesis 1:29; Isaiah 11:6-9).  Recalling Psalm 37:11, he blessed the meek, saying they would inherit the earth.  (Matthew 5:5)  The kingdom of God belongs to the gentle and kind (Matthew 5:7-9)  Christians are to "Be merciful, just as your Father is also merciful."  (Luke 6:36)  Those who take up the sword must perish by the sword.  (Matthew 26:52) 

Jesus repeatedly spoke of God's tender care for the nonhuman creation (Matthew 6:26-30, 10:29-31; Luke 12:6-7, 24-28).   Jesus taught that God desires "mercy and not sacrifice."  (Matthew 9:10-13, 12:6-7; Mark 2:15-17; Luke 5:29-32)  The epistle to the Hebrews 10:5-10 suggests that Jesus did not come to abolish the Law and the prophets (which Paul, and not Jesus, regarded as "so much garbage"), but only the institution of animal sacrifice, as does Jesus' cleansing the Temple of those who were buying and selling animals for sacrifice and his overturning the tables of the moneychangers in the Temple.  (Matthew 21:12-14; Mark 11:15-17; Luke 19:45-46; John 2:14-17)  

Jesus not only repeatedly upheld Mosaic Law (Matthew 5:17-19; Mark 10:17-22; Luke 16:17), he justified his healing on the Sabbath by referring to commandments calling for the humane treatment of animals.     When teaching in one of the synagogues on the Sabbath, Jesus healed a woman who had been ill for eighteen years.  He justified his healing work on the Sabbath by referring to biblical passages calling for the humane treatment of animals as well as their rest on the Sabbath.  "So ought not this woman, being a daughter of Abraham...be loosed from this bond on the Sabbath?" Jesus asked.  (Luke 13:10-16)  

On another occasion, Jesus again referred to Torah teaching on "tsa'ar ba'alei chayim" or compassion for animals to justify healing on the Sabbath.  "Which of you, having a donkey or an ox that has fallen into a pit, will not immediately pull him out on the Sabbath day?"  (Luke 14:1-5)

Jesus compared saving sinners who had gone astray from God's kingdom to rescuing lost sheep.  He recalled a Jewish legend about Moses' compassion as a shepherd for his flock. 

"For the Son of Man has come to save that which was lost.  What do you think?  Who among you, having a hundred sheep, if he loses one of them, does not leave the ninety-nine in the wilderness, and go after the one which is lost until he finds it?

"And when he has found it," Jesus continued, "he lays it on his shoulders, rejoicing.  And when he comes home, he calls together his friends and neighbors saying to them, 'Rejoice with me, for I have found my sheep which was lost!'

"I say to you, likewise there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine just persons who need no repentance...there is joy in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner who repents."  (Matthew 18:11-13; Luke 15:3-7,10)

Jesus insisted upon the moral standards given by God in the beginning (Matthew 5:31-32, 19:3-9; Mark 10:2-12; Luke 16:18), and this did not go  unnoticed by early church fathers such as St. Jerome.

From history, too, we learn that the earliest Christians were vegetarians as well as pacifists.  For example, Clemens Prudentius, the first Christian hymn writer, in one of his hymns exhorts his fellow Christians not to pollute their hands and hearts by the slaughter of innocent cows and sheep, and points to the variety of nourishing and pleasant foods obtainable without blood-shedding. 

Some of the most distinguished figures in the history of Christianity have been vegetarian.  A partial list includes:  St. James, St. Matthew, Clemens Prudentius, Origen, Tertullian, Clement of Alexandria, St. Basil, St. Jerome, St. John Chrysostom, St. Benedict, Aegidius, Boniface, St. Richard of Wyche, St. Columba, St. Filipo Neri, John Wray, Thomas Tryon, John Wesley, Joshua Evans, William Metcalfe, General William Booth, Ellen White, Dr. John Harvey Kellogg, and Reverend V.A. Holmes-Gore.

Reverend Marc Wessels of the International Network for Religion and Animals (INRA) writes: 

"The most important teaching which Jesus shared was the need for people to love God with their whole self and to love their neighbor as they loved themselves.  Jesus expanded the concept of neighbor to include those who were normally excluded, and it is therefore not too farfetched for us to consider the animals as our neighbors.

"To think about animals as our brothers and sisters is not a new or radical idea.  By extending the idea of neighbor, the love of neighbor includes love of, compassion for, and advocacy of animals.  There are many historical examples of Christians who thought along those lines, besides the familiar illustration of St. Francis.  An abbreviated listing of some of those individuals worthy of study and emulation includes Saint Blaise, Saint Comgall, Saint Cuthbert, Saint Gerasimus, Saint Giles, and Saint Jerome, to name but a few."

According to contemporary Benedictine monk, Brother David Steindl-Rast:

"...the survival of our planet depends on our sense of belonging---to all other humans, to dolphins caught in dragnets, to pigs and chickens and calves raised in animal concentration camps, to redwoods and rainforests, to kelp beds in our oceans, and to the ozone layer."

In a sermon preached in York Minster, September 28, 1986, John Austin Baker, the Bishop of Salisbury, England, attacked the overcrowded confinement methods of raising and killing animals for food ("factory farming"), choosing as his example, the treatment of chickens:

"Is there any credit balance for the battery hen, denied almost all natural functioning, all normal environment, lapsing steadily into deformity and disease, for the whole of her existence?" he asked.  "It is in the battery shed and the broiler house, not in the wild, that we find the true parallel to Auschwitz.  Auschwitz is a purely human invention."

Rick Dunkerly of Christ Lutheran Church says: 

"The Bible-believing Christian, should, of all people, be on the frontline in the struggle for animal welfare and rights.  We who are Christians should be treating the animal creation now as it will be treated then, at Christ's second coming. It will not now be perfect, but it must be substantial, otherwise we have missed our calling, and we grieve the One we call 'Lord,' who was born in a stable surrounded by animals simply because He chose it that way."

Rose Evans, editor and publisher of Harmony:  Voices for a Just Future, a "consistent-ethic" periodical on the religious Left, says there are more Christian vegetarians than Jewish vegetarians.  Yet some people still react to the idea of Christian vegetarianism as though it were an oxymoron.

"Every year," says Reverend Andrew Linzey, author of Christianity and the Rights of Animals, "I receive hundreds of anguished letters from Christians who are so distressed by the insensitivity to animals shown by mainstream churches that they have left them or are on the verge of doing so...The time is long overdue to take the issue of animal rights to the churches...

"I derive hope from the Gospel preaching that the same God who draws us to such affinity and intimacy with suffering creatures declared that reality on a Cross in Calvary.  Unless all Christian preaching has been utterly mistaken, the God who becomes incarnate and crucified is the one who has taken the side of the oppressed and the suffering of the world--however the churches may actually behave."

"It is unfortunate that the debate centers around the ethics of eating meat.  When the article is about the negative impacts of cattle."

The article is on an Animal Rights blog. If you think animal rights is unfortunate, then maybe you shouldn't be here.

"I can't help but recall that at one time North America had herds of Buffalo that were 5 miles wide and 12 miles long. Millions and millions and millions of buffalo, eating, burping and farting methane. And what about the elk, caribou, deer, and the hosts of other ruminants like wild mountain goats? The planet was healthy, back then."

What? Did you witness this with your own eyes? Earth to you: 50 billion land animals are killed each YEAR for animal consumption by humans alone. Cows are supposed to live 20 something years, I think? I don't think that "millions and millions of [free-roaming] buffalo" stack up to it. And by the way? Evidence shows - and I learned this long before going vegan - that the first human-induced climate change came at the beginning of agriculture. Not the beginning of hunting.

"Global hunger could be directly attributed to meat-eating."  ---Chrissie Hynde

Half the world's population does not receive an adequate amount of food to eat.  Ten to twenty million die annually of hunger and its effects.  The Institute for Food and Development Policy reports that, "Forty thousand children starve to death on this planet every day," or one child every two seconds.

The livestock population of the United States today consumes enough grain and soybeans to feed over five times the entire human population of the country.   We feed these animals over 80% of the corn we grow, and over 95% of the oats.   Less than half the harvested agricultural acreage in the United States is used to grow food for people.  Most of it is used to grow livestock feed.

Ronald J. Sider of Evangelicals for Social Action, in his 1977 book, Rich Christians in an Age of Hunger, pointed out that 220 million Americans were eating enough food (largely because of the high consumption of grain-fed livestock) to feed over one billion people in the poorer countries.

The world's cattle alone, not to mention pigs and chickens, consume a quantity of food equal to the caloric needs of 8.7 billion people.  It takes 16 pounds of grain to produce one pound of beef.  According to Department of Agriculture statistics, one acre of land can grow 20,000 pounds of potatoes.  That same acre of land, if used to grow cattlefeed, can produce less than 165 pounds of beef.

In his book, The Hungry Planet, Georg Bergstrom points out that protein-starved underdeveloped nations export more protein to wealthy nations than they receive.  He calls this "the protein swindle."  Ninety percent of the world's fish meal catch, for example, is exported to rich countries.  One-third of Africa's peanut crop winds up in the stomachs of European livestock.  Half the world's cereal crop is fed to livestock and the United States annually imports one million tons of vegetable protein from Third World nations--just to feed its farm animals.

Bergstrom writes: "Sometimes one wonders how many Americans and Western Europeans have grasped the fact that quite a few of their beef steaks, quarts of milk, dozens of eggs, and hundreds of broilers are the result, not of their agriculture, but of the approximately two million metric tons of protein, mostly of high quality, which astute Western businessmen channel away from the needy and hungry."

Jeremy Rifkin, author of a dozen influential books and President of the Foundation on Economic Trends, writes in his 1992 bestseller Beyond Beef:

"Cattle and other livestock are devouring much of the grain produced on the planet.  It need be emphasized that this is a new phenomenon, unlike anything ever experienced before.

"Contrary to popular belief, the poor are getting poorer each year...Increased poverty has meant increased malnutrition.  On the African continent, nearly one in every four human beings is malnourished.  In Latin America, nearly one out of every seven people goes to bed hungry each night.  In Asia and the Pacific, 28 percent of the people border on starvation, experiencing the gnawing pain of a perpetual hunger."

"In the Near East, one in ten people is underfed.  Chronic hunger now affects upwards of 1.3 billion people, according to the world Health Organization--a statistic all the more striking in a world where one third of all the grain produced is being fed to cattle and other livestock.  Never before in human history has such a large percentage of our species--nearly 25 percent--been malnourished.

"The transition of world agriculture from food grain to feed grains represents an...evil whose consequences may be far greater and longer lasting than any past examples of violence inflicted by men against their fellow human beings."

In the 1970s, the United Nations Secretary General said that the food consumption of the rich countries is the key cause of hunger around the world.  The United Nations has recommended that the wealthy nations cut down on their meat consumption. 

The Worldwatch Institute has released a remarkable report entitled Taking Stock: Animal Farming and the Environment, which lists nation after nation where food deprivation has followed the switch from a grain-based diet to a meat-based one.

Most of the nations that now import grain from the United States were once self-sufficient in grain.  The main reason they aren't is the rise in meat production and consumption. 

In Taiwan, for example, per capita consumption of meat and eggs increased 600 percent from 1950 to 1990.  With this change, vastly increased amounts of grain have gone to livestock, raising the annual per capita grain use in the country from 375 pounds to 858 pounds.  In 1950, Taiwan was a grain exporter; in 1990 the nation imported, mostly for feed, 74 percent of the grain it used.

In mainland China, the situation is similar.  Increased meat consumption has meant less grain available to feed people.  Since 1978, meat consumption has more than doubled, to twenty-four kilograms.  The share of Chinese grain fed to livestock rose from 7 percent in 1960 to 20 percent in 1990.

Over half Of Latin America's beef production is exported, and the rest is too expensive for any but the wealthy to purchase.  From 1960 to 1980 beef exports from El Salvador increases over sixfold.  Meanwhile, increasing numbers of small farmers lost their livelihood and were pushed off their land. Today, 72 percent of all Salvadoran infants are underfed.

