101 Reasons Why I'm a Vegetarian
by Pamela Teisler-Rice

1
In the official words of the United States Department of Agriculture
(USDA), The Animal Welfare Act, as passed by the US Congress,
"specifically excludes animals raised for food or fiber." With
virtually no protection of farm animals (at either the federal, or on
the state level), institutional cruelty and abuse have become the norm.
In legal terms--which is where it counts in a for-profit
environment--cruelty and abuse of farm animals is, for the most part,
simply not against the law in the United States of America.

2 Propped up with the aid of official government policy, farming in
the US has been allowed, over the last generation, to grow into a grim
corporate monstrosity, the scale of which is hard to comprehend, or
even to be believed. Virtually all of the over 7 billion animals
slaughtered for food in the US every year are today the product of a
highly mechanized factory-like system, incorporating dangerous,
unprecedented, and unsustainable methods of efficiency.

3 Approximately 1.3 billion cattle populate the earth at any one
time. They exist artificially in these vast numbers to satisfy the
excessive human demand for the meat and by-products they provide. Their
combined weight exceeds that of the entire human population. By sheer
numbers, their consequent appetite for the world's resources, have made
them a primary cause for the destruction of the environment. In the US,
feedlot cattle yield one pound of meat for every 16 pounds of feed.
(Within the 12-year period preceding 1992, the number of chickens
worldwide increased 132% to 17.2 billion.)

4 An animal-based diet is invariably high in cholesterol, animal
protein (see #13), and saturated fat, which combine to raise the level
of cholesterol in the blood--the warning signal for heart disease and
stroke. Due mainly to the meat-centered diet of most Americans, these
two diseases account for nearly 50% of all deaths in the US.

5 It takes an average of 2,500 gallons of water to produce a single
pound of meat. According to Newsweek, "The water that goes into a 1,000
pound steer could float a destroyer." In contrast, it takes only 25
gallons of water to produce one pound of wheat.

6 The Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine, a group of
3,000 physicians, estimated the annual health care costs directly
resulting from the nation's meat-centered diet to be between $23.6
billion and $61.4 billion--comparable to similar health cost estimates
associated with cigarette smoking.

7 Feeding the average meat-eating American requires 3-1/4 acres of
land per year. Feeding a person who eats no food derived from animals
requires only 1/6 acre per year. Recent marginal growth in animal
protein consumption in increasingly affluent developing countries has
led to huge increases in the need for feed grains. In 1995, quite
suddenly, China went from being an exporter to an importer of grain.
World shortages are predicted as both populations and meat consumption
rise together--an unsustainable combination. Early in 1996, the world
was down to a 48-day supply of grain. According to Lester Brown of the
Worldwatch Institute, the world "may have crossed a threshold where
even the best efforts of governments to build stocks may not be enough."

8 Pigs in today's factory indoor facilities are likely to be
stacked two and three decks high, each solitarily imprisoned in a
bin--a cage just a bit larger than a pig's body. Those pigs who live
through their stress and fright will adopt coping behaviors--from
pacing, to repetitive rocking, to incessant biting of, or banging on,
the bars. Industry blames the animals; it calls these behaviors "vices"
(see #58).

9 The passage of local laws favoring massive corporate pork
operations in North Carolina recently propelled the state into the
number two spot in national hog production, practically overnight. In
terms of manure, the state might as well have grafted the human
population of New York City onto its coastal plain, times two! Studies
by North Carolina State University estimate that half of the some 2,500
open hog manure cesspools (euphemistically termed "lagoons"), now
needed as part of hog productions there, are leaking contaminants such
as nitrate--a chemical linked to blue-baby syndrome--into the ground
water. In the summer of 1995, at least five lagoons actually broke
open, letting loose tens of millions of gallons of hog waste into
rivers and on to neighboring farm lands. No mechanical method of
retrieval exists that cleans contaminants from groundwater. Only nature
is able to purify things again; and that could take several generations.

10 Worldwide demand for fish, along with advances in fishing
methods--sonar, driftnets, floating refrigerated fish packing
factories--is bringing ocean species, one after another, to the brink
of extinction. In the Nov., '95 edition of Scientific American, Carl
Safina writes, "For the past two decades, the fishing industry has had
increasingly to face the result of extracting [fish] faster than fish
populations [can] reproduce." Research reveals that the intended
cure--aquaculture (fish farming)--actually hastens the trend toward
fish extinction, while disrupting delicate coastal ecosystems at the
same time.

