And yet- I am a vegetarian.

I am not a “bleeding-heart liberal” or a tree-hugger. I am a Christian and politically conservative. I am also not rich by any means- in fact, I am raising 5 children on an income that qualifies me for gov’t assistance (which I am not on).

And yet- I am a non-GMO vegetarian.

When I talk to my dad about the issues that led to my choice, he not only understands them, but agrees with them for the most part. He has seen farming go from a family business with integrity that worked WITH nature to one run by Monsanto and it’s chemicals trying to forever beat nature. He has seen it go from a farmer knowing each of his animals and giving them their natural space and feed (which, btw, for cattle is NOT grain, but grass) to penning them up and caring about nothing but profit. And the waste used to be pure and feed the soil the animals grazed in, rotating between fields as nature intended… now the soil is depleted and won’t grow what’s planted because of all of the chemicals that have been forced into it. And don’t even get him started on antibiotics..

What I am trying to say is that without a word from PETA or any other “group” a thinking person who wishes to know the TRUTH can see that farming and raising animals for consumption is a no-win proposition- especially the way it is done today.

As for nutrition, anyone who wants to spew stuff about how vegetarian diets are lacking in any way simply doesn’t know what they are talking about. Yes, you can be a junk-food vegetarian/vegan- just as you can be a junk-food carnivore. But you can also be a 100% healthy vegan without any supplementation at all (and don’t give me the B12 argument because meat does not NATURALLY contain this, it is a fungus that the animal eats so all vegetarians have to do is eat it and by-pass the dead animal. If you want to call that supplementing, then whatever).

Defending growing 16lbs.of grain to produce 1lb of beef (not to mention the water and antibiotics, etc) is ridiculous and we all know that without gov’t subsidies it wouldn’t be possible at all. On top of that, the waste that is produced, the GMO/ Monsanto agenda and other crap- that 1lb of beef costs far more than what is plunked down at the supermarket.

So, please- if you are going to try and make a defense of the meat industry, do it with some well rounded arguments and facts, not what has been fed to you by the industrial farming machine.

I think that the animals we eat should be treated with respect. Just like Native Americans had respect for everything they ate. They should live a good and noble life and be killed in a peaceful humane way.

You know what’s the real way to respect an animal’s life? By not ending it. (And while Native Americans may not have had that opportunity, we do.)

I am also not ok with the concept of veal, or eating any sort of baby for that matter, but that is my personal choice and I’m not going to judge or push that on others.

What about milk? Because veal wouldn’t exist without the dairy industry.

Companion animals provide us with love and affection and some even contribute to society (such as working dogs). But super extreme groups like PETA are also against having pets, and I love my dog.

That’s not really true. I don’t like PETA, but to say they’re “against having pets” isn’t exactly true.

We domesticated animals and created so many that we have to kill them by the millions each year, so it’s our responsibility to a.) never, ever buy from a pet store or breeder (no matter how “ethical”), b.) spay and neuter our pets.

Humans have naturally been hunter gatherers since the cave days. All of you who judge meat eaters… whats next?

What do they “cave days” have to do with it? Should we also go back to living in caves because it’s more natural?

We have to look at where we are today and stop using “but it’s natural!” as an excuse for continuing practices that are hurting the animals, the earth, and ourselves.

Are you going to go to the jungle to protest lions b/c they hunt down and eat cute antelope? Are you going to scuba dive and tell off the sharks and suggest they only eat sea moss? You might not eat animals, but believe me… there are animals out there that would eat you!

False logic. a.) They’re carnivores, we’re omnivores. We can survive and thrive without meat. b.) They don’t have a choice, we do. Guaranteed: you will never find a vegan protesting in front of a lion’s den because they kill and eat antelopes, so making an argument that they would is just storytelling, plain and simple. Straw man and all that.

I also wanted to second Ryan’s point about vegetarianism not being expensive. Yes, you can spend a lot on processed foods and even fresh fruits & veggies can be pricey in some areas, especially during the winter. However, I don’t know many meals that are cheaper and provide more nutrition than beans & rice (a combination eaten in many forms by many cultures throughout the world).

Oh, what I meant to say was that Alpro are the only soya supplier to guarantee that none of their products are grown on cleared rainforest, so to help the environment, buy their products.

She states: “It has been said that only to an atheist is death the ultimate injury.”

I believe she is confusing death with murder. Most vegans implicitly express their view (and most people’s view) that a quick, painless death is prefereable to severe, prolonged suffering, when they euthanize their companion animals. I imagine many support “right to die” laws also. But even the most pious believer in God and heaven does not want to be murdered, or have their loved ones shot down. I doubt that a gunman’s defense of “Well, I was only hastening their delivereance to the afterlife” would be very convincing to a jury or comforting to survivors.

Not only do we kill animals by the billions each year, we breed them expressly to have them killed as soon as profitable – which is a profound devaluation of their intrinsic worth and intentional violation of their interests – and we do so arbitrarily, for pleasure.

She says: “We are born into a bewildering world where everything feeds off of everything else. If only we could be like plants, which live primarily on pure chemicals, we could finally escape all the ethical dilemmas we must face by the simple fact that we must eat to live.”

We can more like plants – that is, decreasing the amount of killing and suffering on our behalf – by eating a plant-based diet and earnestly looking for and subsequently implementing practical ways to reduce our impact on the earth and its inhabitants. We may not be able to completely escape all our ethical dilemmas caused by having to eat to live, but by doing the best we can to peacefully coexist with the other species of the world (as well as members of our own species), we can go a long way toward removing those dilemmas and bringing our lifestyle more in line with our basic moral principles, including the Golden Rule and acting with compassion; we are not helpless in this respect.