In Brazil, major portions of the Amazon tropical rain forests have been destroyed so that wealthy multinational corporations can produce beef for the wealthy.   Corporations such as Volkswagen, Nestle, Mitsubishi, Liquigas, King Ranch, and Swift-Eckrich have bulldozed and burned literally hundreds of millions of acres, replacing the world's oldest and richest ecosystems, home to two million or more species of plant and animal life with a single crop--pasture grass for cattle.  And here, the beef produced has not gone to feed hungry Brazilians; it has been primarily exported to Western Europe, the Middle East, and North America.  In 1987, the United States imported three hundred million pounds of meat from countries in Central and South America.

With the help of international lending institutions, Brazil has mounted an enormous effort to increase agricultural production, but this has been primarily meat-oriented production and for export.  In the late '60s, soybeans were almost nonexistent or Brazil.  Today, this crop is the nation's number one export--but almost all of it goes to feed Japanese and European livestock.  Twenty five years ago, one third of the Brazilian population suffered from malnutrition.  Today, the figure has risen to two thirds.

Oxfam, the international charity, reports that in Brazil huge cattle ranches take up some of the most fertile soil in the whole country, yet 60 percent of Brazilians are malnourished.  Oxfam estimates that in Mexico, 80 percent of the children in rural areas are undernourished, yet the livestock are fed more grain than the human population eats!  The livestock are exported of course, to satisfy the developed nations' craving for cheap hamburgers.

In the early '60s, sorghum was almost unknown in Mexico.  But by 1980, it covered literally twice the acreage of wheat.  Sorghum isn't grown for humans.   It is fed to livestock.  In the late '60s, livestock consumed only 6 percent of Mexico's grain.  Today, the figure is over 50 percent.  This is a trend throughout the Third World.  Copying the United States' meat-oriented diet, these poor countries devote increasing percentages of their resources to meat production.

In Guatemala, 75 percent of the children under five years of age are undernourished.  Yet, every year Guatemala exports 40 million pounds of meat to the United States. It borders on the criminal!

In Costa Rica, beef production quadrupled between 1960 and 1980, but almost all this beef is exported to the United States, and what does stay in the country is eaten by a tiny minority.  Though more and more Costa Rican land is being turned over to meat production, the population is not eating more meat for the change.  The average family in Costa Rica eats less meat than the average American housecat. 

Throughout Latin America, land availability is a prominent social issue.   Revolutionaries as well as reform-minded moderates have made land reform a major issue.  Yet in many Latin American countries, forests are being leveled in order to create pastures for cattle grazing land. 

In a region where land availability is a central social issue, existing land is being gobbled up by livestock agriculture.   The resulting social tensions have resulted in civil wars, repression and violence.

Hunger is really a social disease caused by the unjust, inefficient and wasteful control of food.  Our food security is not being threatened by the prolific, hungry masses, but by elites that profit by the concentration and internationalization of control of food resources. 

In country after country the pattern is repeated.  Livestock industries are consuming feed to such an extent that now almost all Third World nations must import grain.  Seventy-five percent of Third World imports of corn, barley, sorghum, and oats are fed to animals, not to people.  In country after country, the demand for meat among the rich is squeezing out staple production for the poor.

The same trend can be found in the Middle East and North Africa--increases in grain-fed livestock require more imported feed.  In the early '70s, Egypt was self-sufficient in grain.  Then, livestock ate only 10 percent of the nation's grain.  Today, livestock consume 36 percent of Egypt's grain.  As a result, Egypt must now import eight million tons of grain every year. 

 In the late '60s , Syria was a barley exporter.  But in the intervening years, livestock has consumed increasing amounts of the country's grain.   Now, despite a phenomenal 1,000 percent increase in the land area devoted to producing barley, Syria must import the cereal.

According to Buckminster Fuller, there are enough resources at present to feed, clothe, house and educate every human being on the planet at American middle class standards.  The Institute for Food and Development Policy has shown that there is no country in the world in which the people cannot feed themselves from their own resources.

Moreover, there is no correlation between land density and hunger.   China has twice as many people per cultivated acre as India, yet less of a hunger problem.  Bangladesh has just one-half the people per cultivated acre that Taiwan has, yet Taiwan has no starvation, while Bangladesh has one of the highest rates in the world.  The most densely populated countries in the world today are not India and Bangladesh, but Holland and Japan.

Many of us believe that hunger exists because there's not enough food to go around.  But as Frances Moore Lappe' and her anti-hunger organization Food First! have shown, the real cause of hunger is a scarcity of justice, not a scarcity of food.

 I am very curious about something.

Let’s avoid both the animal rights and the health arguments and even some of the other environmental arguments for a moment.

One point has not been fully addressed and that is this one:

"Half of all fresh water worldwide is used for thirsty livestock.  Producing eight ounces of beef requires an unimaginable 25,000 litres of water, or the water necessary for one pound of steak equals the water consumption of the average household for a year."

~~~~~~~~

"Alberta, with its rapidly growing population and industry, is "ground zero" for water shortages in Canada. Already, the provincial government has declared a moratorium on new water licences for the Bow and Oldman rivers, which recent studies show are vastly over utilized by irrigated agriculture and growing municipalities. Controversy has arisen over new proposals to divert water from the Red Deer River to support development in watersheds that have already outstripped their water supplies."


We are already running out of water in one of the most water wealthy countries in the World, please someone tell me how giving 25,000 litres of water to the production on one pound of beef is justifiable on any level?

Second Point
Please consider that on one side we have millions of starving people with not enough food (grain) or water around the world -even in our own backyard.

On the other side we have a group of people who have absolute entitlement issues to their dietary choices.

How can one justify feeding grain and water to cows rather than directly to people?

Don't think starving people's lot in life affects you?

You will start to care about it - when 150 million climate refugees arrive on your door step competing with you for food and water.

Will you still cling to your beef steak then?

"The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) fourth assessment report predicts an estimated 150 million environmental refugees worldwide by the middle of this century, citing coastal flooding, shoreline erosion and agricultural degradation as major factors."


It is predicted that once the oceans start eroding and destroying prime cropland in low level areas, the world will automatically lose 30% of its rice production. Can't remember the quotes on soy and other grains but sure they are up there too.

Oh well, some folks need to eat their meat right to the last regrettable second....

Please GOD, help humanity WAKE-UP!!

We are all in this together we can not keep talking about "It's my right to eat meat...."

Every time you choose to eat meat you are denying so many others the right to a simple meal.

Vasu, I apologize for the overlap in discussion - by the time I posted, your post was already up. Glad to see additional information to support these important points.

Sue, sorry about the egg for shampoo. There are other ways, plant based. Make your own. Coconut cream is great. Buyingvegan organic plastic bottles of shampoo is causing more harm than cows.

well, what i believe is that people should stop eating meat if they believe in god and nature, 'u know why?'"

when a person die in front of ur eyes u feel really bad and when a animal die or being killed u just simply dont care and eat meat of animals like cows, snakes, fishes etc. why is that so.?

remember human is not only living being on earth there are others too and if u kill them for your hunger it will leads to the distruction of u people.

we are all son of god, animals are like our brothers, the choise is yours if u will love them or kill and est them but remember if we kill somebody without reason we will definetly going to be in hell by god so please eat vegetables beacuse it can be produced in a large amount and it can fullfill all ur bood needs.

help yourself and your mother earth by stop eating meat and  meat of endangerous species.

thank you..

Dear commenter who keeps almost hysterically insisting that most people "would DIE!" if they stopped eating meat, despite the fact that evidence and pesky nutritional experts indicate absolutely the opposite--that most people would be healthier on a balanced plant-based diet: stop repeating the same baseless comment; you've said it, we all know you believe it, and repeating it over and over again here is unnecessary. Continuing to post it will just get it deleted.

"It is unfortunate that the debate centers around the ethics of eating meat.  When the article is about the negative impacts of cattle."

""The article is on an Animal Rights blog. If you think animal rights is unfortunate, then maybe you shouldn't be here.""
Well for the writer of article to post that cows are a climate bomb, then the debate is not about the ethics of eating meat.  It is about the potential consequences of the methane created by livestock.  So if you desire to push your ethics agenda based upon that argument then, I will be here to defend my ability to raise livestock for dairy and meat if need be, as I believe that the soil restoration I have done with managed grazing is a benefit to the planet.

"Evidence shows - and I learned this long before going vegan - that the first human-induced climate change came at the beginning of agriculture. Not the beginning of hunting."
I suppose that the sun has little effect on the climate, the 11 year sunspot cycle, coupled with the long cycle the Mayan calendar is centered around, ending in 2012.  

"Eat a healthy, whole foods diet and skip the cholesterol and hormones."

High Cholesterol is more a sign of a lack of vitamin C than intake of meat.  www.natural-health-information-centre.com/vitamin-c.html
I suppose the fact that leguminous diets typically are high in esterogen is overlooked in your statement on hormones as esterogen is a hormone I believe.

"Half of all fresh water worldwide is used for thirsty livestock.  Producing eight ounces of beef requires an unimaginable 25,000 litres of water, or the water necessary for one pound of steak equals the water consumption of the average household for a year."

Livestock build soil structure, make it spongy so that a rain does not run off and percolates through the soil recharging aquifers, increase the ability of the soil to handle a large rainfall event as happened in MN.  Soil organic matter can hold 3 times its weight in water making soils more drought tolerant also.  As a cow is 90% inefficient and 90% of the very low quality feed passes through it and is returned to the soil with the micro flora from the cows gut the organic matter is more readily available to the plants.  The prairies evolved with ruminants, they are a part of the ecosystem, which should not be tilled for wheat production or we could witness another dust bowl.

Another climate bomb that goes ignored is CHEMTRAILS. Our atmosphere is being intentionally poisoned, every day and no one is accountable. 
Lexa

Fantastic.......both sides presented and represented! It's all about glutony, if we are going to have a planet we HAVE TO MAKE CHANGES!!

I hear what everyone is saying beef is not the way to go here  so dont eat it i raise my own poultry to eat and get eggs they wander my yard ridding it of pests and weeds.
However if you think that you are not killing animals because you are vegan you are mistaken. When fields are plowed by modern machinery and harvested by modern machinery, animals die the machines do not shoe them out of the way. the natural instinct for most animals is to stay very still when frightened, so they get plowed under. If you don't believe me work on a farm and see it for yourself.  Just the very fact that we eat causes the death of something else. If you grow all your own food you can makesure it doesnt happen but we all by from companies who need to make money, they go by faster, bigger, and more profit.

Also I am reading about erosion on grazing land there is as much or more so in fields only used a few months of the year for vegetable and fruit. In most countries sustainable farming is not used, the land goes barren and they crops are just moved leaving a used up piece of land.
there needs to be balance in all things not one extreme or the other
 What we truly need to do is decrease our population and by doing so lessen our impact on the planet as a whole.

I hear what everyone is saying beef is not the way to go here  so dont eat it i raise my own poultry to eat and get eggs they wander my yard ridding it of pests and weeds.
However if you think that you are not killing animals because you are vegan you are mistaken. When fields are plowed by modern machinery and harvested by modern machinery, animals die the machines do not shoe them out of the way. the natural instinct for most animals is to stay very still when frightened, so they get plowed under. If you don't believe me work on a farm and see it for yourself.  Just the very fact that we eat causes the death of something else. If you grow all your own food you can makesure it doesnt happen but we all by from companies who need to make money, they go by faster, bigger, and more profit.

Also I am reading about erosion on grazing land there is as much or more so in fields only used a few months of the year for vegetable and fruit. In most countries sustainable farming is not used, the land goes barren and they crops are just moved leaving a used up piece of land.
there needs to be balance in all things not one extreme or the other
 What we truly need to do is decrease our population and by doing so lessen our impact on the planet as a whole.

Agriculture in America accounts for less than 9% of the total methane emmitted.  You guys have just produced more methane and other gasses using your computers than cows did and they acutally did something like feed a person.

http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=CNG.e36a67d49c1127a8c17cc38ed4a4c27e.211&show_article=1 

This is a link to an article entitled "Hamburgers are the hummers of the food world" and is based on a study out recently from Dalhousie University that speaks to the effect of meat eating on the environment. From the article "The livestock sector is estimated to account for 18 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions and beef is the biggest culprit."  This article is about the science that proves that you meat eaters are helping to destroy this planet.  But I'll bet you that not one of you would even consider reading this or any other article.  You like to talk about how you are concerned for the planet, your constant bleating about plastic bottles being worse for the environment than eating meat being a case in point.  But when push comes to shove, and there is the opportunity to put your "concern" into action by ordering a veggie burger or have beans for lunch, or lentils and rice instead of a greasy burger that is going to pack a little more fat into your arteries, you guys all give in to your appetites.  

Once upon a time, doctors encouraged people to smoke to cure lung problems, now in many parts of Canada, you can't smoke in public buildings or in cars when there are children in the vehicle.  You guys are behind the times and behind science and you are choosing to be there.

-"Evidence shows - and I learned this long before going vegan - that the first human-induced climate change came at the beginning of agriculture. Not the beginning of hunting."
I suppose that the sun has little effect on the climate, the 11 year sunspot cycle, coupled with the long cycle the Mayan calendar is centered around, ending in 2012.-

If you are not going to actually read my post, why should I bother reading yours? I said HUMAN-INDUCED. The Sun is not a human.

Hi John, are you aware of the statistics of how long it takes to make even one inch of soil? 100 to 500 years.

You still haven't explained where people are going to get the 2500 litres of water (per pound of beef) thats being given to the cows instead of directly to people. If you take the average cow's weight and multiply it by 2500 litres, just imagine how much that really is....

Compassion in World Farming is one of the lobbies that believes eating less meat is critical for a sustainable future:

“Lack of water,” says CEO Philip Lymbery, “is set to be the biggest threat to global stability in coming decades. “Producing meat uses up vast amounts of water."

"Minimising the amount of water taken to produce food must now become a priority of global food policy.” The Swedish Environmental Protection Agency (SEPA) has called for a massive 75% reduction in the consumption of meat in order to save water, protect the environment from further degradation and help to alleviate poverty. SEPA suggests a reduction from145g per person per day to just 35 g per person per day.

 "Hundreds of Millions of South Asians Face Increasing Water Stress - South Asian water resources increasingly vulnerable. A report by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) and Asian Institute of Technology in Thailand have concluded that freshwater resources in three major river basins in South Asia are threatened due to climate change and over-use. The report states that the severe water shortages predicted in all three basins would jeopardize the lives of some 750 million people. With two-thirds of the Himalayan glaciers now receding, intense pumping at lower elevations has led to groundwater levels declining rapidly in the Ganges-Brahmaputra-Meghna and Indus basins, resulting in contamination by saltwater intrusion."