11 Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy (BSE), dubbed Mad Cow Disease
because of the apparent mental torture cows display before death, is an
always-fatal neuro-degenerative cattle disease caused by incredibly
virulent and mysterious infectious proteins called prions. An outbreak
in Great Britain had by early 1996 stricken around 160,000 cows.
Circumstantial evidence pointed to the British practice of mixing the
remains of sheep, including brains and bones, into cows' feed as the
cause of the outbreak. This apparent species-to-species inoculation is
what makes all forms of spongiform encephalopathy (known to affect
other mammals as well) so alarming. Are cow-eating humans the next
victims? At press-time, evidence pointed to a certain strain of
Creutzfeldt-Jacob Disease (CJD) as being the human variant of
spongiform encephalopathy. Grim predictions tell of up to 500,000
Britons a year falling to this disease due to their past consumption of
BSE-infected cows.
Prion-based diseases often have incubation periods in terms of
decades, so the saga is sure to continue. In the meantime, since using
the remains of dead animals in feed has been integral to agricultural
operations in the US for years, BSE, or the chance of some future
American version of it, is one more reason to think twice before biting
into that char-broiled burger.

12 Jim Mason and Peter Singer write in their book Animal Factories,
"Instead of hired hands, the factory farmer employs pumps, fans,
switches, slatted or wire floors, and automatic feeding and watering
hardware." As with any other capital intensive system, managers will be
concerned with the "cost of input and volume of output ... [T]he
difference is that in animal factories the product is a living
creature."

13 According to Dr. T. Colin Campbell, one of the key researchers
involved with The China Study (the largest study of diet and health
ever conducted), "In the next 10 to 15 years, one of the things you're
bound to hear is that animal protein ... is one of the most toxic
nutrients of all that can be considered." Risk for disease goes up
dramatically when even a little animal protein is added to the diet.

14 A scientist, reporting in the industry publication Confinement,
calculated in 1976 that the planet's entire petroleum reserves would be
exhausted in 13 years if the whole world were to take on the diet and
technological methods of farming used in the US (see #7).

15 Trees are being cut down at an alarming rate in the US, as well
as around the world, for meat production. If tomorrow people in the US
made a radical change away from their meat-centered diets, an area of
land the size of all of Texas and most of Oklahoma could be returned to
forest.

16 So-called "redskins" are those chickens which--on the conveyer
belts to their deaths--missed not only the brine-filled electrified
stunning trough, but the knife that was to cut their throats. Their
deaths occurred in the scald tank where feathers are loosened before
plucking. Industry throws aside piles of them every day.

17 Chicken feed is routinely laced with antibiotics, sulfa drugs
and other chemical substances. Only by maintaining the birds on drugs,
a practice which began about mid-century, is agribusiness allowed the
luxury and efficiency of massive flocks and intensive confinement.
Today's medicated feed also pumps out market weight birds in half the
time from two-thirds the feed of 50 years ago (see #45).

18 Meat-centered diets are linked to many types of cancer, most
notably cancer of the colon, breast, cervix, uterus, ovary, prostate,
and lung.

19 It is estimated that livestock production accounts
for twice the amount of pollution in the US as that produced by
industrial sources. Livestock in the US produce 20 times the excrement
of the entire US population. Since farm animals today spend much or all
of their lives in factory sheds or feedlots, their waste no longer
serves to fertilize pastures a little at a time. One poultry
researcher, according to United Poultry Concerns literature, explains:
"A one-million-hen complex will produce 125 tons of wet manure a day."
To responsibly store, disperse, or degrade this amount of animal waste
is simply not possible. Much of the waste inevitably is flushed into
rivers and streams. Becoming a vegetarian does more to clean up our
nation's water than any other single action.

20 According to the Family Food Protection Act of 1995 (S.515),
Section 2: "meat and meat food products, and poultry and poultry
products, contaminated with pathogenic bacteria are a leading cause of
foodborne illness." The bill also states that foodborne illnesses take
approximately 9,000 lives, and cause between 6.5 and 80 million
illnesses, each year. According to USDA Secretary Dan Glickman, 500
deaths a year are attributable to E.coli contamination in beef.

21 In the words of John Robbins, author of Diet for a New America,
a dairy cow living in today's modern milk factory "is bred, fed,
medicated, inseminated and manipulated to a single purpose--maximum
milk production at minimum cost." She lives with an unnaturally swelled
up and sensitive udder, is likely to be kept inside a stall her entire
life, is milked up to 3 times a day, and is kept pregnant nearly all of
her life with her young taken from her almost immediately after birth.
"Contented" is the characteristic most often attributed to the cow.
However, cows in today's factories have to be fed tranquilizers to calm
their nerves.

22 Calorie for calorie, spinach has 14 times the iron of sirloin
steak. Iron requires vitamin C for absorption. Animal foods contain no
vitamin C.

23 Steers are castrated to make them more docile.
Castration also promotes a fattier, more profitable, animal. Castration
can be done radically, all at once, or over a longer period of time
with a ring, causing the testicles to eventually fall away. Drugs are
an integral part of today's agriculture, but in the US for this
procedure, anesthetics are rarely used.

