An Encore Presentation of:

WHY I AM A VEGETARIAN

There are many reasons for being vegetarian. Some are religious, some
are ethical, and some are health-related. My reasons are primarily
ethical, although I believe that issues of health are important. This
essay is not a particularly rigorous defense of vegetarianism (more
specifically, it is not a rigorous condemnation of non-vegetarians),
it is simply the reasoning I use when thinking about eating meat. I
will divide my thoughts into three categories: Ethics, Health, and
Ecology.

Ethics

It is very difficult to make the case that eating meat is wrong. Many
times I have been confronted by philosophical colleagues challenging
me to prove to them that it is wrong to kill animals for food. My
response to them is to challenge them to prove to me that any of their
ethical beliefs is correct. It's virtually impossible. There's always
some way to elude any ethical argument. That is why I no longer try to
prove anything to anybody. It is not my responsibility to ensure that
anybody else lives his or her life in an ethical manner; my
responsibility is restricted to my own behavior. This is why I don't
eat meat.

When I was a boy, I spent a significant amount of one afternoon
chasing ants around the driveway with a magnifying glass. The
magnifying glass intensified the rays of sunlight to the point where
it would burn the ants alive on contact. I was having a great time
until my mother caught me. She told me that I shouldn't be killing the
ants for no reason like that. At the time, of course, I didn't find
the argument to be very convincing, but I stopped doing it anyway, and
I don't remember ever doing it again. I heard about neighborhood boys
exploding frogs with firecrackers, and found myself disturbed by that
behavior. Why is that? I didn't understand it at the time, but I
believe now that I do: from an early age, we are taught that it is
wrong to cause others (even non-humans) harm for no reason. This seems
like a pretty reasonable moral dictate, and I'm going to go with it.

"What," you might ask, "does this have to do with eating meat?" I
believe that it has everything to do with eating meat. Put simply,
there is no reason to eat meat. Every year, millions of animals are
killed for no reason. And that's why I don't eat meat.

Well, maybe it's not that simple. The animals are not killed for no
reason, they are killed so that we can eat them. Humans need to eat,
right? Well, that's certainly true, but they don't need to eat meat. I
personally have not intentionally eaten meat since the fall of 1989.
I'm feeling pretty well, despite my lack of meat. People just don't
need to eat meat to live healthy lives. There is, in fact, mounting
evidence that people need to *not* eat meat in order to live healthy
lives. I will address that issue more fully in the "Health" section of
this essay, but in the meantime, take me as evidence. I've gone years
without it, and I have not withered away. Since humans do not need to
eat meat, the animals are killed for no reason. We would do fine
(perhaps better) eating plants. Killing is one of the ultimate forms
of harm, and, since I believe that harming others (even non-humans)
for no reason is wrong, I believe that killing animals for food (i.e.,
for no reason) is wrong. That's why I don't eat meat.

Well, maybe it's not even *that* simple. Let's face it, many people
find a good steak very pleasing. Put a vegetarian meal in front of
them and you take away something very important: the pleasure of a
good meal. The animal, therefore, was not killed for no reason, it was
killed to increase the pleasure of those individuals who will eat it.
I have two things to say bout this. The first concerns whether one
really loses the pleasure of a good meal when meat is eliminated. When
I was still eating meat, I suspect that I ate some form of meat just
about every meal. Most omnivores (i.e., people who eat both plants and
animals, as opposed to carnivores or herbivores) in our country do;
it's just a habit. The fact is, though, that one does not need to stop
eating foods one likes altogether when one stops eating meat, one need
only stop eating those foods that contain meat. I have heard people
claim that the only foods they like are meat-based foods. I find this
unconvincing. I am sure that I would have said the same thing before I
became vegetarian, but if one really thinks about the foods one eats,
it is easy to see that there are vegetarian alternatives. Spaghetti
with a marinara sauce instead of a meat sauce is very good. A bean
burrito instead of a beef burrito is also very good. I am willing to
admit that for many omnivores, these vegetarian alternatives are not
as appealing. What I am not willing to admit, however, is that the
vegetarian loses all pleasure from eating spaghetti without meat.
Spaghetti without meat is good, maybe just not as good. So it is this
incremental pleasure that the omnivore uses to justify his or her
killing of animals. (As a side note, I will often refer to omnivores
as killing animals; this is because I see no moral distinction between
killing an animal and having someone else kill it for me.) "I would
get pleasure out of eating a vegetarian diet, just not as much. That's
why I eat meat." It just doesn't seem so convincing when it's put that
way.