~~~~~~~~

"Water resources imperiled in New Zealand - Based on a review of the government’s recently proposed National Policy Statement for Freshwater Management, New Zealand author Elizabeth Chambers notes that quality freshwater sources across the nation are becoming scarcer due to unsustainable water management, increasing climate change-related droughts, pollution from the widespread use of fertilizers and, most significantly, the large dairy industry which not only requires immense amounts of fresh water but causes waterway pollution from farm runoff. The New Zealand government is developing a number of regulations to ensure a continuous and reliable supply of safe freshwater across the nation. At the same time it is recognizing that dairy production is a major part of the problem, with one cow requiring between 2000 and 4000 liters of water for every liter of milk, according to British journalist Fred Pearce."

Unless we drastically change our lifestyles and dietary choices global water shortages are only going to get worse. In turn this will cause social unrest of unimaginable proportions as more people, countries, industries compete for the same water source.

Okay I'm wading in here.

Humans are omnivores. For the uninitiated that means we need foodstuffs from a variety of sources to get all our nutritional needs met.

That nice strong healthy body you inhabit comes from generations of humans adapting and eating whatever they could find or grow through feast and famine. All those nice cuddly animals wouldn't exist if farmers/ranchers weren't growing them for the stuff they put on your table. And it was the domestication of those animals that lead to you being able to bang out your ideas on a keyboard.

I've been a diabetic since I was 4 years old. I'm sick to death of one group after another preaching at me how I ought to eat. Until you've lived my life, stop pushing your agenda down my throat. YOU try balancing carbs, proteins, and fats with exercise, work, family, and stress. Try calculating how many units of insulin are required to cover a container of yogurt after a swim when you have a cold. And be aware that your coverage level may change tomorrow. If you don't know what I'm talking about, well, welcome to my world.

Try, just try, living without making your own insulin! Humans can not metabolize insulin without vitamin K. WHICH comes from animal protein. 25 years ago ALL insulin came from beef or pork. Human recombinant DNA insulin saved my life and made my son's life possible. BUT there are still people who must use the beef or pork because they can not tolerate Humanlin in its many forms.

I'm all for moderation. I'm all for finding better ways to live on Planet Earth. But I am an inhabitant of Planet Earth too, not an invader. I have as much right to exist here as any other creature. I also refuse to turn back the clock - to a time when 3 out of 4 children never saw their 1st birthday and 1/3rd of women died in childbirth

And the average life expectancy of a diabetic was 20 years old.

Think about it. I lived it.

Although it is an agnostic (i.e., no recognition of a personal God) moral philosophy a few centuries older than Christianity, Buddhism teaches a consistent ethic of reverence for all life. No wars have ever been waged in the name of Buddhism. The act of abortion is also explicitly condemned in the Buddhist canonical scriptures. Sir Edwin Arnold’s poetic biography on Siddhartha Gautama, The Light of Asia, caused quite a controversy in Victorian England: centuries before Jesus, an earlier teacher lived “the Christ life.”
The ethical teachings of the Buddha are quite similar to those found in the Gospel of Jesus: One must never be proud nor harbor anger against anyone. He who humbles himself shall be exalted, while the one who exalts himself shall be degraded. Harsh language must never be used against anyone.

Avoid lust, anger and greed. One should not scrutinize the mote in a neighbor’s eye without first noticing the beam in one’s own. One must “turn the other cheek” if attacked or abused. One’s own possessions must be shared with the less fortunate. If a man obtained the whole world and its riches, he still would not be satisfied, nor would this save him.
In 261 B.C., the Indian emperor Ashoka witnessed firsthand the innumerable casualties he caused during one of his many military campaigns. His heart was filled with grief. He converted to Buddhism. 19th century scholar and writer H.G. Wells considered Ashoka’s conversion to Buddhism one of the most significant events in world history.
Ashoka, formerly a bloody and ruthless emperor, became a remarkably kind and gentle leader. Ashoka established some of the first animal rights laws. He stopped the royal hunt, stopped the sacrifice of animals in his capital city, stopped the killing of animals for food in the royal kitchens, and gave up the eating of meat. Ashoka made it illegal to kill many species of animals, such as parrots, ducks, geese, bats, turtles, squirrels, monkeys and rhinos. He forbade the killing of pregnant animals, or animals that were nursing their young. He declared certain days to be “non-killing days,” on which fish could not be caught, nor any other animals killed. He established wells and watering holes, places of rest and hospitals for humans and animals alike.
Ashoka educated his people to have compassion for animals, and to refrain from killing or harming them. He sent missionaries to all the neighboring kingdoms to teach mercy, compassion and nonviolence. Through Ashoka’s patronage, Buddhism was spread all over the Indian subcontinent. Buddhism would eventually reach the rest of Asia; today there are an estimated 300 to 600 million Buddhists worldwide.

The first precept of Buddhism is: “Do not kill, but rather preserve and cherish all life.” There is an ancient poem, reputed to be the only text ever written by the Buddha himself, which states:
“Let creatures all, all things that live, all beings of whatever kind, see nothing that will bode them ill. May naught of evil come to them.”
The Buddhist emperor Ashoka (268-223 BC) declared in one of his famous Pillar Edicts: “I have enforced the law against killing certain animals..The greatest progress of Righteousness among men comes from the exhortation in favor of non-injury to life and abstention from killing living beings.”

Mahayana Buddhism supports the vegetarian way of life. According to the Mahaparinirvana Sutra: “The eating of meat extinguishes the seed of great compassion.”
The Lankavatara Sutra says:
“For the sake of love of purity, the bodhisattva should refrain from eating flesh, which is born from semen, blood, etc. For fear of causing terror to living beings let the bodhisattva, who is disciplining himself to attain compassion, refrain from eating flesh…It is not true that meat is proper food and permissible when the animal was not killed by himself, when he did not order others to kill it, when it was not specifically meant for him…Again, there may be some people in the future who…being under the influence of the taste for meat will string together in various ways many sophisticated arguments to defend meat-eating…But…meat-eating in any form, in any manner, and in any place is unconditionally and once and for all prohibited…Meat-eating I have not permitted to anyone, I do not permit, I will not permit…”
The Surangama Sutra says:
“The reason for practicing dhyana and seeking to attain samadhi is to escape from the suffering of life. But in seeking to escape from suffering ourselves, why should we inflict it upon others? Unless you can control your minds that even the thought of brutal unkindness and killing is abhorrent, you will never be able to escape from the bondage of the world’s life…After my parinirvana in the final kalpa different kinds of ghosts will be encountered everywhere deceiving people and teaching them that they can eat meat and still attain enlightenment…How can a bhikshu, who hopes to become a deliverer of others, himself be living on the flesh of other sentient beings?”
The Dalai Lama has said, “I do not see any reason why animals should be slaughtered to serve as human diet when there are so many substitutes. After all, man can live without meat.”
Contemporary Hindu spiritual masters have taught us that if one wishes to eat cow’s flesh (or the flesh of any other animal for that matter), one should wait until the animal dies of natural causes, rather than take the life of a fellow creature. This indicates that we are vegetarian first and foremost out of nonviolence toward and compassion for animals, rather than because we follow “dietary laws.”
Avoidance of onions and garlic is not limited to Hindus in India; there is a tradition of avoiding these foods in China, antedating the arrival of Buddhism. ‘Enjoy’ Vegetarian Restaurant in San Francisco, CA is run by Chinese Buddhists, and they do not serve onions or garlic in any of their preparations. However, they do serve mushrooms!
In Theravada Buddhist countries (Burma, Ceylon, Laos, Thailand, Cambodia, Tibet, Malaya), although the monks are forbidden to kill animals, they beg for food and are expected to eat whatever is offered them. Contrasting the Mahayana Buddhist countries (e.g., China) with the Theravada, in A Vegetarian Sourcebook, author Keith Akers writes:
“In the Mahayana countries, the custom regarding monks is completely different, reflecting a different attitude towards meat consumption. The Mahayana Buddhist monks do not beg for food at all; they prepare their own food, which is either bought, grown, or collected as rent. The Mahayana monks in China were strictly vegetarian in ancient times and remain so today.
“Dietary abstinence from meat was an ancient Chinese tradition that antedated the arrival of Buddhism. In China, all animal foods, onions, and alcohol were either forbidden or customarily avoided. Animal products were avoided in dress as they were in diet. There was a prohibition on the use of silk or leather (not observed in Theravada countries).
“Not only are the Mahayana Buddhist monks vegetarian, but so are many Buddhist lay people in China. Lay people usually receive a lay ordination, in which they must take from one to five vows. Almost everyone takes the first vow, which is not to take the life of any sentient creature.”
Misturu Kakimoto of the Japanese Vegetarian Society writes: “A survey that I conducted of 80 Westerners, including Americans, Englishmen and Canadians, revealed that approximately half of them believed that vegetarianism originated in India. Some respondents assumed that vegetarianism had its origin in China or Japan. It seems to me that the reason Westerners associate vegetarianism with China or Japan is Buddhism. It is no wonder, and in fact we could say that Japan used to be a country where vegetarianism prevailed.”
Gishi-wajin-denn, a history book on Japan written in China around the third century BC, says, “Thre are no cattle, no horses, no tigers, no leopards, no goats and no magpies in that land. The climate is mild and people over there eat fresh vegetables both in summer and in winter.” It also says that “people catch fish and shellfish in the water.” Apparently, the Japanese ate fresh vegetables as well as rice and other cereals as staple foods. They also took some fish and shellfish, but hardly any meat.
Shinto, the prevailing religion at the time, is essentially pantheistic, based upon the worship of the forces of nature. According to writer Steven Rosen, in the early days of Shinto, no animal food was offered in sacrifice because of the injunction against shedding blood in the sacred area of the shrine.
Several hundred years later, Buddhism came to Japan and the prohibition of hunting and fishing permeated the Japanese people. In 7th century Japan, the Empress Jito encouraged “hojo,” or the releasing of captive animals, and established wildlife preserves, where animals could not be hunted.
There are many similarities between the Hindu literature and the Buddhist religions of the Far East. For example, the word Cha’an of the Cha’an school of Chinese Buddhism is Chinese for the Sanskrit word “dhyana”, which means meditation, as does the word “Zen” in Japanese. In 676 AD, then Japanese emperor Tenmu proclaimed an ordinance prohibiting the eating of fish and shellfish as well as animal flesh and fowl. Subsequently, in the year 737 of the Nara period, the emperor Seimu approved the eating of fish and shellfish.
During the twelve hundred years from the Nara period to the Meiji restoration in the second half of the 19th century, Japanese people enjoyed vegetarian style meals. They usually ate rice as staple food and beans and vegetables. It was only on special occasions or celebrations that fish was served. Under these circumstances the Japanese people developed a vegetarian cuisine, Shojin Ryori (ryori means cooking or cuisine), which was native to Japan.
The word “shojin” is a Japanese translation of “vyria” in Sanskrit, meaning “to have the goodness and keep away evils.” Buddhist priests of the Tendai-shu and Shingon-shu sects, whose founders studied in China in the ninth century before they founded their respective sects, have handed down vegetarian cooking practices from Chinese temples strictly in accordance with the teachings of the Buddha.