24 By concealing a hidden camera on his body, an employee of a
Rapid City, SD slaughterhouse was able to obtain a videotape for
CBS-TV's 48 Hours. The tape showed how a plant with over 300 employees
that processes an average of 50 cows per hour with only 4 USDA
inspectors "keeps the line moving." It showed workers taking dangerous
shortcuts in cleaning up fluid that had broken out of an abscess from a
piece of chuck beef, a severe violation of USDA rules that would
require an extended clean-up procedure. Comments from a seasoned USDA
veterinarian: "I can say from my experience of nine years and in
talking to other food inspectors around the country, this probably goes
on on a daily basis."

25 The National Cancer Research Institute found that women who eat
meat on a daily basis are almost 4 times more likely to get breast
cancer than those women who eat little or no meat.

26 It is not
unusual in today's factory henhouse for 4 or 5 hens to be squeezed into
a 12" x 18" cage. It is standard for poultry producers to de-beak
chicks with hot-knife machines--not a painless procedure. De-beaking is
industry's solution to birds, driven to crazed pecking, inflicting harm
upon the fellow "product."

27 At the expense of their own hungry populations, producers in
poor countries will choose to export luxury foods such as meat for sale
to rich countries. Meat is much more profitable than subsistence crops
such as rice, beans and vegetables.

28 Methane is one of the four greenhouse gasses that contributes to
the environmental trend known as global warming. The 1.3 billion cattle
in the world produce one fifth of all the methane emitted into the
atmosphere.

29 Meat contains no essential nutrients that cannot be obtained
directly from plant sources. By cycling grain through livestock, we
lose 90% of the protein, 96% of the calories, all of its carbohydrates,
and all of its nutritional fiber.

30 Acid rain, chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs), oil spills ... heard it
all? Enter: "dead zones." Every summer an area devoid of oxygen
develops at the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico. In 1994, the area was
nearly the size of the state of New Jersey. The dead zone, according to
an environmental policy analyst at the Competitive Enterprise Institute
in Washington, "is the end result of an ecological chain reaction set
in motion by ... runoff that ends up in the Mississippi." The primary
cause?--nutrient pollution from animal agriculture.

31 Two hundred years ago, American cropland had topsoil that
averaged 21 inches in depth. Today, only about 6 inches remain. Every
year in the US an area the size of Connecticut is lost to topsoil
erosion--85% of this erosion is associated with livestock production.

32 Fish are living magnets for toxic chemicals. According to
Consumer Reports (Feb., '92), a notable incidence of unacceptable
levels of PCBs and mercury were found in certain species of fish that
were tested (see #85). Ingesting PCBs is considered a chief cause of
reduced sperm count among American men--70% of what it was 30 years ago.

33 Farm animals in our factory sheds today are supposed to have
their drug intakes stopped at proscribed intervals prior to slaughter
to avoid residues ending up in the final consumer product. Withdrawal
schedules, however, are not always properly followed. With so many
different drugs, the regimens can be complex, with written instructions
often not very coherent. Due to the mechanized nature of today's
conveyer belt feeding systems, troughs of old, drug-laden feed may not
get cleaned away when withdrawal should begin. In addition, since farm
animals are often fed animal waste as well as animal flesh, drug and
pesticide residues continue to be recycled (see #101).

34 Harvey Diamond, co-author of the Fit for Life books, writes,
"the list of ailments that can be linked to dairy products is so
extensive there is hardly a problem it doesn't at least contribute to."
Consumption of cow's milk is linked to colitis, dysfunctions of the
thyroid gland, and headaches--even Sudden Infant Death Syndrome, Lou
Gehrig's disease and Multiple Sclerosis. Parent advisor Dr. Benjamin
Spock has said that cow's milk, "causes internal blood loss, allergies
and indigestion, and contributes to some cases of childhood diabetes."
Dr. Spock even linked milk to the risk for anemia in babies. The common
cold, as well as allergies to dust, cats and pollen, are more likely to
go away when cow's milk is taken out of the diet.

35 The human intestine is not designed to digest meat. While a
natural carnivore's intestine is relatively short (3 times the length
of its body) and smooth inside, a human's intestine is proportionally 4
times longer than that of a carnivore, deeply twisted and puckered.
Having no fiber of its own, meat quite arduously inches itself through
the long convoluted human digestive tract. Before it gets to the end it
has become putrid and toxic to the body (see #18 re: colon cancer, #72).

