My Vegetative State: Part 2

If you're trying to follow the outline logic from the previous post, forget it. As the master of my blog domain, I changed the structure. This is Part 2 in a series of why I don't eat meat.

The Moral Imperative

B. Be kind. Rewind. Ok, it really has nothing to do with videotapes, but it's the same principle. Sometimes we do things for the benefit of our faceless brothers and sisters on Planet Earth.

When I was a freshman in college I read a book called Diet for a Small Planet which talked about the inefficiency of consuming calories from meat. As I recall (and at that time), it requires 13 times more grain to deliver calories via meat than if the grain were to be consumed directly by humans. Since so many people on this earth are starving, it struck me that if we all shifted to a meatless diet, more people could be fed. I suppose the practical applications of this logic could be challenged in a hundred ways, but I also suspect there is an inescapable truth at the heart of the matter.

I am quite aware that my individual actions don't make much of a difference. But over the course of my lifetime, and with perhaps the slightest power of example, maybe I will do a little good. At the very least, it seems like an objective worthy of my effort.

In addition, rain forests are being cleared aggressively for cattle farming, which is a very bad thing. (By the way, demand for tropical hardwoods like rosewood, teak and mahogany also drive aggressive rainforest destruction.) Here's an excerpt from an Amazon Rain Forest website:

As the demand in the Western world for cheap meat increases, more and more rainforests are destroyed to provide grazing land for animals. In Brazil alone, there are an estimated 220 million head of cattle, 20 million goats, 60 million pigs, and 700 million chickens. Most of Central and Latin America's tropical and temperate rainforests have been lost to cattle operations to meet the world demand, and still the cattle operations continue to move southward into the heart of the South American rainforests.

Admittedly, there are many other ways to contribute to society. We should all have our pet causes, but respect the ways other people try to make a difference. I don't get involved in Big Brothers/Big Sisters, or Habitat for Humanity, or Feed the Children. But I do eat vegetables.