In a Nutshell

This in response to my dear friend, the funky lamb, who made the mistake of asking:-)

WHY VEGAN?

The Environment

In 2002, more than 1/3 of all fossil fuels produced in the US are used to raise animals for food. Where the environment is concerned, eating meat is like driving a huge SUV or an 18-wheeler. Eating a vegetarian diet is like driving a mid-sized car, and eating a vegan diet is like riding a bicycle or walking.

According to John Robbins, the average vegan uses about 1/6 of an acre of land to satisfy his or her food requirements for a year; the average vegetarian who consumes dairy products and eggs requires about three times that, and the average meat-eater requires about 20 times that much land. We can grow a lot more food on an equal amount of land if we're not funnelling the crops through animals.

It requires about 300 gallons of water to feed a vegan for a day. It requires about four times as much to feed a vegetarian, and 14 times as much to feed a meat eater.

Human Rights

Right now, 1.3 billion people, more than 20% of the world's population, are living in dire poverty. Right now, 800 million people are suffering from what the United Nations calls "Nutritional deficiency". That's a euphemism: they're starving. It is depressing to consider that throughout the last big famine in Ethiopia, that country was exporting desperately needed soy to Europe to feed to farmed animals. The same relationship held true throughout the famine in Somalia in the early 1990's.

Two years ago, the Un commission in Nutritional Challenges for the 21st Century said that unless we make major changes, 1 billion children will be permanently handicapped over the next 20 years as a result on inadequate caloric intake. The first step toward averting this tragedy, according to the Commission, is to encourage human consumption of traditional grains, fruits and vegetables.

Animal Rights

Science and understanding may have progressed, but factory farming hasn't. As Senator Robert Byrd told the US Senate, "our unhimane treatment of livestock is becoming widespread and more and more barbaric". He went on to detail the suffering of pigs in tiny stalls, hens in cages, calves in crates, and the inhumane slaughter of all these animals. Senator Byrd stated, "These creatures feel; they know pain. They suffer pain just as we humans suffer pain."

In the rush for profits, abnormal breeding practises are used so that animals will grow far more quickly than they would naturally, and their organs and limbs can't keep up. So, for example, chickens' upper bodies grow seven times a quickly as they did just 25 years ago, but their lungs, hearts and limbs can't grow that fast. These factory-farmed animals live for fewer than two months before they're at full slaughter weight, and yet they still suffer from high rates of lung collapse, heart failure and crippling leg deformities.

Add to this the torture of calves for veal, the distress caused to the mother cow, the insane cannibalism of factory-farmed pigs, the day-old chicks ground up live for fertiliser, the emptying of our oceans...

The Lost Sacred

I'm not talking about religion, but the intrinsic connection of all life to our planet and each other. "It's raining blood and everyone is getting wet".

Imagine "civilisation" from the perespective of a non-human -any non-human-and the grotesque, out-of-focus picture comes into clear relief: humans are consuming everything else, with reckless abandon.

Part of what is stirring in the dark places of the Australian psyche, invisible becoming visible, is the inkling that this paramount value of society is atrting to reach its limits. And as our collective buttons pop from our accumulated obesity, the fear that there will be a price for this century-long binge is becoming more apparent. The move from kill as you please to kill nothing unnecessarily is the escape hatch from that torrent of blood.

try as you might to block it out with packaging and "merchandising" -pseudo-science supporting your need -what it boils down to is you are addicted to it, feel it is your birthright and are willing to sacrifice innocent lives of many species to satisfy it.

Now, if you can accept that premise as true in yourself and still love yourself unconditionally, then dismiss this as an angry diatribe, a litany of laments from amongst the ranks of the disenchanted, disenfranchised minority. Dig deeper into your own habits and determine whether you are dripping blood along your karmic trail.

All the prophets of all great religions preach the same basic concept: "Do unto others". It is in the definition of "others" that humans are so limited.