Vegetarianism and Veganism

I did search and find a topic on this, but it was over a year and a half old, and didn't cover quite what I wanted to ask, so I'm starting a new one.

First of all, I KNOW it's a really contencious topic, and I'll try not to offend anyone.

I am currently not a vegetarian (or vegan, durr). The idea has never held much sway with me for a bunch of reasons, the main ones being
a) as much as I think humane treatment of animals is important, I think that humans get treated worse in some cases and should be our first priority, and
b) I think there are healthy things about meat, ie that it's a valuable source of protien, iron, etc (and I think eating meat is more natural than popping vitamin supplements).

However, I've been in an environmental studies program for about a year and a half, and the hippies have influenced me I know that raising meat for production is a lot more environmentally intensive than agriculture, and that a lot of our agriculture goes to feeding livestock instead of humans.

If that's all there was to it, I'd probably stop eating meat without much of an argument. But being conditioned to question pretty much everything, I asked around a lot first. My boyfriend's family raises cattle, and most of the grain that gets fed to livestock is the stalks and the rough parts that humans can't eat - it would tear our stomachs.

Also, and I'm in the process of researching this right now for a paper, but I've hypothesized that, say, a soy product that was grown and harvested in Brazil using corporate-farm practices (ie, chemical pesticides and herbicides, monocropping, shorter fallow season, higher intensity, GMOs, etc) and transported to North America using fossil fuel would be more environmentally degrading than locally grown, organic, free-range meat - we''ll go with chicken as more likely, but it's possible that even beef might be lower-impact.

There have been claims made in journal articles I've read that eating locally is more important than what you eat or even whether or not it's organic, at least from an environmental standpoint. I'm lucky enough to live in Southern Ontario's prime agricultural area so I'm able to get a lot of food locally.

I know that a lot of people's reasons for vegetarianism/veganism are not, or at least not entirely, environmentally-based. But if my hypothesis turns out to be correct, would it change your opinions?

So... does anyone know of any research (anecdotal, peer-reviewed, websites, whatever) that supports or refutes these ideas? I promise that I'm not trying to use this to do homework... I'm researching it too, I'd just like to hear from people who live in different places and have different experiences than what I can draw on locally.

Let the quasi-intelligent debate begin!

I can't help you any, sorry, but I'll give this a bump. I like meat. A lot.

hmmm, not sure about the enviromental effect, but I don't eat much meat because I think it's weird and wrong to eat something that was once a pig, cow, or chicken. In this case, I don't force my opinions on other people, and I don't judge people harshly if they agree or disagree. Eat whatever you want, as far as i'm concerned.

I just joined yesterday, but I found the Veggie group here on the site. Maybe you could join and post this there.

I am a Vegan and have been for many years. It was truly the best choice I ever made for myself.

Good luck.

No, I wouldn't change my mind about vegetarianism even if I found out crop harvesting was more deleterious to the environment that raising livestock. While environmental protection is certainly important to me, this is not the chief reason for my diet.

Most strict vegetarians & vegans seek out non-GMO products. They are readily available

Not to mention "organic" labels on foods, meat or veg, means absolutely nothing. There is no standard by which the FDA requires foods meet to be labeled organic.

Evidence of something more horrible somewhere else is not an excuse to perpetuate something elsewhere that is not quite as horrible as the really horrible thing.

It's alright to admit it if you think the way animals are treated is just fine in trade for what their slaughter produces.

The the USDA regulates the use of the term "organic" and there are definite requirements.

I'm sure the Japanese and Singaporeans would see the sense in this.

Yes I eat cow, I am not proud.

But being conditioned to question pretty much everything, I asked around a lot first. My boyfriend's family raises cattle, and most of the grain that gets fed to livestock is the stalks and the rough parts that humans can't eat - it would tear our stomachs.

Why would we eat the crap ends of grain? If people stopped eating cows, wouldn't they end up growing stuff we CAN eat in lieu of cattle feed? And wouldn't all of those crops feed more people than the cows would have, not to mention be a great deal healthier if those cows were going to end up as Big Macs or whatever?

And who cares if eating supplements is natural? Modern medicine isn't natural either.


Dog fart: I'm pretty sure you were thinking of "All Natural" instead of "Organic". I'm pretty sure the latter rather than the former is the label with no requirements. There are groups lobbying to have the standards for qualifying for the "Organic" label lowered, though, so that it becomes essentially meaningless as well.

Hear, hear!

Yeah, them too.
Pick up the new issue of Business Week.

It seems to me that the basic nature of life, not just human life but all life, is that is thrives by comsuming other life. Even vegitarians are forced to destroy some form of life in order to survive. Its just simply the nature of living; someday I'll die and my own body will be devoured in time. Not to go all disney on people, but it is the circle of life.
This does not mean that I am in favor of the torturing of animals; I believe that slaughter houses should be run as cleanly and humanely as is possible. I don't like the notion of factory farms in the very least. That being said, coming from a state that is very agricultural as well as having grown up surrounded by farms, I am strictly against anything which would harm the sacred institution of the family farm which is suffering too much in the modern world as it is. The simply fact is that some types of land can only support certain types of farming; soil which can produce excelent feed for animals might not produce other forms of food quiet as well. This is why one finds dairy farms as your go further into Northern climates; the ecosystem will support the cultivation of hay, but not other foods which humans can actually eat. This is why the dairy farm has become so important in less nutrient rich regions; it allows a family to survive or even prosper on lands which could not grow anything else. To take this away would destroy one of the few ways to make a living in these climes as well as strip away one of the most important institutions in our culture.

Putting food on a plane or a boat from wherever and flying it to wherever is going to be more environmentally-damaging than eating locally, vegetarian or otherwise. The two aren't really mutually exclusive, either way you should try to eat locally-produced foods to minimise on the environmental impact.
I eat locally-produced meats, grains, vegetables and frutis. Some fruits are bit more difficult (particularly given my liking for Chikoo) but it's not as if I need it to live.
I do not need to by Spanish oranges or Israeli tomatos when I have perfectly good home-grown alternatives (that are often more fresh).

EDIT - and I'm sorry for the lack of linkage with quantitative data in this post but I really need to sleep. Such links exist and if this thread lives by the morning I will find them and stick them up.

The biggest problem I see with this is that if everyone suddenly stops eating meat, what happens to the food animals? They wouldn't just disappear. Certainly we would not just kill them all. That would defeat the purpose of not eating meat. Rather, we would turn them loose in the wild, or set up a preserve where they could roam unharmed by people. The real problem is that they would continue to consume the same amount of vegetation and release the same amounts of greenhouse gasses. All the while our own consumption of vegetation would have to increase to replace the meats that we have given up. More undisturbed land would have to be converted into farmland, further reducing the habitat of already threatened or endangered species.

I can see one potential positive in this situation though. That is the fact that having more plants means there will be less carbon dioxide in our atmosphere.

as long as you don't eat people, who cares?

The only "meat" I eat is sushi (posh, I know). Does that make me vegetarian, a half-assed vegetarian, or a "get over the stupid labels etarian?" Any thoughts?

Well that's true if you confine your classification of what's environmentally damaging to the emissions from planes and boats, I suppose.

Of course, dude. It's a CE thread on a hot-button issue.

No matter how specific the initial post, within a page it will be a series of "Well, this is where I stand on Hot Button Issue X!" posts.