In the 13th century, Dogen, the founder of the Soto sect of Zen, formally established Shojin Ryori or Japanese vegetarian cuisine. Dogen studied and learned the Zen teachings abroad in China, during the Sung Dynasty. He fixed rules aiming to establish the pure vegetarian life as a means of training the mind.

One of the other influences Zen exerted on the Japanese people manifested itself in Sado, the Japanese tea ceremony. It is believed that Esai, founder of the Rinazi-shu sect, introduced tea to Japan and it is the custom for Zen followers to drink tea. The customs preserved in the teaching of Zen lead to a systematic rule called Sado…a Cha-shitsu or tea ceremony room is so constructed as to resemble the Shojin, where the chief priest is at a Buddhist temple.

Food served at a tea ceremony is called Kaiseki in Japanese, which literally means a stone in the breast. Monks practicing asceticism used to press heated stones to their bosom to suppress hunger. Then the word Kaiseki itself came to mean a light meal served at Shojin, and Kaiseki meals had great influence on the Japanese.
The “Temple of the Butchered Cow” can be found in Shimoda, Japan. It was erected shortly after Japan opened its doors to the West in the 1850s. It was erected in honor of the first cow slaughtered in Japan, marking the first violation of the Buddhist tenet against the eating of meat.

An example of a Buddhist vegetarian in the modern age: Kenji Miyazawa, a Japanese writer and poet of the early 20th century, who wrote a novel entitled Vegetarian-Taisai, in which he depicted a fictitious vegetarian congress…His works played an important role in the advocacy of modern vegetarianism. Today, no animal flesh is ever eaten in a Zen Buddhist monastery, and such Buddhist denominations as the Cao Dai sect (which originated in South Vietnam), now boasts some two million followers, all of whom are vegetarian.

The Buddhist teachings are not the only source contributing to the growth of vegetarianism in Japan. in the late 19th century, Dr. Gensai Ishizuka published an academic book in which he advocated vegetarian cooking with an emphasis on brown rice and vegetables. His method is called Seisyoku (Macrobiotics) and is based upon ancient Chinese philosophy such as the principles of Yin and Yang and Taoism. Now some people support his method of preventative medicine. Japanese macrobiotics suggest taking brown rice as half of the whole intake, with vegetables, beans, seaweeds, and a small amount of fish.

In his 1923 book, The Natural Diet of Man, Dr. John Harvey Kellogg writes: “According to Mori, the Japanese peasant of the interior is almost an exclusive vegetarian. He eats fish once or twice a month and meat once or twice a year.” Dr. Kellogg writes that in 1899, the Emperor of Japan appointed a commission to determine whether it was necessary to add meat to the nation’s diet to improve the people’s strength and stature. The commission concluded that as far as meat was concerned, “the Japanese had always managed to do without it, and that their powers of endurance and their athletic prowess exceeded that of any of the Caucasian races. Japan’s diet stands on a foundation of rice.”

According to Dr. Kellogg: “the rice diet of the Japanese is supplemented by the free use of peanuts, soy beans and greens, which… constitute a wholly sufficient bill of fare. Throughout the Island Empire, rice is largely used, together with buckwheat, barley, wheat and millet. Turnips and radishes, yams and sweet potatoes are frequently used, also cucumbers, pumpkins and squashes. The soy bean is held in high esteem and used largely in the form of miso, a puree prepared from the bean and fermented; also tofu, a sort of cheese; and cho-yu, which is prepared by mixing the pulverized beans with wheat flour, salt, and water and fermenting from one and a half to five years.
“The Chinese peasant lives on essentially the same diet, as do also the Siamese, the Koreans, and most other Oriental peoples. Three-fourths of the world’s population eats so little meat that it cannot be regarded as anything more than an incidental factor in their bill of fare. The countless millions of China,” writes Dr. Kellogg, “are for the most part flesh-abstainers. In fact at least two-thirds of the inhabitants of the world make so little use of flesh that it can hardly be considered an essential part of their dietary…”

Misturu Kakimoto concludes: “Japanese people started eating meat some 150 years ago and now suffer the crippling diseases caused by the excess intake of fat in flesh and the possible hazards from the use of agricultural chemicals and additives. This is persuading them to seek natural and safe food and to adopt once again the traditional Japanese cuisine.”

Why was my post removed? 
Anyway,  Sue, Yes. I don't buy much that is packaged. Some though (like bottled vinegar.) "Products" are the invention of an industry prying on us. Nature gives us everything. 

For body care I buy absolutely nothing packaged. For food I buy honey in glass jars not much else processed or packaged. 

Also I said that we should work on raising children into adults who would care about animals, plants, humans, the planet. 

Right now, we are raised into people in pain, full of anger and numbed feelings. Raising peaceful being is the way to care for everyone long term.

--  I have two horses, and their weight, moving back and forth over a small field, effectively compacts the soil to where the water finds it extremely difficult to percolate down through it.  -- 
Gee maybe because your animals do not follow migratory patterns the soil becomes hard.  The grass is abused and not able to handle water infiltration as would happen in nature.

Naomi, I already wrote here, publicly, that I was done allowing you to repeatedly post your baseless "most people would DIE without meat" remarks here. If you want to keep insisting that veganism kills people, despite all the evidence to the contrary from scientists and nutritionists, such comments will continue to be deleted. Diatribes against evil "vegan food"--as if someone with a chip on her shoulder about veganism gets to decide what does and does not constitute "vegan food," and apparently only the most heavily processed and packaged foods get to be "vegan foods," as if vegans couldn't possibly eat a diet heavy in completely natural, whole, unprocessed foods--don't get to stay here either.

This also isn't the place for people to insist that global warming isn't real or that humans aren't contributing to it--whether it's a commenter clearly going in the conspiracy-theory direction or a commenter noting it calmly and seemingly setting herself up as an expert on such matters.

--Hi John, are you aware of the statistics of how long it takes to make even one inch of soil? 100 to 500 years.--
Can you cite a reference?  Here is a start for you to remove the blinders and open your mind (a defining characteristic of liberal). www.permacultureinternational.org/Members/kymkruse/KDC

The water can come from the sky when it rains.  Then the soil can act as a sponge and the grass can take the water from the soil, the cow can eat the grass and then the cow can be milked, you can drink the milk, then go to the bathroom and most of the water will return to the cycle of life.

It is quite evident that no matter how many articles, studies, scientific journals are referred to in support of the" go veg'n" for the sake of the planet, you meat eaters will ignore them and instead make unfounded and unsupportable statements.  With the opportunity to research your subjects that the internet provides, you people should be ashamed of your closed minds and obvious intention of doing what you do simply because you are slaves to appetite. 

Wow the Wikipedia lady is back to it again. How dare you call people close minded just because they eat meat. You took an ignorant sounding shot at a genuine sharing of a real life story. Then turn around and call others close minded, the hypocrisy is astounding. Your opinion is obviously formed from inside a bubble and you probably drive an SUV and wear leather anyway.

"A diet that can lead to heart attacks, cancer, and numerous other diseases cannot be a natural diet," writes Keith Akers in A Vegetarian Sourcebook.  "A diet that pillages our resources of land, water, forests, and energy cannot be a natural diet.  A diet that causes the unnecessary suffering and death of billions of animals each year cannot be a natural diet."

I understand there are conservative Christians who fear vegetarianism...which is kind of like being afraid of nonsmoking, nondrinking, or recycling.  Ronald J. Sider of Evangelicals for Social Action, in his 1977 book, Rich Christians in an Age of Hunger, pointed out that 220 million Americans were eating enough food (largely because of the high consumption of grain fed to livestock) to feed over one billion people in the poorer countries.

A pamphlet put out by Compassion Over Killing says raising animals for food is one of the leading causes of both pollution and resource depletion today.  According to a recent United Nations report, "Livestock's Long Shadow," raising chickens, turkeys, pigs, and other animals for food causes more greenhouse gas emissions than all the cars, trucks and other forms of transportation combined.  Researchers from the University of Chicago similarly concluded that a vegetarian diet is the most energy efficient, and the average American does more to reduce global warming emissions by not eating animal products than by switching to a hybrid car.

A 2007 journal published by the American Dietetic Association found "meat protein production required 26 times more water than vegetable protein on rain-fed lands."  The journal further states that dieticians "can encourage eating that is both healthful and conserving of soil, water, and energy by emphasizing plant sources of protein and foods that have been produced with fewer agricultural inputs."

"Livestock are one of the most significant contributors to today's most serious environmental problems.  Urgent action is required to remedy the situation." 

---Union Nations' Food and Agriculture Association

A single dairy cow produces approximately 120 pounds of wet manure per day, which is equivalent to that of 20 to 40 humans.

70% of the grain grown and 50% of the water consumed in the U.S. are used by the meat industry.  (Audubon Society)

On average 990 liters of water are required to produce one liter of milk.  (United Nations)

Over 260 million acres of U.S. forest have been cleared to grow grain for livestock.  (Greenpeace)

It takes nearly one gallon of fossil fuel and 5,200 gallons of water to produce just one pound of conventionally fed beef.  (Mother Jones)

Farmed animals produce an estimated 1.4 billion tons of fecal waste each year in the U.S.  Much of this untreated waste pollutes the land and water.

 The number of animals killed for food in the United States is 70 times larger than the number of animals killed in laboratories, 30 times larger than the number killed by hunters and trappers, and 500 times larger than the number of animals killed in animal pounds.

"If anyone wants to save the planet,” says Paul McCartney in a PETA interview, “all they have to do is stop eating meat. That’s the single most important thing you could do. It’s staggering when you think about it. Vegetarianism takes care of so many things in one shot: ecology, famine, cruelty. Let’s do it! Linda was right.  Going veggie is the single best idea for the new century.”

There is no free speech here. Two of my posts have been removed and a third edited. This one will be flushed too. Oh well. I will go elsewhere.

"Although I may disagree with some of its underlying principles," writes pro-life activist Karen Swallow Prior, "there is much for me, an anti-abortion activist, to respect in the animal rights movement.

"Animal rights activists, like me, have risked personal safety and reputation for the sake of other living beings. Animal rights activists, like me, are viewed by many in the mainstream as fanatical wackos, ironically exhorted by irritated passerby to 'Get a Life!'

"Animal rights activists, like me, place a higher value on life than on personal comfort and convenience, and in balancing the sometimes competing interests of rights and responsibilities, choose to err on the side of compassion and nonviolence."