One more thing about the idea that vegetarian diets are not pleasing:
spend some time thinking about what exactly it is that makes one like
to eat what one likes to eat. It seems clear that we like what we're
used to, for the most part, at any rate. My wife, for example, loves
to eat okra. I can barely understand how someone could willingly put
the stuff in his mouth, much less actually like having it there, but
she loves it. Why? Because she had it all the time when she was
growing up. She's used to it. Isn't it odd that people who grow up in
various cultures around the world tend to like the food they grew up
eating, even if the rest of us can't imagine eating it? We grow to
like the things to which we are accustomed. I doubt very seriously
that I would enjoy eating a steak today. I'm certain that I would find
it greasy and heavy, and just generally distasteful. We grow to like
the things to which we are accustomed. The incremental pleasure will
soon change from the meat sauce to the marinara. Honest. Besides, once
one comes to the conclusion that the moral thing to do is eat
vegetarian, steak is far less appealing, and the pleasure ratios swing
dramatically. There's great satisfaction in knowing that one is doing
the right thing.

Questions of how much pleasure can be gotten from a particular diet
aside, I'd like to challenge the idea that pleasure has a place in
moral reasoning of this sort. Is pleasure really a good reason
(morally speaking) for doing something? Was it morally acceptable for
those boys in my neighborhood to explode those frogs just because it
was fun? Let me put it this way: if Dahmer had said, "Yeah, but it's
fun!" would we all have changed our minds about him? I can't imagine
any of us saying to him, "Oh, well in that case, you're not a
hideously immoral human being." This is because pleasure is not a good
enough reason to cause harm to others (even non-humans). I cannot kick
my dog for fun without people calling me a monster. I ought not to be
able to kill a steer for the pleasure its flesh will give me when I
eat it without people saying the same.

One final note in this general area of discussion: a very common
argument given in defense of eating meat is that it is somehow the
proper "order" of nature for animals to kill and eat other animals.
Humans are at the top of the food chain, and it is perfectly natural
for them to be there. If it is wrong for humans to kill animals for
food, then it ought to be just as wrong for, say, a tiger to kill
another animal for its meal. I find this line of argument somewhat
amusing and somewhat disturbing. I find it amusing because it ignores
relevant facts: the tiger has no alternative; it kills to live. Humans
*do* have alternatives; we kill for pleasure. That seems like a very
simple and highly relevant distinction. Another fact that is
overlooked is that we typically don't speak in terms of what a tiger
does as being moral or immoral. The tiger simply does not appear to
have the cognitive apparatus necessary to make moral decisions and
distinctions. Why would one expect otherwise? Closely related to this
is what I find disturbing about this line of argument: there are
people out there who seem to believe that the so-called "evolutionary"
law is what we ought to use to determine moral correctness. "Kill or
be killed." "Might makes right." Do these sound familiar? The fact
that this is the way that tigers make their living does not mean that
it is the way that we as moral human beings should make ours. (As
another example, in many animal species that congregate in groups, it
is common for the dominant male, when it first comes to prominence, to
kill the young (who were fathered by the previous dominant male) in
order to ensure that the efforts of the females are spent propagating
his own genes; we certainly would not say that human step-fathers
should be given the same right!) Should we not have a higher moral
sensibility than the tiger? Should we not be able to get past the "top
of the food chain" mentality? I believe that we should, and that is
why I do not find the tiger's eating habits particularly relevant in
modern society.

Ethics II

There is a line of thought in ethics called "moral safety" that
basically says that if something might be immoral (that is, if we just
can't say for certain either way), and if it costs very little to
avoid performing the action in doubt, then it should be avoided. The
greater the evidence in favor of the action's immorality, the more we
should be willing to pay to avoid it. For example, I feel very
strongly that it is immoral to kill babies, and I feel that the
arguments to that effect are very strong ones. I am, therefore,
willing to go to very extreme measures to avoid killing babies; I am
willing to pay a high cost so that I don't kill babies. Conversely, if
it takes very little effort to avoid some action, we ought to avoid it
even if the evidence isn't very strong that the action is immoral,
just to be on the safe side. We do, after all, want to be as morally
correct as we can be, right? I submit that, while the evidence for the
immorality of killing animals for food might not seem particularly
strong to some observers, the cost of avoiding it is very low, and so
we should not kill animals for food. In fact, I will go so far as to
claim that we have a duty to be as morally correct as we can be. This
means that, when in doubt, don't do it. If the cost is outweighed by
the doubt (as I believe it is in this case) one ought not perform the
action, even if one is almost convinced that it is a morally correct
action. How much are you willing to pay to be a moral human being? I
hope we can all agree that a little bit of pleasure is not too high a
cost for the insurance it provides.

