Vegetarianism

DEFINITION: The practice of refraining from eating meat

Many vegetarians believe that the processes necessary for raising animals to be eaten by humans—which include feeding, slaughtering, and disposing of the livestock and their waste products—constitute an inefficient use of the planet’s limited resources. Others believe that eating lower on the food chain reduces their chances of ingesting environmental pollutants and other potentially harmful substances. Still others believe the practice of eating animals is simply inhumane.

Human beings practice many different forms of vegetarianism; not all people who refer to themselves as vegetarians eat the same diet. Traditional vegetarians, also known as lacto-ovo vegetarians, eat no meat but do consume dairy products and eggs. Vegans, sometimes known as pure vegetarians, consume no animal products at all and also do not wear or otherwise use products of animal origin, such as leather and wool. The terms “pescatarian” and “pollotarian” refer to people who eat no mammalian meat but do eat fish and chicken, respectively. Statistics vary as to how many Americans identify as vegetarians or vegans. A 2023 Gallup poll put the proportion at around 4 percent of the United States population. That number has stayed relatively stable during the twenty-first century as vegetarianism has remained in the mainstream through discussions of culture, politics, health, and the environment.

Ethical Considerations

The Indian nationalist and spiritual leader Mahatma Gandhi once said, “Live simply, so that others may simply live.” For many, adopting a vegetarian lifestyle is the embodiment of his message. Many vegetarians choose not to eat meat as part of an ethical animal rights stance: they may believe that killing living beings is wrong in general, or they may simply believe that the way livestock is raised on an industrial scale is inhumane. In the twentieth century, as the demands of feeding the swelling American population increased, traditional free-range livestock grazing came to be replaced on a large scale by factory farming, or "concentrated animal feeding operations" (CAFOs), in which livestock such as cattle, hogs, or chickens live out their entire lives in confined spaces inside huge, warehouse-like buildings, where they are fed until they reach an optimal weight and then slaughtered. Many people consider such unnatural living circumstances, in which the animal may never set foot outside, to be inhumane; some respond to this by choosing to eat only "free-range" meat, and others simply choose not to eat meat. Other vegetarians believe more fundamentally that, despite humans' history as an omnivorous species, they have developed a moral sense that allows them to choose not to participate in the suffering of other creatures, and that any killing, no matter how "humanely" done, is participating in that suffering.

Environmental Concerns

Other people are vegetarians for environmental reasons, believing meat production is environmentally unsustainable; this is sometimes known as environmental vegetarianism. One of the earliest articulations of this viewpoint was the 1971 book Diet for a Small Planet by Frances Moore Lappé. In it, Lappé pointed out that it takes 1.3 hectares (3.25 acres) to support the average American meat-rich diet; in contrast, feeding a lacto-ovo vegetarian requires only 0.2 hectare (0.5 acre), while a pure vegan diet requires only 0.07 hectare (0.17 acre). Put another way, if the amount of grain fed to cattle were converted into bread, it would be enough to provide every human in the world with two loaves each day.

The issue of water resources is another important consideration for some environmental vegetarians. Producing one pound of beef requires up to one hundred times more water than producing one pound of wheat. In addition, groundwater contamination from animal waste is a growing problem. Livestock on US feedlots produce twenty times as much excrement as the country’s human population—hundreds of millions of tons per year. Animal waste contains high levels of nitrogen, which can be beneficial to the soil, but it converts to ammonia and nitrates if not processed right away. If not treated properly, the runoff from agricultural feedlots can leach into the groundwater supply, cause algae overgrowth and oxygen depletion in the nation’s lakes and rivers, and eventually pollute reservoirs and wells used for drinking water.

Animals not confined to feedlots pose different problems for the environment. Overgrazing and disagreements about land use in the western United States have become major battleground issues between ranchers and environmentalists. The US Bureau of Land Management spends many millions of dollars maintaining federal grazing lands, yet collects only a fraction of that cost back in fees. Cattle and sheep grazing on public lands compete with wildlife for grass and water, and many thousands of predators (including wolves, bears, and coyotes) are killed each year to protect free-ranging livestock.

The impacts of raising animals for food are even more dramatic in South and Central America. Cattle ranching is one of the leading causes of the destruction of the rainforests, as ranchers employ slash-and-burn agriculture to clear grazing areas for their livestock. Unfortunately, this newly created range lacks the topsoil necessary for sustained grazing and must be abandoned after only a few years.

Health Concerns

“You are what you eat” is a well-worn axiom, but it contains a simple truth about the place of humans on the food chain. A diner sitting down to a plate of filet mignon is eating not only part of a steer but also everything that steer ingested during its life cycle. In the case of animals raised on feedlots, this goes well beyond grain and hay. Grain and corn destined to become cattle feed are sprayed with pesticides and larvacides, and the animals are injected with any combination of hormones, growth stimulants, tranquilizers, antibiotics, and appetite stimulants. Only minute traces of these products can be found in meat sold for public consumption, but the long-term effects on humans are not known.

The scenario is no different for marine life. Fish and mollusks literally “breathe” their environment, and contaminated water leads to contaminated seafood. This is especially true of shellfish, such as oysters and scallops, which feed by filtering water. Predators that eat fish—for example, bears, eagles, and humans—consume the toxins accumulated by the fish they eat as well as the toxins of all the smaller fish those fish have eaten. In addition, ground fish meal is used as both fertilizer and a component of some livestock feeds.

For many people, choosing vegetarianism and eating lower on the food chain is their way of reducing the amount of toxins in their diets; others point out that consumption of meats like beef, even if organically produced, are high in saturated animal fat and therefore increase the risk of heart disease. For this and myriad other reasons, many vegetarians consider theirs a "cleaner" diet.

Bibliography

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