During 1986 - 1988, when I had access to USENET, a nationwide computer network linking corporations, military bases, think tanks, universities, etc., I paid close attention to the abortion debate. The subject of animal rights always came up, albeit indirectly.

The mentality of the pro-choicers was that the fetus wasn't human, but rather some kind of lower life form--and that lower life forms couldn't possibly have rights.

When a pro-lifer discussed the potential humanity of the unborn, a pro-choicer replied, "MY CAT has more potential than that!"

One pro-choicer said sarcastically, "Maybe the kid (the fetus) should be raised as a vegetarian. After all, don't cows have the right to life?"

Another pro-choicer, Oleg Kiselev, upon hearing the pro-life argument that brain waves can be detected in the unborn as early as six weeks, pointed out that animals also have brain waves. He then added, "Excuse me, while I eat my veal stew."

In the spring of 1988, Stephen Carrier, a grad student in Mathematics at UC Berkeley, pointed out that chimpanzees share 99 percent of their DNA with humans, and so, to argue that species membership alone makes life worth protecting "is to fetishize DNA."

A pro-lifer responded: "If it'll please you, I will agree to protect anything that is 99 percent human."

To this, Stephen responded: "Okay. How about 50 percent? That would probably bring quite a few species into the net."

Stephen Carrier admitted, "I don't know what makes it acceptable to kill animals for meat. Some people think it's wrong, and I have no logical answer for them. But it's not murder, and I believe abortions are analogous. Yes, it's killing--but it's not murder."

Stephen admitted his argument was "not a mathematical proof, but there is no mathematical proof that will resolve the abortion debate."

In the fall of 1986, pro-life student John Morrow of Rutgers University compared abortion to slavery: Roe v. Wade denied rights to an entire class of humans merely on account of their age and developmental status, just as the Dred Scott decision of 1857 denied rights to an entire class of humans based on the color of their skin.

Dave Butler of Tektronix in Oregon responded: "Abortion and slavery? Not even close. A fetus isn't human. If you believe it's wrong to eat meat, should your morality be imposed upon everyone else?"

"Not even close" has become a popular slogan with pro-choicers. It even appeared on the headlines of most San Francisco Bay Area newspapers in November 1992, when Bill Clinton was elected.

"Not even close" is not a new slogan. Peter Singer writes in Animal Liberation that when Mary Wollstonecraft, a forerunner of today’s feminists, published A Vindication of the Rights of Women in 1792, "her views were widely regarded as absurd."

Thomas Taylor, a distinguished Cambridge philosopher, tried to refute Mary Wollstonecraft by demonstrating that if women could be given liberation, then animals could be given liberation, too. And since this is "absurd" it must be equally "absurd" to give women liberation. Taylor called his parody, "A Vindication of the Rights of Brutes."

"Not even close" is the "A Vindication of the Rights of Brutes" of the late 20th and early 21st century, because it takes for granted the invincible prejudice that other animals couldn't possibly have rights.  It is this prejudice which we in the animal rights movement are struggling to overcome.

Again, the mentality of the pro-choicers was that the fetus wasn't human, but some kind of lower life form--and that lower life forms couldn't possibly have rights. This led me to conclude that if there's any group out there which ought to be sympathetic to animal rights, it's pro-lifers.

"Organic" has been pretty much meaningless since the federal government took it over. The federal organic program is just cover for industrial ag to move in on the fastest growing market segment. 
A meaningful comparison would be between grass-fed and grain-fed beef. And you'd find it does make a difference. Keeping land in pasture takes far less energy and absorbs far more carbon. Grass-fed cows produce less methane because the chemistry in their rumen is natural instead of artificially acidic. And to the person who said meat gets its taste from spices, grass-fed meat has flavor all on its own. Since I've been eating my own beef for the past fifteen years, even the fanciest USDA Prime steak tastes like nothing to me.
While there's some hope that more pasture time will be required by the Obama USDA for organic certification, you can bet the industry will feed every bit of grain they can get away with.
I'm an actual small farmer in NE Washington state. I'm glad city folks are taking an interest in food, but I don't buy into scapegoating beef production for climate change. 
http://www.holisticmanagement.org/n7/Bloggertin/globalstrategy.pdfThis link will take you to a 20 p. document from Alan Savory, about using intensively managed grazing to help reduce our carbon footprint. From my personal experience I can vouch that intensive grazing management improves productivity and soil health. It is very low on petrochemical inputs. And as it's modeled on natural systems, I'm not surprised.

If folks want to be vegans, that's fine with me. Just remember that without animal agriculture you'll make it impossible to have thriving, local, small farms in most of the country. It builds soil fertility (which coincidentally, sequesters carbon). You can grow crops with chemical fertilizers, but you deplete the soil. In areas such as where I live, the growing season is far too short to make it farming without animal products to sell. In every area, the higher profit potential is necessary for small farms to be sustainable.
As to vegetarians, who'll eat dairy and eggs, those won't be available in market quantities without meat and poultry markets. 
Dr. Weston Price showed quite clearly that it was possible for indigenous cultures to thrive on a variety of diets, and in fact it was the vegetarian cultures that generally were less healthy. The supposed harm of meat-based diets comes not from meat, or fat, but from meat or fat produced by a grain-fed model. 
My personal experience has been that the role of inactivity (too many cars and tvs) has received far less blame for our cardio-vascular problems than it should. 

Walter, interesting argument, but if soil fertility is the problem, why not keep the animals there without slaughtering or milking them? They have to live somewhere, right? Or maybe we should use human manure instead? I am just throwing out ideas here, but it seems absurd that it's necessary to slaughter animals in order for them to provide fertilization.

"it was possible for indigenous cultures to thrive on a variety of diets, and in fact it was the vegetarian cultures that generally were less healthy"
Now it just sounds like you are throwing out anything that will oppose the abolition of meat consumption. How is this relevant to whether or not I should be vegetarian? I think the arguments that meat is bad for your health is ridiculous with regard to animal rights, unless we're talking about the animal's diet. It's not relevant either. We'll never get to the bottom of this by arguing about whether or not meat is good for your health.

In a sermon preached in York Minster, September 28, 1986, John Austin Baker, the Bishop of Salisbury, England, attacked the overcrowded confinement methods of raising and killing animals for food, choosing as his example, the treatment of chickens.

"Is there any credit balance for the battery hen, denied almost all natural functioning, all normal environment, lapsing steadily into deformity and disease, for the whole of her existence?" he asked. "It is in the battery shed and the broiler house, not in the wild, that we find the true parallel to Auschwitz. Auschwitz is a purely human invention."

On another occasion, Bishop Baker taught: "By far the most important duty of all Christians in the cause of animal welfare is to cultivate this capacity to see; to see things with the heart of God, and so to suffer with other creatures."

On World Prayer Day for Animals, October 4, 1986, Bishop Baker preached against indifference to animal pain and lauded the animal welfare movement: "To shut your mind, heart, imagination to the sufferings of others is to begin slowly but inexorably to die. It is to cease by inches from being human, to become in the end capable of nothing generous or unselfish—or sometimes capable of anything, however terrible. You in the animal welfare movement are among those who may yet save our society from becoming spiritually deaf, blind and dead, and so from the doom that will justly follow..."

According to Bishop Baker: "...Rights, whether animal or human, have only one sure foundation: that God loves us all and rejoices in us all. We humans are called to share with God in fulfilling the work of love toward all creatures...the true glory of the strong is to give themselves for the cherishing of the weak."

In October, 1986, on the Feast Day of St. Francis, the Very Reverend James Morton in the Cathedral of St. John the Divine, New York City, made this observation: "We don’t own animals, any more than we don’t own trees or own mountains or seas or, indeed, each other. We don’t own our wives or our husbands or our friends or our lovers. We respect and behold and we celebrate trees and mountains and seas and husbands and wives and lovers and children and friends and animals...Our souls must be poor—must be open—in order to be able to receive, to behold, to enter into communion with, but not to possess. Our poverty of soul allows animals to thrive and to shine and be free and radiate God’s glory."

A 1980 United Nations report states that women constitute half the world’s population, perform nearly two-thirds of its work hours, yet receive one-tenth of the world’s income and own less than one-hundredth of the world’s property. The impact of the women’s movement upon the church is being heralded as a Second Reformation. Women are now being ordained as priests, pastors and ministers, while patriarchal references to the Almighty as "Father" are replaced with the gender-neutral "Parent." Jesus Christ is designated the "Child of God." The words of Scripture—perhaps, more accurately, the words of the apostle Paul—on this subject are seen today not as a divine revelation, but rather as an embarrassment from centuries past:

"Let the women keep silent in the churches, for they are not allowed to speak. Instead, they must, as the Law says, be in subordination. If they wish to learn something, let them inquire of their own husbands at home; for it is improper for a woman to speak in church...let a woman learn quietly with complete submission. I do not allow a woman to teach, neither to domineer over a man; instead she is to keep still. For Adam was first formed, then Eve. And Adam was not deceived, but the woman, since she was deceived, experienced the transgression. She will, however, be kept safe through the child-bearing, if with self-control she continues in faith and love and consecration." (I Corinthians 14:34-35; I Timothy 2:11-15)

Many churches now claim these instructions were merely temporary frameworks used to build churches in the first century pagan world—they are not to be taken as universal absolutes for all eternity. If churches, Scripture and Christianity can adapt and be redefined or reinterpreted in a changing world to end injustices towards women, they can certainly do the same towards animals.

The International Network for Religion and Animals (INRA) was founded in 1985 by Virginia Bouraquardez. Its educational and religious programs are meant to "bring religious principles to bear upon humanity’s attitude towards the treatment of our animal kin...and, through leadership, materials, and programs, to successfully interact with clergy and laity from many religious traditions."

According to the INRA:

"Religion counsels the powerful to be merciful and kind to those weaker than themselves, and most of humankind is at least nominally religious. But there is a ghastly paradox. Far from showing mercy, humanity uses its dominion over other animal species to pen them in cruel close confinement; to trap, club, and harpoon them; to poison, mutilate, and shock them in the name of science; to kill them by the billions; and even to blind them in excruciating pain to test cosmetics.

"Some of these abuses are due to mistaken understandings of religious principles; others, to a failure to apply those principles. Scriptures need to be fully researched concerning the relationship of humans to nonhuman animals, and to the entire ecological structure of Nature. Misinterpretations of scripture taken out of context, or based upon questionable theological assumptions need to be re-examined."

In the winter of 1990, INRA’s Executive Director, the Reverend Dr. Marc A. Wessels wrote: "As a Christian clergyman who speaks of having compassion for other creatures and who actively declares the need for humans to develop an ethic that gives reverence for all of life, I hope that others will open their eyes, hearts and minds to the responsibility of loving care for God’s creatures."

In a pamphlet entitled "The Spiritual Link Between Humans and Animals," Reverend Wessels writes: "We recognize that many animal rights activists and ecologists are highly critical of Christians because of our relative failure thus far adequately to defend animals and to preserve the natural environment. Yet there are positive signs of a growing movement of Christian activists and theologians who are committed to the process of ecological stewardship and animal liberation.

"Individual Christians and groups on a variety of levels, including denominational, ecumenical, national and international, have begun the delayed process of seriously considering and practically addressing the question of Christian responsibility for animals. Because of the debate surrounding the ‘rights’ of animals, some Christians are considering the tenets of their faith in search for an appropriate ethical response."

According to Reverend Wessels, "The most important teaching which Jesus shared was the need for people to love God with their whole self and to love their neighbor as they loved themselves. Jesus expanded the concept of neighbor to include those who were normally excluded, and it is therefore not too farfetched for us to consider the animals as our neighbors.

"To think about animals as our brothers and sisters is not a new or radical idea. By extending the idea of neighbor, the love of neighbor includes love of, compassion for, and advocacy of animals. There are many historical examples of Christians who thought along those lines, besides the familiar illustration of St. Francis. An abbreviated listing of some of those individuals worthy of study and emulation includes Saint Blaise, Saint Comgall, Saint Cuthbert, Saint Gerasimus, Saint Giles, and Saint Jerome, to name but a few."