Health

I'm not much of a nutritionist, but one thing is clear to me: it is
possible to live without eating meat. I'm living proof. Beyond that, I
have to look to more knowledgeable authorities. There are a number of
reference works available to people like me who want to find out about
vegetarian health issues, but many of them are "slanted" towards
vegetarianism. While I don't have any problem with that, some people
are not willing to trust such veg-friendly sources of information. I
will, therefore, try to stick with sources that are not known to be
"out of their minds with love for Bambi." (This is a thinly veiled
reference to those who claim that I am a vegetarian because I think
animals are cute, like Bambi. In other words, they think it's purely
an emotional thing. Those people don't even deserve a reasoned
response.) My main source will be the web pages of the American
Dietetic Association.

Is it possible to live a healthy life without eating meat? I have to
this point given only myself as evidence that it is possible. The
American Dietetic Association's position paper on vegetarianism,
however, confirms my anecdotal evidence. It states that "appropriately
planned vegetarian diets are healthful, are nutritionally adequate,
and provide health benefits in the prevention and treatment of certain
diseases." Also, "Well-planned vegan and lacto-ovo-vegetarian diets
are appropriate for all stages of the life cycle, including during
pregnancy and lactation. Appropriately planned vegan and
lacto-ovo-vegetarian diets satisfy nutrient needs of infants, children
and adolescents and promote normal growth." I often hear people object
that such careful planning as the ADA advocates for vegetarians is too
much work, that it is too hard to eat well as a vegetarian. First, I
would like to point out that the ADA recommends such careful planning
for all dietary choices: "Vegetarian diets, like all diets, need to be
planned appropriately to be nutritionally adequate." Sounds like it
takes some work to maintain a healthy diet that contains meat, too.
Second, I would argue that, like pleasure, convenience is not relevant
here. Is it possible to live a healthy life without eating meat? Yes,
it is. Does it require some planning? Yes, it does. The fact that it
may be more inconvenient (I stress the "may" here) makes no
difference.

I am now going to turn the tables on omnivores. Is it possible to live
a healthy life and still eat meat? Perhaps so, but certainly not the
way we Americans do it now. According to the ADA, "Scientific data
suggest positive relationships between a vegetarian diet and reduced
risk for several chronic degenerative diseases and conditions,
including obesity, coronary artery disease, hypertension, diabetes
mellitus, and some types of cancer." Again, "Studies indicate that
vegetarians often have lower morbidity and mortality rates from
several chronic degenerative diseases than do nonvegetarians." It will
be rightly objected that vegetarians tend to lead healthier lifestyles
all-around, and that attributing these health benefits to diet is
problematic. The ADA's position, however, is that, "Although
nondietary factors, including physical activity and abstinence from
smoking and alcohol, may play a role, diet is clearly a contributing
factor." That is to say, the fact that vegetarians eat the way they
do, i.e., the fact that they do not eat meat, reduces their risk of
contracting and dying from the diseases mentioned above. Given the
fact that all nutritional needs may be met without eating meat, and
that the typical American diet appears to put one at greater risk than
the typical vegetarian diet, it is easy to conclude that a diet
without meat is at least as healthy, if not more healthy, than any
diet containing meat. It is also easy to conclude that a vegetarian
diet is definitely more healthy than the typical American omnivorous
diet. Vegetarianism is just more healthy.

Another problem with eating meat is that the pesticides and herbicides
that we use to grow the grains, etc., that are fed livestock become
concentrated in the tissues of those animals, which are then eaten by
us. This is more of a problem when eating meat than when eating
vegetarian foods because of that concentration effect. I will get more
residual pesticide and herbicide per unit weight or volume with meat
products than with vegetable products. The effects of the ingestion of
pesticides and herbicides are many and varied, but it is not
controversial that they are not a part of a healthy diet.

This brings me to an interesting point. I propose that these health
facts alone make non-vegetarian diets immoral. You see, somebody has
to pay for all those heart attack patients who come into the emergency
room after a luscious steak meal. There is the obvious case of the
ones who cannot afford to pay for themselves and who do not have
insurance. Then it is clear that the public pays for their excesses.
But, of course, even those with insurance impose a burden on the rest
of us. I pay my insurance premiums, just like everybody else, and I
pay just as much as the next guy in line, a guy who eats meat and is
therefore at greater risk of the diseases mentioned above. My
insurance rates are higher because of people who take risks with their
diets. It's very simple: the more people get sick, the higher
insurance rates go. It strikes me as wrong that I should have to pay
for the excesses of others. Moreover, the time and resources of the
medical machine would be better put to use teaching people how to live
healthy lifestyles than resuscitating the individual who has clogged
his arteries with fat and cholesterol. For these reasons, I submit
that we wrong our fellow human beings when we eat meat.