36 Ancestors to the modern bovine evolved in greener, wetter climes
than that of our American West--in ecosystems much better able to
withstand the abuse that cattle grazing can inflict. According to the
General Accounting Office, livestock raising is the primary reason for
the elimination or endangerment of plant species in the nation. Western
ecosystems are further disrupted with US government help. The so-called
Animal Damage Control Program, at the cost of $22 million per year in
Western regions alone, officially acts to exterminate predators to
cattle--a sizable perk for the ranchers, some of whom are far from
needy.

37 The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition and the Food and
Nutrition Board recommend eating a mere 2.5% to 6% of one's calories as
protein. Today's average American excessively eats 40% of his or her
calories as protein--28% from animal protein, and 12% from non-animal
protein (see #13).

38 About 98% of all milk in the US is produced using factory
methods. Part of factory life for a cow includes dangerous levels of
drugs administered to boost milk output. Due to selective breeding,
cows already produce at least two and a half times the amount of milk
of yesterday's pastured counterpart. Then, as of February, 1994,
farmers were given the go-ahead to use the genetically engineered
hormone Bovine Somatotropin (BST) on their herds. Designed to boost
milk output by an additional 15 percent, milk per cow statistics are
already showing the effects nationwide. A cow naturally has at least a
20-year lifespan; today's stressed out cows, however, become hamburger
in less than 4 years, as a cow's ability to give milk quickly
diminishes under modern conditions.

39 Today, cattlemen enjoy grazing privileges on public lands at
rates of less than a third they'd pay to private landowners. In
addition, the federal government pays for maintenance of these public
lands. Estimated total annual cost to taxpayers, either directly, or in
lost revenues, comes to roughly $50-150 million. Also, the federal
"emergency feed program," designed to help ranchers during drought
years, costs taxpayers an average of $26 million every year, drought or
not.

40 Factory-farmed animals contain as much as 30 times more saturated fat than yesterday's free-range, pasture-raised animals.

41
Nearly half the fish tested in a 6-month investigation by Consumers
Union were found to be contaminated by bacteria from human or animal
feces, suspected to be the result of poor sanitation practices at one
or more points along the fish handling process (see #85).

42 In today's factory henhouse, certain lighting schedules will be
employed to maintain an illusion of eternal spring--a technique that
keeps egg production up to speed. When production drops off, the birds
may be put through a brutal forced molt, induced by days of starvation
and darkness. Some, and often many, of the birds will inevitably die in
the process.

43 Meat contains approximately 14 times more pesticides than plant
foods; dairy products contain 5-1/2 times more pesticides than plant
foods.

44 Cruelty can be a regular occurrence at stockyards.
Sick and crippled farm animals, called "downers," may lie suffering for
days until dragged by chain to slaughter. The downer phenomenon would
drastically be reduced if all stockyards refused to allow ranchers to
make any money on them. (Slaughter of a living creature affords a
rancher a better price than "dead-on-arrival" meat.)

45 Of all the antibiotics administered in the US to people or farm
animals, farm animals receive over 95% of them--not so much to treat
infection, but to make the animals grow faster on less feed (see #17,
#101).

46 Meat industry apologists claim that livestock do not compete with
humans for edible food because they live on forage humans cannot eat.
In fact, 70% of all the grain produced in the US is fed to livestock.

47
Animal health on the farm of old came from exercise, sunlight and
freedom to peck or root in the soil. Today, animals are packed indoors
and kept alive with drugs and vitamin injections. The battle against
bacteria in the factory farm shed is a constant concern. Cages are
automatically misted with insecticides. Chickens are even fed chemicals
which stay active in their droppings, a method designed to kill the
larvae of flies that harbor in piles of manure.

48 The great Ogallala Aquifer, which supplies the nation's
breadbasket with water, is being pumped dry, primarily due to
agribusiness growing grain to feed livestock. Spanning over 8
midwestern states, this natural blessing from the last Ice Age may be
gone within several decades.

49 The agony of life for food animals is only surpassed by the
terror of death at the hands of the butcher. Neat and tidy plastic
wrapped packages of hamburger and T-bone steak mask the horror of
cattle being sent to slaughter: the nauseating stench, the frenetic
mooing, the waiting chute, the prolonged electric prodding of terrified
victims (who often are allowed to see others who have gone before
them), the panic in the killing stall, the stunning and hoisting, the
torrent of gushing blood, and the piercing whine of saw blades cutting
flesh and bone. Few people ever see the piles of severed heads, hooves,
milk sacks and udders. Indeed, one trip to a slaughterhouse often is
enough to transform anyone into a vegetarian.

50 A US Congressional committee report, published in 1985, charged
that there were 20-30 thousand animal drugs in use at the time, and
that as many as 90% had not been approved by the FDA.