Reverend Wessels notes that: "In the Bible, which we understand as the divine revelation of God, there is ample evidence of the vastness and goodness of God toward animals. The Scriptures announce God as the creator of all life, the One responsible for calling life into being and placing it in an ordered fashion which reflects God’s glory. Humans and animals are a part of this arrangement. Humanity has a special relationship with particular duties to God’s created order, a connection to the animals by which they are morally bound by God’s covenant with them.

"According to the Scriptures, Christians are called to respect the life of animals and to be ethically engaged in protecting the life and liberty of all sentient creatures. As that is the case, human needs and rights do not usurp an animal’s intrinsic rights, nor should they deny the basic liberty of either individual animals or specific species. If the Christian call can be understood as being a command to be righteous, then Christians must have a higher regard for the lives of animals.

"Jesus’ life was one of compassion and liberation;" concludes Reverend Wessels, "his ministry was one which understood and expressed the needs of the oppressed. Especially in the past decade, Christians have been reminded that their faith requires them to take seriously the cries of the oppressed.

"Theologians such as Gutierrez, Miranda, and Hinkelammert have defined the Christian message as one which liberates lives and transforms social patterns of oppression. That concept of Christianity which sees God as the creator of the universe and the One who seeks justice is not exclusive; immunity from cruelty and injustice is not only a human desire or need—the animal kingdom also needs liberation."

A growing number of Christian theologians, clergy and activists are beginning to take a stand in favor of animal rights. In a pamphlet entitled "Christian Considerations on Laboratory Animals," Reverend Marc Wessels notes that in laboratories animals cease to be persons and become "tools of research." He cites William French of Loyala University as having made the same observation at a gathering of Christian ethicists at Duke University—a conference entitled "Good News for Animals?"

On Earth Day, 1990, Reverend Wessels observed: "It is a fact that no significant social reform has yet taken place in this country without the voice of the religious community being heard. The endeavors of the abolition of slavery; the women’s suffrage movement; the emergence of the pacifist tradition during World War I; the struggles to support civil rights, labor unions, and migrant farm workers; and the anti-nuclear and peace movements have all succeeded in part because of the power and support of organized religion. Such authority and energy is required by individual Christians and the institutional church today if the liberation of animals is to become a reality."

If this topic was posted somewhere other than an AR blog, like, say, Spiegel International, would it warrant so much negative debate & defensiveness?

If you disagree, argue with the German consumer protection organization.

Back to the original topic:  http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/0,1518,574754,00.html

Christians mistakenly think they are no longer under Mosaic Law, because Paul referred to his background as a former Pharisee and previous adherence to Mosaic Law (with its dietary laws and commandments calling for the humane treatment of animals) as "so much garbage."  (Philippians 3:4-8)

Nothing in the synoptic gospels suggests a break with Judaism. Jesus was called "Rabbi," meaning "Master" or "Teacher," 42 times in the gospels. Jesus' ministry was a rabbinic one. He went to the synagogue (Matthew 12:9), taught in the synagogues (Matthew 4:23, 13:54; Mark 1:39), expressed concern for Jairus, "one of the rulers of the synagogue" (Mark 5:36) and it "was his custom" to go to the synagogue (Luke 4:16).

Jesus began his ministry by teaching the multitudes not to "give what is sacred to the dogs, nor cast your pearls before swine."  (Matthew 7:6)  Dogs, like swine, were considered foul and unclean by the Hebrew people.  (Deuteronomy 23:18; I Samuel 24:14; II Kings 8:13; Psalm 22:16,20; Matthew 7:6; Luke 16:21; Revelations 22:15)  These words were used by the children of Israel to describe the neighboring heathen populations.

When sending his disciples out to preach, Jesus instructed them not to go to the gentiles, but to "go rather to the lost sheep of the house of Israel."  (Matthew 10:5-6)  When a Canaanite woman asked Jesus to heal her daughter, he replied, "I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel...It is not fair to take the children's bread and throw it to the dogs."  (Matthew 15:22-28)

Jesus regarded the gentiles as "dogs."  His gospel was intended for the Jewish people.  Even the apostle Paul admits that the gospel was first intended for the Jews, and that the Jews have every advantage over the gentiles in this regard.  (Romans 1:16, 3:1-2)

When a scribe asked Jesus what is the greatest commandment in the Torah, Jesus began with "Hear O Israel, the Lord thy God, is One Lord."  This is the Shema, which is still heard in every synagogue service to this day.  "And you shall love the Lord with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength...And you shall love your neighbor as yourself," Jesus concluded.

When the scribe agreed that God is one and that to love Him completely and also love one's neighbor as oneself is "more important than all the whole burnt offerings and sacrifices," Jesus replied, "You are not far from the kingdom of God."  (Matthew 22:36-40; Mark 12:29-34; Luke 10:25-28)

In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus himself said:

"Do not suppose I have come to abolish the Law and the prophets. I did not come to destroy but to fulfill...till heaven and earth pass away, not one jot or tittle pass from the Law till all is fulfilled. Whoever, therefore, breaks one of the least of these commandments and teaches men so shall be called least in the kingdom of heaven; but whoever does and teaches them, he shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven...unless your righteousness exceeds the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees, you will by no means enter the kingdom of heaven." (Matthew 5:17-20)

Jesus also upheld the Torah in Luke 16:17: "And it is easier for heaven and earth to pass away than for the smallest portion of the Law to become invalid."

Nor do these words refer merely to the Ten Commandments. Jesus meant the entire Torah: 613 commandments. When a man asked Jesus what he must do to inherit eternal life, Jesus replied, "You know the commandments." He quoted not just the Ten Commandments, but a commandment from Leviticus 19:13 as well: "Do not defraud." (Mark 10:17-22)

Jesus' disciples were once accused by the scribes and Pharisees of violating rabbinical tradition (Matthew 15:1-2; Mark 7:5), but not biblical law. Jesus never says anywhere in the entire New Testament that the Law is abolished; this was Paul's theology.  Paul openly identified himself not as a Jew but as a Roman (Acts 22:25-26) and an apostate from Judaism (Philippians 3:4-8).

Sometimes Christians cite Matthew 7:12, where Jesus says "Do unto others..." and this "covers" the Law and the prophets. But Jesus was merely repeating in the positive what Rabbi Hillel taught a generation earlier. No one took Hillel's words to mean the Law had been abolished--why should we assume this of Jesus?

If Jesus really came to abolish the Law and the prophets, Simon (Peter) would not have resisted a divine command to kill and eat both "clean" and "unclean" animals (Acts 10), nor would there have been a debate in the early church as to what extent the gentiles were to observe Mosaic Law (Acts 15). When Paul visited the church at Jerusalem, James and the elders told him all its members were "zealous for the Law," and they were worried because they heard rumors Paul was preaching against Mosaic Law (Acts 21).

None of these events would have happened had Jesus really come to abolish the Law and the prophets.

Jesus not only repeatedly upheld Mosaic Law, he justified his healing on the Sabbath by referring to commandments calling for the humane treatment of animals!

While teaching in one of the synagogues on the Sabbath, Jesus healed a woman who had been ill for eighteen years.  He justified his healing work on the Sabbath by referring to biblical passages calling for the humane treatment of animals as well as their rest on the Sabbath.  "So ought not this woman, being a daughter of Abraham...be loosed from this bond on the Sabbath?" Jesus asked.  (Luke 13:10-16)

On yet another occasion, Jesus again referred to Torah teaching on "tsa'ar ba'alei chayim" or compassion for animals to justify healing on the Sabbath.  "Which of you, having a donkey or an ox that has fallen into a pit, will not immediately pull him out on the Sabbath day?"  (Luke 14:1-5)

Jesus compared saving sinners who had gone astray from God's kingdom to rescuing lost sheep.  He recalled a Jewish legend about Moses' compassion as a shepherd for his flock:

"For the Son of Man has come to save that which was lost.  What do you think?  Who among you, having a hundred sheep, if he loses one of them, does not leave the ninety-nine in the wilderness, and go after the one which is lost until he finds it?  And when he has found it," Jesus continued, "he lays it on his shoulders, rejoicing.  And when he comes home, he calls together his friends and neighbors saying to them, 'Rejoice with me, for I have found my sheep which was lost!'

"I say to you, likewise there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine just persons who need no repentance...there is joy in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner who repents."  (Matthew 18:11-13; Luke 15:3-7,10)

Paul, on the other hand, says if anyone has confidence in the Law, "I am ahead of him."

Would that mean Paul places himself ahead of Jesus, who said he did not come to abolish the Law and the prophets? Would that mean Paul places himself ahead of Jesus, who said whoever sets aside even the least of the Law's demands shall be called least in the kingdom of heaven (Matthew 5:17-19)?

Would that mean Paul places himself ahead of Jesus, who taught that following the commandments of God is the only way to eternal life (Mark 10:17-22)? Would that mean Paul places himself ahead of Jesus who said that it is easier for heaven and earth to pass away than for the smallest portion of the Law to become invalid (Luke 16:17)?

Paul may have regarded the Law as "so much garbage," but it should be obvious JESUS DIDN'T THINK THE LAW WAS "GARBAGE"!

If Christians assign greater value to Paul's teachings over those of Jesus, then "Christianity" really is "Paulianity."  Bertrand Russell referred to Paul as the "inventor" of Christianity.

I'm not saying Christians should all be circumcised and following Mosaic Law. The Reverend Andrew Linzey, the foremost theologian in the field of animal-human relations and author of Christianity and the Rights of Animals (1987), rejected such an approach in a 1989 interview with the Animals' Agenda.

I'm merely saying that Christianity for the past 2000 years has been based on a misunderstanding.  My friend Rankin Fisher (a former Missionary Baptist minister), quoted a Methodist minister friend of his as having admitted, "We (Christians) aren't really following Jesus.  We're following Paul."

--Walter, interesting argument, but if soil fertility is the problem, why not keep the animals there without slaughtering or milking them?--
Very reductionist thought there.  Soil fertility is a problem however, there are other problems feeding everyone given that not all regions will support the vegan diet.  But then we can ship food all over the world and create green house gasses.  
anyway, if you have cows to build soil fertility why not milk them?
in addition the comment about sunspots effecting the climate, has to do with the fact of the little ice age that happened after agricultural practices began.

On trying to direct people concerned with studies that research organic cattle with conventional is too bad as you ignore any arguments that may open real dialogue about the issue. 

I did not read most of the reasons for and against meat consumption because it was too painful to continue. My reason for abstinence is a sense of wrongness, and injustice to not abstain. No I can't rationalize the habit, or criticize those that do, because they too are led by the bent of there genes.

Here are some references that support the argument that only properly managed agriculture can turn the global warming tide.
Look in Priority One: Together we can defeat global warming, Allan Yeomans.
This is an outstanding book with many strong references.  Yeomans explains
thoroughly what global warming is and how agriculture is the only tool
capable to turn it around. 

Also, Managing Wholes, a website managed by Peter Donovan, contains a
wonderful array of information and articles.  http://managingwholes.com/

Did you know if Americans cut meat out of their diet for just a single day, it would save over 200,000 tons of food and nearly 2 million tons of CO2-equivalent emissions? That amount of food could feed all of the estimated 2 million displaced people in need of food in the Democratic Republic of Congo for at least 6 months, and the carbon emissions saved would be more than enough to cancel out the emissions from flying all of that food to the Congo.

This is the conclusion reached by calculations commissioned by the World Society for the Protection of Animals, or WSPA, in conjunction with their new report Eating Our Future: the Environmental Impact of Industrial Animal Agriculture, released in November 2008. The report and accompanying data show how industrial animal agriculture, or factory farming, not only causes the suffering of billions of animals, but is also a major contributor to climate change, scarcity of resources, and global problems such as poverty and disease.The report concludes by recommending a reduction in meat consumption and moving toward smaller-scale sustainable and humane food production methods.

“There is no religion without love, and people may talk as much as they like about their religion, but if it does not teach them to be kind to beasts as well as man, it is all a sham.”

---Anna Sewell
author, Black Beauty

"I care not for a man’s religion whose dog or cat are not the better for it...I am in favor of animal rights as well as human rights.  That is the way of a whole human being.”