To add insult to injury, after we have killed the millions of animals
each year to eat, we insist on killing millions more in attempts to
find "cures" for the illnesses caused by our dietary choices.
Cholesterol-lowering drugs sound great on the surface, but why, since
we have chosen to ingest the foods that cause the problems in the
first place, do we insist on killing more animals when the real cure
is right at hand: stop eating animal products. Not only could millions
of animals be saved if we dropped these pointless avenues of research,
millions of dollars (usually tax dollars to which I contribute) would
be saved. We already have the cure, we are simply too selfish to
swallow the pill of vegetarianism. This needlessly negatively effects
millions of human and non-human animals every year, and should,
therefore, be avoided.

Ecology

This section will be less replete with references, because it is
significantly more difficult to find resources online that deal with
this issue, but that are (again) not published by organizations that
some would view with skepticism. This discussion will, therefore, be
more general than I would like, and should be taken as such.

The environmental effects of meat production are a little surprising.
To begin, the majority of cultivated land in the United States is
devoted to the production of feed grain for livestock. There are many
arguments raging about how much grain exactly it takes to produce a
pound of any given meat, but one thing is clear: meat production is
less efficient than grain production. This is far from controversial,
so I will explain how I come to this (admittedly rough) conclusion.
Consider the average meal. There will typically be some meat product
involved along with vegetable products (e.g., bread, potatoes,
vegetables). In the typical meal, animal products (including meat,
dairy and eggs) make up less than half of the food consumed. (This is
not to say that more than half of the food is vegetarian, since animal
broths and fats are common ingredients in many pasta dishes, etc.) In
fact, animal products probably make up significantly less than half of
the average meal. Yet, more than half the land is used to feed
livestock. Interesting.

So what does all this mean? Well, for one thing the removal of native
foliage and the introduction of agriculture leads to greater soil
erosion; the layer of topsoil on farmed lands is growing smaller each
year. Water usage is greater in the production of animal products than
in the production of vegetable foods. This is evident because we must
use water both to grow the food for the animals and to give them
water, as well as to clean pens, etc. The amount of pesticides and
herbicides used are greater as a result of meat, dairy and egg
production. If we use more land to feed them than to feed ourselves,
we could use less land, plant fewer crops, and thus use less pesticide
and herbicide. Adding still more insult to injury, using such a large
amount of land to produce meat products decreases the amount of land
available for wild animals to use for their needs. Wildlife is being
forced to either adapt to often dangerous artificial environments or
simply die.

In addition to these concerns, there is the effect that pesticides and
animal waste have on the environment. Both may end up in the water
supply, ruining it or making it more expensive (financially and
environmentally) to treat for human consumption. Also, these
contaminants can adversely effect local wildlife. The American bald
eagle was nearly driven to extinction by the use of pesticides. While
it is true that those particular pesticides are no longer used (at
least in this country), it serves as an example of the effect that
pesticides and herbicides can have on wildlife just by their
introduction into the ecosystem.

Why is this important? Natural resources are being used at an
accelerated pace due to the widespread use of animals as food sources.
Rush Limbaugh says that it is the greatest of arrogances to think that
we humans can destroy the earth. The earth has survived many natural
catastrophes and is still around, right? Like so many of his half
truths, this doesn't really get to the point. It is true that we will
almost certainly not destroy the earth. But we may well make it
uninhabitable for future generations of humans and animals. Other
species will evolve to be able to live in the new environment we
create by our excesses, but we may not be able to survive. Is this
really what we want? I am not going to make the claim that we have any
moral obligation to future generations not yet in existence, but it
does seem to me that it would be better for us not to make the earth
uninhabitable as we know it. Perhaps this is more an aesthetic thing
than anything else, but I think we would all prefer to leave the earth
as pristine as possible. Using animals as food sources the way we do
now contributes to the failure of attaining that goal.

Conclusion

These are some of the thoughts I have on eating meat. I do not believe
that it is an ethically justifiable practice. It is clearly not in our
own self interest to do so, as evidenced by the health issues outlined
above. And it is not in the best interest of the earth as we know it.
We're not going to destroy the world, but we might change it beyond
recognition. I do not eat meat, and I do not believe that in our
society, where alternatives are readily available, anyone else should,
either. This is why I am vegetarian.


courtesy of www.cse.nd.edu/~pscherm1/why.html