51 The
Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine came out in 1991 with the
"New Four Food Groups." They are: fruit, vegetables, whole grains, and
legumes (beans and peas). Meat, poultry, and fish were termed
"optional" foods, not considered necessary for health. Referring to the
USDA's "Food Pyramid," Marion Nestle, the chair of New York
University's Department of Nutrition, said: "Why do we have a milk
group? Because we have a National Dairy Council. Why do we have a meat
group? Because we have an extremely powerful meat lobby."

52 With every one of their natural instincts restricted and
unfulfilled, pigs in today's factories will take to "tail-biting."
Insane, bored and frustrated, these naturally intelligent and playful
creatures may be driven to gnawing neurotically on one another's pig
tails and hind ends. If not prevented, a mauled pig may die from an
attack. Mauled pigs cannot be sold, so they become a problem to the
producer. The answer? Pig tails are routinely amputated, and pigs are
kept in total darkness except for feeding time.

53 With an annual injury and illness incidence rate of 23.2 per 100
full-time workers, poultry processing is ranked as the nation's 11th
most dangerous industry, nearly twice that of coal mining and
construction. The high illness incidence exists because workers
actually contract diseases from the sick animals in their midst.
Workers in the meat packing industry suffer injuries in the workplace
at 10 times the national average, primarily due to damage to tendons
and nerves from repeating the same motion up to 8,000 times an hour
(see #64).

54 In egg factories all over the country, male chicks are weeded
out and disposed of by "chick-pullers." Over half a million chicks a
day are stuffed en masse into plastic bags where they are crushed and
suffocated. Or they may be ground up while still alive to be fed to
livestock or used as fertilizer.

55 Author and director of The Institute of Nutrition, Education and
Research, Dr. Michael Klaper, writes, "The pricetag on the supermarket
chuck steak does not include irreplaceable topsoil; yet future
generations will pay dearly." (see #99, 31)

56 At least 95% of all toxic chemical residues in the American diet
come from meat, fish, dairy products and eggs. This is because such
residues are stored in fat. Each step up the food chain serves to
amplify the consumption of toxins. Fish, especially, have very long
food chains. Avoiding fish to avoid toxic residue may not be a
sufficient preventative measure, however, as one third of the world's
fish catch is fed to livestock. Due to the excessive use of pesticides,
insecticides and petrochemical fertilizers on cropland, the injection
of hormones and antibiotics into farm animals, and the abundance of
PCBs and mercury in our oceans, there is toxicity in the flesh of all
animals people eat. More than ever, it is wise to eat "low on the food
chain," with plant food being the lowest and safest.

57 Research by best-selling author Dr. Dean Ornish found that a
vegetarian diet, when combined with certain other lifestyle changes,
can cause heart disease to be halted and even reversed. A diet without
meat can also help prevent diabetes, relieve the symptoms of diabetes
and can even end the need for insulin treatments.

58 A major part of the horror of a pig or chicken farm is the
noise. Inside a hog barn of a thousand animals, workers wear ear
protection against the din of squealing animals banging against their
metal cages. To hear what this sounds like, call: 919-549-5100 x4647.

59 What we have today is a "meat industrial complex." A press
release promoting a $2,000 publication produced by a publisher of
high-tech research reports reads like a page out of Aldous Huxley's
Brave New World. Entitled "US Food-Animal Health Product Markets:
Consolidation of End-Users Spurs Biotech Development," the report
intends to inform readers about emerging markets in support products to
the new assembly-line world of corporate farms. The press release
stated: "Management sophistication is growing along with the size of
food-animal production facilities. Computers have introduced highly
technical breeding, immunization and other maintenance schedules into
the barnyard. ... New products will use genetic engineering to increase
milk and meat production, produce improved animals and improve
vaccines. ... End users are demanding species-specific products and
broad-spectrum ones that attack multiple problems with single doses."

60 The digestive system of the natural carnivore is designed for
flesh. The human digestion system is designed for plant food. From the
inadequate amount of acidity in human saliva, bile in the human liver
and acid in the human stomach, to the relatively small size of the
human kidneys, it is clear that the natural diet for humans is
vegetarian.

61 A male calf born to a cow--what does the farmer do with this
useless by-product of the dairy industry? After the calf's birth, if he
is not immediately slaughtered, more than likely he'll be taken to a
veal factory. There, he will be locked up in a stall and chained by his
head to prevent him from turning around for his entire life. He'll be
fed a special diet without iron or roughage. He will be injected with
antibiotics and hormones to keep him alive and to make him grow. He
will be kept in darkness except for feeding time. The result? A nearly
full-grown animal with flesh as tender and milky white as a newborn's.
The beauty of the system from the standpoint of the veal industry is
that meat from today's so called "crate" veal will still fetch the
premium price it always did when such flesh came only from a baby calf,
just a lot more of it.