---Abraham Lincoln

Christian writer C.S. Lewis noted that animals were included in the first Passover.  The application of the “blood of the lamb” on the doorposts, not only saved a man and his family from death that night in Egypt, it saved his animals as well.

Lewis put forth a rational argument concerning the resurrection of animals in The Problem of Pain.  His 1947 essay, “A Case for Abolition,” attacked vivisection (animal experimentation) and reads as follows:

“Once the old Christian idea of a total difference in kind between man and beast has been abandoned, then no argument for experiments on animals can be found which is not also an argument for experiments on inferior men.  If we cut up beasts simply because they cannot prevent us and because we re backing up our own side in the struggle for existence, it is only logical to cut up imbeciles, criminals, enemies, or capitalists for the same reason.  Indeed, experiments on men have already begun.  We all hear that Nazi scientists have done them.  We all suspect that our own scientists may begin to do so, in secret, at any moment.

“The victory of vivisection marks a great advance in the triumph of ruthless, non-moral utilitarianism over the old world of ethical law; a triumph in which we, as well as animals, are already the victims, and of which Dachau and Hiroshima mark the more recent achievements.  In justifying cruelty to animals we put ourselves also on the animal level.  We choose the jungle and must abide by our choice.”

“I am not a Christian,” wrote one animal rights activist in Animals, Men and Morals (1971), “but I find it incomprehensible that those who preach a doctrine of love and compassion can believe that the material pleasures of meat-eating justify the slaughter it requires.”

In 1977, at an annual meeting in London of the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (RSPCA), Dr. Donald Coggan, the Archbishop of Canterbury, said, “Animals, as part of God’s creation, have rights which must be respected.  It behooves us always to be sensitive to their needs and to the reality of their pain.”

Dr. L. Charles Birch, an Australian “eco-philosopher,” has long urged the churches to preach conservation of nature and respect for other living creatures.  In July 1979 he argued at a conference of the World Council of Churches in Cambridge, Massachussetts, that all living creatures should be valued because of their “capacity for feeling.”

Dr. Birch has also condemned the overcrowded, confinement methods of raising and killing animals for food as “unethical,” and declared that “the animal rights movement should be supported by all Christians.”

--Significant environmental damage results from livestock agriculture, often driving many other species into extinction--
This is the result of the expanding human population, not agriculture per se.  As far as other environmental problems, well managed livestock can heal the landscape, but you do not listen and simply spew junk so as to not have any potentially positive results of livestock on the environment.  
on a ranch in ND the water infiltration was .6 inches per hour in the eighties, and after changing management techniques, now 13 inches of rain per hour infiltrate his soil.  Filling aquifers, reducing the potential of flooding, and increasing the ability of the land to withstand a dry period of time.
--“Animals, as part of God’s creation, have rights which must be respected.  It behooves us always to be sensitive to their needs and to the reality of their pain.”--

So how do we value the rabbit over the snake/coyote?  As opposed to ranting, and saying rights need respected.  How about answering the question as to how you determine whos rights are respected the predator or prey in nature, The video of a buffalo being taken down by a pack of wolves makes me wonder how you could condone their actions.

Some on here wanted to understand how  "meat-eaters" found their way to this animal rights blog over the weekend -

I'm  here because Change.org sent me an invitation to come read it in my personal email.  I'm a member of  change.org because I already know, and agree with,  all the arguments about big ag and the environmental damage it creates.  Apparently, so do  many of the other meat-eating  commenters  I've read on here.

Some  wanted to know why meat eaters rarely  participate in these discussions-
maybe I can shed some light on that for you.

I introduced myself as a farmer, and immediately folks  assumed I run a CAFO. 
I don't. I have a small,  old-fashioned, family farm. We are organic and do everything possible to implement sustainable practices.  We bought a badly depleted farm and have been working our butts off to restore the soil  and raise our stock on grass - not grain.

We don't kidnap offspring from our dairy animals, we share the milk.
We grow wool for our clothing because in our opinion its more envirionmentally sound than toxic, petro-based synthetics.
Plant based synthetics use too many resources better reserved for food production.

We have installed extensive conservation areas for wildlife, planted natural filters to keep manure runoff out of the watershed, and the number of animals we have per acre is well under the number it would take to pollute.

Many assumed I never gave a thought to animal welfare.
I do.  So much, in fact, that  I chucked a lucrative career in order to move to the county to grow my food.  The mis-treatment of animals in the current  food system  was a significant reason for  that decision.  

We treat our animals so  humanely  that our farm operates in the red because of it.  We need outside jobs to carry the farm.
We CAN'T COMPETE with big. Under current law,  we CAN'T BE  HUMANE and be legal. 

We do it anyway, because we believe it's imperative for the survival of the planet, and because we believe it's the right thing to do.


All the data that has been given here supporting the
vegan diet as "better for the planet" is based on
grain fed animals.
While many of you have complained we don't read your articles, you obviously didn't even read our comments, or you wouldn't have been oblivious to the fact that we were agreeing with you.

I disagree with some of your assertions about life and death - but that has nothing to do with cow farts.

If you really care about animal welfare, start lobbying to make it easier for humane farmers.  You won't convert folks who don't believe the way you do. But you can have allies in folks who believe CLOSE to what you do. IF you stop alienating them, that is.

Some on here wanted to understand how  "meat-eaters" found their way to this animal rights blog over the weekend -

I'm  here because Change.org sent me an invitation to come read it in my personal email.  I'm a member of  change.org because I already know, and agree with,  all the arguments about big ag and the environmental damage it creates.  Apparently, so do  many of the other meat-eating  commenters  I've read on here.

Some  wanted to know why meat eaters rarely  participate in these discussions-
maybe I can shed some light on that for you.

I introduced myself as a farmer, and immediately folks  assumed I run a CAFO. 
I don't. I have a small,  old-fashioned, family farm. We are organic and do everything possible to implement sustainable practices.  We bought a badly depleted farm and have been working our butts off to restore the soil  and raise our stock on grass - not grain.

We don't kidnap offspring from our dairy animals, we share the milk.
We grow wool for our clothing because in our opinion its more envirionmentally sound than toxic, petro-based synthetics.
Plant based synthetics use too many resources better reserved for food production.

We have installed extensive conservation areas for wildlife, planted natural filters to keep manure runoff out of the watershed, and the number of animals we have per acre is well under the number it would take to pollute.

Many assumed I never gave a thought to animal welfare.
I do.  So much, in fact, that  I chucked a lucrative career in order to move to the county to grow my food.  The mis-treatment of animals in the current  food system  was a significant reason for  that decision.  

We treat our animals so  humanely  that our farm operates in the red because of it.  We need outside jobs to carry the farm.
We CAN'T COMPETE with big. Under current law,  we CAN'T BE  HUMANE and be legal. 

We do it anyway, because we believe it's imperative for the survival of the planet, and because we believe it's the right thing to do.


All the data that has been given here supporting the
vegan diet as "better for the planet" is based on
grain fed animals.
While many of you have complained we don't read your articles, you obviously didn't even read our comments, or you wouldn't have been oblivious to the fact that we were agreeing with you.

I disagree with some of your assertions about life and death - but that has nothing to do with cow farts.

If you really care about animal welfare, start lobbying to make it easier for humane farmers to make a living.  You won't convert folks who don't believe the way you do. But you can have allies in folks who believe CLOSE to what you do. IF you stop alienating them, that is.

I don't see it as an impasse at all.
You are correct, the corps won't change unless economics force them to do so
Luckily, there is a great deal of political might building against
big ag on many fronts.
The grass-fed movement is gaining momentum with tremendous speed, and family farms are making a comeback.
When I moved to my community, there were farms for sale everywhere, cheap. They have all been bought up and most of this new breed of farmers share the same values, and see the folly of those who bought into the trends of the past half century.

Getting folks to opt out of the conventional, mainstream food supply is the solution, IMO.
Lose lawns in favor of   gardens and fruit trees, raise a trio of laying hens in the backyard, buy from local, small farms.
This means folks may  have to learn to can their own food for winter.  It may mean someone could have a small business canning healthy food for the neighbors. (But not until our laws are changed to make this type of operation affordable and legal, as it was in the past.)  

There are alternatives. The more those of us who oppose   big ag can band together, in spite of our differences, the more powerful we will be.

In his 1975 book, Animal Liberation, Australian philosopher Peter Singer writes:

A liberation movement is a demand for an end to prejudice and discrimination based on an arbitrary characteristic like race or sex.  The classic instance is the Black Liberation movement.  The immediate appeal of this movement, and its initial, if limited, success, made it a model for other oppressed groups.  We soon became familiar with Gay Liberation and movements on behalf of American Indians and Spanish-speaking Americans.

When a majority group--women--began their campaign some thought we had come to the end of the road.  Discrimination on the basis of sex, it was said, was the last form of discrimination to be universally accepted and practiced without secrecy or pretense, even in those liberal circles that have long prided themselves on their freedom from prejudice against racial minorities.

We should always be wary of talking of "the last remaining form of discrimination."  If we have learned anything from the liberation movements we should have learned how difficult it is to be aware of latent prejudices in our attitudes to particular groups until these prejudices are forcefully pointed out to us.

A liberation movement demands an expansion of our moral horizons. Practices that were previously regarded as natural and inevitable come to be seen as the result of an unjustifiable prejudice.  In comparison with other liberation movements, Animal Liberation has a lot of handicaps.  First and most obvious is the fact that the exploited group cannot themselves make an organized protest against the treatment they receive (though they can and do protest to the best of their abilities individually).

We have to speak up on behalf of those who cannot speak for themselves.  You can appreciate how serious this handicap is by asking yourself how long blacks would have had to wait for equal rights if they had not been able to stand up for themselves and demand it.  The less able a group is to stand up and organize against oppression, the more easily it is oppressed.

The principle of the equality of human beings is not a description of an alleged actual equality among humans; it is a prescription of how we should treat humans.  Thomas Jefferson saw this point.  He wrote in a letter to the author of a book the notable intellectual achievements of Negroes in order to refute the then common view that they had limited intellectual capacities:

"...whatever be their degree of talent it is no measure of their rights.  Because Sir Isaac Newton was superior to others in understanding, he was not therefore lord of the property or person of others."

Similarly when in the 1850s the call for women's rights was raised in the United States a remarkable black feminist named Sojourner Truth made the same point in more robust terms at a feminist convention. " ...they talk about this thing in the head; what do they call it?  ('Intellect,' whispered someone nearby.)  That's it.  What's that got to do with women's rights or Negroes' rights? If my cup won't hold but a pint and yours holds a quart, wouldn't you be mean not to let me have my little half-measure full?"

If possessing a higher degree of intelligence does not entitle one human to use another for his own ends, how can it entitle humans to exploit nonhumans for the same purpose?

In a forward-looking passage written at a time when black slaves had been freed by the French but in the British dominions were still being treated in the way we now treat animals, Jeremy Bentham wrote:

"The day may come when the rest of the animal creation may acquire those rights which never could have been witholden from them but by the hand of tyranny.

"The French have already discovered that the blackness of the skin is no reason why a human being should be abandoned without redress to the caprice of a tormentor.

"It may one day come to be recognized that the number of the legs, the villosity of the skin, or the termination of the os sacrum are reasons equally insufficient for abandoning a sensitive being to the same fate.

"What else is it that should trace the insuperable line?   Is it the faculty of reason or perhaps the faculty of discourse?  But a full-grown horse or dog is beyond comparison a more rational, as well as more conversable animal, than an infant of a day or a week or even a month old.  But suppose they were otherwise, what would it avail?  The question is not, Can they reason?,   nor Can they talk?  but, Can they suffer?"

The capacity for suffering and enjoyment is a prerequisite for having interests at all, a condition that must be satisfied before we can speak of interests in a meaningful way.  It would be nonsense to say that it was not in the interests of a stone to be kicked along the road by a schoolboy.  A stone does not have interests because it cannot suffer.  A mouse, on the other hand, does have an interest in not being kicked along the road, because it will suffer if it is.

