10 Things that Drove me to Vegetarianism, Part 2

My last post (10 Things that Drove me to Vegetarianism Part 1) contained two of the reasons I began eating vegetarian (and cooking vegan) almost three months ago. Here are reasons 3 through 6.

3. Cattle are kept in feed lots prior to slaughter. While many cows are allowed to graze for their first few hundred pounds, all factory farmed beef cattle are kept in feedlots where their diets can be closely monitored and engineered to produce the fat marbling the industry prizes so highly. After a few months of standing in mud and feces in crowded pens they are sent to the slaughterhouse. Aside from the horrible life the cows lead for those few months, feedlots are breeding grounds for disease. The chances that a cow is healthy when it is slaughtered are very low. Does mad cow disease ring any bells?

4. Farmed turkeys have been so tampered with they can no longer reproduce. Because the American consumer prizes white breast meat, farmed turkeys are bread to reach butchering weight by the age of 6 months (if they don’t die of organ failure, heart attack or disease by then-and 10.4 million do every year). Their breasts are so large and their bodies so weak that it is common to find turkeys that can’t walk well, and flying is certainly out of the question (wild turkeys can fly up to 55 miles per hour). It is actually physically impossible for tom breeders to um . . . get together with the females. According Ann Donoghue of the Agricultural Research Service, "Essentially 100 percent of the nearly 300 million turkeys produced annually in the United States for consumption are the result of artificial insemination.” (http://www.ars.usda.gov/is/AR/archive/jul98/toms0798.htm). In short, there is no such thing as natural turkey no matter the labels say.


5. All the protein humans need to lead a healthy life can be found in plant foods. God made our plant foods to be rich in protein. Though the USDA might tell us we need up to 40 grams (or more) per day the fact is that most Americans get their protein from animal products and 60% of them are overweight. I shoot for between 20 grams and 50 grams per day. Some days I eat more and some days I eat less. Vegetarians can easily get enough protein by eating a wide variety of foods including beans, peas, lentils, whole grain breads, rice, quinoa, etc. As an added benefit these foods are cholesterol and cruelty free.

6. Injury and illness rates at beef slaughterhouses run up to 30%. According to the Department of Labor, this makes the meat packing industry the most hazardous for employees with non-fatal injuries (http://stats.bls.gov/iif/oshwc/osh/os/ostb0754.pdf). Injuries range from repetitive stress disorders such as carpal tunnel to broken and severed limbs. Injury rates in meat packing plants are twice the national average, while illness rates are ten times the national average (remember the cows in the nasty feedlots?). (http://www.sustainabletable.org/issues/processing/). America’s insatiable appetite for cheap meats has increased slaughter rates from 175 per hour to nearly 400 per hour. This enormous increase in production line speed is believed to be a top contributor to the increase in injury to employees and instances of food contamination. Try cutting open 400 beefs per hour without accidentally getting the innards everywhere and you’ll see what I mean.