62 Agricultural engineers have compared the energy costs of
producing poultry, pork and other meats with the energy costs of
producing a number of plant foods. It was found that even the least
efficient plant food was nearly 10 times as efficient in returning food
energy as the most energy efficient animal food.

63 Unlike natural carnivores who can eat large quantities of
saturated fat without developing clogged arteries, humans, as well as
herbivores, predictably develop atherosclerosis with excessive
saturated fat in their diets (see #4, #100).

64 Referring to the book The Jungle, Jeremy Rifkin, author of
Beyond Beef, writes, "Little has changed in the meat packing industry
since Upton Sinclair's telling account." Plant conditions are so
intolerable and dangerous that even exploited workers with few choices
for other employment leave the industry. Along with the high turnover,
the array of languages spoken by immigrant employees, serves to
minimize meat inspection, the job done more and more by meat packer
employees and less and less by USDA inspectors.

65 Food originating from animal sources, including milk, unlike
most foods derived from plants, makes the blood acidic. When this
happens, the body withdraws calcium from the bones to make the blood
more alkaline. This process balances the pH of the blood, but
consequently becomes one of the factors which leads to osteoporosis.

66 Bacteria in meat and poultry processing is a constant concern,
and a very big business. The proliferation of antibacterial rinses
(chlorine and saline) and sprays (for cow udders), as well as steam
pasteurization (beef), ammonia neutralizers (poultry litter) and
contaminant vacuums--just to name a few, all serve to allow the meat
and poultry industries the luxury of cheap and filthy operations. A
USDA-approved pilot test of a chemical de-hairing process went into
effect in early 1996. The procedure--which will give stunned cattle a
burning, bacteria-eliminating shave before slaughter--will probably
prove effective in the pilot test. In practice, however, the chance for
a percentage of still-sentient animals being chemically burned will
most certainly exist.

67 Foodborne illness related to meat and poultry cost Americans $2-4 billion each year in medical expenses and lost wages.

68
Family farmers who sold their chickens independently to processors on
the open market only 35 years ago operate nearly exclusively today as
"contract growers." If he hasn't yet been squeezed out completely, "Old
MacDonald" currently holds a contract with a company in which he agrees
to provide his facility and labor to grow company birds, on company
feed, to company specifications. He can hardly get out of debt after
his investment in the necessary hardware of today's intensive
confinement systems. The demise of the family farmer, which is complete
in the chicken business, is now well under way in the pork business.

69 Are humans naturally carnivorous? Generally speaking, it is not
common for humans to stalk a wild animal, catch it by sinking claws
into its body, bite its neck, and feel comfort in the taste of fresh
warm blood and uncooked flesh.

70 Farming today is fully concentrated in the hands of a few. In
the US, eight firms control half (approximately 3.5 billion birds) of
the poultry industry, and four meat packers control 90 percent of meat
processing. The so-called Freedom to Farm bill, which came into law in
early 1996, schedules $36 billion to be given over 7 years, in essence,
to the wealthiest of America's agribusinessmen--regardless of prices in
the market, nor with requirements to farm anything at all. The law will
ultimately act to shake out small and moderate sized farms once and for
all.

71 A method used to crank up pork production is to take piglets
away from their mothers soon after birth. The forced weaning allows the
sow to end her lactating period so she can become pregnant again. To
prevent piglet death due to the emotional loss, a mechanical teat may
serve as a substitute. Tending to the mother's emotional loss has no
economic value and so is given no consideration.

72 The high incidence of constipation, hemorrhoids, hiatal hernias,
diverticulosis, spastic colon, and appendicitis in humans corresponds
very closely to today's widespread adoption of high fat, low fiber,
meat-centered diets.

73 Our dwindling supply of good water is directly tied to meat
consumption. Over half of the total amount of water consumed in the US
goes to irrigate land growing feed and fodder for livestock.

74
Since so much fossil fuel is needed to produce it, beef could be
considered a petroleum product. With factory housing, irrigation,
trucking, and refrigeration, as well as petrochemical fertilizer
production requiring vast amounts of energy, approximately one gallon
of gasoline goes into every pound of grain-fed beef.

75 The Allied naval blockade during World War I of German-occupied
territories in 1917 forced Denmark most dramatically into nationwide
vegetarianism. The death rate there from disease during the period
dropped by 34%.

76 It is deceptive to measure fat as the percentage of physical
weight of foods as the milk industry does. Since milk is mostly just
water, by weight the fat comes to only 3% to 3.7%. Fat content by
calories, however, is 50%!

77 Chicken feathers, guts, and waste water, which normally need to
be discarded during processing, are routinely "recycled" back to the
layer and broiler houses as feed. Industry experts believe that along
with unclean slaughtering and processing techniques, this forced
cannibalism is leading to the rampant salmonella epidemic in poultry
plants (see #11).