Author Keith Akers, in A Vegetarian Sourcebook (1983), notes that by arguing against the killing of plants, the meat-eater "seeks to reduce vegetarianism to absurdity. If vegetarians object to killing living creatures (it is argued), then logically they should object to killing plants and insects as well as animals. But this is absurd. Therefore, it can’t be wrong to kill animals.

"Fruitarians take the argument concerning plants quite seriously; they do not eat any food which causes injury or death to either animals or plants. This means, in their view, a diet of those fruits, nuts and seeds which can be eaten without the destruction of the plant that produces the food.

"Finding an ethically significant line between plants and animals, though, is not particularly difficult. Plants have no evolutionary need to feel pain, and completely lack a central nervous system. Nature does not create pain gratuitously, but only when it enables the organism to survive. Animals, being mobile, would benefit from having a sense of pain; plants would not."

In determining a boundary between sentient and insentient life, Peter Singer in Animal Liberation suggests that "somewhere between a shrimp and an oyster seems as good a place to draw the line as any, and better than most."

Keith Akers states further, "Even if one does not want to become a fruitarian and believes that plants have feelings (against all evidence to the contrary), it does not follow that vegetarianism is absurd. We ought to destroy as few plants as possible. And by raising and eating an animal for food, many more plants are destroyed indirectly by the animals we eat than if we merely ate the plants directly."

(Meat-eaters indirectly kill ten times more plants than do vegetarians!)

"What about insects?" asks Akers, "While there may be reason to kill insects, there is no reason to kill them for food. One distinguishes between the way meat animals are killed for food and the way insects are killed.

"Insects are killed only when they intrude upon human territory, posing a threat to the comfort, health, or well-being of humans. There is a huge difference between ridding oneself of intruders and going out of one's way to find and kill something which would otherwise be harmless."

According to Akers:

"These questions may have a certain fascination for philosophers, but most vegetarians are not bothered by them. For any vegetarian who is not a biological pacifist, there would not seem to be any particular difficulty in distinguishing ethically between insects and plants on the one hand, and animals and humans on the other."

I'd like to see a return to organic farming. In 1989, concern over the use of the pesticide Alar on apples caused many Americans to consider organic produce. We produce pesticides at a rate some 13,000 times faster than we did in the 1950s. Our environment is being flooded by pesticide compounds.

Poisons used to kill insects accumulate on crops, in the soil and in greater concentration in the tissues of living creatures higher on the food chain. The EPA's Pesticide Monitoring Journal reports that "Foods of animal origin (are) the major source of pesticide residues in the diet."

In his Pulitzer Prize nominated book, How to Survive in America the Poisoned, pesticide authority Lewis Regenstein writes: "Meat contains approximately 14 times more pesticides than do plant foods...Thus, by eating foods of animal origin, one ingests greatly concentrated amounts of hazardous chemicals."

A 1976 study by the EPA found the breast milk of mothers who consume animal products to be 50 to 100 times more contaminated by pesticide residues than the milk of vegetarian or vegan mothers.

Organic farming and Integrated Pest Management (IPM) are getting more attention today. These utilize natural insect controls, such as predatory insects, weather, crop rotation, pest-resistant varieties, soil tillage, and other environmentally safe practices.

A 1979 Department of Agriculture task force of scientists and economists came to "...positive conclusions on the importance of organic farming and its potential contributions to agriculture and society." Until the end of the Second World War, American farmers produced bountiful harvests without relying on pesticides. There is no reason why America cannot do so again.

--I have become aware of the environmental impact of the current methods of big agriculture and I for one don't foresee them changing if it means impact on the bottom line.--
You want to change them work to eliminate grain subsidies

you know the elimination of grain subsidies would.
increase employment as more people would be needed to tend farms.
Health Problems would decline as our diets would not be based on wheat, corn and soy.  We would most likely have more omega3 fatty acids in our diets and be healthier.

Fertilizer sales would plummet as they are required for modern agriculture but would fade away as their cost is too high (not counting the environmental costs)

CO2 emissions would decline, as tractors importance in farming would be greatly reduced.

Energy independence, ag consumes 30% of energy and this would greatly decline in moving to a local food economy.
There are more ways, but all I can think of at this moment.

I would like to see organized religion take up the struggle for animal rights. Religion has been wrong before. It has often been said that on issues such as women's rights and human slavery, religion has impeded social and moral progress.

It was a Spanish Catholic priest, Bartolome de las Casas, who first proposed enslaving black Africans in place of the Native Americans who were dying off in great numbers.  The church of the past never considered human slavery to be a moral evil. The Protestant churches of Virginia, South Carolina, and other southern states here in the U.S. actually passed resolutions in favor of the human slave traffic.

Human slavery was called "by Divine Appointment," "a Divine institution," "a moral relation," "God's institution," "not immoral," but "founded in right." The slave trade was called "legal," "licit," "in accordance with humane principles" and "the laws of revealed religion."

New Testament verses calling for obedience and subservience on the part of slaves (Titus 2:9-10; Ephesians 6:5-9; Colossians 3:22-25; I Peter 2:18-25) and respect for the master (I Timothy 6:1-2; Ephesians 6:5-9) were often cited in order to justify human slavery. Many of Jesus' parables refer to human slaves. Paul's epistle to Philemon concerns a runaway slave returned to his master.

The Quakers were one of the earliest religious denominations to condemn human slavery.  "Paul's outright endorsement of slavery should be an undying embarrassment to Christianity as long as they hold the entire New Testament to be the word of God," says contemporary Quaker physician Dr. Charles P. Vaclavik. "Without a doubt, the American slaveholders quoted Paul again and again to substantiate their right to hold slaves.

"The moralist movement to abolish slavery had to go to non-Biblical sources to demonstrate the immoral nature of slavery. The abolitionists could not turn to Christian sources to condemn slavery, for Christianity had become the bastion of the evil practice through its endorsement by the Apostle Paul. Only the Old Testament gave the abolitionist any Biblical support in his efforts to free the slaves. 'You shall not surrender to his master a slave who has taken refuge with you.' (Deuteronomy 23:15) What a pittance of material opposing slavery from a book supposedly representing the word of God."

In 1852, Josiah Priest wrote Bible Defense of Slavery. Others claimed blacks were subhuman. Buckner H. Payne, calling himself "Ariel," wrote in 1867: "the tempter in the Garden of Eden...was a beast, a talking beast...the negro." Ariel argued that since the negro was not part of Noah's family, he must have been a beast. Eight souls were saved on the ark, therefore, the negro must be a beast, and "consequently, he has no soul to be saved."

The status of animals in contemporary human society is not unlike that of human slaves in centuries past. Quoting Luke 4:18, Colossians 3:11, Galatians 3:28 or any other biblical passages in favor of liberty, equality and an end to human slavery in the 18th or 19th century would have been met with the same kind of response animal rights activists receive today if they quote Bible verses in favor of ethical vegetarianism and compassion towards animals.

Some of the worst crimes in history have also been committed in the name of religion. There's a great song along these lines from the early 1990s by Rage Against the Machine, entitled "Killing in the Name Of".

Someone once pointed out that while Hitler may have claimed to be a Christian, he imprisoned Christian clergy who opposed the Nazi regime, and even Christian churches were subject to the terror of the Nazis. Thinking along these lines, I realize that while I would like to see organized religion support animal liberation (e.g., as was the case with Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and the American civil rights movement) rather than simply remain an obstacle to social and moral progress (e.g., 19th century southern churches in the U.S. upheld human slavery on biblical grounds), this support must come freely and voluntarily (e.g., "The Liberation of All Life" resolution issued by the World Council of Churches in 1988).

Religious institutions can't be coerced into rewriting their holy books or teaching a convoluted doctrine to suit the whims or the secular political ideology of a particular demagogue. American liberals argue that principle of the separation of church and state (upon which the United States was founded) gives us freedom FROM religious tyranny and theocracy. Conservatives argue (the other side of the coin!) that one of the reasons America's founding fathers established the separation of church and state was to prevent government intrusion into religious affairs.    I agree with Reverend Marc Wessels, Executive Director of the International Network for Religion and Animals (INRA), who said on Earth Day 1990:

"It is a fact that no significant social reform has yet taken place in this country (the United States) without the voice of the religious community being heard.  The endeavors of the abolition of slavery; the women's suffrage movement; the emergence of the pacifist tradition during World War I; the struggles to support civil rights, labor unions, and migrant farm workers; and the anti-nuclear and peace movements have all succeeded in part because of the power and support of organized religion.  Such authority and energy is required by individual Christians and the institutional church today if the liberation of animals is to become a reality."

Vasu, i see you have taken much time and effort to make your point.  I've read what you wrote here very carefully.
I will try to explain in the best way I can, why your points do not change my opinions.

First, a quick comment about the religious aspect. You wrote:
"Such authority and energy is required by individual Christians and the institutional church today if the liberation of animals is to become a reality."

Christ referred to himself as  "the good shepherd".  The theme of  shepherds and sheep  permeates throughout the gospels. Shepherds raised sheep for meat, wool, and dairy. The idea that Christians should "liberate" animals from this symbiotic relationship is intrinsically un-Christ-like. 

You posted this statement:
"Finding an ethically significant line between plants and animals, though, is not particularly difficult. Plants have no evolutionary need to feel pain, and completely lack a central nervous system."

This is a key point on which we do not agree.  There is more that we do not know about plants and "lower life forms" than we do know.  This is not just my opinion - researchers disagree on this point and there is no consensus either way. Here is but one example of scientists who take an opposing view:

"New research opens a window on the minds of plants"  http://www.csmonitor.com/2005/0303/p01s03-usgn.html
Snippet:
"As trowel-wielding scientists dig up a trove of new findings, even those skeptical of the evolving paradigm of "plant intelligence" acknowledge that, down to the simplest magnolia or fern, flora have the smarts of the forest. Some scientists say they carefully consider their environment, speculate on the future, conquer territory and enemies, and are often capable of forethought - revelations that could affect everyone from gardeners to philosophers.
Indeed, extraordinary new findings on how plants investigate and respond to their environments are part of a sprouting debate over the nature of intelligence itself."

I do not find questions about consciousness in plants  and simple life forms as  "absurd."   My opinion about  life differs substantially from yours, apparently-
I do not believe that  plants, insects, and even the microscopic world  can be equated to stones. 
We each have the capacity to extinguish the  life from another being - and none of us can restore that life once taken, no matter how "low", simple, or different it is from the human form. To me, life is on,  or it is off.  I do not choose to assume a lack of consciousness just because I can't see it.  Consciousness is by it's very nature unobservable.

You also wrote:
In determining a boundary between sentient and insentient life, Peter Singer in Animal Liberation suggests that "somewhere between a shrimp and an oyster seems as good a place to draw the line as any, and better than most."

This is a very arbitrary statement, completely based on one person's opinion. My difficulty with  those who  portray vegetarianism as somehow
superior to meat consumption is this very point;   it's ALL arbitrary:

Jainist monks sweep their paths as they move about, to prevent stepping on insects and tiny creatures.   Strict vegetarians, many Jains will not even farm vegetables because farming  kills bugs.  And yet, they boil their water before drinking it -  killing multitudes of tiny creatures because they must in order to prevent illness.  That's kind of arbitrary.
Fruitarians won't kill a plant but they eat the future generation - the unborn "children", if you will.  Again, arbitrary.
 
Any place you choose to draw that line is arbitrary, because you cannot avoid killing other life forms while you are on this planet. 
Not only can you not avoid it, it's the very nature of the cycle of life.  Every place we look in the natural world, eat, reproduce and be eaten rules the day.
I embrace life, that means I must also accept death - mine and others. I am a part of the cycle, and I  accept my place in it.  I eat food. Meat can nourish  my body, therefore, it's food.

I'm concerned about animal welfare. I do my best to move through the world without inflicting suffering. 
Is a  quick death, without anticipation, suffering?  I don't think it is.
There is no  "right" to never die. Or as Kristen said, "the right to not be eaten."  We're all destined to be eaten. It's natural, it's right, IMO, it's Gaia.

Well, this has been... interesting. And long. And it's getting to the point where it's taking a lifetime for the page to even load.

Closing the comments now, folks. Thanks for participating.