She says: “A vegetarian diet engenders poor health in every individual I’ve met.”

I invite her to meet my wife and me. Or any of the dozens of vegetarians I know. Then we can head over to the cardiac ward and see how many vegetarians and heavy meat-eaters there are. I have to really wonder about statements like this. Where does she live? There are healthy vegetarians at every veg- or animal protection-related gathering in every medium and large town in the country – and in many countries. How can I ascribe any credibility to any of her arguments when she makes statements that are so blatantly, empirically disproved?

She says: “It does benefit the vegetarian, however, in that it confers a sense of moral superiority and allows for the creation of a sense of “us” versus “them”, one of the most basic of human instincts.”

Speaking for myself, and I’m quite sure for many other vegans, when I act in accordance with my conscience, and advocate treating nonhumans with respect and kindness through a vegan diet, I do so because I am compelled to help the victims of cruelty and injustice, and because I believe vegansim is one step toward a far more peaceful world. I would gladly – in a heartbeat – give up any presumed “moral superiority” and “us vs. them” mindset in return for the developed world adopting a vegan diet and including animals in their moral universe. I would shut down my blog and throw out my leaflets and sit on the porch and play guitar, to anyone who walked by, and quite possiby to the squirrels racing up and down the tree, or as an accompaniment to the songbirds’ joyous singing.

Does she see no difference between sawing the limb off a dogwood and sawing the limb off of a dog? Is she saying if she had to make the choice between those two options, she would flip a coin?

Would she swerve to run over the chicken and spare the carrot?

Does she posit that there’s no difference between slicing into a tomato and sticking a knife in the side of a live lamb?

Is that what gets her through her omnivorous day?

There are two common, self-serving, convenient psuedo-metaphysical constructs that remain popular among omnivores as means to rationalize their daily participation in eating flesh and in creating beings just to be killed and eaten.

One is basically “animals have no feelings.” No interest in living, no emotions, no capacity for joy and fear, elation and despair. That has been thoroughly disproven, and it’s also obviously not true from simple observation and common sense. But some die-hard omnis hang onto to it.

The other branch of omni feel-good-ology is “everything is equally sentient and equally capable of feeling.” When taken to its logical conclusion, killing a human and smashing a rock are equivalent. But again this defies not only science but common sense and observation. Can anyone look at the pig mentioned earlier, writhing in pain, screaming, defecating, as he hangs on a hook, and then thrashing wildly as he is dunked into scalding water, still alive and conscious – and compare that to the “suffering” of a plant pulled from the ground?

If plants do feel pain – through some as-yet-undetected mechanism, as they have no nervous system and no detectable pain receptors, then God, or the gods, or evolution, or all three are playing some kind of sick cosmic joke, as the plants have no way of escaping their presumed torment.

Heeding the Occam’s Razor rule, it is far easier to be as compassionate as possible, and to attempt to follow the Golden Rule, and admit when you’re not, than to think up wildly implausible schemes to excuse easily avoidable cruelty. Among its many other virtues, veganism is easy on the conscience.

I’ll respond to Cattleman’s contributions down the road a piece.

I’ve heard & researched all sides (vegan, vegetarianism, omnivore) & Veganism is the most compelling, ethical, & compassionate way to live life. And for the record, I am not vegan but am on a path to be there within the year. It’s amazing how far removed Americans have gotten from their food sources & de-sensitized toward killing others that its become 2nd nature to accept the status quo.

Is there “modern-scientific proof” that you possess a soul? (Do you assume every living being does not have a soul unless proven otherwise?)

Isn’t “their polytheism” vs. “my monotheism” a case of “us” vs. “them” and therefore aren’t you doing the same thing you suggest vegetarians are doing, i.e, contributing towards human blood spilling?

A meat-based diet causes more health problems than a vegetarian one, all other things being equal. A pregnant human is recommened bigger portions of vegetables and fruits and asked to restrict intake of animal products like fish and liver.

However, I don’t see the difference between consuming a chicken and consuming a carrot. Plants are every bit as alive as mammals. I suppose the most non-violent means of harvest would be taking only the fruit and seeds of plants, which does not harm the generating organism and in fact confers it some benefits, namely that of being tended and protected. Still, one is destroying, by it through one’s digestive tract, the ultimate purpose of those seeds, which is to create more of itself.

We are born into a bewildering world where everything feeds off of everything else. If only we could be like plants, which live primarily on pure chemicals, we could finally escape all the ethical dilemmas we must face by the simple fact that we must eat to live.

The designer of our universe is difficult if not impossible to interrogate. we don’t know why things are the way they are. in the face of this frustration, made even stronger by the lack of coherent faith expressed by most vegetarians, which in my experience seems to consist primarily of a naive nature-based polytheism, the vegetarians re-direct their discomfort with a universe that is drenched with blood and pain onto their fellow humans, as if we meat eaters were responsible for a nature “red in tooth and claw.”

Perhaps I am too generous in ascribing any kind of faith to most vegetarians. It has been said that only to an atheist is death the ultimate injury. I don’t think drawing artificial lines between what it is “right” to eat makes the world any better. A vegetarian diet engenders poor health in every individual I’ve met, and, as Cattleman points out, it is far less efficient to get one’s calories completely through plants than through meat.

It does benefit the vegetarian, however, in that it confers a sense of moral superiority and allows for the creation of a sense of “us” versus “them”, one of the most basic of human instincts. It could be argued that this instinct has caused far more blood to be spilled than the practice of eating meat: far more human blood. Instincts can be reshaped, modified by dint of our complex brains. But creating a world in which we do not have to consume to survive is still beyond the horizon of our current abilities.