78 Even though organic farming and integrated pest management are
viable farming methods, agribusiness continues to use pesticides.
Pesticides may take hundreds of years to degrade. Despite huge
increases in pesticide use, crop losses due to pests are actually 20%
higher today than they were mid-century.

79 A 1978 study found blood pressure levels of vegetarian Seventh
Day Adventists to be significantly lower than blood pressure levels of
meat-eating Mormons.

80 In a March, 1984 cover story, Time
magazine reported findings regarding cholesterol and heart disease. It
noted that "in regions where ... meat is scarce, cardiovascular disease
is unknown." (See #100.)

81 There are no laws to regulate transport of animals for food
consumption, specifically via truck--so this is the meat industry's
preferred method of transport. That many of the animals are dead after
their brutal trip is calculated as a cost of doing business (see #84).

82 More soot is emitted from grills in LA's fast food restaurants than from all of the city's busses.

83
The American farmer, as our storybook image of him suggests, simply no
longer exists. Today, the person who actually gets close to farm
animals is just a hired hand of agribusiness. In the broiler or layer
shed of tens of thousands of birds, for instance, the main job to
attend to is culling dead birds from cages. Through careful
calculations, conditions are maintained intense enough to keep costs
down, but not so intense that mortality rates cut into profits.

84 Due to growing commercial specialization in the several
developmental stages of cattle production, and due to producers seeking
the best price at every step of the animals' maturing process, your
hamburger may have come from a steer that suffered relocation between
Mexico and the US. Feeder cattle are shipped to Mexico to graze;
Mexican cattle are shipped to the US to be fattened in US feedlots; and
US cattle are transported to Mexico to be slaughtered and processed.
The USDA and the financial community hail this animal shuffling as a
development which shows how the various "cattle sectors" can
"complement" each other with "free trade." It's not likely that the
steers who suffer the trip would agree (see #81).

85 Late in 1995, the FDA put into place new rules pertaining to the
regulation of fish processing. The rules require the FDA to inspect
each of the nation's 6,000 processing plants, at most once per year and
as little as once every three years, at which time a few samples may be
taken for later evaluation. Individual fish will continue to not be
inspected by any US agency. Though every fish processor will be
required to keep ongoing records of safety procedures peculiar to its
operation, no regulations whatsoever will pertain to the 100,000
fishing vessels that bring seafood to market. The new system is
considered an improvement--from the standpoint of the consumer--over
the previous one (see #32, #41).

86 According to John Robbins book, Diet for a New America, "The
world's cattle alone, not to mention pigs and chickens, consume a
quantity of food equal to the caloric needs of 8.7 billion people."
Hundreds of millions of tons of grain go to animals while only 5
million tons of grain could adequately feed the approximately 15
million children throughout the world who starve to death every year.

87 The positive health benefits a person may think he or she gets
from eating fish can better be achieved through a whole foods
vegetarian diet. Fish lacks carbohydrates, fiber, and vitamin C. Also,
fish is high in animal protein, which is hard on the kidneys and high
in fat, which increases the risk of cancer and gall bladder disease.

88 The USDA does not inspect for trichinosis in pork. It is widely
known that pork must be thoroughly cooked before eating. Still, about
4% of Americans have trichinella worms in their muscles which can
periodically cause flu-like symptoms and even death.

89 Hens are starved for 30 hours before their slaughter. Any food given during this time would not be converted into flesh.

90
According to William Castelli, M.D., Director of The Framingham Heart
Study, vegetarians outlive other people by about six years.

91 A person sitting down to a meal of animal foods will consume, in
the aggregate, much more than just the animal product on his or her
plate. The disposal of male chicks (see #54), predator control for
ranchers (see #36), fish fed to livestock (see #56), controlled levels
of animal mortalities (see #83), and even forced cannibalism (see #77)
in today's agriculture add up to animal-per-plate ratios higher than
what may meet the eye. So, due to today's modern methods of
agriculture, phantom animals are an automatic ingredient in the recipe
of death at dinner time when animal foods mar the menu.

92 According to the United Nations, "slight, moderate or severe
desertification" affects 29% of the Earth's landmass. The destruction
is largely due to the demands of livestock raising around the world.
With two-thirds of the earth's population subsisting primarily on a
vegetarian diet, it is the meat-eating rich countries, such as the US,
which are driving this trend with their imports of beef. To supply
demand, Third World exporters drive indigenous populations, who have
tilled the soil sustainably for generations, off their land. The
uprooted rural refugees are currently flooding overburdened urban
centers all around the world.

93 Trade in animal food puts needless pressure on world governments
straining to get along. For instance, the US allows the implantation of
hormones into beef cattle. For this reason, since the late 1980s, the
European Union has banned all imports of US beef. With the advent of
the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), the USDA has vowed
to step up pressure on the EU to force it to accept US beef. The
controversy could possibly even have to be settled by the Geneva-based
World Trade Organization's dispute settlement body. A similar scenario
between the US and Russia with respect to poultry was being played out
at press-time. Intense pressure from the poultry industry was put on
the USDA and even Vice President Gore to intervene when all poultry
imports were rejected outright by Russia due to safety concerns.

94 More than a third of the veal calves tested in a 1995 undercover
investigation done by the Humane Farming Association came up positive
for clenbuterol--an acutely toxic and illegal animal drug. Subsequently
it was found that many veal producers in the US had knowingly purchased
and used the drug for their herds over a five-year period. This in
itself is frightening; but worse is the revelation that the FDA and the
USDA worked to protect the veal industry from scandal by maintaining a
coverup about the clenbuterol use of which it became aware.

95 In a seven-year study of washed-up marine debris at Padre Island
National Seashore (located on the southeastern coast of Texas), the US
Department of the Interior found that the shrimping industry was far
and away the biggest contributor of ocean litter.

96 Poultry processors are not required by the USDA to check for
salmonella bacteria in poultry. A 1978 USDA rule still in effect
accepts a "chill tank" bath for bird carcasses as a sufficient
counter-measure. Dunking a chicken carcass through this bath, now known
as the "fecal soup," has been likened to a rinse in your toilet.
According to the Center for Science in the Public Interest, 25% of all
chicken sold in the US carry the salmonella bacteria--a conservative
estimate. The USDA says that salmonella poisoning may be responsible
for as many as 4 million illnesses and 3 thousand deaths per year.

97 To produce foie gras, a duck or goose is force-fed huge
quantities of grain three times a day with a feeder tube. This
torturous process goes on for 28 days before slaughter, causing
stomachs sometimes to burst. Livers, diseased and swollen to several
times normal size by this process, are considered a delicacy which sell
for about $12 an ounce. About 7,000 tons are produced worldwide per
year.

98 Though milk gives temporary relief to ulcer sufferers because of
the calcium content, acid production in the stomach eventually results
and the stomach lining is eroded even more.

99 The direct and
hidden costs of soil erosion and runoff in the US, mostly attributable
to cattle and feed crop production, is estimated at $44 billion a year.
Each pound of feedlot beef can be equated with 35 pounds of eroded
topsoil.

100 According to the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute,
cardiovascular diseases caused 954,000 deaths (42% of all deaths) in
1993. Total direct cost to sufferers added up to $126.4 billion.
Seventy-two percent of the deaths were due to atherosclerosis
(hardening of the arteries), a disease strongly linked to a meat-based
diet (see #63, 80).

101 The treatment of human disease with antibiotics is showing
signs of being hampered by the flagrant overuse of antibiotics fed and
injected into the animals people eat. Meat-eaters are exacerbating the
trend toward human immunity to medicinal drugs just by eating cow's
milk, hamburgers and chicken. This ultimately affects everyone,
vegetarians and non-vegetarians alike.
This list--in its entirety--is copyrighted by Pamela Teisler-Rice.

Stating
this is not to discourage distribution of the list in other forms. It
is only to serve notice that The VivaVegie Society must be notified of
any and all multiple reproductions.

101 Reasons Why I'm a Vegetarian was compiled using many facts
derived mostly from secondary sources. Individual facts are not
copyrighted by The VivaVegie Society -- they are copyrighted by the
source.

The VivaVegie Society is New York City's premier vegetarian advocacy
organization. Its primary goal is to reach pedestrian traffic to
promote the vegetarian way of life and to educate about the detriments
of our society's meat centered diet. VivaVegie Society advocates gather
in populated areas around New York City setting up a table to
distribute educational material about vegetarianism, educational
material which always includes the 101 Reasons. The compact 8-page
(equivalent) document 101 Reasons Why I'm a Vegetarian is integral to
the purposes of The VivaVegie Society.

And finally, last, but not least:

101 Reasons Why I'm a
Vegetarian is dedicated to my husband, Alan Rice, who maintained a
constant flow of invaluable reference material streaming my
way--without which this "mighty convincer" would have been a lot less
convincing.

Copyright © 1995. The VivaVegie Society. All rights reserved.
HTML source file: Copyright © 1996 EarthBase, Inc. All rights reserved.

Your comments are of interest to me. email: pamela@nycbiz.com Published by The VivaVegie Society; Prince Street Station; P.O. Box 294 New York, N.Y. 10012-0005 U.S.A.

Publisher: Pamela Teisler-Rice

Copyright © 1995. The VivaVegie Society. All rights reserved.